Last game of the Alaris Dream campaign

The end is upon us!

This week saw the last game of the 40k Alaris Dream campaign at my club. Throughout the campaign we had been fighting to get relics for our special characters. Now it was time to see who'd win them in the end. 

Imotekh makes it night time. My camera makes it sunset.

The last game was a 6v6 game with 1000 points each. We had to field our special characters if they were alive. The objective of the game was to collect relics from the other characters. All of the relics were on the same side though....... so we had to kill each other to get them..... 

For this mission the special rules were: 

   Your character had to move as quickly as possible to the nearest relic

   You were allowed to attack your allies

   After turn 1 your character must roll a reserves roll. If it is passed then they teleport away from the battle to a 2'x2' table to duke it out with the other characters

 Necron Warrior: I though you were our friends

Ork: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggggghhhh

As I had a relic I knew that my allies would turn on me. I kitted out Imotekh with a derpstar squad of lords, crypteks and an overlord. One cryptek had veil of darkness so I could teleport to whichever objective I wanted, one had a chronometron for re-rolls (which came very much in handy), one with an eldritch lance. The rest of my army was 3x5 warriors and 2 wraiths to annoy Mark because he loves them so much.

Imotekh has his lightning ability. As I knew everyone and their pet dog might be attacking me I decided to use his lightning  on every unit on the table that wasn't mine. All this did was kill an immolator that was nowhere near me and annoy a lot of people hehe.

A wraith proxied as my overlord because I'd left my overlord attached to his command barge at home. Doh!

The derpstar squad and Imotekh did really well. They almost killed a chaos lord who had 2 relics, killed most of his squad of CSM, killed a squad of 8 chaos termys too!! After all that they hadn't lost a single man (er necron?). The chronometron came in handy to re-roll Imotekhs teleporting away roll when I didn't want him to go. 

By turn 5 Imotekh teleported onto the small table of doom. On there already was an Ork warboss, a Chaos Lord, Typhus, a Grey Knight character, The Swarmlord and a guard Psyker character. Imotekh sucks in combat so I knew I was doomed.

Crazy things happened though. The Swarmlords psychic powers killed a 2 or 3 of the enemy characters. Imotekh killed the warboss. Imotekh then got stuck into combat with the chaos lord he'd been trying to kill all game. The chaos lord had other ideas though. He had a relic that let him re-roll failed saves and I didn't have a power weapon, so he effectively had a 2+/2+FNP! We failed to kill each other and eventually the swarmlord killed us all.

So in the end the Swarmlord won the campaign by only winning the last game. Congrats to Matt Franklin who normally doesn't have much luck playing 40k. I'm happy with how Imotekh did, he was fielded in 6 out of the 7 games in the campaign and only died at the end. He did fail his one and only we'll be back roll though grrrr.

Thanks to Ian and Barrie Wardle of Guardians of Tyr, it was great fun. If I did the campaign again I'd probably choose Mephiston instead as there was a lot of character combat involved. Now I need to finish writing the campaign I was planning......

Game 5 of the Alaris Dream campaign - Imotekh Lives Again!

Last nights game was the penultimate game of the club campaign. Due to issues with numbers on the Imperial side 2 of our games had to be changed to 3000 points Imperial vs 2x 1500 point bad guys. I was allied with Orks against 3000 points of Blood Angels.

My list was:

Imotekh, Destuction Cryptek with Gaze of Flame and chronometron cryptek attached to 20 warriors

Overlord with warscythe in Command Barge

2x 8 warriors with 2x Destruction crypteks in 2x Ghost Arks

4x Wraiths, 3 with Whip coils

Ork list was:

Warboss with Power Klaw

3x 30 boyz squads with a nob with power klaw and boss pole

10x burna boyz

6x deffkoptas with rokkits

Blood Angels (2x force orgs):

2x captains with lightning claws

1x sanguinary priest

1x furioso dread with blood talons in drop pod

3x scout squads

2x land raiders

2x vindicators

2x stormravens

1x predator with autocannon and lascannons

1x baal predator with the burny flame template thing

1x big assault squad

The game itself was an objective game with 5 objectives on the table. We were meant to play with a weird rule that meant all infantry (including jump infanty and bikes) would come back on as reserves. We canned this rule because our game was taking forever anyway and this would have made it insane.

