40k with the Family

Made a family trip back home, which gave my boys a chance to play some Warhammer 40k with their cousins, my brother's boys.  My boys have slowly developing Black Templar and Ultramarine 40k armies, while their oldest cousin has a large collection of Eldar and Harlequin forces.  The boys also used this opportunity to exchange gifts with their cousins, which of course included 40k units for each other.

So we all journeyed down to my nephews' friendly local gaming store for a battle.  My boys don't have enough for either of them to field a full army, so they combined their chapters' forces into what I'll call Task Force Black and Blue.  Their cousin fielded a mass of very well-painted Harlequins.  TF Black and Blue hoped to shoot down the Harlequins before they could close the distance and tear marines limb from limb.

The only slightly unfortunate part about this was the table.  We ended up on a large table with a painted background, so please excuse the surface in the shots below.

Overhead view - TF Black and Blue at near end, Harlequins at far end of table.

Harlequins advancing on hover bikes.

More hover riders, with a small horde of foot troops behind.

TF Black and Blue takes defensive positions.

Boy 1's new Redemptor Dreadnought lines up to take a shot.  He proved somewhat effective, but some bad dice plagued his employment of his Heavy Onslaught Gatling Gun.

Ultramarines disembark from their Rhino and prepare to engage the onrushing Harlequin menace.

Black Templar dreadnoughts and Primaris forces form a firing line to hope to reduce the Harlequin skimmers at top end of frame.

Things get nasty in the middle as  large scrum develops, drawing in about a third of each side.  Plenty of casualties.  Note the magnificent Harlequin minis, with swirls of cards around them. 

The Harlequins advance in and wrap around both the Ultramarine tactical squad and their Rhino.  The tactical squad would ultimately get wiped out.  The Primaris Aggressors at top of frame proved highly effective, wiping out some Harlequin units that charged them.  If playing against a melee-heavy force, the Flamestorm Gauntlets work well - they hit automatically as the enemy charges.

On the Marine left, the weight of fire ultimately destroyed the advancing Harlequin skimmer fleet.

The Marines held their ground, albeit with some substantial casualties on their right flank.  All in all, a good game and certainly one that will help keep the next generation of wargamers excited about painting and playing in the future.

Kill Team, Blood Angels vs. Tau

Got introduced to Kill Team at my friendly local gaming store, and found that I really enjoyed it.  Played one intro game with 10 Blood Angels - 5 Tactical, 5 Death Company with jump packs.  I played against some Grey Knights that were dual wielding force swords, and figured my goose was pretty cooked, but the dice went my way, and I prevailed.


As these, things tend to go, GW promptly killed the game.  Then they brought back the Necromunda rules, which they shouldn't have killed in the first place, to replace it.


Regardless, I was struck with how well the 7th Edition 40k rules work for a skirmish game (which 40k isn't).


Anyway, I played a game with my eldest boy, who reveled in the chance to take the Tau to task with his/my Blood Angels (again).


We squared off with the same Blood Angels team against a group of Tau Fire Warriors and some marker light drones:

Blood Angels at far end of the field, Tau near, hoping to capture the three objectives marked with red poker chips.

I didn't catch much of the battle in progress, but as you can see, the Tactical Blood Angels took some losses, while the Death Company managed to close the distance and wipe out the Tau.

Two Brothers of the Death Company celebrate with a post-battle high-five on the (former) Tau high ground.

I really don't feel like jumping on the Necromunda reboot bandwagon right now, and will definitely break out these rules in the future.  Should've expected that GW would pull the rug out from under me, I suppose...

Two More Quick 40k Games

Wrapped up a couple more small-ish 40k games, in the same vein as the games played in this post.


Game 1:
An Ork horde squares off with the Tau.  The Ork plan is to advance into melee combat, the Tau plan is to stop the Orks from closing the distance and shoot them all stone dead.  Very straightforward.

The forces at game's start.  The goofy kid's tractor toy in the background is substituting for a Trukk. 

The Ork right flank advances, and that Trukk doesn't look at all silly.

Another view of the Ork right flank, showing the Stormboyz moving to the cover of the industrial silos at center.

The Boyz have departed from the Trukk, the Stormboyz are advancing, it all seems to be going according to plan...

Unfortunately for the Orks, the overwatch fire from the Tau proved absolutely murderous, and the Stormboyz, when they finally reached the Tau lines, were far fewer than when they started.  And, as it turns out, the Tau Crisis Suits aren't as squishy as Fire Warriors in melee combat.  Wish I'd taken more pictures.


Oh, and this wouldn't be a battle report if I couldn't say that the Ork Weirdboy failed spectacularly.  He - again - attempted to teleport and rolled a critical failure, disappearing into the Warp with a significant portion of the Boyz.


Game 2:
Back to another Blood Angel-Ork fight, this time in a desert environment.

The Ork horde advances again toward Blood Angel lines, with the Stormboyz using a walled compound to cover their movement.

It wouldn't be a battle report with the customary news that the Ork Weirdboy failed.  Based on his failure in our last battle reports, he only had a few Burnaboyz to teleport with.  Of course, he failed, dramatically, disappearing again into the Warp with his crew.

The Weirdboyz's failure was just the beginning.  Above you see the end result of the battle, with the Blood Angels' combined arms laying waste to the Orks.  Some dramatic morale roll failures by the Orks accelerated the process.

That's all for now... coming soon, some Frostgrave.

Two Quick 40k Games

Here's two short 40k battle reports:


Game 1:
A Christmas (yes, a bit of delayed reporting here) game between me and my brother with our sons joining in.  Due to a lack of proper terrain, we set things up on the family dinner table after eating and used platters and canned vegies for... vegetation.  Other canned goods provided some other things to block the line of sight.


