Bobby's First Battle with his Space Marines!

My son has participated in my Warhammer hobby probably as long as he can remember. As I've starting digging through my boxes of Marine stuff, he fell in love with them, so...the marines became his!

He's dutifully painted up 16 Marines so far, the makings of two Tactical squads, using a simple wash method for the basecoat, and doing their shoulderpads, guns, eyes and other details in colors that he chooses. He's getting very competent at "staying inside the lines", getting his colors only where they're supposed to be, doing very decent work for a 5-year old. If he sticks with it, he'll be a master in no time! :)

So today I promised him a battle! He had two semi-tactical squads of 8 guys each (including Sgt, Missile, and Flamer), and he's started work on his 6 Terminators. I throw out two mobs of 20 boyz and 5 bikers. No nobs in any of the units...yeah, I took it easy on him :) I had a dedicated helper, who only managed to break one of my orks!

Bobby went first, after a long review of the basic mechanics (rolling to-hit, wound, and armour saves). He very excitedly set up one of his squads in "the castle". His Terminators and other squad formed a long firing line, with him remembering key things like placing his flamer in the front of his squad!

He shot up my bikes and my shoota boyz on his first turn. We practiced counting by twos, and did some fun math...gotta make it a learning experience! I ran right at him with everything, full speed ahead! My bikers drove right up to his terminators, shot them, and assaulted them. One of the bikers lived...he was so proud!

The shoota boyz picked off a few marines, too...I helped him choose which ones to remove, setting him up for a nice turn 2 assault on the diminished Shootas.

Turn 2 went pretty poorly for me...his squad in the church ripped up many of the choppa boyz with flamer and missile fire out the windows. The other tactical squad advanced on the shoota boyz, killed many with flamers and bolt pistols, then assaulted them, won the combat, and ran them down. The last biker killed another Terminator before being ripped apart by many power fists!

In my final turn I called the Waaagh, and got the choppa boyz in to the Terminators. His faith in The Emporer was his shield, as the boyz did 14 wounds, and he failed only 2 saves. The remaining two Terminators killed two boyz, tieing me in combat. On his turn he used the surviving Tactical guys to assault the orks also, killing off enough to win combat and annihilate them in sweeping advance!

He did a good job measuring his movements, was asking the right questions: "how many attacks does this guy get? how strong is this guy? how high do I have to roll to wound him?"...I think he will be a very competent table-top general in no time!

Thanks for the great game, Bobby!