We'd had our vacation planned for a month or so, but I unwisely bought an Army Transport case online...my poor Hordes stuff had been banging around in shoeboxes for months...such that it would likely be delivered while we were away!
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| They don't like the shoebox! |
As luck would have it, it showed up the day before we left.
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| Will everything fit?! |
After I got my packing done, I started fiddling with the foam seeing how I could arrange it to fit all my toys.
As I'm doing this, my wife walks by and says, in a disgusted tone,
"You're not bringing that with us are you?"
I started to reply, "No, I'm just seeing how things will fit and trying out how the foam-shaping works..."
But then I stopped mid-sentence...I mean...why not?
So I said, "Well, I guess I could...there is some nice gaming places near my folks' house...."
She rolled her eyes and walked away and I hauled 20 pounds of Hordes gear with me as a carry-on.
I'm happy to say that the transport worked wonderfully, as there were no casualties.
I did find time to go to Dragon's Lair in San Antonio. I did not meet anyone that wanted to play WM/H, but I did meet some very nice people and enjoyed myself watching their games....mostly Fantasy, but Flames of War too. My son and I bought a "travel-size" Settlers of Catan and had a nice game there too. :) So hauling all the toys was kind of a waste of time, but I did have a nice evening at Dragon's Lair San Antonio.
We had a busy time. Vacation this year was a lot different, as my oldest son (Bobby) is big enough to do some more "grown-up" type activities. He got to ride his first full-size roller-coaster (The Steel Eel at Sea World), horseback riding (a real horse, not a pony, that he had to control himself), laser tag, tubing on the Guadalupe, baseball game, banana-boat ride in the Gulf....great stuff for a great kid!
Enough boring vacation stuff! This site's about gaming!
The day after we got back I participated in a 40k Campaign game at the FLGS. Here's the campaign info: http://erieve.web.officelive.com/default.aspx
I played vs. Tim's Blood Angels at 1850. I don't remember the details of his army, but he had a big death company blob and a death company dreadnought in a stormraven; a big unit of terminators (using the very cool Space Hulk minis); a big unit of assault marines; a furioso dread; a librarian; a chaplain with the death company, and some priest guys giving Feel No Pain.
I was using my normal tried and true Kabal of the Blackened Sun:
-Ancient Haemonculous with Agonizer
-3 Trueborn with Blasters in a Venom
-3 Trueborn with Blasters in a Venom
-9 Hekatrix Bloodbrides with a Syren with Agonizer in a Raider
-10 Warriors with Blaster and Splinter Cannon in a Raider
-10 Warriors with Blaster and Splinter Cannon in a Raider
-10 Warriors with Blaster and Splinter Cannon in a Raider
-10 Warriors with Blaster and Splinter Cannon in a Raider
-3 Reavers with Heat Lance
-3 Reavers with Heat Lance
-and 3 Ravagers all with Dark Lances
All the Raiders had Flickerfields, but I didn't scrape up points to put them on the Ravagers.
I won the roll and went first. The game went my way right away when my first turn's shooting shot down the Stormraven and then wrecking the Death Company Dread. The game then went quickly, as I ran away from his foot-slogging meanies while pelting everything that moved with all the guns I could find and throwing Reavers in the way to slow things down and distract. We quit playing after turn 5, when he had only the Terminator Priest left, and I still had 3 Warrior Raiders, the Wyches (on foot), a Ravager, and a Trueborn Venom around.
Tim had some really miserable dice the whole game, particularly for his Armour Saves. The Emperor did not protect. Many terminators died to standard Splinter fire.
But vengence was to be his! We ended the game a bit early, so pulled out 25points of Hordes on Hordes! I took pMorghoul with a Bronzeback, a Rhinodon, a Gladiator, 4 Beasthandlers, Aptimus Marketh, and an Agonizer! He had Trollbloods....I honestly don't remember his caster, but he had a big blob of Fennblades, a big mean troll beastick, a krielstone, and an impaler.
