The Silver Drakes 40k debut!

 o/

This past weekend I masked up (lots of infectious Tyranid spores in the air out there ya know...), and went out for my semi-annual 40k game. Actually it was about as 'fluffy' as we could get with myself fielding my Silver Drakes vs. my buddy Matt and his Tyranids. We even used the ice world table and terrain which matched my marines'' bases! 

500 points, I forget the scenario name, but basically there were 5 objectives to hold, for secondaries I had thin them out (or something like that) and abhor the witch vs. Matt had the Slay the Warlord and Line breaker secondaries. 

Here's how it all went down:

Our forces as deployed. The Nids occupied the forest opposite, whereas my Drakes were more or less grouped together for mutual support, aside from the forlorn hope assault intercessors who were sheltered behind the ruins of the Chateau du Neverness. 

Going first I can assure that my turn one shooting was more or less a big fat whiff (as usual), killing nothing. In response, Matt's Zoey ( smited? smitten? smote?...yeah let's go with smote) smote a lone intercessor. There was also considerable movement amongst the nids and my assault intercessors.

Speaking of, said intercessors prepared to go out valiantly...

Charging in with a gazillion attacks, I have to say that despite not liking the whole strategem/CP game mechanic, when marines are charging a carnifex, gene wrought physiology (to-hit rolls of 6 auto wound) combined with preferred enemy and trans human physiology (marines ignoring incoming to-wound rolls of 1-3) are collectively the shit! I didn't kill it, but despite catalyst the monster suffered 4 wounds for the loss of only 2 marines!

Matt's hivefleet (kraken I think?) could fallback and charge in the same turn, needless to say, the aforementioned wounded carny did just that in order to get the hell away from the assault intercessors! It also regenerated most all of it's wounds much to my annoyance.

Aww hell! Thinking of past experiences, I figured that this was going to be it for me! Instead however the Drake's line miraculously held (in part to transhuman physiology again) and both combats were more or less a draw. 

The little gribblies tried to overwhelm my assault intercessors to no avail, and things went much that other way. Irritated, in the following turn the Zoey smote them out of existence. 

Everybody was stuck in by this point, even my Ordo Xenos Inquisitor who isn't seen here as he was too busy plunging his power maul up the left side carny's ass! 

As you can imagine, that was enough to finally finish off the beastie, and I turned my attention to the other one. However it would fall back, and then charge my Lt., barely squeezing into range! Despite Iron Will and artificer armor, my Looey went splat, garnering Matt a secondary. Sad face.

Suffering from Loss of Lieutenant, unlike in the game of Infinity where that throws an army into disarray, in 40k it sent my marines into a rage, and they quickly dispatched the second carny. Huzzah!

An aerial view of the bottom of turn 4, it looks grim all around with a mere victory point separating both sides. 

...and that's where it went all to hell. Matt smote my lead squad of intercessors with an impressive 6 mortal wounds! The inquisitor went off and dispatched the 2 lone gaunts on the flank, however my other intercessors were apparently disheartened by the sudden loss of their comrades and failed to wound any gaunts with their shooting. Worse yet they failed their charge and were not able to drag the gaunts off of the objective via a last ditch effort of HTH combat. 

That was pretty much it. 

In the end, total VP's were something 20-34, in Matt's favor. Still the game more or less came down to the wire, as we were just a single point apart going into turn 5. His Zoey was definitely the the MVP, as smiting two wounded units out of existence really hurt me at the end, leaving little in any way to recover. Still, I killed 2 Carnifexes in close combat and survived to tell the tale, so I'm a happy man! 

Notta bad start for the Silver Drakes non-Kill Team career. Honestly I thought I'd be toast on turn two and not even live to see the bottom of turn three, but GW's love of all things primaris meant that even in an army bereft of heavy support, they can still hold their own!