2nd Ed Slaaneshi Word Bearers

[Achinadav]

Its been a while! I got distracted by tiny titans & kneehigh knights (see link in sig if you're interested) and I've mostly been painting Adeptus Titanicus for the last 6 months or so. Great models. But I have another 2nd ed game scheduled for 11 May, so for the next week my mission is to get some base colours on a couple of Word Bearers so there aren't as many unpainted minis in my force.

 

This time my opponent is planning to use his chaos cultist force, which are a bit experimental and we don't expect them to be massively competitive. So I'm going to try out multiple small squads of 3-4 CSM and see how it goes. Normally I'd go for big squads, because I'm used to the good guys being limited to 5 or 10 marines in a squad. But I like the idea of each character having a little retinue and I can pop a heavy weapon or couple of special weapons in each squad. This'll let me spread them out to where I want them on the table. I'm also planning to stick with a daemon summoning list, although noise marine special rules make them difficult to use with sorcerers. In the batrep above I avoided this by putting them at opposite ends of my deployment zone. That's very prescriptive, though, so I'm just going to use normal CSM this time. Will put another batrep up after the same, they're great fun to write.

 

Today I had an extra day off to make a really long weekend out of the May Day Bank Holiday on Monday. Weather a bit rainy for our planned outing into the city to track down the dinky doors (awesome mini art installation in Cambridge, google it!), so instead I painted some scenery:

 

The sorcerer is for scale. I've got 8 of these in total. They're the hard plastic corner protectors that came with a piece of furniture. Sprayed them silver, stippled on my dried up yellow, stippled brown and black along the bottom and a bit of rust on the bare metal bands. Then liberaly washed with Agrax Earthshade. Bit rough. The plastic is so smooth that there's no real texture and I wish I'd roughed them up with some really coarse sand paper first. The smoothness also means there's quite a few tidelines from the wash. I should probably have been a bit more conservative and done a couple of coats. Whatever, they're cover and more interesting than plain black.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Achinadav

[hushrong]

Excited to see some painted minis and another battle report.

 

The new terrain is pretty sweet. Makes me think of a tank tap...but for super heavies and titans to deal with.

[Achinadav]

hushrong you're a genius! Painted minis is what we're missing here. And superheavy tank traps was one idea I had in mind. I started off painting these for AT, but figured they'd work here too. My other idea was orbital dump boxes as a way to deliver supplies and materiel into a warzone.

 

As part of my AT distraction I got fed up struggling to tale decent photos. So I installed a better phone app on my camera, learnt how to use it and brought a mini lightbox & tripod. What I immediately discovered is that proper lighting and focus really shows the faults. Long story short, I busted out the lightbox yesterday and used it on my Word Bearers. I also put my big boy pants on and used some Rustoleum matte spray varnish to try and get rid of the high gloss finish. It mostly worked a treat. Maybe a second coat.

 

I fiddled a bit too much with my camera settings and messed some of the photos up. They came out too dark, which makes a change from blurry and over exposed More to follow when I get the lightbox out again.

 

My daemonettes:

 

Honestly I'm not sure this is an improvement over the last photo. Its in focus, but too dark. Grrrr. Very tempted to add a box of fiends to my daemon contingent. I really like their weirdness.

 

Noise marines squad 1:

 

Predominantly black is hard to photograph, even without a high gloss finish.

 

Noise marine squad 2:

 

Hmmm, still slightly blurry. I can also deploy these by using the second blastmaster marine as an asipring champion. In fact, I'd probably use the one from squad 1 and give him a bionic eye. The +1 to hit qould make him a bit more reliable against targets in cover and allow him to detect hidden enemies.

 

My main CSM squad:

 

Well, the painted ones anyway The bolter ones are the first multipart plastic minis for chaos. Multipart in that you got two types of legs, two types of bodies and very little in the way of customisation. They were cheap!

 

And because he was one of the main reasons for getting into CSM, here's a couple of close ups of the heavy bolter dude. I love the pose! I've got a box of the plastic/metal hybrid havocs to paint up for more antitank. I can see the follow on from the 2nd ed era heavy weapon chaos marines.