Low on sleep (then and now), I only have a rough memory of how the game went: I started out strong, with some nice Rhinodon action wiping out half the Fennblades, but then making a foolish counter-charge with the Bronzeback that got him eaten by the big mean Earthborn. The Gladiator didn't have quite enough Ooomph to get the Earthborn down, so he got tied up and was going down quick. We had to stop due to time, but it was going to end up with me having just the Rhinodon left while he had the Earthborn and Impaler left to finish me off.
Last night I got another 40k game in, this time at 2k points. I tried replacing one of the Ravagers with a Razorwing Fighter with four Shatterfield missiles. My opponent was Grey Knights with two AutoCannon dreads and a million Paladins in scary blobs. I felt like I played very poorly...he won the roll and chose to go first. I tried to set up to be outside his 30" threat range, but was lazy and sloppy and ended up losing two Ravagers to the Dreads and a Raider to Psycannons....sloppy. Then I left the Reavers too close together getting them charged by the same combat squad. My shooting was almost completely ineffective...3 turns of all my shooting managed to kill 3 Paladins and take one weapon off each Dread. We ran out of time after turn 3, where he had not lost any squads, and I was down a lot...and he was in better position to capture/hold objectives. If things had gone on I stood a decent chance of a draw, I think, but it would have taken some decent dice (something I had none of that game!) and excellent choices (something I wasn't doing well that game!). Such is life!
And last, I got a Vassal game of Hordes in on Saturday that I wanted to mention. The person I played against went by the name of Big Fat Troll...unsurprisingly he played Trollbloods. I used my 35pt Zaal list, and he used Borka, Fennblades with UA, Pyre Troll, Impaler, Bomber, Krielstone, a Fell Caller and Janissa.
He seemed to be very comfortable playing as we started, and was very accomodating as a took a break after first turn to get the kids in bed. On turn 2 I ran the Swordsmen up to clog up his Fennblades, with the Guardians close behind. My hope was to draw the Fennblades in to my infantry blobs where I'd generate some souls and be able to use the Guardians to clear them out while I just took the shots from his shooting as best I could. I felt like once I had the Fennblades out I could make charge-paths how I wanted.
This worked well, as his Fennblades and shooting killed off most of the Swordsmen and a few of the Karax. He forgot to use his Pyre Troll...I reminded him when he called end of his turn, but he decided to just leave it. On my turn I cleared out almost all of his Fennblades, and had Hakaar and a Guardian up on the Krielstone unit threatening Borka next turn, and another Guardian tieing up his Iimpaler...
...on his turn 3 his Bomber put some shots on my Brute, which put Blast damage on Zaal...he took a total of 5 damage. Then...and this is the interesting part of this battle...
...he quit.
"I'm getting tired, and I think you pretty much have this one."
Really? Honestly, you quit because you think you're losing? I did feel like I was in a strong spot. I planned on using my feat next turn to wipe out his beasts, or get Hakaar or Kovaas on Borka if lucky. But still...quit turn 3 because you're losing?
I was pretty agitated by it. I was polite to Big Fat Troll, but I sure won't be playing him again. Very very lame, in my opinion! I had been diligent about taking screenshots for a good report for that game, but I'm not even going to bother posting them. Grumble grumble!
Friday I've got a Flames of War game planned, at 1500 points I'm going to use a force-type I've never used before: all tanks!
From Fortress Europe, a Panzer Kompanie:
Command Platoon: 2 Panther A and SdKfz9 Recovery Vehicle
Panzer Platoon 1: 3 Panther A
Panzer Platoon 2: 3 Stug III G
Heavy Tank Platoon: 1 Tiger 1E
AntiAircraft Platoon: 2 SdKfz 10/9
My opponent uses British 11th Armoured Division. I'm hoping the Panthers will be too much for his Shermans to deal with, so just have to hope to get the Fireflies down. With that many high-powered shots (10 from the Panthers and a few more from the Tigers) I hope to wipe out whole platoons at a time! If he brings lots of infantry, then I've got a million MGs and the AA guns to hopefully wipe them out!
I'll try to take some pictures of this one and do a battle report :)
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