Blood on the Pavement: A Warhammer 40K Battle Report

The Introduction

Yesterday, I made a post about an upcoming game of Warhammer 40,000.  My White Scars Space Marines were set to take on a strike force of Grey Knights in small, 500 point skirmish.  Last night, the battle was fought and, well...  It was a very bloody affair.  What follows is a brief battle report with pictures illustrating the final position and casualties of each unit at the bottom of each players turn.

Disclaimer: I apologize in advance if I flub any rules explanations or unit abilities.  I have very little experience with my opponent's army and my notes from last night are very brief.  In addition, I'm still learning the 6th edition of Warhammer 40K and I might just be dead wrong.  Also, these armies are both works-in-progress so please forgive us for incomplete and unpainted miniatures.

The Armies

In my post from yesterday, I laid out my White Scars army list.  I made one slight change before playing and swapped out the Land Speeder Storm for a standard Land Speeder.  This was largely due to the fact that my Storm model wasn't completely built yet, but also because I didn't think my Scouts would need a transport and the regular Land Speeder is slightly more survivable.

My opponent fielded a tiny, yet elite strike force of Grey Knights.  These guys are very expensive (points-wise), but have a lot of tricks up their sleeves and some of the most devastating weaponry in the game.  His total model count was 7 (compared to my 12) and his list looked something like this - 

HQ: Grey Knight Captain 

• Terminator Armor
• Master-Crafted Nemesis Force Halberd
• Master-Crafted Storm Bolter

TROOPS: Grey Knight Strike Squad

• Psycannon
• Justicar w/ Nemesis Force Halberd

HEAVY SUPPORT: Dreadknight

• Heavy Incinerator
• Heavy Psycannon

My main concern going into the game was the Dreadknight.  I had the melta weapons to pierce his ridiculous armor, but the damn thing isn't a vehicle and has a Toughness value).  That's a tough nut to crack and I deployed my army with the intention to try and drop the Dreadknight as quick as possible.

The Set-Up

Our mission for this game was The Emperor's Will and our Battlefield deployment was Dawn of War.  My Captain secured the Warlord trait of Master of the Vanguard (which unfortunately never came into play) and my opponent's Captain gained the Intimidating Presence Warlord trait (which he did get to use, but was not effective).  We placed objective markers, but I'm going to spoil a bit of the battle and reveal that they never came into play - you can, however, see them at the top and bottom of the right side of the battlefield (represented by servo-skull markers).

My White Scars are lined up on the bottom of each of the pictures below.  As you can see in this first one, I threw my bike squad and captain (he's the biker with no head and all the metal bits on him) dead center to face off against "Legs" McGee, the Dreadknight.  My plan was to have them drive up, pour a TON of bolter and meltagun fire into the thing, slag it and then loop around to charge into the Strike Squad that was being accompanied by the Grey Knight Captain.  My Scouts  set themselves up in a high perch which gave them line of sight to damn near everything on the battlefield (lower right, in the building) and my Land Speeder hid behind that big rock column (lower left) to avoid being blown away on the first turn by the Dreadknight's big guns or massed small-arms fire from the Strike Squad (which you can see in the top left, coming out of the ruined building).

My Captain and 2 other bikers got clipped off the bottom of this pic, but I swear they're there.

The Battle

On his first turn, my opponent marched his Grey Knights forward.  No fancy maneuvers here - he just closed the distance.  Afterwards, shots from the Strike Squad were able to ice one of my bikers.  Not a great start, but I still had my meltaguns!  Thankfully, he was still too far off to attempt to engage me in hand-to-hand combat during his Assault Phase.

For my first turn, I moved my bikes up and set the Land Speeder off to the lower left hand corner of the board.  For the Speeder, my goal was to keep the Strike Squad within range of my heavy bolter, while staying out of their range.  Unfortunately, the Speeder's shots were ineffective.  My bikes, on the other hand, did better (but not great).  Their melta weapons were able to inflict a single wound on the Dreadknight.  My scouts also took a few potshots at the lumbering pair of legs, but their high-tech sniper rifles were unable to find an exploitable chink in its armor.

Moving into the Assault Phase, I realized that my bikes were a little too close.  One of the things I like best about 6th edition is that players are now free to pre-measure distances at any time and had I taken proper advantage of this, I could have brought my melta weapons to bear and given myself enough space to avoid a counter charge during my opponents next Assault Phase.  As it stood, I tried charging into the Dreadknight to at least avoid getting kicked to death.  With it's crazy high Toughness, my bikers would've needed to roll 6's to do any damage on the lumbering behemoth.

