Back to work tomorrow. Kill me now.
Headed up to Fabe’s place for another test game of Warhammer 40k yesterday. This time we had 1500 point armies and played on a full sized field on his living room floor – which left both of us with agonisingly painful necks and knees.
I fielded a force of Valhallans (printed out onto paper and stuck onto bases with blu-tack), while Fabes rolled out his newly purchased Space Marines, backed with a bunch of the Space Hulk models Matt left behind when he debunked to the Alps. Because we’re still learning we played without vehicles, which led me to some interesting conclusions…
1: Footslogging Imperial Guard across a battlefield is not much fun.
2: Footslogging Imperial Guard across a battlefield without any kind of mobile cover is even less fun.
3: Footslogging Imperial Guard across a battlefield when your opponent has spent over half of his 1500 points on Cyclone Missile Launchers and Conversion Beamers is possibly the least fun thing ever.
It was basically a prolonged duck shoot. I barely got any units out of my table quarter, and conceded defeat at the start of round five when a Space Marine Captain took out my Company Commander in single combat (and my knees were killing me).
That said, I did manage to hold off disaster for quite a while – mainly by rolling an unreasonable number of fives and sixes while Fabes kept rolling ones and twos. My heavy weapons teams inflicted a fair bit of damage and my Company Commander survived far longer that he should have thanks to his refractor field. The champions however were my ratling snipers, who managed to eliminate Fabes’ Master of the Forge despite drawing the attention of numerous grenade and missile launchers and a nearby group of snipers containing some whiz-bang special sniper character who seemed to have spent the entire battle huffing obscura (The sniper! He does nothing!).
My least useful unit was the massed one consisting of 20 veterans (with various heavy weapons) and a Ministorum Priest. The first round of missile strikes reduced this to about five models who promptly fled – I managed to rally them but the game was over before they got back in range of anything (The Eviscorator! It does nothing!)
Despite being smashed by Fabes’ somewhat underhand weapon choices it was a really fun day. I think I may have to consider buying some models…
I got a few things out of this:
* Numbers don’t mean too much at ranged combat – granted I was flying blast-type missiles everywhere, but your troops outnumbered mine 3 to 1
* A mix of units is definitely required. Imperial Guard require vehicles – I suppose it “defines” them in a way. Next game, vehicles will be used – which mean less blast type weapons, which will lead to a more even combat
* I hate super-invulnerable ratlings with uber-snipers
Fabes