 

Oh, and my standard bearer came out OK in one photo, so consider him a bonus:

 

I used him in my first game last year. For Slaanesh, a banner bearer is a bit surplus to requirements, given their immunity to psychology. For the characters and noise marines anyway.

Edited May 4, 2019 by Achinadav

[K0rtmer]

OMG, these are amazing. It always warms my heart to see old models getting some new love, and you're totally doing them right with your bold colours and green bases. Bravo! Are there any more coming?

 

Regarding your photos: I think part of your struggle is due to the bright background and rather busy colours of the book you put your models on. Here's a super-cheap and effective idea: go print out one of these and use them as backgrounds for your picture: http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2010/05/photo-backgrounds.html . There's heaps of others on the web, these are just the first that come to my mind.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Your kitbashed Noise Marines look great! Where'd you get the xenomorph heads?

[K0rtmer]

Your kitbashed Noise Marines look great! Where'd you get the xenomorph heads?

I'm fairly sure these aren't kitbashes, but unmodified legacy (second edition?) Noise Marines.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

 

Your kitbashed Noise Marines look great! Where'd you get the xenomorph heads?

I'm fairly sure these aren't kitbashes, but unmodified legacy (second edition?) Noise Marines.

I'm surprised how lax copyrights were enforced in those days. If Games Workshop distributes those models now, 20th Century Fox will surely sue the company into oblivion.

[hushrong]

I honestly think with some work those pyramids could make for sweet Necron-esque terrain. Black paint and glowing glyphs and all. Orbital supply drop is a neat idea too. If you add fins and some burners like a drop pod that’d be killer. Either way that’s a great pick up for terrain.

 

The updated pics look good and has me itching for some classic 40k. My buddy and I are going to try 3rd edition this year. He’s played it but I started with 5th. I have been loving the insanity of customization in the older 3.5 CSM codex and anxious to put my dusty Emperor’s Children army back into service. However I think sonic weapons at that point didn’t ignore cover from what I’ve read so far.

[Achinadav]

OMG, these are amazing. It always warms my heart to see old models getting some new love, and you're totally doing them right with your bold colours and green bases. Bravo! Are there any more coming?

 

Regarding your photos: I think part of your struggle is due to the bright background and rather busy colours of the book you put your models on. Here's a super-cheap and effective idea: go print out one of these and use them as backgrounds for your picture: http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2010/05/photo-backgrounds.html . There's heaps of others on the web, these are just the first that come to my mind.

 

Thanks! I decided to stick to the green bases on the new stuff too. I might not quite get the right red on the armour, but I can match the green fairly well.

 

The camera tips are handy, ta. I got a bunch of different colour backgrounds with the mini booth, haven't really experiments with them. The pure white worked well on my titans, I think because it reflected the light up from underneath. Using my copy of the Word Bearers omnibus felt appropriate, but I think you're right that it contributed to my problems.

 

Your kitbashed Noise Marines look great! Where'd you get the xenomorph heads?

 

Thanks, although I can't take all of the credit; Brother Kortmer is spot on, these guys are 100% original. 

 

 

Your kitbashed Noise Marines look great! Where'd you get the xenomorph heads?

I'm fairly sure these aren't kitbashes, but unmodified legacy (second edition?) Noise Marines.

 

 

I have done a little bit of modification. The sonic blasters come with one type of head & body and the blast masters came with another. So I clipped the gribbly bit out of some of the sonic blaster heads. I also used super glue coated blue tack to add a tongue to one of the shoulders. It changes the silhouette enough to stop them looking like carbon copies.

 

 

 

Your kitbashed Noise Marines look great! Where'd you get the xenomorph heads?

I'm fairly sure these aren't kitbashes, but unmodified legacy (second edition?) Noise Marines.

I'm surprised how lax copyrights were enforced in those days. If Games Workshop distributes those models now, 20th Century Fox will surely sue the company into oblivion.

 

 

I think there's enough other examples of mouths coming out of mouths that they could get away with :)

 

I honestly think with some work those pyramids could make for sweet Necron-esque terrain. Black paint and glowing glyphs and all. Orbital supply drop is a neat idea too. If you add fins and some burners like a drop pod that’d be killer. Either way that’s a great pick up for terrain.