Deployment was table quarters on a normal 6' x 4' table. This made it very hard to deploy 3000 points on either side. My deployment being squished to the side of our quarter effectively meant I was kept out of the game. The Orks filled a lot of our deployment and the Blood Angels were struggling for space too, too many orks and too many large BA vehicles.

Before the game started we all had ambushes to do as per the previous games in the campaign. I rapid fired 20 warriors into a land raider hoping to immobilise it. I got 5 glancing hits! I then failed to get anything higher than a stunned, even with the chronometron reroll on one of them! GAH! The orks managed to kill a vindicator with their ambush and the blood angels killed one of my wraiths, Mark really hates my wraiths XD

Once the game got started it was a very long and slow game. I'll just go over the highlights.

The orks moved towards the enemy as orks are wont to do. The Blood Angels mostly held back. I tried to get round to the enemy but we only got 4 turns in so I never really got there.

Imotekhs lightning killed a stormraven and immobilised a land raider.

The drop podding dreadnought slaughtered a squad of 30 orks but didn't do much else.

Imotekhs squad got charged in the last turn by a squad of 5 marines, because I had a crytpek with Gaze of Flame he didn't get a charge bonus so I only took 10 attacks which killed one warrior, I then hit back and did nothing. For the first time ever my warriors actually passed the morale check and stayed in combat, I just wish I had a power weapon in the squad somewhere.

I don't really think anything else spectacular happened. It was mostly a game of kill the orks or be killed by them.

My Necrons were pretty much ignored all game, which meant I still had 3 troops by the end to claim objectives. I had one ghost ark on an objective, one which I believe had an objective but there was a difference of opionions on it and one squad of 20 warriors on an objective but in the last turn they were charged which pulled them away from it. The Blood angels held one objective too. The objectives were worth d666 points each, I got 400 ish and the Blood angels got 100 ish, so we effectively won anyway. I only got 2 kill points in the end and I haven't a clue what the other 2 got but it was certainly much more than me.

We finished at 2300 and I still had an hour drive to get home :'( sooo tired today!

Apologies for the funny coloured and sometimes fuzzy pics. We were in a dark corner of the room and my cheapo camera had difficulties with it.

 

Game 4 of the Alaris Dream campaign

Today's game was a random objective game. There were 5 games on 6'x4' boards with one on one 1500 point games. There were 5 markers on each table, one in each quarter and one in the middle. Everyone was handed secret objective cards that were for their eyes only. The card detailed which 2 objectives were yours. Due to the secret and random nature of it some players had objectives in their opponents deployment zone and I'm sure some would have both players going for at least one of the same objective.

Each of the 5 tables had different terrain and this in turn had different effects on the game. Our force commander had asked us previously in the week if there were any preferences as to which board we wanted to play on. I picked the swamp board. The swamp counts the entire board, minus hills, as difficult terrain that grants 4+ cover. There's also a chance of your models being eaten by a swamp monster. I picked this board specifically so I could pull some C'Tan Writhing Worldscape shenanigans with Imotekhs nightfight and some scarab farming.

I won the roll to pick sides and go first. We could pick any side of the table. So I picked one of the short sides to keep Imotekh as far away from the enemy as possible. If he died then he'd be gone from the campaign permanently. 

My opponent was Space Wolves. His army was mech mainly with a squad of long fangs and a dreadnought.

Before the game started I had an ambush tactic to use. I decided on ambushing his Long Fangs with Imotekh's warrior squad. Imotekh's flamer attack massacred the squad killing 3 of the missile launchers. The relic Imotekh gained in the last battle came in use for the return barrage of fire. 2 missile launchers and a bolt pistol fired at Imotekh and his squad. The bolt pistol missed and the shot was reflected back, killing the sergeant (Yay relic!), one of the missile's was save due to cover, the other knocked down a warrior who promptly got back up again. The 2 remaining Long Fangs then cacked their britches and decided to leg it in the opposite direction but they regrouped at the beginning of the game.

Once the game got started it pretty much revolved around me getting my close combat elements to the enemy while Imotekh blatted things with lightning. He killed 2 rhinos and a razorback. Probably the best he's ever done with it. But the important thing was that the nightfight was keeping away fire from my warriors which were sitting nicely on objectives.

