There is only a very silly game.
So I was going to write up my whole game with Blogger Scotty and, as per usual, I stopped taking photos about 40% of the way through the game.
This, however, is the highlight:
I'd been dinging up Bel'akor with Thermal Spears, Hunter Killers, Krak Missiles and a Culexus Assassin and left him on 1 wound so the brave Commissar, leading the last remaining parts of my Penal Legion squad charged the Daemon Prince. I rolled two hits, two 6s to wound and the whole game held it's breath as Scotty needed 2 4+s to not die and promptly rolled two more sixes! It was EPIC. He then promptly ended the Penal Legion squad, cut up my artillery and finally found himself very dead as an Armiger Helverin took the centre objective and noted the large wings and promptly Anti-Flyer 2+'ed Bel'akor back to the warp.
So first real game of 10e was a good success. The rules feel mostly pretty good and I like how much it's slimmed down from the 8e / 9e bloat. There's not *too* much to remember and once I get weapon stats down and things like that, I'll be much happier.
Scotty admitted he didn't bring the Soul Grinder since it would probably have chewed me up pretty badly but I had plenty of anti-armour stuff on the board and reckon I could have given it the beans. I also need to tinker with the list a little bit - the tank commander definitely needs to be giving out 2 orders a turn and the Imperial Agents contingent needs a second look. This one worked, but only because I was playing against daemons. I reckon it'd give Tyranids a good go too but probably a bit middling against a more general list.
Anything I don't like? The stupid 60x44 table just vexes me for no real reason. I understand exactly *why* it's like this but come on. Otherwise, while I remain unconvinced I'll ever play in a comp (unless it's big enough to have a real drinkers bracket for me!), I'll be happy to play it casually and use all the nice models that I have!
The long dark night time of aggressive troops...
I played a game of Late War Flames of War against clubmate Chris, breaking out my Volksgrenadiers and their new 12cm mortars against his Brigade Panzergrenadiers. I wanted to try this list out as I think it has game in both attack and defend missions (but never maneuver!) and elected to defend against the Panzergrenadiers. Who also defended. Uh oh. D/D missions.
We wound up rolling up Night Patrol, and given that neither of us had ever played it, we thought it was worth a blat. It was a slowish setup as we worked through the completely different game setup and we were both a bit baffled about what correct decision making looked like but I think both of us could play it again. Chris reckoned playing it in a tournament would be a tough ask to finish the game and I am inclined to agree. It definitely feels like if you're going to defend you need to know how to play, and how to win, these missions.
Here we are at the end of my first turn:
On turn two, almost nothing happened as we both kept our heads down. Chris and I had occupied these two houses below - me defending my objective and him waiting for enough of his half-tracks to remount to come up and try and shove me out. We spent most of the game pounding the other players building and Chris came off second best in the end. But not well enough for me to assault him out and finish the platoon the quick way.
Turn three and I got no reserves so spent a relatively quiet turn shuffling things around and lining up my SdKfz 250 Recce tracks to go after Chris' Stummels because this happened:
In an absurd turn of events, the King Tigers were basically stuck between my minefields and Chris' and their main contribution to the game was rolling 6s and absolutely ruining the recce tracks you can see below! Chris said later on that he should have brought them on later and instead brought on his second platoon of Jagdpanzer IV/70s on his right to stop my Recce making a cheeky run for the back objective (which I was totally trying to do!)
Chris rolled up on my fortress with his SdKfz 251/16 Flamm tracks and did some great unpleasantness for a couple of turns but I kept up a respectable return fire with panzerfausts (I lost the shrecks early) for, in the end, a whole lot of nothing!
We reached a stalemate on the right where those flak hlaf-tracks in the top of the photo pushed my remnant assault platoon back to the bulletproof cover of the craters while three Jagdpanzer IV/70s sat off to the right electing not to cross the hedge given the additional +1 to cross checks at night. I managed to range in both my 8cm and 12 cm mortars on the remnant of his infantry platoon and eventually thrashed them into next week over nearly six turns...
And this is where the game finished up:
Unpictured were my Brigade Panzer IVs cleaning up the second platoon of Jagdpanzer IV/70s while my Brigade Panthers finished off the work started by the Assault platoon and killed Chris' first Jagdpanzer VI/70 platoon. They went on in the following turn to bail out all of the half tracks on the objective to emerge victorious.
So this was both of our first time playing the Defend / Defend Night Patrol game. Possibly not a great choice for Chris with his Brigade Panzergrenadiers but I think he managed a cunning middle ground to keep all his half-tracks on table. He said afterward that his big mistake was putting that objective in the open where he had to be on it and there was some proposition I got the first turn. Shuffling it just up the street so he could be in the church and defend it would have made this a very different game.
Night was hard work for two armies who are mostly Trained at best - my artillery was next to useless and most shooting at concealed, gone-to-ground infantry was on 6s with the extra +1 for night. So it was a grind but a really enjoyable one, just because it was such an unusual mission. If you've never played it, read through the game setup VERY carefully when you do because it has a completely different order of operations. Also, minefield placement really matters. 9/10, would play again.
Next Time
Bit of a workbench. I'm working on a character model for an upcoming game of Shadowrun then another one for the game that follows that (Vecna, Eve of Ruin for DnD5e) and trying to finish up the last of the KoW conversion - I've had some wings 3D printed for the 'Elohi' proxies and while they're a bit silly, they should do the job of clearly denoting that these things fly!