 

The updated pics look good and has me itching for some classic 40k. My buddy and I are going to try 3rd edition this year. He’s played it but I started with 5th. I have been loving the insanity of customization in the older 3.5 CSM codex and anxious to put my dusty Emperor’s Children army back into service. However I think sonic weapons at that point didn’t ignore cover from what I’ve read so far.

 

I hadn't thought of necron terrain! That's a really good idea. I decided to keep these quick and dirty, so it took me less than 2 hours to do all 8. I'm sure I could have made them look better if I'd put more time in. I always keep any eye out for interesting things in packaging :)

 

I played 3rd ed for a year or so. The most exciting thing I got out of it was another marine army using the new (for then) plastics. I really enjoyed all the kit bashing & what not. For some reason I never tried out my CSM in 3rd. Overall I found that I didn't like the loss of customisation that 3rd brought. The rules were streamlined and easier to pick up, I think. But truthfully, I liked that 2nd had a different feel for every phase. Coming back to it, I discovered that the rules really aren't as complicated or difficult to follow as I remembered, especially once they're internalised. Except for a few things like the rules for ork mega armour. They're massively overwritten and take a couple of paragraphs to explain that they get a 2+ save with a unmodified 4+ reroll.

 

If you've got most of the paraphenalia, I really would recommend trying out 2nd a couple of times. Start at low points values of around 500 and work up towards 1500-2000. At that level you can afford to spend points on a few fun things and it allows the more expensive armies, like marines of any flavour, to get more bodies on the table.

[Achinadav]

Yesterday's game was great fun! An interesting match up between my, relatively elite, Word Bearers and my opponent's massed, but low quality, cultists. I was massively out-numbered, to the extent that I really thought I'd be swamped. It didn't work out like that...A close game that led to us actually calculating the victory points for the first time. More on that later.

 

Here's the army I chose for the battle:

 

Characters

 

Dol Barack - Chaos Lord

Mark of Slaanesh, power axe, Master-crafted Plasma Pistol, Haywire Grenade, Conversion Field.

 

Jarmin Moon - Master Sorcerer

Mark of Slaanesh, boltgun, Force Rod, Hood of Hellfire (+50% tax for Imperial gear), Refractor Field, Acquiescence, Quickening, Strength of Mind.

 

First Acolyte Timour Locke - Sorcerer

Boltgun, Force Axe, Prescience.

 

Gul Karnak - Aspiring Champion (Veteran CSM squad)

Mark of Slaanesh, power fist, boltgun, meltagun, krak grenades, Armour-piercing Ammo.

 

Troops

 

The Apostle's Fist

3 x veteran CSM in terminator armour, 1 x combi-flamer, 1 x power fist, 1 x power mace.

 

1st Coterie

3 x CSM, 3 x boltgun, 3 x krak grenades, power fist, power axe, power mail (+50% tax for post-Heresy gear).

 

2nd Coterie

3 x CSM, 2 x boltgun, missile launcher with frag & krak missiles.

 

3rd Coterie

3 x CSM, 2 x boltgun, missile launcher with frag & krak missiles.

 

4th Coterie

3 x CSM, 1 x boltgun, 2 x flamer.

 

Support

 

Predator, twin heavy bolter sponsons, assault launchers.

 

Rhino, assault launchers.

 

Daemons

 

The Astral Choir

6 x daemonette.

 

I drew Dawn Raid as my mission; I had to get a squad with less than 50% casualties, or an undamaged vehicle, into my opponent's deployment zone. This would be a tough one for me. Fortunately I had a rhino and some terminators, which meant I could put a very tough squad in there and bunker down.

