A few Thursdays ago I played another 1750-point game of Warhammer 40,000 in the Nerd Bunker. It was against John, whom I’ve played many times before, but always in lower point Combat Patrol games. This time, we were playing a much bigger game and I still had my previous 1750-point list (with Uncle Tickles et al.) and John was using his Crimson Fists figures, running under the Space Wolves codex, as in our past battles. I still haven’t completely decided whether I prefer to call his force the Crimson Wolves or the Space Fists, but I think I’m leaning toward the latter. Either way, John needed to proxy some of the figures and vehicles for the list he was trying out, so if you see some figures in the photos that don’t look right, don’t worry about it. And, if you see some soda cans on the table, those are drop pods. Don’t worry about those either.
Those Coke Zero cans represent drop pods, and these forces in my backfield represent a definite problem for me
So the mission was Capture and Control (the mission with the two objectives, one in each deployment zone) and the deployment was Spearhead (from diagonal table quarters) and the beginning was pretty low-impact. One of my Vindicators shelled some of his missile-wielding Long Fang units hiding in a building (and they all passed their cover saves) and he rained some missiles down on some of my vehicles with very little effect. But the forces that deployed from his first turn drop pods were going to be a pretty big problem for me. Luckily, I had good old Uncle Tickles and my daemon prince on my side.
"Listen guys... do you hear something? It sounds like something about to die in a hail of missiles."
However, in actuality, both of my HQ units did so little before dying that it was sad. Uncle Tickles got into a fight with Logan Grimnar (big boss-man of the Space Wolves) and could have snuffed him, but I didn’t roll high enough and he only caused a wound or two before succumbing to Logan’s dual power fist auto kill gauntlets which also shoot, I believe. And the daemon prince (who still doesn’t have a name) deepstruck into John’s backfield (as his drop pods had done into mine) and got shot to hell by all of John’s missile launchers from his dreaded Long Fang units.
A Rhino full of Chaos Space Marines shows up to reinforce the Plague Marines protecting my objective
So then, it was up to the infantry to hopefully hold on to my objective and save the day. I still had a working Vindicator that was slowly advancing on one of the hideouts in John’s deployment zone that was full of missile-launching Long Fangs (and also held his objective, which I didn’t technically realize until later) and it was drawing a lot of missile fire, but it just kept a-movin’. I also had a group of three Terminators that ended up not doing anything super helpful, and I still had two (out of three) Obiliterators that had been hiding in a crater for the entire game and just trying to lay down long range fire and make John think twice about advancing any of his vehicles.
"Hey, where'd our vehicle go? And why are we standing in this crater?"
Eventually, things started to accelerate. The Chaos Space Marines who had been in a Rhino during the entire game found themselves standing in a crater, confused and missing a few of their comrades after their Rhino finally had enough with the missiles and blown the hell up. Luckily, they were close enough to the Plague Marines and the objective that they were able to provide back up for their pestilent friends and keep the objective safe. I was losing troops as John’s Space Fists kept marching forward, but then he had a revelation: I had scoring troops on my objective, but he was using all of his scoring troops to menace my scoring troops, which meant he didn’t have his objective properly held, as far as the rules were concerned. If the game ended on Turn 5 (which it could, since the number of turns in the game is random between 5-7) there was a good chance I would win. This caused him to move some of his troops back on a forced march to his objective.
MVP of the game, in my opinion
At the same time, I realized that one of my trusty Vindicators (which had been shrugging off missile fire all game but doing very little else other than moving forward) was going to soon be in range of contesting John’s objective. The Vindi couldn’t take the objective, but it could cause John’s troops to be unable to score their objective (if they got there in time) and it could try to shell them as they headed toward said objective. John realized this as well, and more and more missiles rained on the lone Vindicator, but it just kept coming.
Luckily for me, at the end of Turn 5, John rolled a 1 to determine that the game ended then, and I won 1-0. If it had gone on to Turn 6, I doubt that I would have been able to hold on, but it still might have been a draw. If the game had gone on all the way to Turn 7, I’m fairly sure I would have lost. It was a lot of fun, and I think that if John had left a scoring unit on his objective from the start (as I usually do… sometimes to my detriment) then the best I could have done would be a draw. The mixture of the toughness of the Space Wolves codex, the age of the Chaos Space Marine codex, and the experience difference between John and myself (he’s been playing a long time) would have made it pretty difficult for me to win in a stand up fight. But we both had fun, and we’re both planning to get together and play another 1750-point game soon.
atom smashing 