Monday, October 22, 2018

Kill Team League Game 1: The battle for the planet Neverness

o/

Curiously, this combat proved to be much more of a fair fight than it would seem...

The Silver Drakes, and their kill team named 'We're not the Alpha Legion, really!' made their league debut and it wasn't anymore inspiring than was their original battlefield debut. What's worrisome is that bad things come in threes, and this was just round two...

I challenged Screech as he was fielding Tyranids, the arch enemy of my Silver Drakes. We fought the Terror Tactics scenario (in a nutshell, we needed to get our models off of the enemy's table edge). As we set up our forces in the ruins, I was as yet unaware that we were on the planet Neverness, it was only later as I began to roll an inordinate amount of 1's in every shooting phase that our locale became clear...


The Silver Drakes deploy but their enemy is mysteriously absent...not even the sound of crickets! 


Aha! There they are! Skulking behind terrain!


What treachery is this? The Hive fleet has developed cell phone cameras to determine actual lines of sight!?!


Two Termagants vs. 2 primaris marines with bolt rifles, easy peasy right? Not when you're rolling ones...hell, the hitting on a 4+ normally wasn't even handicap I was rolling so badly!


Here ya go, the Silver Drakes chapter in a nutshell.


Due to my woefully in adequate shooting, the Tyranids have closed the gap and engaged in HTH all over the place with essentially no losses! Just a few flesh wounds here and there...


Luckily Screech's die rolling was mediocre, and at the very least I could make armor saves consistently! Meaning this grunt held out for 2 turns or so before coming to his inevitable conclusion...


With the marine on the ground engaged in HTH with a termagant, Demotion tossed a frag grenade on the other two below (with 5 'shots' no less!), the Termagants in turn returned fire!

Many shrubberies perished in this vicious exchange...


My sergeant is swarmed from all directions whilst the grunt above him valiantly flees...advances towards the objective!


Still going... It should be noted that by this point, that fucker with the black chitinous armor had made three, or possibly even four fucking 6+ saves!! What the hell!?! Despite the long drawn out combat, the bugs would eventually be victorious.


My auxiliary grenade launcher gunner, who (1) was able to reroll ones in the shooting phase due to his specialist ability, (2) but never did so as I hadn't bothered to ever actually read that bit despite writing it down 2 weeks before and, (3) despite the above nightmarish situation pictured here, he was the only marine to finished the game completely unscathed.


Somehow, or rather miraculously at game's end (following turn 5 as we forgot to roll for it at the end of turn 4), no models had made it off of either table edge, and we were down 3 models a piece. It was a dead tie. We were even tied on points - 92 each. As bad as I rolled all game, I'm claiming that as a win! Hell, GLORIOUS VICTORY!! is actually more appropriate if I'm honest. 

In the games' aftermath, XP was meagerly doled out, one grunt found his way to the convalescent home where he'll miss the next round. I added a (literally green) new recruit to fill his spot in my roster for said game. 

Also and again somehow...due to our tie, which resulted in the loss of no resources, Screech and I are now tied for 1st place in the league! Because that seems fair...

****

da fuk?

On a different note, has anyone figured out what a 7+ save is exactly? This came up at another table, and was ruled a 6+ for expediency.  Speaking of, here are a few pics from a few other games:

The Deathguard squaring off vs. the Adeptus Mechanicus, lurking in the distance.
The Dark Angels lead by Captain Caliban (?) vs. the Genestealer cult.


And some new models on display in the cases which serve no other purpose than as eye candy:


Painted no doubt in honor of the F-22 wing that got mauled by Hurricane Micheal.

Screech commented that the uniforms weren't historically accurate, as they lacked coffee stains. However as a reservist with no combat experience, I'm figuring that he's not been much closer to a tank than I have.


6 comments:

Siph_Horridus said...

You throw dice just like me then, we call it 'Siph rolling'... And the 7+ save just means a Six followed by a 4+ (50:50 ratio pass or fail after the six is thrown) and even with modifiers that improve the save by +1, the Poxwalkers will require a 6+. We came across this with Warhound Titan Void Shield saves for a degraded titan after damage is a 7+ and believe me when you face eight Turbo Lasers, those 6+/4+ saves matter!

WestRider said...

Ugh, the 1s followed you! Kind of hilarious that that resulted in the two of you tied for first, tho. That definitely makes it a victory in my book.

GW has handled rolls of 7+ differently in different places. In the case of Poxwalkers, it means exactly what it says, so they don't get a Save at all unless they're in Cover or are having their Save boosted by some effect. It was covered in one of the 40K FAQs somewhere.

Da Masta Cheef said...

@Siph: Please, take your die rolling technique back please, I don't want it. As for the 7+ save in an edition that was designed to streamline things, that strikes me as horribly convoluted.

@WestRider: I victory yes, though only a pyrrhic one at best...

Also, given the 'disgustingly resilient rule, why even bother with the 7+ save? Just seems pointless.

WestRider said...

Disgustingly Resilient applies in addition to any possible Save, so you can get a 6+ Save and then the 5+ DR. In 40K, I think they have a Stratagem or Psychic Power or something that can improve it further. There might also be some Killzone Stratagems that could improve it further as well.

Monkeychuka said...

Apparently you can 'will' your dice rolls to be better. It doesn't actually make any difference but because you are being positive, you notice the good rolls more than the bad and feel like you did better. Personally, I prefer being a 'debbie downer' and whining a lot.

Some great photos there (with your new camera?) and I always like funny, narrative battle reports. Looked like a very cinematic and cool game.

Da Masta Cheef said...

@Westrider: A 6+ AND a 4+ (inevitably failing most of the time), and then the DR 5+ just seems like a lot of rolling for a very little chance of reward.

@Monkey: Positivie thinking!?! This is 40k! There were no Tau present....

Sometimes its frustrating, however this time my dice rolling was as bad it was comical! And yes, these were with my new iphone camera, which were decidedly less pixelated than many in-game pics with my old camera. It was a good time, Screech is kinda like my adopted little wayward brother, so games with him are always fun!