Alas, with the new year it's time for a little more sci-fi youknowwhats
ie death, carnage and objective acquisition....small scale!
Yours truly wandered over to the GW camp late last year in a bid to find players with whom to game consistently. Comprising adult gamers with
lives the League meets regularly but these encounters can be months apart. Is the wait worth it? 110%! Does it fulfill yours truly's mad gaming obsession? Most certainly not!
Thus ensued a wander into 40k with the Imperial Fists and the building of a very respectable Ork force. Sadly however these are going to have to go soon as they just take TOO LONG to paint (and this gamer's attention span is short....like a goldfish sort of...) Need smaller miniatures to paint faster to get gaming quicker....what to do?!
As the old adage goes "
amateurs study strategy and tactics, professionals study logistics".
GW's IGOUGO system just does not reflect ANY accounts I've read of combat and it's just that. A warGAME good for finding opponents, rolling some dice, having an evening's laughs and working the memory center remembering the 127,564 special rules that characterize each army.
One of the best systems GW did develop, however, was Epic. A venture into 6mm with alternate activation, hidden ordering, and later a command system requiring die rolls. Everything this player fees a WARgame should have. When troops just DO what you want them every time it's just...not...real...
One shot against either AT or AP instead of 54 for each unit type, fast and furious, and extremely hard to master.
Having now played four games of 40k and won THREE, this player just doesn't get what he needs out of 40k. The game I lost was a gimmick "oh your weapons can't harm that guy!"
I don't like games like that. They leave a sour taste in my mouth.
So last night I played my first game of
Epic.
Up against the uber friendly and welcoming
fattdexx of Wargamerau, commanding a Chaos force, went a Marine battlegroup comprising the following detachments
1x Devastators
1x Assault
1x Terminator
1x Tactical
1x Land Speeder
1x Land Raider
1x Thunderhawk gunship
Chaos brought
2x Predator
1x Terminator
1x Scouts disguised as Demons
2x Chaos Marine
1x Defiler (mean looking walkie things)
1x Evil Flying things of death
The Chaos forces advance
Marine deployment
Land Raiders deploy in cover to support their rear objective or contest Chaos' holdings
Long story short I won the first activation and the Marines immediately moved west to scout out the enemy's objective. The plan was for the Thunderhawk to then drop in and claim it then return to pick up the Marines and deploy them where most needed, the Terminators teleporting in to claim (or more likely contest by a hair's breadth!) the objective in the enemy's rear and for my forces to totally ignore the enemy strong points - the trenches in the center of the table I would have serve as Chaos' traps rather than strongpoints. While they were safe in there my troops weren't particularly threatened, in fact.
However (and the sign of a good system!) the Thunderhawk IMMEDIATELY failed its 2+ activation (dopey pilot!) and the Defilers moved out of the woods to claim my line of advance to the objective. Jolly good. This is all turning to the proverbial baby-poop me thought!
Turn two opened with Chaos holding the central objective, his scouts covering my lines of advance down the center, his garrison untouched, the Defilers sitting atop a mountain, his Preds advancing rather menacingly toward my objective and his flying things of evilness continuing strafing runs over the board giving me the quintessential prick in the side.
As my morale turned south out popped a load of Terminators to contest the latter and by the Emperor's graces my troops stood their ground and annihilated these! One major attack down it was high time to fight back or the Marines would be effed. Hard!
The Thunderhawk bravely (insanely!?) sped across the board defying ground attacks to drop Devastators and Assault troops on the enemy's objective en mass.
Having delivered its heavy duty cargo, of course, it was then shot down to bits and exploded in a heap but its job was done (and given his prior opening game performance that pilot was best off the roster anyway...) Now the assault troops could act as a buffer if the Defilers advanced by jumping in their way and sacrificing themselves to buy the Devastators shots and breathing space.
On my left the Terminators appeared from the Warp right on cue despite my last minute re-routing change and stood solidly in the way of the advancing Chaos horde as the land speeders moved about for a crossfire. That detachment was thus shattered and destroyed.
In the rear however the Predators came over the hill and opened fire. Bloody and brutal firefighting saw the Land Raiders lose a couple of their number but all in all the Predators had the worse of it.
Thus as turn 4 beckoned I held the Breakthrough objective, my own rear objective and a second objective in the enemy's half of the board thus winning the day. Not the war....but the day....
Thanks for reading and to JD for the chance to try out the game!
Til bullets run out and peace comes to gaming tables everywhere....
long live the League!
