Bink's Birthday Bash!

"I know I dropped it around here somewhere...".

 

Last night we gathered for a massive 40k game, and since it was the eve before Bink's birthday we decided to have two Ork armies (Waaagh Bink and Waaagh RorRuk) square off against Screech's Chaos army (yes, the nefarious Thousand Sons (of Bitches) deploying from their battle barge The Velvetta Scourge) along with Jim's Blood Angels (of Khorne, apparently). Since we all had 1500pt armies made up, we just went with those.

Setting up the BAs...

Knowing that time was limited for such a large scale game we agreed to try to limit our movement phases to 15 minutes tops. We choose to e deploy on the long table edges, and chose Purge the Alien as out mission.

Orks set up on the right side of their DZ

Orks set up on the left side.

Thousand Sons set up

Blood Angels set up and the start for 1st turn moves...

 

Surge in a pop smoke!



And here are the highlights

Turn One Blood Angels/1K Sons

 

• A Blood Angel Drop Pod lands in the middle of our Deployment zone cutting off a key path between one of the high rises and a bunker. It deploys a dreadnought with twin-linked heavy flamer! (ulp!)
• The BA dread blows up the trukk that was transporting Mad Doc Grotsnik!
• BA Bikers shoot up my Kommandos who break and run!
• One of my Deff Dredds takes HP damaged from the 1K Sons Landraider.

The BA dread blows up a Mad Doc's Trukk!

 



Turn One: Orks

• None of my shooting was effective at all! I rolled a lot ones considering that I needed 5+ to hit, yeah I expected to miss, but jeeesh! I killed a single Devastator marine.
• Mad Doc's retinue is a mob of 'Ard Boys who charge with frothing fury at the fire throwing dread, but it is no match against all of that rage and is wrecked.

 

And a dreadnought dies

Turn two BA/1K sons

Thousand Sons and Dread Co. Dread tearing up the Ork lines

• The Death Company Dread is deployed via Drop Pod into the left portion of the Ork's deployment zone. It blows up my Battle Wagon with a lucky shot!
• A squad of Thousand Sons marines lead by his Warlord, a Chaos Sorcerer, arrive via Dread Claw. They shoot up, and charge Bink's Bikers, killing his Warlord in a Challenge, defeating them and running them down. It was a humbling affair but at least one of the Thousands Sons died via overwatch.
• On the other flank, the Chosen charge my slugga mob, and champion challenges my squad's Nob. They kill each other! The two units remain locked in combat...

Turn Two: Orks

• We focus most of our fire on the left flank on that Death Co. Dread. It simply must go! And after taking HPs to a Weird Boy Zzzap! it's my Lootas T7 guns that finished it off.
• On the right, Bink's Deff Coptas and my Dredd shoot the heck out of a 1K son's Rhino and fail to do anything to it! My dredd charges it and wipes it out with a power klaw!

Look, more things to kill!

• Desperate, and statistically challenged, the Burna Boys charge the Thousand Sons. They are crushed by the Thousand Sons who slowly and purposely stride across their fuel soaked corpses.

"You Blood Angels just hang back an' watch this..."

•  My slugga mob wipe out all but one of the Chosen, and he's the guy with fearless banner! So, this one guy has my Warlord and big mob locked in combat with him.

"HA! I will take you ALL on!!!"

• My Kommados, who rallied on our Turn one and have been making their way over to the BA Bikers that have been shooting at them, attempted and failed a charge against them.

it struck us that it was now nearing 2 am, and most of us were feeling it hard! The funny thing is, when you're having this much fun it only feels like 2 hours have past, but in fact MANY hours passed and passed quickly! We agreed to call it there and tally our VPs, declaring the BA/1K Son alliance the victors! All of us were itching to continue, but we just HAD to stop. Still, it was good fun and all units got to participate (regardless of their effectiveness, heheh).

Looking down the Ork lines, another round or two and it was going to get SERIOUSLY bloody

As we packed up we tried to figure out what happened: how can we do this on a Friday night and actually finish the game? Shy of playing with a greatly reduced point agreement, we probably can't. We would need to agree to play an all day game starting at noon or so get through this kind of Epic awesomeness. Still, finishing wasn't the point: it was the fun of getting our war-cries out and hanging out together, and enjoying the time well spent, and that is what this is all about! It was a good start to Bink's Birthday weekend: we'll see if we can top it next time!

2nd 6th edition game



The Dr's Kommandos. A reminder that I should paint my own someday.

Last night the Dr. and I played 40K. This was my 2nd game of the new edition. It was a small game, 750 points, but I've been finding in this new edition that the smaller points games are taking us about as long to play as the 5th edition 2K point game. There are enough subtle changes to learn through to slow us down a bit.  



Space Wolf Deployment



I fielded my Space Wolves, which was just a subtle rules tweak to the list I used with Warfrog in that last report I wrote about.