 

For my opponent's cultist to really be viable, they need a bunch of psykers. This led to us putting aside our gentlemen's agreement of 1 psychic mastery level per 500 points. So I gave Jarmin Moon an upgrade to master sorcerer, which turns him into a pretty formidable warrior with an extra power. I was VERY disappointed in my power draws. He pulled Beam of Slaanesh (Toughness test on 2d6 or become spawn! Pretty awesome) as his first primary power, which I swapped in the hopes of getting one of the powers that force a Leaership test to aid in my daemon summoning. That went down the pan when I drew the only power I don't like in the Slaanesh deck

 

Because you draw all Primary powers before going on to secondary, my opponent then pillaged the Adeptus deck for his demagogue & pair of magi. Given that there was a very good chance that this pillaged all the powers I would want, I decided that TImour Locke would draw from the Librarian deck (lots of melee buffing powers) and Jarmin Moon took his secondary ones from there too. Locke's turned out to be pretty much useless on what is pretty much an otherwise normal CSM. Moon's could make him a pretty good melee combatant (Quickening doubles movement distance & attacks and whatnot) and help protect the army against any nefariousness from the cultist coven.

 

The opposing cultist army was drawn from one my opponent has been putting together. His aim is to make it interesting and have a chance, without being Eldar levels of abusable. They've got their own way of summoning daemons, which is different from CSM and means that the psykers act as a coven, but can't use their powers in the psychic phase they carry out their ritual. It turned out that between them, the demagogue & magi pretty much drew the powers that would have helped on my mission: Displacement and The Gate. The first moves a squad or single model 2d6 inches, the second puts two ends of a portal within 18" of the psyker and stuff can go through. They also had Hellfire, burning pillar of flame that stays in play, Machine Curse, shut down weapons/vehicles, and Scan, find hdden things & look at rival psykers power (bit naff).

 

The rest of the army was made up of two close combat units of beastmen (with 2 wounds each, pretty tough), three units of 10 cultists (poor quality chaff, but numerous), a PDF squad with a missile launcher and boltguns (old school Imperial Guard plastics, lovely with BIG heads), and some bodyguards for the coven. And a Leman Russ. This thing bristles with two heavy bolter sponsons, a lascannon and a battlecannon. It was probably the thing I outright feared, as it could turn my small force into a puddle of goo.

 

Slightly blurry photo of the cultist deployment:

 

We had to use the full width of the table for deployment because there were so many bleeding (or soon to be bleeding) cultists! On my left, the PDF & Leman Russ were deployed backed up by both beastmen squads. The centre is held by two groups of cultists, the first being the lovely semi-naked kilt wearers that GW put out at the end of 2nd edition, an the next one being old Necromunda redemptionists. The last squad of cultists were on my far right with the coven and their bodyguards placed back from the front.

 

As you can see, we decided to use my old Necromunda terrain. It looks great still, with hindsight, not so good for more than a handful of models in an army.

 

And here's my deployment:

 

With my much higher strategy rating (5 vs. 2), I had the advantage of seeing my opponent's deployment. So, full of bravery, I completely refused my left flank! That Leman Russ was scary. I did have the option of putting 1st Coterie & Dol Barack on my left. Between Gul Karnak's meltagun Armour-piercing Ammo, two power fists and Dol Barack's Haywire Grenade, they could have gone tank hunting. Except that could have led to them being swamped by PDF & beastmen. So they're in the middle to try and stop me being flanked badly. I put 2nd & 3rd Coterie where they could see plenty of cultists to unload their frag missiles at. They're out in the open, but I was trusting to range and power armour.

 

My predator is lined up on what is really the only route across the board without excessive manoeuvring. Its job is to scream across and unload 5 sustained fire dice of heavy bolters & autocannon on whatever it can see. 4th Coterie and Dol Barack are going to be running forward in support. Twin flamers That should crispyfy some cultists.

 

Finally, The Apostle's Fist and Jarmin Moon are in the rhino. They aren't going to get to the enemy deployment zone quickly, because the rhino will need to manoeuvre a lot, but they should get their safely. Between them, their should be enough resilience to survive to the end...I didn't really know what to do with Timour Locke. Naff power, not much ability. So I just stuck on my far right to plink away with his boltgun.

 

I won the roll off for first turn and decided to force my opponent to go first. This would give me a final turn to maybe get into his deployment zone with no chance to shoot at whoever ended up sat in the open. It would also mean that they might move into range for my first shooting round...