This is where the tide of luck started to turn for me as I ended up failing to roll an adequate charge distance and lock the Dreadknight down.  My biker just sat in the middle of the road looking fearsome.

And another case where I couldn't quite capture the whole field.  My Land Speeder is off to the lower left, out of frame.

As you can see, the bad luck didn't stop at my failed charge.  Though the Grey Knights had similar misfortune in their own charge attempts, their ranged weapons reaped a heavy toll on my Captain and his squad.  I lost another biker and my all-important Attack Bike (with it's mounted heavy weapon).  Oh!  And my Land Speeder got plinked and lost one of it's hull points.

Ouch.

At this point, I needed to make a desperate gamble - so I veered off to the left with the bikes and charged the Strike Squad.  Before the melee commenced, I took a few shots with the Land Speeder, the snipers and my bikes, but was unable to cause any casualties.  My Captain challenged the Grey Knight Captain and the two of them ended up locked in combat for the rest of the game.  Unfortunately, the rest of the Strike Squad made short work of the 2 bikes that had bravely charged in alongside their commander.

And this is what the board looked like right before my Captain finally succumbed to the onslaught of the Grey Knights.  Two rounds of concentrated shooting with the Dreadknight's heavy weapons made short work of my Scouts and the Landspeeder proved unequal to the task of mowing the bipedal death machine down with it's heavy bolter.

Though my Captain fought valiantly, he was only able to deal a single wound to his Grey Knight counterpart before his luck finally ran out and he was brought low with a mighty halberd swing.

The Conclusion

They say that defeat is the great teacher and...well, I definitely learned a lot from this game.  Grey Knights?  They're tough.  Like, super tough.  I was not expecting those 6 men to last as long as they did and the Dreadknight is going to haunt my dreams for a while.  If I could change anything up, I'd likely drop the Scouts and the Land Speeder for a regular old squad of Space Marines on foot (or in a Rhino transport, if I had the points) to get more guns (and, like, a missile launcher or something) on the ground and force my opponent to attempt more armor saves.

Despite some awful dice and being all but tabled, I still had a lot of fun with this game and can't wait to start painting my models and building the army up beyond a mere 500 points.  I hope you guys enjoyed this battle report and that you'll leave a comment or drop me a line with some feedback.  I'd love to do more of these (for Warhammer, X-Wing or any other games)!

A Very Special Training Exercise, starring Khajiun Khan

I've never tried my hand at a battle report before, but I've got a game of Warhammer 40K tonight and I think I might give it a spin.  My friend Ken and I will be throwing down with 500pts using the latest 6th edition rules.  He will be playing a small strike force of Grey Knights and I'll be bringing my savage White Scars to bear.

Several of my friends and I have been playing these small games using a modified Force Organization chart (requiring only 1 Troops choice as opposed to 2) in order to acclimate ourselves to 6th edition.  My own experience with 40K is tumultuous (I've only rarely ever had a field-able army), but I've been entrenched in the setting since the game's 3rd edition.  For my money (quite literally), 6th has been a very tight, comprehensive system that captures all the great elements that past versions have waxed and waned on.  Heroes are incredibly heroic and powerful without being armies unto themselves.  Core units of troops are essential for every army to secure and hold objectives.  Vehicles are now neither wafer thin nor mandatory mobile cover.  It all fits together rather well.

When the call went out to start playing again, I had just sold my 5th edition Ork army.  I thought long and hard about picking the Greenskins up again as they are easily my favorite part of any Games Workshop intellectual property, but I didn't want to have to struggle with list building like I did in 5th edition and I certainly wasn't prepared or motivated to build and paint a massive amount of foot-slogging boyz from scratch.  No, for this I wanted something more compact and elite.  As it happens, I'd been pumping out a few characters for Fantasy Flight's Deathwatch rpg and I had really come to love and appreciate the White Scars chapter of Space Marines.  There's a lot I could say about the Scars from a cultural/historical perspective, but that might get a little wordy and stray off topic (cultural appropriation in Space Marine chapters has got to be covered by someone somewhere).  Suffice it to say that I love Genghis Khan as a historical figure and the thought of a massive army of unrestrained Space Marines on bikes appealed to me.

