40K Battle Report - First Foray into Heresy

Well, as every reader of the blog well knows, Horus Heresy fever has bit us hard for the last year or so. Byron and Greg have been madly accumulating and painting Forge World resin Space Marines of various antique specifications, and I kid myself that my vintage all-metal Howling Griffons more-or-less qualify as combatants of the 30th millennium of man. They have MKII Rhinos for Pete's sake!

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to wheel out some of these models for a game. Greg came up with the backstory:

"A group of World Eaters, with a few Sons of Horus and Death Guard, are part of a small Crusade stub force that was re-assembling and re-fitting on Toxo IV. They were waiting for new heavy equipment to be delivered - all the other fully assembled units had gone off to Istvaan already - when word of the “developments” on Istvaan arrives.

They move to seize control of the planet.

These “traitors” lack much heavy equipment, so one of their first objectives is a raid on a Planetary Defence Force armoury to steal some tanks. With the support of a lone Sicarian tank, they assault the PDF armoury - their goal will be to activate various tanks and armoured vehicles found there and get them off the table in one piece. A reaction force of Ultramarines also stationed on Toxo IV (the Howling Griffons company) arrives to block their plan."

We set up the opposing forces diagonally in deployment areas 24" apart. I chose a list from the new Forge World "Crusade" army book; two squads of 10 Marines in Rhinos, heavy weapon squad of 5 with lascannons, squad of 5 Terminators, a 7 or 8 man Destroyer squad with jump packs, and a Land Raider Armoured Proteus.

Greg and Byron lined up several giant squads of Space Marines with ridiculously broken weapon combos :-) plus a Legion Sicaran battle tank, a squad of Marines with multimeltas, some guys with Volkite Calivers (nasty), etc...

Byron did a very nice job on the Sicaran tank. Unfortunately its weaponry wasn't quite strong enough to damage the Land Raider, but that turned out not to be a huge problem...

Melta-dudes...

I advanced my line of troops (upper left) trying to refuse a flank and block the melta-goons from getting shots at my Raider. At the same time I dropped the Destroyer squad and Terminators into the backfield to try to hose off the melta guys.

This is about half of what I was facing to my front - pretty strong stuff!

I had some success against the green guys, nearly wiping out the squad, but my own forces were suffering heavily. It was a straight kill-points game so I needed to kill squads, but was falling behind...

Destroyers and Terminators were wiped out. 2 more VPs for Greg and Byron...

Greg's command squad rolled up another of my Marine squads - +1 more VP for the bad/good guys.

But a clash of Titans was imminent as my command squad disembarked from the Raider...

In the middle the two opposing commanders clashed. Artificer armour with 2+ save and the new power weapon rules (AP3) meant the combat was loooong and drawn out. My boss eventually killed Greg's, salvaging a VP for me as a warlord kill. I think they both got so tired that Greg's boss just gave up.

Gilles doing his impression of Greg's traitor warlord

In the end the Griffons got trounced, about 7VPs to 3. Volkite Calivers are nasty but the special SM Legion bolter rule (double shots) and 20-man squads are even nastier. Obviously, escalation in the form of Reaver Titans is in order...

 

Thanks to Conscripts Greg and Byron for bringing out their cool new toys and to Greg for the scenario. The fun factor of 40K is almost entirely dependent on your opponents and the spirit in which the game is played, and we are lucky to all be of similar minds on that!  

Peanut Allergy - RT Dreadnoughts!

 

This week I finished off the Rogue Trader-era dreadnoughts for my Howling Griffons force. They had come as a lot from an eBay seller in the UK, and I got a pretty good deal on two of 'em as the models were missing one left arm/weapon. This didn't pose a problem in my mind as I'd intended to use modern weapons on the models anyway.

Here's one with the "two Dreadnought close-combat weapons" combo.

 CCW and lascannon.

 Different view of the same model.

 CCW and multi-melta.

 Another view.

 Rear view of #3.

 CCW and "old school" missile launcher.

A very versatile chassis, eh? Decals were pinched from the Syrian MiG kit I just built for Greg's Golan Heights project.

Here's the variety of weapons I can deploy. All are magnetized and easily swappable, and each weapon fits on any of the three Dreads.

Looking forward to rolling these guys out; I think we will need to play an Apocalypse-style game... the Howling Griffons must be nearing 2,500 points now.

40K Griffons vs. Tau - This Time It's for the Greater Good

 

Last Thursday was my birthday so as is my wont, I set up a big game to celebrate. This year I wanted to have another outing with the Howling Griffons so I challenged Conscript Greg to a rematch against his Tau.

 

With 1500 points to play with you get to roll out with *most* of the toys although I still had to leave the Devastators and Terminator Squad (not to mention the Chaplain and Librarian) on the Battle Barge (I'm getting the feeling that my armies are becoming more and more suited to Apocalypse-size games?)

Finished up a standard for the converted Captain I picked up in the blister; he joins the command squad.

