Short trip to 40K

Tonight's 1'000pts of Blood Angels.

Every once in a while you get a weirt idea, e.g. playing 40K again after two years of playing WM/H exclusively, so this is how this blog gets an update again after one year.

As there also has been an edition change one year ago, this happened to be the first game in 6th Edition for me and my buddy +Tudor Stanescu. We agreed to play 1'000pts with the goal to have fun and see how the new rules are like.

Surprisingly, the game felt rather fluid and easy to get back into, although I am sure we did many mistakes. However, we didn't care as it was just an easy game.

My list at 1'000pts:

Epistolary
Terminator Squad with Heavy Flamer
Sanguinary Priest with Jump Pack
Aussault Squad
Tactical Squad
Ball Predator

This is how we set up at the start of the game. I seize the initiative.

BA Turn 1: My troops advance. The Baal Predator scores a "Crew Shaken" result on the Dreadnought with its Assault Canon.

DA Turn 1: Tudor wants to deepstrike his Terminators, but that somehow doesn't make sense in his backyard. We check the rules and see that his bikes can Scout. We reposition them so they are right in front of the Baal Predator and the Terminators arrive. At the end of the turn, the BA Assault Squad is no more. The Baal Predator remains intact, though.

BA Turn 2: My own Terminators arrive from reserve and shoot Tudor's Tactical Squads with the remnants of my own Tactical Squads. The Baal Predator falls back and shoots the Terminators, but I don't score any rending shots and they make their saving throw.

At this point we had to end the game already as the shop was closing. :-/ However, the game confirmed my expectation that the 40K rule set is still good enough to have a fun and casual game. I also noticed while watching other 40K players at the store how relaxed their way of playing was. Once you have grown a habit of playing with chess clocks, you take it so much for granted that you stop to remember how playing without a clock was. Well there I got to feel it again.

I guess WM/H still is going to be my favorite rule set for years to come. In comparison, WM/H has the easier and better designed rules, but an unbelievable complexity because of the units' cards. Warhammer 40K, on the other, has complex rules, but especially in a game where you play Marine vs. Marine you can roll quite quickly as there are only a couple units' special rules you have to keep in mind.

Will I play 40K soon again? Probably not. However, if I do, it will be in the most relaxed way possible. It sounds like a BA/DA vs. Orkzez campaign may be coming up. ;-)