So, I got my hands on a Dark Angels Ravenwing Battleforce (because it is essentially a bike army in a box) and set to work.  I was lucky enough to score some old White Scars bits off eBay and a few friends helped me scrounge up the bitz I wanted to start adding a Mongol horde flavor to the army.  So far, I haven't gone too crazy, but it's a start.  After playing a few games, I've settled on a list that incorporates as many bikes as I can reasonably fit in 500 points.

HQ: Space Marine Captain

• Space Marine bike
• Lightning claw
• Lightning claw

TROOPS: Scout Squad

• Sniper rifles

TROOPS: Space Marine Bike Squad

• 2x additional bikers
• 2x Meltaguns
• Attack bike
• Multi-Melta

FAST ATTACK: Land Speeder Stor

I have actually gone ahead and thrown in the mandatory HQ and 2 Troops choices required by the standard Force Organization Chart despite the house rules requiring just 1 Troops choice for this size game.  I used Sniper Scouts in one of my test games and was really impressed with them (and the new plastic models).  They make a nice long range addition to the bike squad that has to get up close and personal to get the most out of their devastating melta weapons.  The Land Speeder Storm isn't really necessary as a transport for the scouts, but it gets me a nice mounted heavy bolter and is very characterful for an army that is highly mobile in the fluff.

Now, I'm not sure what my opponent will be fielding tonight, but last I talked with him he had a list that had a Captain, a 5-man Grey Knight Strike Squad,  and a Dreadknight.  This is a tiny, tiny army and I will have an unusual numerical advantage, but the Grey Knights are tough and the Dreadknight is scary - I mean look at it!  If this is the army I end up facing, then my plan will be to secure any objectives with the scouts and pepper his Strike Squad with sniper rifle fire with support from the Land Speeder Storm.  The bikers, meanwhile, will swing wide to slag the Dreadknight with melta fire before charging into whatever remains of the Strike Squad and/or Captain.

Tonight, I'll be taking pics and notes for a full battle report which should be up on Saturday.  Since the White Scars and Grey Knights are both Imperial forces, this is just a "training exercise" from a fluff standpoint, but I hope I can lock down a victory.   

For the Khan and the Emperor!

 

Ryanuary Begins

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to guest host on the All Things Good & Nerdy podcast where we discussed the upcoming "Ryanuary" extravaganza.  Throughout the course of January, I'll be acting as the 4th chair on the show and delivering hard-hitting tabletop news, reviews and commentary.

I'll probably also go into the ATGN Trademarked "Super Dick Mode" about component quality, box control and Games Workshop's specialist game support.

Review: X-Wing the Miniatures Game (If we're going in, we're going in full throttle)

Buckle up folks, this one's been a long time coming - it's X-Wing: The Miniatures Game by Fantasy Flight Games!  Now, before you go locking your s-foils in attack position let's hold our fire and see if there are any life readings on board.

Components: In the past, there have been some mediocre Stars Wars miniatures (I'm looking at you Star Wars: Starship Battles), but with Fantasy Flight behind the wheel we have some impressive offerings.  These are easily some of the best pre-painted miniatures I have ever seen.  The detail is very crisp for the scale (which comes in at approximately 1/270th) and the paint jobs are nice and clean.  Fantasy Flight is using a harder, lighter plastic than other pre-painted minis games (like HeroClix, Dungeons & Dragons or Monsterpocalypse).  As a result the ships feel a bit fragile (due to the light weight), but are surprisingly sturdy and don't suffer from the type of drooping/sagging/bending that plagues other minis.  Additionally, the game comes with movements templates, tokens, dice and cards - all of which live up to the Fantasy Flight standard of quality.

The rulebook for X-Wing is nice, neat and accessible.  The core box set has enough components for players to try a few scenarios (also included in the rulebook) and get a good grasp on both the basic and advanced rule sets that are presented.  The rules themselves are intuitive to a point, though the interactions between ships while moving and the timing of certain abilities may pose a problem to players on occasion.  Fantasy Flight recently released an FAQ/Errata document that clears up most of these issues.

Gameplay: X-Wing is a dogfighting game through and through.  Players will build squadrons of fighters by selecting either named pilots (like Wedge Antilles or Howlrunner) or generic ones and equipping them with upgrade and skill cards.  Pilots, equipment and skills all cost a certain number of points and currently, the standard game size is 100 points.  This allows players to customize their squadron as they see fit and could mean as few as 3 or as many as 8 ships on the table depending on what a player choose.


