Ultramarine Flashback army fights on

 



1500 points of old school marines!

War returns to Johnson City! And it returns at the shinny new location set up by Hobbytown specifically for gaming! Hats off to Bob and Mary for making this happen and supporting local public play.

I showed up not thinking I would play, but Murl convinced me, so I dashed home and grabbed the ultramarine-flashback army that I have spent this month so far sharing my 1st and 2nd edition flashbacks about on this blog. This would be their 2nd 6th edition game, and my 2nd go around with Codex: Space Marines. Did I learn anything from my defeat at the hands of Screech's Thousand Sons (of bitches)?

This time I remembered all of the models, and opted out the Devastators and put the Venerable ('cause I can't argue that he's anything but) Dreadnought back in. I almost ditched the scouts at last minute as I thought they were pointless in the last game, but decided I would try a different strategy and have them infiltrate further into the field as opposed to coming in from reserve to just be shot to death. Also, and this is a big deal, I broke up the 2 tac squads into 4 combat squads.



A lot of guard!

I really can not recall exactly what this is comprised of (and if you send me a list Murl, I'll past it in here), just a lot of lasguns, a squad of Orgyns, lots of heavy weapons (mortars, and lascannons), a psyker and a beefy command section.

Deployment

Objective game, there are 4 objectives. My scouts start off taking one (bloody boobytrap). Note that the cottage on the pyramid was Hiveangel's idea, his ode to Rohan.

Bottom of Turn one

Little movement on the Imperial Guard side with exception to his Ogryns who meandered forward. Meanwhile orbital bombardments and mortars rained down on the the boys in blue. The squad that started out on an objective (the woody terrain to the right of the landraider) was blasted off of it and almost routed off of the table. They rallied at the top of my turn moved to the right of the terrain, while the other combat squad moved in to retake the objective. My scouts were shot up bad, reduced down to 3 models, but they held their ground and returned fire into the unit that tore into them, getting fire support from the combat squad that positioned themselves behind the wall. The Venerable Dreadnought and the combat squad near 'Rohan' moved forward toward the woods in the middle of the table, on the other side of it is an objective counter.


Surprise!

Turn 2.
Murl's lone sentinel pops up and shoots the Venerable Dreadnought in the back! However this fails to achieve anything more than getting the Dreadnought's attention...on my turn the ancient warrior turns around and obliterated the walker with a plasma cannon shot.



Turn 2 end of Ultramarine turn

After with wither hails of las blasts, bombardments and mortar shells, the squad that had made for the middle objective was shot up bad, routed, rallied and was positioned by just behind the trees. The unit of guard that had shot them up had moved up, and were advancing closer. Meanwhile the scouts were blasted off of their objective by the guard. Honestly, at this point,  I was so out-gunned I didn't think these combat squads could hold up. I'm used to playing Space Wolves and I just don't often have units this small hold up to this amount of firepower.



Turn 3 end of Ultramine turn

Murl's third turn was vicious, and he turned his mortars onto the unit of marines at the wall, who lost 2 more brethren. The marines holding the objective in my deployment zone lost more guys to the orbital bombardment, and two survivors that were just to the right of it were slain as well. The Ogryn were charging forward, trying to catch the combat squad in the middle of the table but they botched their charge distance.

Neverness' third turn was the game changer. The landraider (which had been whittling wounds off of the ogryn unit for the whole game so far) deployed a unit of stormguard who unleashed a blaze of hellfire rounds into the ogryns. Leaving just the primaris psyker that had been shepherding them all forward. The combat squad in the middle hit him with bolter rounds and a flamer ended his reign of witchery!

Speaking of witchery, take a look at the far back field and you'll spot some terminators...





"We're coming for YOU!"

 ...these guys in fact! The Librarian teleported down with a Terminator squad, and in a bold yet reckless attempt at a decapitation strike, they blasted into the command section, killing over half of the General's retinue (including that pesky Master of Ordnance!) and caused most of Murl's army to recoil and react to this new threat!

Turn 4, and Murl pumping some serious firepower into the Terminator squad. 44 lasgun shots, and a single Terminator fell. Two more fell to concentrated lascannon fire. Then he charged the three remaining guys with a command section and his general. I declared a challenge with the Librarian, who bested his foe (an astropath I think?) while my terminators wiped out the command section. On the following assault phase the fight continued and this is how it was locked, with the librarian taking a wound from someone and locked with a guardsman (Sgt.?) with a powerglove. I can't recall when I lost the remaining terminators. Still, the VP for the Warlord kill was nice, and mine was still half alive...

Turn 4

With Murl's army focused on my terminators, the Stern guard mounted back up into the Land Raider and it moved forward. My three marines behind the wall moved forward and reclaimed the objective, while offering a prayer to their dead scouts whose remains where scattered on the bastion's base. My combat squad by the wood shot and flamed the imperial guard unit that had claimed the objective, while the dreadnought moved in...

