New Gaming Mat

Fellow 40ker Gareth ordered and received a fantastic new Mars themed gaming mat recently. It is one of the those mousepad style ones and came with a fancy carry case and is really nice.

So last Tuesday we gave it a run. We rolled it out then got some terrain on it in the appropriate places. Noted that it might be time to paint a few more buildings (probably red!).

I played Tau and he played Ad mech - 1500pt. I have been running bikes for some time so wanted to show Gareth what a true firepower army was.

My three Riptides (that's fluffy right?) were doing very well early on - the Nova re rolls from the wing formation saving me a wound almost every round.

Meanwhile some sneaky crises suits deep struck in the enemy lines to secure objectives.

The Crises team's intial drop went well but then they all forgot they had decent armour and disintergated quickly to basic fire.

While at my end of the table, fire warriors were doing what they do best now - sitting back on objectives and dying as slow as possible.

At the end Gareth grabbed a small win thanks to some good late game moves. The ad mech pulled out all the stops to hold the red planet! Looking forward to many more games on the mat. Need to do some terrain work as this will be very nice once covered in all painted items.

40k 08.03.2016

Last night Gareth and I had a game of 40k. We used the Maelstrom IX pack (here) and rolled up mission 3 (objective in each zone worth 4 VP, control objectives for maelstrom card drawing, and 1 VP for each StW, FB and LB)

We were only playing 1000pt so we could keep learning our respective army rules. I used Ravenwing and Gareth was playing Cult Mechanicus and Skitarri.

I focussed on controlling the board early on to get Maelstrom cards - while eliminating the heavy grav kataphron destroyers that could ignore cover (if the kastelans did a wound). My support squadron of 4 speeders moved to higher ground to get clear shots and I failed 3 out of 4 dangerous tests - ouch. However this combined with other shooting did enable me to wipe off one squad early for first blood.

Gareth wiped off the (now heavily damaged) support squadron with some firepower (getting his single kastelan wound on them first to remove cover), then moved to consolidate his forces in his corner to not get attacked piecemeal. 

Board control made the difference

Turn 2-4 I racked up 8 VP on maelstrom quickly by controlling 4 objectives. Also engaged and destroyed the other heavy grav katephrons with some attack bikes.

However not dealing with the kastelans started to hurt - their firepower caused me to lose bikes quickly even with ravenwing jinking. 18 S6 AP3 shots hurt - especially with 12 of them TL! My librarian made a mad dash for saftey but failed 4 of his 8 2+ cover saves, so even FNP didn't save him.

With my numbers depleted Gareth pushed out took most the board back, however I still just managed to hold my objective on turn 6 when the game ended as Gareth rolled a 3.

In the end we both held our home objective for 4 VP. I had 8 VP from maelstrom cards, Gareth had 5 VP. Gareth had slay the warlord and I had first blood for 1 VP each. 10 - 13 made the tournament points a 12-8, a minor victory for me. I would say that pretty accurately represented the final result. Turn 7 would have likely changed that to a big victory for Gareth.

Next time - stepping up to 1500pt.