After 3 weeks hard slog at the painting table/desk the Halo marines got their outing at Winds of War, their intended debut. This is the third event I have been to that has been hosted by
Bracknell Forest gamers, Winds of War 10 and Escalation 10 being the first 2. Both having been fun events that were well run and were full of great opponents.
This was the first time me and Ginge had seen are armies side by side, apart from a brief look at Ginges warthog and his low quality photos on his blog (Seriously, Ginge, would you like a camera with a macro function for your birthday?) and living 120 miles apart meant that we took our own directions with our armies. Ginge was playing his Spartan/marines as Blood Angels, I was playing mine as Space wolfs. Final results are available
here.
One of the more disappointing, (although expected) things of the day was the number of Imperial Guard players there with racks of auto cannons and chimeras and Hydras. As you'll see below we faced 3 guard players. I think this is because the Guard excel quite well in these games, no other codex has access to such useful vehicles as the Hydra, or Chimeras. While still being able to cram in loads of troops and autocannons which dice up the vehicles allowed in combat patrol.
Round 1:
Vs (Chaos) Space Wolves and Imperial Guard (Thunderwolf cavalry, with 5man squad in Rhino/Guard with Chimera Spam and an artillery piece with armoured sentinel for added fun)
Capture Your Objective from the centre of the enemies deployment zone.
We lost the roll for first turn, but being an objective based game, this wasn't too much of a loss. The Space wolfs thundered forward, heading towards their objective in our deployment zone. As the game progressed Ginge repulsed the thunderwolf cavalry
and the squad in the Rhino, with a little support from my long fangs. My two razorbacks advanced towards our objective, trying to survive the hail of fire from the Imperial guard. The razorbacks were eventually destroyed. With 6 marines left in two squads of 3, moving through difficult terrain attempting to charge the 2 squads of guardsmen between them and the objective. One squad failed to reach to reach the guardsmen. Leaving 3 spacewolfs to try and carry the day against 18 guardsmen. After killing 3 or 4 on the charge the guardsmen attacked back, causing a phenomenal 7 wounds on the wolves. Of which I failed 4 armour saves. (Damn my inability to make armour saves). Ending the game in a draw.
Round 2:
Vs Combined Tyranid Force (2x2 Zoanthropes, 3x Hive guard, 26ish Hormaguants, Genestealers and Y-Genestealers)
Killpoints
This started off badly being a killpoint missions, as we had twice as many as our opponents and quite a few easy kill points in the razorbacks and landspeeders. Made even more difficult by the copious amount of line of sight blocking terrain on the table. Great for the Hive guard, not so great for our ability to tackle the hive guard though. Unfortunately for us the game started rather badly, despite putting six wounds on a squad of zoanthropes with missile launchers they just wouldn't die. Where as Ginge pouring heavy bolter fire into the hive guard also resulted in no wounds. (in total over the course of the game I put about 10 wounds on them from missiles which they failed one of). Although one of the highlights of the game had to be the Longfangs decimating about 23 of the Hormagants after they all grouped up tightly on the approach :oP. After claiming the easy killpoints of the 3 razorbacks and two landspeeders, the tyranids were left with two hive guard a zoanthrope on a single wound and a few genestealers getting beaten up by a squad of grey hunters.
With the majority of our army intact, it was annoying to have time called on us at the end of turn 5. At the end of the game we lost 5 kill points to 3, but got the majority of the victory points, an extra turn would have seen us drawing with the Tyranids I think.
Round 3:
Vs Imperial Guard and Tau combined.
Objectives (3 in our case, dawn of war deployment)
After a quick confab, our opponents decided to give us the first turn, hoping for a last turn objective grab. Ginge deployed his razorback, with combat squad and chaplain as far forward as possible. The rest of our army came on from the back first turn. The Imperial Guard player came on slowly rolling two chimeras down the road towards the middle of the table. Ginge promptly blocked these with his razorback and proceeded to play merry hell amongst the imperial guard lines. Meanwhile my two razorbacks advanced with supporting fire from the long fangs, destroying one Chimera and immobilising another. A squad of Tau suits attempted to deepstrike next to my long fangs but scattered 6" away, leaving them to rely on their burst cannons for effect.
Unfortunately for them every shot missed (that's even worse then my average shooting), and they ate missiles next turn. In a long shot to try to draw the game, our opponents attempted the move onto the centre objective, next to my squad in razorback, and tank shock through the building onto another objective. Although this would still have lost them the game as we still had the 3rd objective. Anticipating this move, ginge had turbo boosted his speeder directly in front of the Chimera blocking his path. At this point our opponents gave up. Sensing that they would be tabled next turn, and wanted to save face. Netting us our first victory and 1000VPs.
Round 4: (The little sentinel that kept on going and the long fangs that forgot how missiles worked)
Vs Imperial guard and Space wolves (Armoured sentinels with plasma cannons and Chimera with veterans, Long fangs, skyclaws, wolf priest and grey hunters in razorback)
Kill points.
For this game, we were set-up in opposite table quarters to our team mates. We won the first turn Ginge headed towards the imperial guard player with most of his force, leaving a combat squad with missile launcher in his deployment. I sent one squad in a razorback towards The guard player, leaving the longfangs and other grey hunter squadron in razorback to try and harass the space wolf player. The Long fangs enjoyed some success early on when they hit the squadron of 3 armoured sentinels with plasma cannons. killing two off and stripping the cannon from the third. Ginge lost his speeder (Lost one, one immobilized) to the guard firepower, but proceeded to kill off the rest of the guard force in short order. Meanwhile the space wolfs had wrecked my razorback and killed off the squad inside with the skyclaws. From this point on my longfangs failed to hit anything, rolling a seemingly never ending stream of 1s'. Regardless, we had managed to kill off the enemy long fangs and razorback, leaving a grey hunter squad cowering out of sight, and the sky claws with wolf priest. Who were caught in combat with my grey hunters. I was losing combat slowly, although Ginges squad with chaplain in was nearby, ready to lend a hand. However they were stuck in combat with a shaken, stunned, weaponless, immobilized sentinel that refused to die. Totalling up kill points we came out just in the lead.
Overall we positioned 6th, with a good number of victory points for our position and not too far off the leaders.
Another enjoyable day out in BFG, thanks to the guys there for running the event. As they said at the time, this is the last time WoW is being run in it's current format, so have to wait and see what they have planned for next year.
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