Revenge of the Ultramarines

My friend and I got together again today for some Warhammer 40k.  We were both playing the same lists as last time, my with my Eldar and him with his Ultramarines.

The game started out in my favor with my Pathfinders epically destroying his Rhino with some very lucky 6’s.  My Walkers then took out the squad that popped out of the  Rhino.  My Harlequins were assaulted by his Assault Marines and held their own for a while.  On the next turn, my Dire Avengers jumped out of the Wave Serpent and destroyed another of his tactical squads, and my bikers shot up a few of another squad.  This is where I made a critical mistake.  For some reason I decided to assault the marines with the bikes.  Though they would win the initial assault, they got destroyed the following turn.

Turn three is where things really turned bad.  My bikes got killed in assault, his dreadnought assaulted my Dire Avengers and would tie them up for the rest of the game, and worst of all, his Terminators deepstruck in right between my Pathfinders Walkers and would make the game for him.

At the end of turn four, my Walkers were in combat with his terminators, my Avengers locked in with the Dreadnought and the Wave Serpent driving around aimlessly.  Everything else of mine was dead, so I conceded the game.

Overall, it was a good game.  I made some critical mistakes and my friend made some good moves.  This was his first win against me, so it’s nice to see the improvement.

Eldar vs. Ultramarines

My friend has been working on putting together an Ultramarine army for 40k, and he wanted to try it out today.  He was running two tactical squads (one in a rhino), an assault squad with jetpacks, a squad of terminators and a dreadnought.  My army was made up of a Dire Avenger squad with an Exarch in a Wave Serpent, a squad of 8 Pathfinders, 6 Jetbikes, 3 War Walkers with scatter lasers, 5 Harlequins and a Doomseer.  We ended up rolling the capture and control mission with 3 objectives and the dawn of war deployment.  I went first.

I deployed my Avengers in the serpent behind some cover with my Doomseer.  My pathfinders setup on a hill with firing lanes to two of the closer points.  My friend’s rhino setup behind some cover close to the middle of the table and his tactical squad setup on the other side.  My first turn saw my jetbikes coming in and taking some shots at the rhino with no success.  The walkers came up the middle and fired at his tac squad (we completely forgot about the night fire rule), killing 2.  The pathfinders also managed to pick off one.  The Serpent drove to the center of the board and the Harlies walked up towards the Pathfinders.  My friend moved the rhino and disembarked.  His assault squad ran toward my pathfinders, and his terminators and dreadnaught moved toward the center point with the Serpent.

On the second turn, my Serpent moved to the center point and dropped off the Avengers, and the bikes moved to get a better shot on the 1st tac squad.  In shooting, the walkers, serpent and pathfinders managed to completely wipe out the assault squad.  The avengers dropped a few of the 2nd tac squad and caused them to run off the table.  My bikes were able to kill a few of the 1st tac squad and they turned tail.  They were able to regroup and the terminators moved up and actually assaulted the wave serpent and destroyed its weapons and immobilised it.  The dreadnaught took out a few Avengers and the tac squad failed to hurt any bikes.

On turn three the Avengers bladestormed and with the help of the walkers, cut the terminators down to 2.  The bikes killed a few more of the tac squad and the Pathfinders picked up and started to move to capture an objective. The Harlies were getting into position to assault the terminators.  His terminators and dreadnought killed off the rest of the Avengers in shooting and assault.  And the tac squad managed to kill a bike.

The game ended at the end of turn four.  The War Walkers and harlies finished of the two terminators.  The tac squad assaulted the bikes and even with all the attacks they failed to kill any.  The bikes killed off one marine and then proceeded to sweep the tac squad off the table.  At that point we called it a game.

The MVP on my side was definitely the Walkers with the bikers being a runner up.  The Serpent and Avengers were alright, but I could have used them more effectively.  My friend was plagued with bad luck in his rolls and just some bad decisions for movement and such.

Overall a good time was had, and we both learned plenty.

Chaos!

