Warhammer 40K: Play Report

We talked about the release of Warhammer 40K’s sixth edition, but I haven’t really talked about it since. One of the reasons for that is that I haven’t had a chance to purchase the rule book yet. I knew it was coming, so I really should have planned better. I just haven’t had the disposable income to pick one up. That did not stop me from getting to my local Games Workshop store this weekend and playing my in two small point value games. But would I even like the new rules?

The first game I played was a one on one match against a Space Wolf player. He hadn’t really played many games of sixth edition either, so we both knew we’d be looking lots of things up while playing. It was a friendly relaxed game of war in the grim dark future. To get the technical stuff out of the way, we each had 700 points of figures. We played a three objective game with hammer and anvil deployment. I was using my Salamanders and my opponent was playing Space Wolves.

I had a blast. The new random objective powers turned out to be useful in two of the three situations. The random power I picked up from the Warlord traits actually came in handy at one point in the game. Shooting at buildings is fun, although my multi-melta was too far away to do serious damage to the tower. During the first two rounds of the game I really thought I was going to lose. I managed to turn it around though and my opponent conceded at the midpoint of turn five. I think my Captain challenging and killing Njal Stormcaller was the highpoint of the game for me.

Our next game was a three way capture the flag battle. Both the Space Wolf player and I re-used the armies we had just played with. Our third player was a fantasy player who was jumping into 40K with a Grey Knight army. Since no one was really familiar with the Grey Knight rules, we messed them up pretty badly. We gave the Grey Knights a pretty big power boost that they don’t really have. The Grey Knight player won that game, but had we actually used the rules correctly it could have been anyone’s game. In the end, we all had fun though, so that was what mattered to us.

Brandon and I will both be up at Games Day this weekend, so I’d expect a full write up on that sometime next week.

Warhammer 40K: The First Game

I’ve documented a little bit of my descent back into full blown Warhammer 40K addiction. Sunday I took the next big step forward. I boxed up all my little army men and went down to my local Games Workshop store and played my first game. Now I had played 15+ years ago, but the rules have changed three times since then so I’m going to just say I’m a beginner and leave out all that old history.

Today’s recap is going to be pretty easy to follow; I’ll keep game terms to a minimum for the non-Warhammer players out there. In the future we may run more detailed battle reports. The game basics were I was fielding 800 points of Salamanders. Not a lot of points, but except for one piece, it is everything I have assembled right now. My opponent was a local Tyranid player who took second place in the store’s tournament last week. I honestly was not expecting a win. Before we go into the report I have to mention my opponent was awesome at helping me through my first game.

We used a standard setup and we had three objectives to hold to win the game. I managed to steal the initiative. Both of our first turns were spent moving up our units. The second turn made things more interesting. My Dreadnought and my heavy bolter marine both scored a wound on his Tervigon (it has six to begin with). A Mycetic Spore drops behind one of my combat squads and two Zoanthropes attack the back of my Dreadnought. Their attacks blow up his multi-melta arm and immobilize him for the rest of the game. Shooting from his swarm of Gaunts manages to take down one of my Terminators. On my far right side his Warriors take out two of my marines.

I wasn’t feeling all that great at the start of turn three. Well I was having fun; I just didn’t think I was doing very well. The Mycetic Spore is destroyed after being hit with a flamer and heavy bolter. My Captain leads the Terminators in destroying the Zoanthropes with their thunder hammers. A combat squad and a swarm of Gaunts meet in hand to hand combat. 2 marines fall and 3 Gaunts are destroyed.

The game starts moving quickly now. The Tervigon takes another wound. My Terminators charge the Warriors, killing them, but lose two of their own in the process. My combat squad kills four more Gaunts. An area attack wipes out the remaining marines in that squad. In turn 5 the Tervigon is closing in on my heavy bolter squad. It looks like those 5 marines are going to die. Somehow the dice come up for me. My rapid fire bolters manage to wound. He manages not to make an armor save. The beast falls to the ground dead in front of them.

I was having a blast. Sadly I remembered way too late that I wasn’t supposed to just be shooting the bugs, there were objectives. The Tyranids had a mass of Gaunts holding one of those objectives; I didn’t have anyone remotely near one. We rolled and the game continued one more turn. I focused all of my fire on the Gaunts and killed enough to send them running. Neither of us had control af an objective, my first battle ended in a tie. Honestly I was thrilled to tie. I learned a lot during the game and will be better prepared for the next one. Hopefully I’ll have more painted then too.