New Blood

Ahhh, there’s nothing quite like the first time you play with a new army. I think I’m right in saying that I remember my debut outing with nearly all the dozen or so forces I’ve put together over the last 12 years. Some of them were happier than others; today I will recall with particular fondness, mainly because I didn’t really expect to play.

 

 

It’s been a quiet week so I was hoping to blitz my way through painting a respectably-sized Blood Angels strike force. Had I just stuck to a few characters and some basic marines (everything red but the helmets – and even most of those are red) I think I could easily have managed it. However I decided to break things up by having a go at the Sanguinary Guard (models I was really looking forward to painting) and they turned out to be ridiculously detailed and demanding. I arrived at the store expecting only to do a little twiddly painting and talk about how I shaded the angel wings.

However, a little mental arithmetic told me that if I included my unfinished Tactical Marines in my force, the grand total came very close to 1000 points. (Pen-and-paper arithmetic’s just told me that a) the army came to 945 points and b) was technically illegal: one infernus pistol too many, given the squad size. Oops.) With this in mind I arranged a quick game against some passing Space Wolves.

We ended up playing a Capture and Control mission with the two objectives in opposite table corners. I set up first and combat squadded my Tactical Marines: one element sat on my objective, the other deployed in cover opposite the Wolves’ one. The Death Company deployed very aggressively with a view to assaulting the enemy objective. My commander, his Assault Squad, and the Sanguinary Guard (yes, in a 1000 point game. Sorry) stayed in reserve. The Space Wolves popped one Grey Hunters pack down on their objective, another on a building opposite mine (looking back this was a fairly symmetrical battleline, mostly), and infiltrated some Wolf Scouts deep in my own territory threatening the objective from the start. A big Blood Claws squad went into reserve.

I kept the initiative and just moved the Death Company forward, not quite managing to run them into assault range this turn. My shooting should have been desultory but the Space Wolves only passed one armour save in the first two turns and the squad on the building suffered from the two TC squads’ bolter fire (the plasma guns were just out of range all game and the missile launcher missed every shot it took). The Space Wolves shot at the Death Company with everything in range and – ho ho – only managed to kill two. The Scouts forgot to do anything, which was agreeable.

On turn two the Sanguinary Guard dropped in to support the Death Company and the Commander and his squad did the same to challenge the Scouts. In retrospect this was a silly mistake as I think I could’ve moved them on normally and then got to assault as well as shoot with them. Anyway the three-strong Death Company assaulted the six or seven Wolves guarding their objective and caused slightly ridiculous amounts of damage, the combat concluding with a lone Death Company trooper grappling with a Space Wolf with a power fist.

The Space Wolf reserves outflanked and came on close to the objective in my own corner, while the unit on the building started redeploying (it was clear we were both slightly out of range of each other’s tactical units and my opponent cracked first). The ongoing combat saw both warriors magnificently cock up their attacks and it ground on. The Wolf Scouts assaulted the Commander and his Assault Squad, killed a couple, lost the combat anyway and fled off the table.

Back on my turn, one of my own Tactical squads started heading for the enemy objective. I commented at this point that we seemed to be heading for a draw… The Commander and Squad assaulted the Blood Claws and got horribly mauled with only the Commander left standing. On the other hand the Death Company trooper finally managed to off his partner and consolidated towards the Wolves who’d just climbed down off the building, Sanguinary Guard close behind.

The Blood Claws dragged down the Commander and headed for the objective, though they needed to kill the Tactical Squad guarding it to hold it. The surviving Grey Hunters gunned down a Sanguinary Guard before being slaughtered by the raving vampiric lunatic who continued to show just why the Death Company are so called, who took down three – four elite Sanguinary Guards just managed to kill the remaining two between them. Hmm.

I ran my tactical squad up to the enemy objective while everything else headed back towards my own corner. The Blood Claws assaulted the Tactical Squad on guard and wiped them out on the charge, and the dice came up for the end of the game. I held the Space Wolf objective… but while the Space Wolf youngbloods were sitting on the Blood Angel objective, the Sanguinary Guard were (by half an inch) close enough to contest it. V for victory (and a number of other words best not said around Blood Angels…)!

Hmm, well, a fun and close game, and the obvious modifications the list is crying out for are more heavy weapons and rhinos. Luckily both are on the way. To make room for these I think we will not be seeing the Sanguinary Guard again at this game size; gorgeous though the models are they simply didn’t pay for themselves on this occasion. I would also very much like to stick a few more Death Company in the list – their spectacular performance this game may have been a fluke, but I’m by no means convinced of this.

First priority, though, is to stick backpacks and guns on all the Tactical Marines. Killing Space Wolves with long-range shots from guys who were visibly totally unarmed was slightly embarrassing, but I think I’ll get over it.