Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Story Time

All right boys and girls it’s time to gather around the campfire and swap some stories.

40k has many aspects to it from collecting the miniatures, customizing them, and then painting them, but one of the largest, and my personal favorite, is actually playing the game on the tabletop. Even the actual playing has a number of aspects to it that people can focus on. However, as everyone knows when you start to roll dice things can go sideways in a hurry. On the flip-side, sometimes it seems like everything goes your way, and it is these moments that can let even a normal infantry dude do incredible acts sure to get his name passed down in the annals of history and net him a promotion. So let’s share some stories of epic luck (good or bad) that you have personally experienced.

I’ll start it off with one of my favorite stories about a sanguinary priest in a game with Heretic and his Tau. Now I know that it isn’t news to anyone that Blood Angels will mop the floor with Tau in close combat, but in this case the priest took it to all new levels. A sanguinary priest is a 50 point independent character who had been given a 25 point jump pack. Priests are excellent support characters giving and friendly units within 6 inches the furious charge and feel no pain special rules, but when it comes to fighting they aren’t much better than the average assault marine. Their stats are exactly the same except for +1 WS (for a total of 5) and they have only the 1 wound and no invulnerable save. While they can be given power weapons, I almost never spend the points to do so as I try to keep them in the back ranks to prevent them from being hit in close combat (also meaning they can’t attack as they are still ICs) so a power weapon usually isn’t worth it.

The game was annihilation at 1850 using the dawn of war set-up. Both of our armies ended up crowding around the middle of the board. I was able to dodge some of the worst shots as I ran up the center to get at him, but he has able to circle the wagons using his devilfish as a shield wall to buy him some more time to fire at me. Fortunately one of my assault squads with its priests was able to jump to the side and barely squeeze in between a building and his flank. This squad was able to multi-assault a full fire-warrior squad, a crisis suit team, and a two-man team of broadsides. By directing the majority of their attacks at the fire warriors they were able to win combat by enough that all three units failed their leadership and tried to only to get cut down or make it off the board. Of course this left the squad completely exposed with their entire backup still fighting through a devilfish wall. Unsurprisingly Heretic made them his primary target and dumped a buttload of shots in to them. The squad itself was vaporized with the priest barely living after making like 7 armor saves. With only the priest still standing Heretic turned his fire on the rest of army that was approaching. This turned out to be a big mistake as the priest then assaulted a full squad of pathfinders and killed enough that they tried to run away and single-handedly sweeping advanced them. By know the rest of my army had busted through the fish wall and therefore took all the fire from Heretic’s next turn. Trying to save his command and attached crisis suit squad Heretic was able to jump them out of the assault range of most of my units, but not the lone priest who charged in and caused one wound which one of the suits failed to save and passed all the saves put on him. Because of this on wound the suits and commander failed their leadership tried to run, only to be cut down by the lone priest. By now the game was pretty clearly mine, but this didn’t stop the priest from joining one of my other assault squads (now rather reduced in number) to finish off another squad of fire warriors to completely table Heretic. Now obviously for a 50 point model with 25 points of wargear to single-handedly take down nearly 500 points of stuff (and be involved in the destruction of another 500) requires some serious luck on my part and a serious lack of it on Heretics, so this epic story wasn’t due to either one of doing something right or wrong, but it does make for some awesome retelling.

Now that you’ve heard one of my stories how about getting on the comments and hitting me up with one of your own favorites?

3 comments:

  1. 2nd game ever with my Eldar, against BA with lots of FNP Assault Marines with Dante.

    He goes second, I Turboboost my serpent force in a castled postion to mitigate shots from deep strikes. Dante comes on and does his -wounds etc stuff to my Farseer. He then gets 1 shot off against my Wave Serpent with said Farseer, hits, pins, blows it up. Rolls lots of 5's and I take 5 wounds, putting one on my Farseer (who fails it, as do all the other ones leaving me with one Dire Avenger an the Farseer). I make a pinning test, pass it, make a leadership test for losing too many guys, fail it, fall back. Next turn I attempt to use Doom on the FNP squad, roll 3 6's, Perils, Ghosthelm fails, Farseer dies like a bitch and the other DA falls off the table.

    So after laughing about this for like 10 minutes and shooting about 74 str 6 shots into a 5 man FNP squad and not killing a single dude, I extend my hand and my opponent and I go get a beer lol.

    What, this was supposed to be about good stuff our units have done lol?

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  2. I one time hade an imperial guard commander (in the 4th ed book) that fought Kharn for 3 rounds and won.

    He then later charged a 6 man zerker squad and killed all them, and after that a terminator squad.
    If I ever play that model again, he will be counted as Yarric.

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  3. Single Zoanthrope gets charged by a squad of 9 ork boys that it had just shot at, not only does the zoanthrope not take a wound.. it manages to deal one. The boys fail their leadership test and the zoanthrope sweeps 'em off the table.

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