Turn 5

Murl's 5th turn was mostly ineffective. On my turn, the combat squad, who was charged on Murl's turn, finished off the IG unit that was attempting to take the objective.

The unpainted guy is a commisar. (Yes, the others are painted, just with a primer...)

My Sternguard again dismounted and blasted an entire rank off of the front of the Imperial Guard Platoon that was shielding the lascannon heavy weapon team. I think they killed 10 or 11 guys with that round of shooting. It was significant enough to force a rout test, but the guard held their ground, something was preventing their resolve from cracking... Ah, it was a commissar that now found himself in the front, his "ablative armor" of fodder removed, and now he was taking the final hits and making his saves! Staring boldly and coldly into the uncaring eye lenses of the sternguard while screaming litanies from his Uplifting Primer!!!

The Uplifting Primer. You just aren't a guard player without one!

And this was how the game ended, oh, and my Librarian was locked in combat with this guy, who was trying to bash through his armor with a powerglove, who in turn was dodging the sweeping arc of the force axe!


"I don't care if your paint job is older than half the kids in the room, you're going down!!!"

 At the bottom of Turn 5 the game ended. I had accumulated 3 objectives, Line breaker and Warlord VPs, while Murl claimed and single objective and First Blood (those poor scouts; all they wanted was some shmores!).

Ultramarines: 11
Imperial Guard: 4

It was an awesome game, and until the Librarian and Terminators arrived on turn 3, I thought I was screwed! I was impressed with the Codex Space Marines 2nd outing, not just because I won, but the way the combat squad allowed for more tactical flexibility and when the dice are not screwing me, survivability! Not sure how this tactic would work against "all-comers" though, or all scenarios, but it seemed work well for this objcctive scenario. One of the things about facing the guard is the psychology of trying to overcome the fact that you are outgunned about four to one. You get over it though when you realise, they miss half the time, wound less than that, and you're making a lot of saves (assuming that is, you can make those saves! I recall an early battle report with Da Masta Cheef where I lost a Wolfguard squad to a single volley of shooting by his traitor guard. I can't seem to find it to give you a link, but we both reference it so much I might have to find that and repost it).

Speaking of the Cheef, while Murl and I were having our rather tame fight, it was battle-royal extreme on the next table between Da Masta Cheef's Eleet Grot Mountin Duvishun and Kushial's Lions of Harlech space marine chapter. Read about that here.



See what an army of mostly grots can do to a Space Marine army!

 

I have no pics of the game between RTvoril and Hiveangel, but you can read the amusing battle-report here.

Screech's last stand!

And finally, I watched the final round of Screech teaching two new players how to, well, kick his ass, which was good to see actually as Thousand Sons (of bitches) deserve to die, and it's good to have new players not squashed in their 1st public game. Well done Screech, who, if I didn't know better, I would think he was trying to become a GW Outrider with the way he organizes and supports the local gaming community around Hobbytown. We pick and poke fun at you a lot dude, but damn, you deserve applause for what you do, and I thank you for it!  This public applause, of course, doesn't mean that I don't plan to slaughter you when we game this Wednesday...;)









Ultra Flashback

Now we go back in time!





Jay's Ultramarine army! Fully assembled and still ready to kick ass!

While at my folk's house today gathering some old scenery (of which you can see some in the background of this pic), I stumbled across my brother's old Ultramarine army. When we started out playing Rogue Trader: Warhammer 40,000 we started with me playing Orks and he playing Space Marines. He had two of the old RTBO1 marine boxed sets, one of which was painted as Space Wolves (see like, my whole blog) and the other as Ultramarines, his army of choice. I acquired it all since I painted almost all of it and didn't like the idea of all this work and nostalgia just going away. I cut my teeth on these guys, and my brother's Ultramarines were some of the 1st models that I painted that I was actually pleased with. It took me years to figure out the Space Wolves.

Jay (my brother) and I were living in England at the time. My dad was stationed at RAF Woodbridge/Bentwaters (two bases, but he worked at both during this time) however we lived off base. The Doctor and our friends were all into Warhammer 40,000 and we would scrape together allowances or work money or whatever to occasionally venture into Ipswich to visit the game store, War & Peace, where we would purchase Citadel Miniatures and other gaming products. At that time the Pound to Dollar conversion rate was not generous to us, so this stuff was really expensive to us back then (oh, if only we knew...). Yet, somehow, we managed to gather together some impressive armies which only grew bigger when we moved back to the States (and thanked the Emperor that 40k was big -and available!- over here!).

About a year after we moved back, the 2nd edition to Warhammer 30,000 arrived, and this army, Jay's Ultramarines, would achieve it's glory and earn it's laurels. Earlier this evening I sent my brother the pic above with a caption that said "guess what my next blog post will be about?" His response: "I'm guessing it will be about your orks getting their asses handed to them time after time, year after year?" ;)
LOL! Touche!