My Wraiths got to the enemy first but had been decimated by Vindicator fire by the time they got there. They managed to destroy the main gun on the vindicator before finally falling to their injuries. 

A turn later my scarabs got to the enemy. The didn't really kill much except for the dreadnought, taking 20 off its armour value lol. They mainly acted as a tar pit for the 2 squads of wolves and the lord that had got out of exploding rhinos.

My C'Tan killed a lone dude and I then made a hideous tactical error and charged him into a combat already going on with a horde of scarabs and wolves. The scarabs died in droves, loosing combat by 12. The poor C'Tan, after taking not a single wound, then fell due to fearless saves. He only killed one marine with his explosion :( After this his effect of making terrain dangerous was lost.

After this all happened, the Spyders finally made it into combat. They didn't do much either. They did manage to chomp through a few marines but eventually they had all fallen bar one that was in combat with the Wolf Lord.

At the end of the game my warriors had been sitting on their objectives the whole time and I'd kept the Wolves at bay. They held one objective and I held 2. I got 6 kill points and he got 5. Each objective was worth d666 (3d6 sort of) points, due to some lucky rolling I ended up with over 1200 points :D

It was a fun game but I really ballsed up with the C'Tan. I could have put the scarabs onto better targets too. I didn't realise that Space Wolves are so damn annoying in combat against mediocre combat units like scarabs.

Game 3 of the Alaris Dream 40k campaign

A 6v6 750pt each objective game sounds like a long an tortured game to fit in one evening. It was actually a quick and fun game though (we did lose a player from each side as well, probably making it a bit quicker).

The mission was our special characters had to go as fast as possible to obtain the nearest relic. On the side of not being Imperial we had: Imotekh, Typhus, Swarmlord, an Ork biker warboss that isn't Wazdakka and another chaos dude (at the other end of the table so I didn't see what character). On the Imperials side was: Saint Celestine, Straken, a SM captain, a SW dude and Draigo.

The objectives were relics hidden in temples in a cave. (6 relics along the centre line of a 12'x4' table). Because we were in an enormous cavern the night fight rules were in play but I managed to negate it for a turn with a solar flare. Vehicles had to be kept in reserve and rolled a dangerous terrain test to come in.

My list for the game was this:
Imotekh
Royal Court with 2x lords with warscythes and mindshackle scarabs, one with res orb, 3x crypteks, one with chronometron, one with veil of darkness and one with gaze of flame and Solar pulse.
20x warriors
4x destroyers

I deployed opposite a guard infantry player with Straken. We had an objective in a building smack bang between us.

Through crazy pregame tactics, myself and the Straken guard player both had an ambush to use against each other. I went first and rapid fired a 20 man warrior squad into Straken's command squad. Normally I'd expect a crap-ton of gauss shots to be able to kill 5 guardsmen. 40k doesn't always follow laws of probability (or sanity) and I only killed 3 men. Straken and his guardsman returned fire and didn't do anything.
He then used his ambush to rapid fire a plasma gun veteran squad at my 4 destroyers. My destroyers were promptly wiped out before the game had even started. This meant a 3rd of my force didn't even start the game :( and royally messed up the solar flare tactic I had in mind (i.e. splatting the nearby sisters of battle with AP3 shots).

Once the game had actually begun to begin the enemy stole the initiative, ruining the next phase of my plans.

To my left was the Swarmlord, to my right was some infiltrated chaos marines and beyond them was a host of nurgle and orks. Sisters advanced on the Tyranids, the guard advanced on me and other forces advanced further up the battlefield.
Due to the night-fighting being in place I managed to avoid being shot by the 50 or so guardsmen coming towards me. Saint Celestine took a relic in the first turn.

In our half of the first turn we advanced ourselves. Imotekh unleashed his lightning bolts on the enemy and again my luck wasn't even close to normal probability, using the lightning against 3,750 points of Imperialists killed just one space wolf and fizzled out after that doing nothing more for the rest of the game. My warriors killed a few stormtroopers and my court zapped a penitent out of existence with their first shot of the game (hehe). I'd also popped the solar pulse but it didn't really get used as pretty much all of our forces were close range shooting, rapid fire 24".

