On the weekend we had a daytime session of Epic in Games Cube Parramatta (thanks GC).
During the week i put out a call and 3 of us were available. Yhah.
Death Korp of Krieg (DKoK) List (played by K) and Marines List (played by T and myself - 2 separate games).
First game was me DM'ing while the newsters got into it.
Below we see the Marines Warhounds and Land Speeders getting swamped by a pack of DKoK Infantry with Marcharius support fire.
Not really an idea scenario for the marines, though to their credit they did whittle down quite a number of the guardsman before getting wiped out.
One of the fun events of the day was the warhound crit'ing and stumbling over some the guardsmen who were too close. fun times.
A fun shot of a Thunderhawk running a ground attack through the terrain. The DKoK had flack available but they were broken for 2:3 of the game so the Thawk had pretty much free reign (not that it's super-shooty or anything).
DKoK win with BreakSpirit and DefendFlag. probably could have wangled a TakeHold too with an extra turn... however the vehicle as pretty slow... combined with the focus being on combat rather than objectives... an issue that experience with resolve soon enough.
Both of the new players are getting suitably familiar with the basic rules and beyond, so was definitely worth the effort all round.
Second game i reset the same Marine list, same terrain layout and off we went.
Suffice to say i DIDN'T charge up the board with more than i had too. The gorgons fully of guard are a potent assault unit, but slow, so not overly difficult to avoid.
The Earthshakers (artillery) were annoying and niggled away at the already small marine units.
Sacrificed the Predator Annihilators to crunch the DKoK Heavy AA early on, freeing the Thunderhawk to attack the Earthshakers (Light Vehicles - so they really copped some fire there).
Basically it was a game of avoidance and although most of the units were coping fire they were avoiding the heaviest damage and remaining unbroken enough.
The terminators teleported in on turn 3, taking out the last of the Earthshakers before getting swamped by infantry (but not before mauling them a bit).
Picking away at the small stuff meant that heading toward the end of turn 3 i had a number of speedy units still available, and DKoK had no activation left. There was enough lure in my plan to get them toward my end of the board but without giving them uncontested objectives... in return i was able to scoot my formations down the board to secure the Blitz and TakeHold. There was no chance (or opportunity) of BreakSpirit, or ShallNotPass or even DefendFlag with the large (virtually) unbreakable infantry blobs. Going to turn 4 probably would have seen the remaining Marines slaughtered but thinks played out to plan.
Anyway, i guess it demonstrated that you don't just win by killing more units... something some of us take longer to learn than others [raises hand]. That said, it was a learning session and nutting out the mechanics is easier when you plunge in with as many combats as possible, and there was plenty of that going round too.
Hopefully everyone learned enough to make it worthwhile (even if the dice gods were not being overly generous - but tbh that's how Marines dice roll).
Personally i think i'm now at a level where i'm getting a feel for what other peoples armies can do and working toward/around that in a strategic way. Obviously, dice are dice, but knowing when to avoid the enemy is as vital as when to engage them. Additionally, being able to play against the same army a couple of times helps with the strategy side as well.
I'll put down as a note that there's a local Chaos Marines player who does this avoidance game brilliantly. He was at CoD at the latest session and we've played a couple of times some time ago. I managed to watch part of his game and it really inspired my approach to this game.
Until next time...