Just for something different, I’ve decided to start a Chaos Space Marines army for Warhammer 40k.  My Eldar army is at a good point right now, and there isn’t anything I really need for it at the memoent.  I’ve always wanted a Chaos army, and I was able to get a really good deal on ebay for some stuff.  With this I’ll have a few more options when I play against my friend, and if I ever manage to convince my wife to play, she’ll have and army as well.

Warhammer 40k Battle Report from Saturday

So this Saturday a friend and I drove an hour to go play a few games of Warhammer 40k.  About 10 people showed up for the games, and it was a lot of fun playing against some new people.  All told I got to play two games.

The first game was againt Space Marines.  He had two squads of marines, a Rhino transport, a scout squad and a nasty terminator squad.  I had two squads of Pathfinders, a squad of Harlequins, a squad of Dire Avengers with my Doomseer, a squad of War Walkers and a squad of jetbikes.  It was a great game with a lot of close combat.  His scouts attacked my avengers on the first turn and locked them up for a few turns.  I was able to kill them off before his terminators deep struck in, but they still didn’t end up scattering.  My Pathfinders were able to immobilize his Rhino on the first turn because he messed up his movement and I was able to see the front corner and got some lucky rolls.  The Walkers didn’t do much, since the missile launcher couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn, and they got destroyed mostly before they got in range of his more open units.  His Terminators with claws and hammers decimated my Harlequins and Avengers, but the Doomseer was able to kill one with his pistol.  He couldn’t kill my Pathfinders hiding in my tower, so he decided to assault the tower and managed to destroy it.  The Pathfinders jumped to safety, and were able to kill a few Terminator and get them to run away, but not far enough.  So they were still contesting my objective and I didn’t quite get close enough to his, so it ended up as a win in his favor.  It was a great game with some very memorable moments.

The second game was against my friend, and he ended up borrowing a space marine army from another guy for the game.  This army wasn’t quite as tricked out and contained 2 marine squads, a squad of assault marines, a squad of terminators and two dreadnaughts.  There was a bit more cover in this one, which worked to my advantage.  My Pathfinders were deep in the trees and were nigh impossible to kill, and my Walkers were able to get much better shots on his marines.  The missile launchers were again horrible inaccurate, but the rest of the shots were too much for him to handle and the Space Marines just couldn’t handle it.  At the end of turn 5, he had a terminator, an assault marine, 4 space marines and his two dreadnaughts left on the table.  I had only lost 4 harlequins, 2 pathfinders and a few jetbikes.  It’s also important to note that his assault marines were having a tough time with jumping into the trees and dying to dangerous terrain tests.  He lost two out of the six that way.

Overall it was a lot of fun.  I met some new people and got registered for the tournament next month.  My friend bought up a bunch of Space Marine stuff so he will have an army ready to go for the tournament as well.

What I’ve been up to…

It’s been a while.  I’ve had the last week and a half off from work, and I just haven’t made the time to post anything new.  I’ve been doing a lot of painting on my Eldar army.  There’s still a lot of work to do, especially since I just purchased a bunch more stuff.  It has been nice to get back into the swing of things, though I really need some better brushes.  Mine are in terrible condition.  I just posted a few pictures of the army up on my Flickr page, so if you look in the sidebar you can see them there.

I’ve also been playing a lot of Warhammer Online with my new guild.  It has been a lot of fun.  In fact, last night, my wife, some guildies and I went and did a low level dungeon that gave up minimal XP.  We did it just for the prospect of getting a silly title to wear on our characters.  No one in my old guild would have even thought of doing that, and it was a ton of fun.  I’m very glad I switched.  My wife and I are very close to hitting level 40, which will be a huge achievement for me, since I’ve never made it to the top level in any MMO game I’ve played.

As for the holidays, we spent some time with my family and had a great time.  It was great to see them all again, and can’t wait to see them again.

So to all of you, I hope you had a great Christmas and a happy new year.  See you in 2009!