The basic mechanic behind ship movement consists of players simultaneously selecting which move each ship in their squadron is going to perform via a set of dials unique to that ship.  The maneuvers include things like simple moves forward, slight turns, sharp banks and the infamous Koiogran Turn (a simplified, Star Wars version of the Immelman Turn).  Once players have set a dial and secretly placed it next to each corresponding fighter, they are revealed in ascending pilot order - each pilot having a skill number that determines just how good they are.  Once a ship has moved, it can perform an action.  Actions can range from improving your ability to evade, acquiring a target lock or even activating one of your upgrade cards.

Example of how the dials & movement templates work

After all ships have moved, players will enter the combat phase and attempt to shoot each other down. This is as simple as checking to see who is in your firing arc (a 90 degrees wedge in front of every fighter), how far away they are (there are bonuses to attack for being at point blank range and bonuses to defense if you're far enough away) and building their dice pools.  Attackers take a number of attack dice equal to their primary weapon value and roll them.  After counting up how many hits they've scored, the defender will build a pool of green defense dice equal to their evasion and attempt to roll evade icons to cancel hits.  There are rules for shields, critical hits and of course character abilities that alter the core mechanics of the game, but these are the basics.

Combat in action

Overall:  If you follow me on Twitter, then it won't surprise you to know that I'm in love with this game.  Like, the scary kind of love that makes me want to tie it to a bed and break it's legs so it can't run away from me.  Squad building is an exciting challenge and there's enough variety so far to keep squadrons fresh and games interesting.  Both the Rebels and the Imperials seem to be well balanced against one another.  However, since combat is dice based, there is a fair amount of luck involved and sometimes even your best laid plans can evaporate if you keep rolling blanks.  Luckily, the game plays relatively quickly and the moments of bad-dice-temper-syndrome are likely to be few and far between.

The game is a bit pricey for a board game generally and a bit pricey for a miniatures game if you take into consideration how many models you get for the price - BUT, I find the depth and satisfaction I get out of the game makes this initial sticker shock completely irrelevant.  X-Wing definitely delivers your money's worth and with new expansions coming out early next year, I don't think I'll be letting it collect dust any time soon.

The holidays are killing me...

UPDATE: As of yesterday evening, the prices for these games have gone back up.  Though these games are still cheaper on Amazon then they would be at retail, the difference is less striking and (as always) it's probably for the better to support your local game store if you can.

There are some crazy deals up on Amazon right now that I would be remiss not to tell you guys about.

Mansions of Madness, $36.79 (54% off) - A Lovecraft/Cthulhu themed dungeon crawler set in Fantasy Flight Games' Arkham Horror line of games.  This one has some quirky mechanics and takes a while to set up, but is probably my favorite in the genre due to the intricate mysteries that the Keeper player must put together for the Investigator players to solve.

Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, $17.84 (55% off) - This one is unique in that it's a co-operative Living Card Game.  Players create a team of heroes from Tolkien's works and support them with allies both familiar and new.  The artwork alone makes this game worth the cost of entry, but I'm happy to say that the game itself is also incredibly well done and fun to play (also great for just two players, though it supports up to 4).

Android: Netrunner the Card Game, $21.59 (46% off) - Netrunner is just plain gorgeous.  It has beautiful artwork and sleek, elegant mechanics.  I don't have enough good things to say about this game.  One player takes on the role of an giant, mega-corporation trying to bring it's plans to fruition while the other plays a Runner hellbent on hacking into the corps' assets for their own gain.  The gameplay is completely asymmetric - meaning that the Runner and Corp both have different decks with different cards that have different mechanics.  It's a little hard to explain, but imagine Shadowrun meets Bladerunner the card game.

X-Wing: The Miniatures Game (ALL THE SHIPS) - The X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE Fighter and TIE Advanced single ship expansions are all on sale from 43-57% off.  I've got a review for this game that will be up on Sunday, but until then it's Star Wars dogfighting at its tabletop finest.  Command squadrons of your favorite pilots from the original trilogy as either the heroic (terrorist) Rebels or the dominating (peace-keeping) Imperials.

Review: King of Tokyo

My love for kaiju movies and the giant monster genre in general can be likened to Godzilla himself - large, menacing and when it decides to surface, it will take the combined force of several other monsters and a few potshots by the Japanese military to bring it down.  With that in mind, let's take a look at King of Tokyo by IELLO - a dice game for 2-6 players that plays in a lightning fast 20-30 minutes.