From that point on it looked like it was over for me, the guard advanced and annihilated my warriors in combat, I failed my Ld check from loosing combat by 2 :( and got overrun. This left me with just Imotekh and his court. Inspired by pure insanity and obsession with the objective Imotekh left his group of advisers and body guards. He ran for the relic and sent his squad against the interfering Straken. He took the relic and the court killed a squad of stormtroopers and Strakens remaining guardsman (yay for evil AP1 flamer weapons). The court then charged Straken and made him punch himself in the face due to mindshackle scarabs but he passed his invulnerable, he didn't pass the saves from the warscythes though. Thus Straken was permanently removed from the campaign. My court promptly ripped through the rest of the guardsmen with the help of some chaos marines.
Imotekh has achieved his goal and then managed to avoid the enemy long enough to escape with his prize.

To my left the Swarmlord had beaten down the living saint 3 times but she still refused the give up. The Emperor wouldn't let her rest. An entire army of white-ish marines (you'd understand if you were there) outflanked to assist the saint but ultimately failed and the Swarmlord stole the relic from the Saint.

Further afield, both the Chaos lords took 2 relics each. The Ork warboss died in a heroic battle with a horde of ork boys swarming and killing Draigo and his paladins. The forces of Nurgle beat down the Space Puppies.

So in the end the bad guys held all the relics. The Imperials lost Straken and Draigo but Celestine lived. The bad guys only lost the Ork Warboss Watzhiznaym.

A victory for us but we have no idea what future there is as our force is only a loose alliance of convenience. Who knows what the purpose of the relics is or how the campaign will unfold?

Game 2 of the club campaign

I forgot my camera so no pics today.

Last night was an awesome, fun and truly bizarre game. I'll try to describe it as best I can. First off, I was a bit hyper from a crazy drive to make sure I got to the club as quickly as possible as I finished work later than normal. I got held up by an accident on the A1 and my car ran out of fuel near the club due to a dodgy fuel guage. I made it there half an hour late buzzing from adrenaline and having not eaten much. I dread to think how annoying I was last night.

Anyway, on to the game. It was a 3v3 game for random objectives. We had to search buildings instead of shooting and on a d6 roll of a 6 there was an objective. Also to make things way more crazy there was a set of tunnels underground accessible via buildings in the main table. These tunnels were represented with space hulk terrain on another table. The rooms in the tunnels were also possible objectives. We also had restictions to our force org, we can only have 1 elite/fast/heavy/hq if we take 2 troops, 2 if we take 3 troops or 3 if we take 4 troops. In this game each player only had 750 points, so the restrictions were quite limiting. We also had restrictions on max wounds, MCs, saves and vehicle armour.

On my side (the bad guys), I had necrons led by imotekh, 20 warriors, cryptek with chronometron and 5 wraiths with whip coils. Dale had orks, 90 boyz and a warboss. Jon had nurgley chaos marines and some plague bearers.

On the enemy side the corpse gods followers had: Blood angels led by Dante, lots of jump pack stuff and space wolves with erm wolfy stuff and long fangs.

Imotekh messed up the game quite a bit. We stole the initiative because of him and he made it night fight for the first 3 turns meaning we barely got shot at all. His lightning was a bit pants, killing only 7 or 8 marines I think.

The whole game revolved around trying to get guys into the tunnels and our armies moving towards the middle of the table. Two objectives were found and held by our side in the tunnels and one was found and held by the space doggies. My necrons fared alright, I lost 2 wraiths and a handful of warriors. My wraiths killed a captain and a squad of honour guard barely taking a scratch from them. The orks died in droves, kind of what orks do though. The nurgle forces did well holding 2 objectives and killing Dante.

The blood angels died in droves too but the space wolves did well, killing loads of orks.

So in the end the bad guys won. Dante now can't come back for the rest of the campaign (yay). Imotekh survived to fight another day. It was an amazing game. Haven't had this much fun playing 40k for a while. Congrats to the Guardians of Tyr for organizing it. Thanks Ian and Barrie.

I hope this wasn't too rambling or incoherent. I'm knackered and relying on my iPhone to autocorrect and hopefully make this all make sense lol.