Actual gaming

Got to play not one but TWO games yesterday.

The first was a large (but not really Apocalypse-scaled) 40k game - 4 players, 3000 points per player. Then to make it really interesting we diced for allies. I picked my Imperial Guard to use, sort of a "last hurrah" for their existing codex, as I don't expect to play with them again until then new Imperial Guard codex is released in May. I ended up paired with Jeff's Emperor's Children-themed Chaos Space Marine army, facing off against Mike's Tyranids and Chris's Orks.

So we have here two shooty-armies against two horde-style armies. Oh boy.

We played a 16'x4' set of tables, with four objectives. We set up baffles for blind deployment - a particular favorite of Jeff's. Predictably the Guard and Chaos armies were set up very quickly; the Horde took a long while, giving Jeff and I time to discuss some minor planned strategy over donuts.

Sadly we were under a time limit - our Tyranid player had to leave by 3:30, so we were only able to get in three turns. During that time, the horde forces surged us hard, but I felt that our guns had been able to hurt them pretty badly. With another turn or two, we might have been able to mount our planned counterattack and seize two of the four objectives pretty handily - but it was not to be and we lost 2-0 on objectives.

Some my army's highlights of the game were:

• My Lascannon weapon teams first blowing up a [freshly purchased] Ork Battlewagon, and then on the next turn killing the two surviving Meganobs.
• Four infantry squads AND a Leman Russ tank pouring fire on a Carnifex to finally kill it, mere inches from where it was going to crash into my lines.
• Those same infantry squads and a command section raining dealth into a unit of 15 Ork Bikers and finally routing the last three of them after deliviering an enormous hail of fire.

After everyone packed up and the Tyranid and Ork players departed, Jeff and I played a quick game of Warhammer.

It was my third outing with the Warriors of Chaos since the new book came out - so far I had one tie (against Wood Elves) and one loss (againt Dark Elves). Jeff played Dwarves - this time a really, really freaking shooty Dwarf army.

However my Chaos Warriors were not to be denied, ending in a handy win for me. Really the man of the match was my Chaos Sorceror, who cast Curse of the Leper onto the Hammerer unit containing Jeff's Thane - and the dwarves were completely unable to rid themselves of this spell. It ended up killing the entire unit - I managed to pick off some of the Hammerers in a long combat with one of my Chaos Warrior units, but overall the spell did them in. Jeff did manage to kill a lot of Warriors and Chaos Marauders with his two Flame Cannons and 40 Crossbows and 20 Thunderers (ow, ow, ow) but when my units made it into melee, it was just a slow grindfest where Chaos was bound and determined to win.

Good games, both.

Coming on Thursday: Urban War against Tim.