[Achinadav]

First Turn! The enemy cultists rushed forwards right across the board. I didn't know what their mission was, so didn't really know why...Here's some dodgy photos (too much light coming in from the front window, I think) of where they ended up:

 

The Leman Russ was manoeuvring its way around the scenery. With nothing in sight or range on my left, the cultists, beastmen and PDF all ran forwards. On my right the cultists started to climb up the tower, I thought to get lined up and shoot me with their awe-inspiringly bad BS of 2! On the otherside of the tower the second squad of cultists and the coven moved towards the middle, and my predator

 

There was no shooting, everyone ran and the Leman Russ (why is a tank named after a primarch?) had no targets.

 

And there was no close combat, because nobody had charged and we were all too far apart.

 

So straight onto the psychic phase. We decided to use 3d6 for the warp flux due to having 5 psykers in play. To be honest, this was probably not great for me. I didn't really have any powers I wanted to use desperately and I was outnumbered in this phase too. It led to us cycling through the entire deck a couple of times. This ended up being in my favour; I seemed to get the lion's share of all the special cards. So what happened in this phase you ask? One of the magi tried to Machine Curse my predator, fortunately it was out of range! Hah! I used a special card to engage the level 1 magi in a duel. Roll off, add mastery level, highest roll shoves a power out of the other psykers mind. Level 3 vs. 1. Odds were in my favour...Jarmin Moon lost Strength of Mind! Arggggh. I think Displacement got cast next. Maybe to move the PDF? Jarmin Moon then cast Quickening. Plan being to get him into melee and munch through cultists. I couldn't use his Hood of Hellfire, because he was in the rhino and couldn't draw line of sight. Overall, I'd have been better leaving him on foot with Dol Barack, grrr.

 

Apparently I didn't take any pictures of my movement, oops. 1st Coterie & Gul Karnak ran forwards and kept themselves in cover, whilst 4th Coterie & Dol Barack pretty much did the same. The predator accelerated to combat speed and straight up the middle into what is best described as a target rich environment. All the better to use all those sustained fire dice. The rhino started trundling through all the obstacles on my right. With hindsight, I shouldn't have put anyone in there, just followed behind the predator with it and let the terminators & Jarmin Moon run up my right. They would have been more manoeuvrable and made the same distance.

 

Timour Locke did stuff. He just ran forwards and hid behind one of the little yellow pyramid thingies.

 

Shooting went OK. Not brilliant. The missile launchers blew away quite a few cultists between them and left holes in the cultist squads and forced break tests (summoning points! yay!):

 

You might spot a few missing The predator spat heavy bolter fire in both directions. I think it took 4 out from the 2nd edition cultist squad (more summoning points!) and a couple from the cultists in front of the coven. Except it also jammed its righthand HB And the autocannon missed

 

No close combat, straight into psychic phase where I think I rolled really high for the warp flux. If memory serves, I got a bunch of special cards, including Ultimate Force & Energy Drain. I was nervous. It felt like anything I did could be wrong; there were SO MANY CULTISTS and I just didn't have very many attack powers. So I used Energy Drain. This was a mixed blessing. Any force cards stored in force weapons got stripped, any powers in play (my Quickening, the enemy's Machine Curse) got auto-nullified. But it prevented the cultists from pulling any nasty tricks with Displacement (I didn't know about The Gate at this point, that could also have been nasty). It also meant that Machine Curse could get recast next turn, hmmm.

[hushrong]

Looks like a set up for a fun match! Sounds as if it was bloody affair for it being a close match, especially since there were so many fleshbags to gun down. Also cool to see the mix of terrain used too.

 

One day I may try out second edition. I’m pretty pumped about 3rd honestly and I got the big rule book for $10. I have a CSM codex I got for $5 but I need a ‘newer’ one that isn’t so beat up. Compared to everything else I played since I started my jaw drops at the amount of customization in 3rd. If I read things right I’m pretty sure I can have a blastmaster havoc squad and other wild things. So it would be cool to see what 2nd has to offer.

[Achinadav]

The second turn began with the Leman Russ making its way around the tower:

 

This gave it a beautifully clear line of sight on 2nd Coterie:

 

This didn't look like it would end well...At this point I realised that there were so many cultists to move that I could take loads of photos of them! And as I type this I realse that I completely forgot most of my own movement phases. Next time I should scribble notes too, instead of relying on memory. Anywho, the PDF, beastmen and cultists all advanced some more:

 

The PDF's missile launcher now had a lovely view of the middle of the table. Currently it couldn't see very much and couldn't fire because it had moved.

