One Part Army, Two Parts Audience

I’ve kind of been trying to avoid playing 40K for the last few weeks, mainly because I’m not sure my fragile ego could endure another spanking. Nevertheless with my enforced summer break looming I really have to gather my rosebuds while the sun shines, or something, and so I duly manned up and trotted along to GW Oxford.

Shortly after entering the establishment I was challenged to a game by someone I had better not name. I should have known what to expect when he said he had ‘1000… hang on, 1250… actually I can probably do a full 1500 points.’ Hmmm.

We wound up playing War of Attrition with my Blood Angels in the role of the Imperial Guard. This is a mission which looks a little dodgy to me, balance-wise: the deployment conditions appear to give the Guard a big incentive to deploy with a deep firebase. A more balanced army like the Angels isn’t so limited. Anyway, the Chaos Marines of my opponent were plonked down in the table centre, deep in his own half (he didn’t really consider the value of deploying further forward, or perhaps given I was likely to get first turn he was being cautious) – a squad with a Tzeentch mark, a Daemon Prince, two Obliterators, and a squad of Thousand Sons. On my left I stuck down the Devastators, supported by a combat squad. The Death Company, the Captain and his assault squad, another combat squad and Mephiston all deployed in cover on my right. Victory would be a matter of points destroyed (not kill-points), with infantry Troops recycling as reserves.

I got the first turn and trundled the Death Company up to his army, advancing with the Furioso more slowly. The Devastators started the steady rain of fire on the Chaos forces they would maintain for most of the game, generally being quite accurate (just as well given everything in the Chaos army had some kind of invulnerable save). On the first Chaos turn the Obliterators blew up the Death Company rhino, which was sort of predictable, and a bolt of change destroyed the Furioso, which was a bit unlucky I thought.

Anyway, on the second turn the Death Company negotiated their way around the Rage rule to assault the Obliterators while Mephiston swooped forward and engaged the Thousand Sons single-handed. The Obliterators barely had time to gurgle before they were dead, while Mephiston found himself in a bit of a slugfest: the 4+ invulnerable the Thousand Sons enjoyed kept them in the fight, and I had a nasty shock when I found their champion was packing a force staff: Mephiston was one 6 away from being instantly killed.

There was nothing to be done about that, so I crossed my fingers and concentrated elsewhere. The Tzeentch squad, the Daemon Prince and the Sorcerer all counter-charged the Death Company, but the combat was a close one and the vampire-marines only lost by a single wound. The following turn they were finished off but not before wiping out the last of the Tzeentch squad, while Mephiston polished off the last of the Thousand Sons.

All that was left in the Chaos army by now was the Prince and the Sorcerer and they advanced on my lines waiting for their troops to recycle. Mephiston snuck up on the Sorcerer and showed him the proper use of a force weapon, shortly after which the Thousand Sons reappeared just behind him. Their inferno shots pattered off the Lord of Death’s 2+ save and not wishing to push my luck (and being well ahead on points) I pulled Mephiston back, quite happy to sit out the remaining couple of turns in a defensive posture.

The Daemon Prince had other ideas and pursued Mephiston, taking a wound off him with a Bolt of Change before assaulting. Clearly getting peevish Mephiston demonstrated again how a force sword is properly used and consolidated into cover.

The Tzeentch squad had now recycled alongside the Thousand Sons but as neither had any effective long-range weapons and both were in the fire arc of my plasma cannons as they advanced my opponent conceded even though there was a turn left to play. He was right: the final score was 1095 to the Blood Angels, 490 to the Chaos Marines.

Hmm. Yet another Death-and-Meph outing, with the Company and the Chief Librarian killing the entire enemy army between them (with some supporting fire from the Devastators). Everything else barely moved or shot throughout the entire game. I know those two units are capable of that level of destruction, but at the same time I can’t rely on it. This game was mainly useful as a bit of an insight into some of the odder parts of the Chaos list.

And I feel I must say that my opponent did not seem very confident in his grasp of the rules, consistently forgetting to roll for his daemonic support, not to mention his psychic powers. Maybe I should have been a little more lenient about this and reminded him before the game actually finished, but hey. It’s a tough school. He needs to learn to remember without help, not everyone’s as compassionate as me (and he called me ‘dude’ a couple of times during the game, which I didn’t appreciate).

Oh well, a win’s a win, as they say, and there’s nothing like a crushing one-sided victory to make you remember why you started playing the army in the first place. I’ll settle for that, for now.