Trying Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition - Deathwatch vs Thousand Sons

 

A few weeks back I took my Deathwatch down to the club to try 10th edition Warhammer 40,000. I'd found 9th edition a bit fiddly and hard to keep track of, and was quite hopeful for 10th. I certainly found list building a significant chunk easier!

My opponent was running Thousand Sons, and had been playing a few games of the new edition. We picked a pretty standard mission and deployed, with me taking the first turn.

I advanced my bikes, claiming an objective, but my fire into the Thousand Sons was pretty ineffective.

A squad of Thousand Sons with flamers and Ahriman headed into the midfield. They used some kind of magical ritual to remove the armour saves of my assault intercessors, who basically exploded.

Some Thousand Sons teleported into my backfield to score a secondary objective.

On my turn, I charged a Dreadnought and Bladeguard into the Thousand Sons.

But the counter attack started to whittle them down...

Kill Team Cassius then rolled into the Thousand Sons squad who'd charged my Spectrus Kill team...

At the start of the Thousand Sons turn 2, Magnus turned up. I was definitely in a lot of bother.

That's . . . that's a lot of casualties.

My Phobos Librarian charged into the Tzeentch sorcerer to try and finish him off...

Buti it was basically all over - my Captain got run over by a Rhino (the ignominy!), while the surviving Hellblaster tried to facedown a (proxied) Mutalith Vortex Beast on his own...

Magnus smushed another Killteam on his own - the sole survivor got charged.

My dice were not helping, though. Here's a typical round of armour saves...

After some ineffective flailing at each other for a few combats, the Phobos Librarian eventually fell to the Sorcerer, despite having had a relatively good chance of killing the sorcerer outright...

And it was then basically down to the mopping up. At the point of turn 3 that I was tabled, I was down 22-57 victory points...

That said - I had a lot more fun than with 9th edition. The Goonhammer game tracker is excellent and makes it easy to keep track of what you're meant to be doing, picking which special abilities your army has means that you only have a few things to keep track of, and all the units having some cool special ability on their card was fun.

I'm going to put the Deathwatch away for a little, though. They currently lack good anti armour options with the models I have, and I don't want to invest money in them until their Codex comes out. So, it's time, I think, to pull out my rather dusty Astra Militarum...

Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans

A got a few more Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans painted by Squiggle's Studio. I still haven't got a game of 10th edition in yet, but hopefully I'll find the time some point soon...

Deathwatch Bikers

 

I got these bikers for my Deathwatch back from Squiggle's Studio recently. While the bikes are discontinued and won't have a direct profile any more, they're apparently going to be acceptable proxies for the Primaris bikes.

I really have no idea how Deathwatch and Space Marines are working in the new edition. I'm also aware that Space Marines usually have a pretty early Codex so I'm not going to be rushing to change a lot of my Marines just yet. Still, I should probably get a game in.

Trying out 9th edition Warhammer 40K

 

The other week, I managed to make it down to Dark Sphere to get in my first game of ninth edition 40K. To keep it manageable, we kept it down to 1,000 points. We rolled for a mission from the Arks of Omen pack, and got the Incursion Mission "Desperate Raid".

My opponent brought a Necron force with a bunch of Warriors, some Lychguard, a unit of Flayed Ones and I think some Immortals. They had a terrifying ability that meant they reduce the toughness of models they were in close combat with due to the radiation they are saturated with.

I hid most of my units away to avoid getting wrecked by Necron firepower in the first turn. The current competitive rules for 40K have half your victory points coming from the mission, and half from the secondary objectives you select yourself. To try and keep things simple, I chose the Adeptus Astartes missions Shock Tactics and the generic missions Grind it Down and Behind Enemy Lines. I realised only now when writing it up that Behind Enemy Lines and Shock Tactics are both in the same category and couldn't be taken together.

A ton of Necrons pour into the centre of the table, but fortunately only a few Marines fall to their fire, especially due to a well timed use of a Marine strategem that means that they can only be wounded on a 4+ for one set of attacks.

I use some Stratagems and a Chaplain litany to heavily buff up a unit of Assault Intercessors before yeeting them into the biggest unit of Necron Warriors, absolutely wrecking them and leaving only three alive. I could have used another stratagem to take a second attack, and chose not to. It later turned out that this was a mistake as while it would have been massive overkill, those three surviving Warriors survived the rest of the battle scoring an objective every turn for the rest of the game.

The Necrons then came up and counter attacked, wiping out the Assault Intercessors. This happened a few times as a Marine unit heavily damaged or destroyed a Necron unit, only to be wiped out in return.

The Necron player also brought on a unit of Flayed Ones into my deployment zone. Oh dear.

The Destroyers wrecked one of my Phobos combat squads in the ruins on the left of this photo...

