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| Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow city centre on a dreich January morning. |
With New Year over and my Hobgoblins varnish drying, I headed out on the 2nd January to see Charles. A public holiday in Scotland, the public transport was on Sunday schedule but I was still able to make my way there with a couple of cases of figures....
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| Deployment from Charle's point of view |
...so we could play our first game of Warhammer 40,000 of the year. A 2,000 point bash, so a fairly big battle, in which he would throw hordes of Orks against my purple and pink men at arms.
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| And his cat would devour the souls of the dying. |
So his table was cleared and terrain set out; shortbread and Kettle Chips were opened up; army lists were drafted; and the first of the year's slaughterfests began.
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| Deployment from my side. Noise Marines and Raptors to left; Contemptor and Vindicator to center; Chaos Lord Noise Marines and Sonic Dreadnought to right |
With a larger game and the slightly erratice new 7th ed missions there was scope to take some fun units. I brought two 10-man Noise Marines units for my regular troops, one lead by a Chaos Lord; a five man jump pack unit for close combat; a Vindicator siege tank for a big heavy gun; and two Dreadnoughts, one contemptor and one sonic, for general fire support.
The game would make a new outing for the
Sonic Dreadnought as it finally has
7th edition rules. Up until now I've been using rules from a couple of editions ago to use this model - these new rules are not only current but much better, giving Sonic Dreadnoughts some cool tricks like a higher rate of fire and the option to make the weapons nastier at the risk of damaging the Dreadnought. (Essentially, shaking itself apart with the power of the sonics.)
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| For your records. |
Charles, on the other hand, decided despite the large point value to leave his
Stompa off the table and instead make his army focused on lots of other fun toys -
Meganobz with scary close combat weapons, hardy
Battlewagon troop transports, a small fleet of Deffkoptas and the generalship of the famed
Ghazghkull Thraka - epic Ork leader with his own special rules.
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| Sorry, guys, but this is my file picture for Ghasghkull, even though he's had a couple of new figures since then. |
So, how did the actual game go? Well, as expected Charles vastly outnumbered me and while I inficted some early game misery with the use of long-ranged weaponry it wasn't long before his Green Tide
(Not a euphemism) was upon me.
He went for a
Refused Flank and kept all his forces on one side of the table - the Sonic Dread was unchallenged but a large force headed for the Raptors and Noise Marines near the graveyard, who very quickly found themselves outnumbered.
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| Early game and the Meganobz have rolled out their Battlewagon and charged the Noise Marines, all but obliterating them - the Raptors are coming to the rescure |
Very quickly my left flank was all but annihilated, the Meganobz having such thick armour that I struggled to inflict any serious wounds. I claimed a skull or two but in no way a fair exchanged for the Raptor and Noise Marine units they pretty much rolled over all by themselves.
The only positive was that the Vindicator and Contemptor were free to pick at a weak centre, with lots of soft targets that could dish out long range fire but not take it. A charging Contemptor saw the Lootas run off the table, the artillery pieces lurking the woods for safety.
With the left flank broken, however, the Meganobz would get back in their Battlewagon and both vehicles could roll around the cliff face towards the rest of the army. It seemed all but impossible to do much far fight to a draw at this stage, though the vagaries of the point scheme of this game meant I wasn't actually far behind - in fact, I was routinely tying with Charles.
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| The stragglers face the rest of the army. |
At this stage, it was mostly mopping up for Charles. The Noise Marines and Chaos Lord took a lot of fire and were whittled down before the Nobz charged up the hill towards the Sonic Dreadnought. It had proved very nasty in this game - it's long range template fire, able to fire twice if it didn't move, picking off units from a fair distance away. Sheer numbers meant it couldn't do enough when they got close, though, and the sound of metal slicing against metal filled the air.
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| Last stand of the Sonic Dreadnought |
The remaning unit, the Vindicator, found itself in a tough situation. If it survived the close combat it could open fire with a ranged salvo so harsh as to punch a hole in anything.... but Ghasghkull and the surviving Meganobz had some nasty close combat potential.
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| Who would win? PLACE BETS NOW! |
It went..... pretty much as you'd expect.
So the end result is that while I managed to keep the point totals comparatively close, it didn't matter - my army was wiped and the first game was a solid loss for the Emperor's Children.
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| Don't expect any |
The first thing Charles said is that my army was too heavy on the Noise Marines, which are quite expensive and leave me forever outnumbered. He's right - I pick 'em because I like 'em and they do have some cool stuff (like cover-ignoring weapons and immunity to Fear) but in real terms they are expensive to play on the table and there are more cost-effective choices out there. Regular Chaos Space Marines might be a better bet to help me bulk out my force on the table and I do indeed several full squads which don't see as much use as they perhaps should
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| Less Noise Marines, more this? |
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