Everybody rides in this crew! The final list consisted of the Captain and command squad in a Razorback, three sections of 10 Marines each in Rhinos, a seven-man assault squad with jump packs, a Landspeeder and the Land Raider Armoured Proteus.

Greg rolled out with... a bunch of Tau ;-) Three squads of Firewarriors I think, two Devilfish APCs, two big (Broadside?) suits, several Crisis suits, a Pathfinder squad, Commander Shasta Cola-Beverage and a bunch of very annoying drones.

The game we set up was a straightforward objectives-hunt with three on the table: the comm tower at left on the hill, the missile silo at centre between the craters, and a Gothic ruin at right just out of shot. You can see my stuff rolling onto the table for my first turn. Greg has yet to deploy.

Here's another view. We had some more full landscape shots but Blogger refused to let me post them as landscapes, very annoying.

Anyway, I decided to go for the two objectives at centre and on my left and ignore the one on my far right. Greg went for the ones on his left and centre and ignored the one on his right. This resulted in the entire battle being waged for the centre objective, the only one we both wanted.

My Razorback was brewed up almost instantly so the command squad disembarked and unfurled the standard.

These guys deployed in a wood at the centre of the Tau line and were responsible for moderate mayhem, although Griffon bacon was saved for several turns by Greg's appalling die rolling. Whew!

These guys secured the uncontested objective on Greg's left flank. They added some long range sniping too - even the basic Tau guns are really good!

Another view of the big cheeses behind their destroyed transport.

The infanous missile silo can be seen at centre left. It's a cool little model from Armorcast - three pieces: silo top, a moveable hatch, and the missile warhead. As the turns went by we moved the hatch aside and the missile rose into firing position, ready to ruin everyone's day.

Missile approaching launch and a Griffons squad has disembarked preparatory to assaulting the objective. (Their Rhino blew up of course)
 

A highly annoying Devilfish wish no guns saw fit to interpose itself in the firing line of the Land Raider...

... duly obliterated! (note crater)

The command squad struggled up through the crater to assault some nearby suits (below). The Proteus acquitted itself very well in this game, redeeming the shame of the first-turn blowup of its first outing on the table. The Assault Squad and Landspeeder didn't fare so well, deep-striking in front of a Tau gunline and not surviving the ensuing shooting phase :-(

We left a section of Marines on the leftmost objective and brought the other section and Rhino over to help in the middle, which they did by driving off the Tau section in the crater (top left). They had problems surviving the concentrated fire of the suits though. In a fortunate turn Greg's commander got left out on his own, and was charged and killed by Marines. The damn Devilfish (above centre) wedged itself in between my Marines and the objective, denying me sole control.
 

My command group was *just* in range to assault the suits (thanks to the Warlord trait I'd rolled earlier) and eliminated them.

Winning the battle, but drawing the war... the game ended up a precise draw. We each controlled one objective (three VPs), Greg scored First Blood, I scored a leader kill, and we both got Linebreaker.

It was a pretty fun game and 6th edition represents a significant advance over 5th, but we found we really needed Conscript Dave V. there to provide his encyclopaedic rules knowledge. We had to spend too much time checking the rules to verify how Rapid Fire worked, etc. Anyway we had fun, a ton of guys showed up through the evening, and we drank beer, ate cake, and pushed around some really nice models. If that's all I get out of wargaming I'm pretty happy with that :-)

Mr. Peanut and other Rogue Trader Oddities

A couple weeks ago I ran a poll on the blog to see what type of Dreadnought readers wanted to see in my Howling Griffons army. Well, the overwhelming winner, with 73% of the votes cast, was the original Rogue Trader "Mr. Peanut" style walker.

This suits me, so off I went to eBay to find some suitable models... and ended up with three. I only got two left arms in the deal though, but that's OK since I was planning on updating the weapons loadouts anyway. I'd gotten some rare earth magnets at Lee Valley Tools suitable for the purpose, so on those went...so when I run I'll have a choice of two lascannons, a missile launcher, a multi-melta, or another CCW.

Just waiting for some 60mm bases from Hoard o' Bits for these. They *barely* fit on 40mm bases but I'd like to try the aesthetics of the larger ones and if LCF ("looks cool factor") is maximized, that's what I'll use.

Next up is another vehicle for the Griffons. Since I got the Razorback turret for one of the Rhinos I figured I'd be unlikely to use the Predator turret, especially if there were no opportunity to mount sponsons. Then I happened across a set of Rhino track pieces on the sprue, with no chassis... so I figured that even with my minimal scratch-building skills I could cut up some plasticard to make the chassis. The bitz box supplied the requisite parts to finish the model - front doors, sponsons, hedge cutter, etc.
 

 

 Some dollar store chain wrapped around the spiky hedge cutter, and it will be ready for primer.

I wasn't happy with the way I'd based the Landspeeder and it repaid my lack of faith by falling apart and smashing the model to pieces. So after I stuck it back together I raided the spares bin again with a view to basing the model the original way - on a clear hex-base. Much more stable and aesthetically acceptable, not to mention historically accurate ;-)

Cheers,

Dallas