But the Deathwatch Veterans proceeded to charge them and absolutely wreck them with a Xenophase Blade and Heavy Thunderhammer.

I still don't have a good idea of what "should" destroy something else. Some things I think will do a bit of damage, and absolutely wreck whatever they're hitting, while other attacks (particularly bolter fire) seemed completely ineffective. I suspect this is knowledge will come with time.

The Flayed Ones charge into the Intercessor Kill Team, but spend most of the game slowly trying to kill them, and the Objective Secured ability scores me a bunch of points.

The combined Necron shooting wipes out the Veterans, and then the characters, meaning I'm running out of units to do anything.

The Intercessors stay bogged down, unable to put a dent in the Flayed Ones.

The Chaplain manages to hold up the Lychguard a little, but not much.

The Vanguard Veterans arrive and absolutely delete a unit with damage to spare. This is a definite equipment issue as they'd have probably been able to still do this with only one lightning claw and a Storm Shield, while having some tiny chance of surviving the follow up fire that wiped them out in practice.

The Hellblasters took some casualties but also had trouble removing much in return. They did overcharge to remove some big walker thing.

With the game done, we added up the points and my opponent hadn't quite understood the mission and had not scored as many points as I had. But, you know, I also hadn't selected a legal selection of secondaries. I'd also run the Xenos Hunters rule wrong for the first turn, applying some rerolling 1s to shooting when it should have just been Melee. And also forgotten Marine doctrines for the whole game.

It was definitely a learning game, is what I'm saying...

Deathwatch Shieldbreaker Strike Force

 

I picked up the 2021 Space Marine Christmas army box, the "Shieldbreaker Strike Force". With everything else in the force done, I got it over to Squiggle's Studio to get painted up. To give the sergeants a bit more of a kick, I picked up some sprues for Thunder Hammers, and a set of 3 "Easy Build" Assault Intercessors  to bulk out the Assault Intercessors and let the multi-part ones take the role of the sergeants.

The new regular Intercessors with the five I already have gave me five of each of the bolter types they come with to let me pick which I need for a particular game or particular role. It should be 

Heavy Intercessors are the new unit for the most recent Codex. They've got tougher armour and bigger guns - I'm interested to see how they turn out in play.

I gained another Captain to swap in and out as needed, along with three Bladeguard. They can't do anything super clever in Deathwatch, but I suspect they're going to be pretty good in the new Boarding Action games.

Finally, the new Primaris Speeder. There's three different ones with different names, and I have no idea which is which. Hopefully I'll get to play it enough to learn which one it is and what it actually does...

One Page Rules: Grimdark Future Firefight Campaign Day 1

 

My friend I tried out Grimdark Future with a few months back set up a mini campaign day for three of us to play through. I brought my Deathwatch, my friend brought his Necrons, while our third player borrowed some of my friend's Eldar as she's not finished painting her Sisters up.

So, on this mysterious backwater planet, the Inquisition have noticed strange activity and possible Eldar, so the Deathwatch were sent to investigate.

The Deathwatch scouted into an Industrial area that had started to mysteriously collapse. As they took up positions, a strange ray gun flared and the squad's gunner fell to the ground. 

The close assault specialist ran up to support the kill team's scout, who was accessing a strange Xenos device to determine it's purpose. Out of the dark leapt a mechanical horror, draped in human skin.

Spotting a more ornate mechanical creature, the kill team's psyker Librarian Abelii charged in and engaged in a brutal duel. Neither were able to gain the upper hand, even with the Librarian unleashing a lightning storm on the powerful Necron.

Lieutenant Clypeus held off the horrific Xenos, and another of its allies that materialised into existence. He was badly injured, but held it together to stay standing.

Meanwhile the close assault specialist sprinted to try and retrieve the squad's servo skull that had been sent to scout ahead, but more mechanical Xenos had been tampering with it, and didn't fall to his desperate assault as darkness fell, and the two forces separated.

In the end, both forces had gained intelligence on the other's activity, but neither had managed to gain an edge...

Heading out into the wastes, the team hadn't got far before suddenly Eldar leapt out of the shadows to attack!

The squad's scout crept around the edge to take out the Eldar's fire support.

Meanwhile the Lieutenant desperately fights to hold off another one of the Eldar's infiltrating attackers.

However, as the Eldar's assault troops charge in, the Marine's armour holds true to protect them...

And the Marine counter attack brutally cuts down the aliens, leaving them in control of the battlefield so they can gather intelligence as to what the Xenos are up to . . .

Meanwhile, elsewhere the Eldar strike against the Necrons, striking out against their ancient foe.

With a suspicious run of luck, the Necrons are swiftly vanquished. Were they manipulating fate, or was it pure luck?

It was a day of games and catching up with friends. It's something I wasn't doing much even before the pandemic, and something I'm keen to do more of in the future...