Components: Despite being a dice game, King of Tokyo has an impressive array of components.  The dice themselves are large, solid and just plain fun to roll.  They hit the table with a satisfying clatter and have easy to read symbols.  It's hard to explain with mere words just how amazing these cubes are.  Each player will also get to choose a monster standee and matching score tracker.  These are simple, sturdy cardboard and the artwork is bright and vivid.  The cards used for various monster upgrades and special abilities have got some great artwork on them and are printed on good stock with a nice satin finish.  I'd recommend sleeving them, but then they won't fit in the box insert (always a bummer).  Finally, the game has a board to denote which monster is in Tokyo (more on that later).  It's small and simple, but is on par with the other compnents as far as quality.

Seriously, those dice are amazing!

Gameplay: King of Tokyo is a filler game through and through.  It sets up, plays and breaks down very quickly.  Players take turns rolling the six base dice and matching up symbols to gain different effects.  You can attack other monsters, heal damage that's been done to you, gather energy (which is used to buy cards) or score victory points.  You get three throws of the dice in a turn and can keep whichever dice suit your needs between throws - will you try and wrack up as many victory points as possible or will you pummel the arrogant giant ape that's currently occupying Tokyo?  There is a surprising amount of depth here for so random a game.  The different combinations you can get may allow you to go for one big victory point rush in a single turn or give you the opportunity to gain a little energy, heal your monster and do a little damage.  Like any dice game, it's hard to plan your turn in advance, but I've yet to feel like I've been cheated by the dice.

Rules: King of Tokyo has a simple, full-color rules insert that is mostly easy to understand.  The game has a few quirks (mostly concerning the scoring of victory points).  Once you've got a game under your belt, however, you should be good to go.  Pick up the dice, rolle them, choose which ones you want to keep, roll the rest and repeat once more.  At the end of your three rolls, you compare your dice results and score victory points, damage opponents and gain energy accordingly.  At the end of your turn, you can spend any energy you've gained on upgrade cards that will do anything from giving you an extra head (which allows you to add one of the green bonus dice to your rolls) to forcing you to fight the military and sacrifice health for points.  Possibly my favorite mechanic is the press-your-luck decision of entering Tokyo.  If the Tokyo space on the game board is empty and you roll one of the damage icons, you enter Tokyo.  While in the city, you gain extra points at the beginning of each turn and any subsequent damage rolls you make are directed against all of your opponents.  The flip side to this is that only one monster can be the King of Tokyo, so any damage rolls your opponents make are directed against you and can not be healed..  If you take damage, you can choose to leave Tokyo, but you then sacrifice the bonus victory points.  It can be risky, but so far I have seen many a game won by a lone monster taking on all comers and finishing strong atop the smoking rubble that was once a Japanese metropolis.

Overall: King of Tokyo was a game that I bought based on a brief description and a few promotional shots of the box art.  I am a huge Japanese monster movie fan, so this was a no brainer, however unlike some other games, KoT really delivers on solid gameplay and integrates the theme very well.  I wish there had been mechanics to differentiate the monsters (everyone is exactly the same for now), but the game still delivers on that feeling of giant kaiju clashing in the middle of a city filled with terrified, poorly dubbed humans.  What more could you want?

Mobile Posting Action Force

Don't mind me. I'm just testing the Blogger app on my phone in preparation for Extra Life this weekend. For those of you who don't know, Extra Life is a charity supporting Children's Miracle Network hospitals. Gamers around the world will be pledging themselves to play video, board, card and roleplaying games for 24 hours straight.

To facilitate such selfless devotion to this noble cause, Extra Lifers need sponsorship from supporters like you! Head on over to the Extra Life website for more information. If you're feeling particularity generous you can visit my team's donation page and help us smash our sponsorship goal. Remember, every little bit helps!

This will be my first year participating in Extra Life, so I'm trying to prepare as best I can. My friendly local gaming store will be open for all 24 hours and that's where I'm planning to be. I'll have my X-Wing miniatures, King of Tokyo, Munchkin Cthulhu and Monsterpocalypse handy, for sure. I'm hoping to get the chance to play Netrunner, Horus Heresy, Mansions of Madness and a few  rpgs to boot.

Remember, I'm there for a whole day!

Stay tuned all weekend both here and on twitter for updates, pics and maybe even a few video posts!