Is there a better way to celebrate your birthday than a birthday bash? Or bashing? Probably. But this is the fun we decided to have.
"I'm next!" |
Da Masta Cheef and I agreed to meet up for a 1,000 point game of Warhammer 40,000 10th edition. It was our first game of this shiny new edition, and we were eager to give it a go. We decided to play the Only War mission from the basic rulebook as it's a simple and straight forward game. The objective was that we had to "table' the opponent (i.e. eliminate fully all elements of the opposing force) and if by the end of Turn 5 that hasn't happened the winner will be determined by who has collected the most VPs. VPs are earned by claiming or holding Objectives.
980 points of Tyranids. |
Not really Old One Eye. |
The Space Marines were ...a whole lot of marines! They actually out-numbered the nids! This is Cheef's newest army, the Black Dragons. So forgive him if they appear in some pics to be the Primed Dragons or Bare Plastic Dragons as they are very much a work in progress. Led by a Chaplain and a Primaris Lieutenant, the mustered force was comprised of Assault Intercessors (5 troops) two squads of Intercessors, one with 5 troops the other with 10, a Hellblaster squad, an Infernus Squad, a unit of 5 Reivers, a Balistus Dreadnought and an Imperial Agents unit of Voidsmen-at-arms.
995 points of Primaris Space Marines. |
The battlelines we made seemed to be straightforward also, something a Napolionics player might admire.
Astartes deployment. |
I had my Genestealers, along with their accompanying Broodlords, take advantage of their Scout moves and scuttle 8" forward.
Tyranid deployment (after Scout moves) |
Cheef's Reivers moved up in the board edge, with the quip of "I'm not sure I need to get closer to the Tyranids."
Turn One, Cheef won the roll-off to go first, and apart from moving units onto the closest objectives, not much really occurred. Oh, other than the Black Dragons wiped one of the Genestealer brood off of the table relying on Oath of Moment and the tools of the Primaris Lieutenant (Target Priority, Tactical Precision and Bolter Discipline) to effectively reduce the Genestealers to a spray of ichor and shattered chitin. Yikes! The Hive Tyrant arrived to take an objective in one of the round ruins. His Venom Cannon was ineffective against the Ballistus Dreadnought. In fact the Tyranids shooting was easily rebuffed by the Astartes. This was already feeling like an up hill climb for the Tyranids.
End of Turn 1. |
Pappa Claws about to let it rip. |
Come on, it's only 5"! |
It wasn't all laughs though, as the Screamer Killer closed on a unit of Primaris fiends and reduced them to admantite coated beef jerky chunks.
Turn 4 was upon us, and the Black Dragons pointed every available gun and special shenanigan available at the Hive Tyrant, until finally a gernade toppled the mighty beast. The tussle between the Chaplain and the Broodlord continued until the Chaplain overcame his foe with his mighty beat-stick (TM).
"Once you were bigger, now I am the giant!" |
Yikes! On my Turn 4, I was left with a shattered army, with no synapse available for any additional support, While the Black Dragons held on to their cleansing advance.
The Black Dragons press on. |
The Reivers, despite losing three of their unit, were unwavering in their resolve and eliminated the last of the termagants by the ruins where the Rippers controlled the objective. They consolidated into the Rippers, whose counter attack was little more than a nuisance to the Reivers.
Turn 5, the last round, and it was looking like the nids were needing a miracle. The Black Dragons were now methodically cleaning up the remaining xenos infestation. The Infernus Squad immolated the last squad of Termagants, and served the objective.
Objecrive secured -with fire! |
The Balistus Dreadnought turned it's sights onto the Screamer Killer, who was still above half strength, and lanced it like a boil.
Long distance lancing. |
Finally the Reivers proved their worth by tearing up the last of the Rippers. "What's the point of these again?" The Reiver Sgt asked fasciously after spitting out a ripper tail.
The Ripper's last stand. |
And here we are at the bottom of Turn 5, and Tyranids have no assets left. The VPs proved to not matter in the end as the xenos threat has been utterly eliminated the Black Dragons win the day!
So, that was our first 10th edition game. Other than agreeing that Battleshock is a great name for a ruleset that didn't seem to matter, the game played just fine. But it was the little things that tripped us (mostly me) up. Like my completely forgetting about the Termagant's Skulking Horrors ability (a way over sold name, all-things considering). That could have kept them alive a bit longer. But there was not a strategy to undo rolling snake-eyes for a 5" charge and rolling them again with a reroll. The Tyranids MVP was the Screamer Killer, the model of which I was borrowing. MVP on the Marine side... I think I will say it was the Chaplain, only for his heroic stand against the Broodlord.
He fought for his life, Chapter, and a paint job. |
Fun game as always, we had a lot of laughs, and I learned a lot about these bugz as well as the new edition. Hopefully the new knowledge will make for a more successful fight in their (and my) next game.
3 comments:
As always it was a good game and a good start to 10th ed! Well, for me anyways...
It was a good game. Not a horrible start, as I felt I learned from this experience. It's just going to be rough finding the time to game but I think we can make it work...
Enjoyed this batrep. Shame about the result though. I have heard mind, that the Nids, despite getting shiny new toys in their recent codex release are pretty flippin awful in the 40k armies rankings. Maybe they need a little stat bump or points decrease here and there to make them better?
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