For the first time in a while I managed to carve out some space in my schedule to actually play some 40K, and for the first time ever it was against someone who actually reads this blog. I was a bit worried that this would put me at an automatic disadvantage (surely all those wails of ‘I don’t have enough anti-tank’ and declarations that ‘the army relies too heavily on Mephiston killing everything in sight’ couldn’t have gone unnoticed) but then circumstances dictated my taking an all-infantry force anyway and it was nice to have an excuse before we even started playing.
The prospect of playing mechanised Eldar was not an appealing one but my opponent put that back to our second game and started off by rolling out his Necrons. A fairly standard army, it seemed to me: lots of destroyers and a monolith. The mission turned out to be the Necrons ambushing the Blood Angels. As the prospect of getting into assaults with Necrons was something I was very happy about, I wasn’t too worried, but my opponent clearly was and deployed extremely cautiously, obviously hoping to gun and run me while shielding his warriors.
I got the first turn and not much happened apart from the Devastators obliterating an entire Scarab swarm and nearly everything else swooping towards the enemy. On his first turn my opponent showed he’d been doing his homework by targeting Mephiston with his Heavy Destroyers and sticking three wounds on him. Hmmm! Elsewhere the Tactical Squad took a battering but that was all in terms of shooting, and this was largely due to the Necron Lord and an Immortal squad teleporting across the table to outflank me.
This proved to be a bad move as the Immortals were now in view of the plasma cannons of the Devastator squad, and also in assault range of the Captain and his retinue. Needless to say they did not survive the turn. Elsewhere the Death Company ran up to the monolith, bashed it with their thunder hammer and immobilised it (they were now effectively immobilised themselves due to the Rage rule, unless they could destroy it), while Mephiston engaged the Heavy Destroyers. My plan was to try and avoid killing all of them on the charge (not necessarily easy with the Lord of Death!) which would hopefully keep Mephiston safely locked in combat for the next Necron shooting phase. The good news was that one did indeed survive, but the bad news was that he actually stuck a wound on Mephiston leaving him with only one left.
Not much happened on the second Necron turn beyond the Destroyers shooting fairly ineffectually at the Captain’s squad and Mephiston finishing off the Heavy Destroyers (the Necron Warrior reserves refused to show up). On the third Blood Angel turn the Death Company managed to smash the monolith and Mephiston charged and wiped out the regular Destroyers, and at this point (6-0 down on kill points and with only two Necron Warrior squads and a Tomb Spider left to work with) the Necrons conceded the game. I think more aggressive deployment and play might have given them a better chance, but then again I think getting the first turn makes a big difference in this mission.
Anyway – no more Mr Nice Guy and out came a mechanised Eldar army, with three Wave Serpents, three War Walkers, a Falcon, a Night Spinner, lots of Dire Avengers, Fire Dragons, Scorpions, and Eldrad in it. Oh dear. We ended up playing a objective-based mission with most of our armies starting off the board. Eldrad’s Stones of Warding really promised to peg Mephiston’s psychic powers back and limit his abilities.
And for the first couple of turns the Blood Angels took a real pounding, the Death Company staggering forward towards Eldrad’s Wave Serpent, one of the combat squads being all but obliterated. My counterfire and mobility were both extremely limited. The game was going as I’d feared it might.
Then, we had a remarkable twist of fortunes. My reserves turned up. I decided my only chance was to deep strike the Sanguinary Guard deep into the Eldar deployment zone so they could shoot at the rear of their vehicles – but they scattered off the board, causing a mishap which let my opponent deploy them. Apologising for doing so (which touched me, rather), my opponent popped them down in front of the Fire Dragons, where they were sitting ducks. I deep struck the Captain’s squad down in roughly the same place safely (my opponent declared this was ‘ballsy’ until I reminded him of the Descent of Angels rule).
Anyway, that turn the Captain and his squad managed to wreck one of the Wave Serpents and the Death Company assaulted and destroyed another, really limiting the Eldar mobility on that side of the table. On the next Eldar turn my opponent took solace from his losses (and the non-appearance of his large squad of Striking Scorpions from reserve) by opening up on the Guard with the Fire Dragons’ melta-guns. Five shots, three hits… but no wounds! Somehow it was all starting to go right for the Blood Angels.
On my next turn Mephiston risked Wings of Sanguinius, got away with it and wiped out the Fire Dragons on the charge. The Death Company assaulted the War Walkers and destroyed them all. The Captain and his squad moved up behind the Night Spinner and destroyed that in the shooting phase as well.
The Eldar were taking massive casualties but still in the game, and the arrival of the Striking Scorpions only made that more obvious. Luckily they were fractionally out of assault range of the Captain’s squad. Elsewhere Eldrad assaulted and wiped out the surviving Death Company and the Falcon containing a squad of Dire Avengers positioned itself to claim an objective in my table half.
We were both running out of Troops choices and time. On my next turn the Guard shot at and then assaulted and wiped out Eldrad and his squad, while the Captain’s squad and the Attack Bike did the same to another Dire Avenger unit. Mephiston began a long and infuriating cat-and-mouse pursuit of a damaged Wave Serpent threatening to contest an objective held by my combat squad.
At the end of turn five, despite everything, the Eldar were ahead, holding one objective while contesting another. Luckily the dice went my way and we played on into turn six. On that turn I was able to wipe out the Dire Avengers doing the holding and move an Assault Squad up to contest with the Falcon, making the game a draw (Mephiston proved unable to get rid of the annoying Wave Serpent on the other side of the table). But the dice favoured me again and we were into a final turn…
The Guard assaulted and wiped out the Striking Scorpions (a fitting conclusion to a spectacularly good performance from them, easily their most impressive for me), while the last surviving Assault Squad member finally managed to stick his power fist through the back of the Falcon and bring it down, giving me an objective outright. With only one unit left in his army and two objectives under Blood Angel control, my opponent accepted defeat. But it had been an incredibly close and unpredictable game and I fully appreciate how very lucky I was to win. A lot of fun, as well, of course.
Not for the first time, though, I find no lessons in victory. The first game did see a couple of units doing absolutely nothing to impact on the game, and yet I scored a fairly easy win. In the second game, I think pretty much everything played its part in helping me scrape a very lucky win – changing anything in the army would have changed the course of the game. And I’m quite happy with the result I got!