• 2 grey hunter squads (one with a rhino)
• A landspeeder
• Rune Priest as my HQ choice
• 4 man Wolf Guard Terminator squad with Drop pod
• Longfang squad with missile launcher



Shoota Boyz deployment



The Dr. fielded his Orks. Which I tried to recall as being:

• A warphead
• 2 squads of gretchin with the required amount of Runtherdz
• 2 squads of Shoota Boyz.
• 1 squad of Kommandos.

Shoota Boyz with Warphead ( the unpainted ork)



The battlefield was set up with Vanguard layout. Our mission was Crusade, Failing to steal the initiative the orks went first. It didn't seem that he could do much, except move his guys towards the objectives. That was, until, he rolled his Warpheadz' psychic powers and teleported him and his shoota boyz across the table, directly behind my Long Fangs.



Warphead and boyz attack the Longfangs from behind.

When the smoke cleared from all the shooting, the Long Fangs stood firm. Then they boyz charged. When the red mist settled, the Long Fangs were no more. In fact, each model died 3 times over! LOL


Aftermath of Kommando and Boyz assault

A similar thing happened with the Squad of Grey Hunters nearby who were wiped out by a squad of Kommandos that launched out of cover. It was a glorious 1st round for the Orks...



Drop Pod Assault

On my turn I tank shocked the warphead and shoot boyz who failed the LD test and bolted, but the real fire power was unleashed with the Runepriest Gnarl and the Wolfguard's drop-pod assault. With a heavy flamer, Deathwind missles, and living lighting, the Kommandos with quickly dealt with. 


Chasing the Warphead

The last of the Kommandos were eliminated by the terminator's assault phase, and they began pursuit of the Warphead.



Objectives seized



 Over on the other side of the table, the other half od the ork army (all troops choices I must stress) were happily seizing objectives. BTW, that strange white square is our last minute attempt at ...um, "modeling" a pond! LOL. It worked for our purposes.



Dr's awesome ghost-faced grots surge forth!

A note on the Dr's grots: They are all totally customized (actually, the Dr.really can not stand fielding models that aren't unique) and I wanted to show them off here. Note that bases with 2 snottlings on them count as a single grot. This is a close up of them surging forth to assist the rallied Warphead and his boyz...



Yup, it was turn 3.

 ...who turned to charge the Rhino full of Grey Hunters. They wrecked the Rhino, and subsequently all the Grey Hunters jumped out the back, and gunned down the shoota boyz.

The Heavy Flamer of the Land Speeder Tornado showed up to flame a huge swath of the grot horde.

The Runtherdz assaulted the Speeder, and blew it up. The resulting explosion might have killed more grots then the heavy flamer did!

In the remaining turns the Grey Hunters eliminated the Runtherdz and the grots, and claimed a nearby objective, giving me my 1st 3 points. The Warphead, down to 1 wound,  hid denying me a bonus 1vp.

The game ended at the bottom of turn 5 with my Wolf Guard and Rune Priest trudging into the ork lines raining fire into the other Grot squad in a desperate bid to clear the orks of their objectives, but it was not to be.

ORKS 8VP

Space Wolves 3VP

Some questions that came up that are basically due to the edition change. In fact, these are sort of subtle changes and they really threw more for a loop.

• Charging a skimmer: Is the chance to hit no longer modified by how fast it moved in previous turns?
• Attacking a moving vehicle. This gives a vehicle a WS1. Non-moving a WS0. If by having a WS1, does this allow the vehicle to "attack back" (i.e. those hobos who kill themselves or self-amputate themselves by trying to jump onto moving trains)?
• Where the hell is the main rulebook FAQ!? C'mon GW!
• There may have been other questions that I don't recall, if so I'll edit them in here later.

All in all, a fun game, We're hoping we again do it can on Friday.

-Joel


Our first 6th ed game

Last night Warfrog and I got together to try out the new Warhammer 40,000 6th edition rules system. We chose 1000pt each, I took Space Wolve and he chose Tyranids. It was supposed to be a toss-off kind of practice game, but as is typical when we play, we totally got into it and didn't stop until after 2am! I took two Runepriests so I could play around with the new psi rules, my classic landspeeder to see if the tweaks to skimmers could be experienced, 2 Rhinos each with a 6-man squad of Greyhunters, a pack of Longfangs, a Lonewolf and a drop pod with 5 Wolfguard.

I'll let Warfrog explain the hilarity of this situation! LOL

We took a bunch of pics and Warfrog is committed to doing a battle report in the next few days, and talking about what we thought of certain rules. I had a few WTF moments with a few things, but in hindsight I get the 'theatrical' elements that GW was trying to achieve with this edition and they sort of make sense when I think about them from that perspective. As is typical, my dice stole the show and blew our minds- as my Runepriest could attest too.  :)

Anyway, it was more fun then either of us thought it would be, so look forward to his write up. Once he posts it, I will add a link on this blog post.


UPDATE: Here's Warfrog's report: http://warfrog.blogspot.com/2012/07/first-run-with-6th-ed-tyranids.html and I am adding my additional observations to his comments thread. So continue over there please (it's like a comic book cross over!)