My Blood Angels formed a battle line and faced off against my newly purchased Orks. 

The Ork horde advances toward the Blood Angels, hoping to get within charge range. 

The Orks' Weirdboy tried to get his mojo going, but rolled serial failures and proved entirely worthless.  Note this - it will prove a constant in our games.

The Blood Angels' Furioso Dreadnought has taken the center of the field, breaking the Orks' center and putting and end to the contest.

We both forgot to bring dice, but I'm happy to report that the Games Workshop dice rolling app works great.  Fun was had by all.


Game 2:
The second game comes from a trip to our friendly local wargaming store.  Almost all of the table space was taken up, so we grabbed one long, thin table and set up another quick game.  My boys played the Blood Angels, and I played the Orks.  The point value for this game was slightly higher than the last, with the Blood Angels fielding Mephiston and the Orks some additional Boyz.

The Ork horde starts awfully close to Blood Angel lines this time...

The Ork Weirdboy tried to teleport behind the Space Marine lines with a large complement of Boyz to whip some Blood Angels.  He again rolled up a critical failure and he and half of the total Boyz head count frittered off into the Warp.



The Furioso Dreadnought again gets into the mix with the Ork main body.  This bodes ill for the greenskins...

Mephiston joins the Dreadnought and contributes to wrecking the Orks in detail.  The Deffkoptas that swept behind Blood Angel lines (back of the photo) didn't do much to dent the Marines' effectiveness.

This game proved another Blood Angel victory.  Stay tuned for future game reports - we'll get some Tau back in the mix.

Warhammer 40k: Death Company vs Tau 1000-ish Points

In line with my last two posts (one and two), this covers a game of 40k between me and my oldest boy.  He loves the Blood Angels, and I love a well-painted mini, particularly some Death Company with jump packs.  So what follows is a few highlights from a game where we each had 1000 points or so.  He had Astorath as his warlord and a Death Company squad of 11 as a death star unit (which it is, at 1000 points), and I had Tau and some Kroot. 

The two forces lined up, Blood Angels on left and Tau on right.  Blood Angels took the initiative.

The land speeders advanced and drew a ridiculous amount of fire, but proved improbably lucky at managing not to get blown up.  Terrible Tau dice in this opening turn.

The Death Company runs in order to close the distance.  One land speeder is down.  Its crew dismounted, but I think this was a mistake - I think they were supposed to go down with the ship, so to speak.

Tau prove much more effective on the other flank, whittling away at tactical marines that wander into range.

 The Death Company take a couple of casualties from overwatch fire as they assault, but it doesn't really matter.  The Kroot get munched pretty easily.

The placement of the Death Company, in easy line of fire of Tau Fire Warriors, helps whittle them down a bit.

Tau on the right flank fall prey to some deadly Devastator Squad fire.

Some Kroot think it's a good idea to assault the tail end of the Death Company unit...

...and they suffer casualties and rethink this course of action.

And Astorath and his Death Company faithful close the distance to the Tau Fire Warrior line, delivering a crushing blow.  At this point, we called the game.  There was no Tau victory on the horizon.

Two lessons learned:
1.  The Kroot pushed me from 800 or so points to nearly 1000, and I need some more proper Tau troops to make this list competitive.
2.  The Kroot might have been effective as a speed bump of sorts, pushing them into the path of the Death Company so that they spent more time under the guns of the Tau line.  Something to think about for future games...

Warhammer 40k, Blood Angels vs. Tau

Building off of my last post, 40k is STILL back, baby!  Here's a few pics from another game with my oldest boy, who continues to enjoy playing Blood Angels against any and all takers:

Tau advancing to the nearest buildings for firing positions across the road that divides this town, which looks nothing at all like my Force on Force terrain for urban operations in the Middle East... 

 Tau

 Tau Crisis Suits advance to a rooftop, only to come face to face with a Blood Angels assault squad.

 Mephiston uses a spell to make one of the Tau on this rooftop explode, killing other nearby Tau.  Pretty spiffy trick, that. 

 The assault squad, having cleared the rooftop of Tau Crisis Suits, likewise slay some Kroot foolhardy enough to move into melee combat...

 Mephiston leads a tactical squad in a charge against these Tau.  Tau overwatch fire proves deadly, but...

 ....Mephiston closes the distance and gets the job done himself.

The assault squad used jump packs to move into assault range of this Tau unit and Ethereal...

 ...which left me with no more Tau in a bloody endgame.

The tally of points after 3 turns and conclusion of the game.  I got tabled by my boy.

40k is Back, Baby!

I started gaming a over a couple of decades ago, and of course had a Warhammer 40k army.  Blood Angels, painted reasonably well.  I sold them, unwisely, for about what I paid for them, when I needed money.  I essentially donated my time and effort in assembling and painting them, and it hasn't sat right with me since. 


Then last year I procured some Tau (not even realizing they were 40k, but that they looked good as generic anime-esque aliens) minis for my Modern Warfare:  Alien Invasion posts (see #1 and #2, more to come). 


Then I took the leap, and bought some Blood Angels and a few more Tau, and finally got to play a bit with my oldest boy.  This is a delayed report - the battle happened a bit back, but here goes...

Tau face off against a mixed Blood Angel and Imperial Guard force.  Tau near side of the board.

Tau suffer a lot of casualties for going through difficult terrain.  I think I misapplied this rule.

A Crisis Suit dances in front of the Imperial line...

...and takes a wound.

Tau casualties pile up...

Kroot charge in from the Tau right flank, and you can see the remainder of a Tactical Marine squad at top.  They shouldn't have let themselves get caught out in the open...

Kroot and Guard clash in the center of town.  Both have been thinned out.

Furioso Drednought closes in for the kill.

Turned out a Blood Angel victory, and had a good time.  Looking forward to future matches.