Fun Game

Someone was traveling cross-country and happened to drop by Minnesota for the week, and he was looking for a game. Of course, I'm always up for a Warhammer 40,000 game and I volunteered to play him at Gamezenter. Totally worth the hour trip there.

Anyway, he brought a Space Marines list. Salamanders Successor Chapter, but Inheritors of the Primarch Chapter Tactics, so re-roll a single wound roll. He had this list:

Adeptus Astartes Battalion Detachment (Salamanders Successor Chapter)

Primaris Captain with storm shield

Primaris Chaplain, Master of Sanctity

Primaris Lieutenant in Phobos Armor

3x5 Intercessors

5 Reivers

5 Aggressors

4 Bladeguard Veterans

Invictor Tactical Warsuit

Venerable Dreadnought

Primaris Apocethary

2 Company Veterans

3 Outriders

3 Eradicators

5 Devastators with lascannons

Rhino

Basically, something like that. I brought my usual Imperial Knights and Adeptus Mechanicus list, but replaced my Knight Castellan with a Knight Crusader, and swapped out an Ironstrider Ballistarii and the remaining points for a second squad of Skitarii Rangers and a second Skorpius Dunerider. Didn't want to bring an overly competitive list because this was meant to be a friendly game, but I didn't have any other stuff to bring. Maybe Thousand Sons, but I like Knights more. Anyway, we chose to play Battle Lines, and he got first turn.

Pretty awesome terrain setup, by the way. Kudos to my opponent, I love the way he set up the terrain. Looks very thematic and fun.

Anyway, he got first turn, moved up his Invictor Warsuit. I think he had an ineffectual shooting turn, with his Venerable Dreadnought failing to wound my Knight Crusader. The Invictor Warsuit did about 4 wounds to him, and failed the charge, so...yeah. That kind of sucks.

I proceeded to fly my Archeopters across the table. My shooting was ineffective as well because I rolled lots of 1s and 2s for my cognis lascannons' wound rolls despite hitting them. Ouch. Anyway, my Knight Crusader did most of the heavy lifting, killing the Venerable Dreadnought and Invictor Warsuit. I think I also took out an Intercessor squad, wiped out the Outriders, and did a few wounds to the Aggressors, and killed a single Bladeguard Veteran, but other than that, I didn't do much.

The Aggressors, with the Salamanders' Tactical Doctrine in effect, destroyed one of my Stratoraptors with their flamers while the Eradicators and Devastators nuked my poor Knight Crusader in the second turn. From then on, I was on the back foot. But I was ahead in objectives because my Skorpius Duneriders had moved up to grab both objectives not in my deployment zone. I also took Vital Ground as my secondary, so that gave me extra 2 points per objective though my opponent was able to deny me one when he charged his Bladeguard into my Skorpius Dunerider. The Reivers showed up in my deployment zone to do Ocatrius Data and stayed out of sight from my Onager Dunecrawlers.

His Bladeguard Veterans survived several rounds with my Armiger Warglaive, but my other Armiger Warglaive wiped out the Eradicators. Between the Onager Dunecrawlers, remaining Stratoraptor and second Skorpius Dunerider, I was able to kill 3 Devastators and maybe a couple of Intercessors here and there. I did destroy the Rhino eventually, but I was rolling lots of 1s and 2s for the wound rolls for the cognis lascannons, which was...bad. Ouch.

Eventually, the Aggressors killed my second Stratoraptor with their flamers, still on Tactical Doctrine, while the Lieutenant in Phobos Armor and the Primaris Chaplain charged my Armiger Warglaive and Skitarii. The other Armiger Warglaive ate a lascannon shot from the surviving Devastator, and that's probably about it. Oh, the Reivers charged my Onager Dunecrawlers, locking them in combat. The Lieutenant in Phobos Armor survived everything I threw at him, but I managed to kill the Primaris Chaplain with a lucky meltagun shot (I think?) and eventually took out the Bladeguard Veteran. On the other side of the table, I finally killed one squad of Intercessors and finished off the Devastators. My Armiger Warglaive then charged the Primaris Captain, and because my opponent failed a bunch of saves, he took 9 damage and bit the dust. Ouch.

The Lieutenant in Phobos Armor continued to trade blows with my Skitarii Rangers and Marshal, but the Aggressors had enough. They destroyed one of my Ironstrider Ballistarii, and then wrecked my Skorpius Dunerider in combat. On the other hand, my Armiger Warglaive killed the Primaris Apocethary with a meltagun shot, and then the surviving Ironstrider Ballistarii killed the Company Veterans. I charged the Aggressors and killed like 3 of them, but eventually they destroyed the poor Armiger Warglaive. That was fine, the rest of my army opened up to kill him in my next turn, but prior to that, my second Armiger Warglaive had slain the last Intercessor squad to grab me the objective in my opponent's deployment zone, and also score me points for Vital Ground. Not bad. I actually maxed out on Vital Ground by the end of the game, surprisingly enough.

I was way ahead on points at this point, so I didn't bother counting No Prisoners. I think it finished 77-48 in my favor (and that was me excluding the points I would have gotten from No Prisoners, and I think I forgot to add Engage on All Fronts for my last turn or so - not that it mattered, this was a friendly game and we were playing for fun, so I'm fine with not counting those). Pretty fun game! Closer than we thought it would be, though lots of it was me sending my Stratoraptors kamikaze into his Aggressors so that they wouldn't charge my Skitarii (and hence I scored Primary and Vital Ground because they have Objective Secured, ha ha).

Hope to play more games! We'll see what happens during Crusade on Friday!