Anyway, enough of the background, on to the show and tell!

Before there was Codex: Ultramarines for 2nd Edition 40k, all I had to go by for any sort of paint guide was what little info I could figure out from White Dwarf.  There was a booklet that came with the Space Marine paint set that we had too, but it wasn't as helpful as it could've been, though I did wear it out! As the squad above shows, we figured out that Ultramarine squad Sgt's had red helmets. Although we had decals I was always unsure about what to do with them exactly due to the inability to put on the 'tactical' arrows on the right arm, as the studs were on the left. So these guys were never totally finished. Note the red skull on the leg of the sgt. And that is not an official missile launcher by the way, but I still like it! (it was from a Harrier jump-jet model that I had, and one of us thought that it would look cool as missile launcher, plus we needed another one, so we slapped on a com unit and presto!)

These chaps are from the 2nd edition starter box set. When the codex Ultramarines arrived we decided that he needed a Veteran Squad so we painted up there guys. It was probably the last squad of this group I painted for him. I really like how clean they look even still. Even the red guns don't bother me as much...

...as they do for this unit! Wow, that is some serious red. OK, these are not typcial devestator marine models, in fact they are from the Space Crusade game. They have a plug-in option for their weapons, so that they can swap weapons out during the game. Pretty cool concept, and one that almost carried over to 2nd edition 40k. The guy on the far left is the Sgt, armed with a heavy bolter. Yes, they used to just look like a big bolter, not the monsters that they are now. Next to him is a missle launcher (which looks similar to the rocket pod from the 1st squad in pic. 2), lascannon (way big! Especially compared to the Imperial Guard version of the time), a few regular marines (the Space Crusade one have bayonets), a conversion beamer (!), and an assault cannon. The 3 guys in the very back are the 2nd edition models included as unit filler.

Here is an example of the sort of things you could do with the Space Crusade minis. The Tarantula model has a remote that plugs into the pilot's hand, which also attaches directly to it for manual firing in the game. It's pretty cool.

This squad is much like the one in pic 2. I still like the orange missile launcher, and think this contrasts a bit less garishly than the red. Seriously, what was up with Games Workshop's mid-'90's red kick and how did we ever like it?!

The 2nd to last unit I ever painted for this army. I was still sort of figuring out how to paint flesh at this point. These are OK, but I would later learn to deepen the shadows a bit more for better contrast and definition. Still, these guys are pretty cool. Added bonus for having painted bases, which is something I was really leery of for a few years and it took me a while to figure out how to do them. Now, it's almost my favorite thing to do on a model.

Nothing says old school here like this pic! The original plastic Space Hulk terminators, the plastic Terminator Librarian, the original dreadnought and in the background, the Mk1 Landraider! The Librarian is worth discussing: in 2nd edition, psykers were incredibly powerful, and this guy used to kick some major ass! He alone brought victory to this army on more than one occasion against the likes of Orks, Space Wolves, Eldar, Genestealers and Chaos.

Also, I did not paint the dreadnought, it is how it arrived when I won a pair of them in an online auction. The other one was stripped down and repainted and you can find him in my Space Wolves gallery.

The rare mk 1 Land Raider

Ah.... This thing was such a pain in my ass when it hit the game table! LOL! Still, I really enjoyed painting it. I remember painting it in a single day (seriously) and I still think it looks alright.

The even rarer 2nd edition box

A note on the color of this army. We used the Space Marine paint set that came out in '89, and for some reason the base coat from that set has a way of darkening the Ultramarine's blue when layered over on top of it. The newer paints have a brighter hue for some reason and this army looks odd when held next to them. However, to see my point, I put our Land Raider on the box and you can see that the colors are fairly close. You can also see that ours is more kick-ass because it doesn't have fricking RED all over it!

Not included in these pics are the unpainted models, mostly special characters, and a whirlwind that I disassembled to strip and repaint.

This army hasn't hit the table since 3rd edition, of which Jay only played a few games. The total lack of psionics and the radical rule changes between the two editions just didn't excite him anymore. However, we have been talking about playing again someday, and perhaps it is finally time for him to return... in the meanwhile, I am thinking I might experiment with touching a few of these guys up and seeing if I can't bring the paint-jobs up to my current standard (which these guys are just base-coated when compared too) and maybe have them make an appearance down at Hobbytown for bit of a muscle flex. Da Masta Cheef thinks I should use the Forgeworld rules for some of this old stuff. After all, this Codex: Space Marine army is more likely to see the light of day than my Celestial Lions probably ever will! :)

UPDATE:
Oh, and I added up the current point value of the Ultramarines assembled in the first pic. Without the Devastator squad they are right at 1500pts. With the devastators (plus a few more wargear goodies) it comes up to 1750 points. That doesn't include his unpainted models, the whirlwind or the special characters. Impressive for a 20+ year army, huh?