 

Thanks to all the running about and up towers, the only thing that could fire was the Leman Russ at 2nd Coterie. It started off well, for me; the battle cannon missed and scattered well away from everybody Then the lascannon evaporated one of them completely. That's what happens when you shoot infantry with antitank weaponry (isn't that against the Geneva convention?). Then the one heavy bolter that had line of sight opened up and this happened:

 

Just enough wounding hits and two failed 5+ saves 2nd Coterie was no more. On the brightside, the Leman Russ would have to keep moving to find more targets.

 

No close combat again. In the psychic phase the cultist kicked off their summoning ritual. The mechanic that my opponent was testing was total up mastery levels (5), roll a d6 (6), add them together (11) and maybe pass a test I'm forgetting. Anyway, it resulted in 5 bloodletters popping up in the cultist lines, behind the big tower on my right that the cultists were busy climbing to the top of. No Hood of Hellfire, with Jarmin Moon still in the rhino, I drew the special card for reflecting cast powers and held onto that. Maybe I didn't cast anything? But I did summon 5 of my own daemons at the end of the phase. Forgot a photo, but I placed them in front of 1st Coterie at the end of the walkway in front of the cultist squad. They were feeling hungry and eyeing up cultists and beastmen for dinner!

 

The game was shaping up to be really interesting. Both of us felt like we were under threat, with anything we did having the potential to be the wrong thing. My opponent was concerned that the cultist summoning ritual might have been too easy. But it felt about right to me. Yes, he got lucky with rolling a 6, but I'd accrued plenty of summoning points for my daemons, via break tests, and been able to bring them in exactly where & when I wanted them too. So it felt about as easy for both of us. Also, to make the ritual as effective as possible, he needed his coven all in one place. If I'd had some raptors or other manoeuvrable troops, I could have got right in his face and disrupted it.

 

My turn started with my daemonettes charging. They split up to take on the cultists and the beastmen:

 

Three of them got to the beastmen and two of them ganged up on a cultist (just out of shot on top of the bridge). The rhino drove forwards and unloaded the Apostle's Fist & Jarmin Moon near the base of the tower. 1st Coterie tucked themselves at the base of the tower behind the daemonettes. Basically hunkering down in cover from the Leman Russ. The predator slowed down and drove forwards before turning to face the big mess of cultists and their coven. Really irritating that I don't have a picture of this! Grrr, because its quite important. Dol Barack and company moved forwards under the two later platform they'd been sheltering under.

 

Edit: Turns out that my opponent took a photo showing this quite nicely:

 

This cultist-eye-view shows nicely what I was aiming for; total obliteration via heavy bolter & autocannon!

 

In shooting phase, everyone unloaded and slaughtered more cultists. The predator had to clear a jam and my dice luck continued to roll down the hill to the lowest common denominator when it missed completely. Between them, everyone else did pretty well:

 

I did really feel the difference between traitor and loyalist terminators, though. No assault cannon (3 sustained fire dice) and twin linked boltguns instead of storm bolters (1 sustained fire dice). Loyalists would have made a real mess of all those cultists. Break tests continued to be passed. In large part because my opponent had drawn a really cool Strategy card (1 per 1000 points or parts thereof) that added 1 to his Leadership for the whole game. My cards were unused throughout the whole game and I wasn't very impressed with what I'd drawn.

 

Close combat. This was gonna be fun

 

In our previous game, I'd been really impressed with my daemonettes and how they crunched through orks left, right and centre. So I was looking forward to this. The cultist died with a look of ecstasy on his face. The beastmen proved to be tough cookies:

 

I'd completely forgotten that beastmen had two wounds and T4. The pair double teaming one of them only managed one wound between them. And the one-on-one combat was one by the beastmen. Pah! Who's afraid of the big bad daemonettes now? I wasn't very happy about this. On the bridge, the daemonettes followed up into the cultists as I (re-)discovered that I didn't need to worry about coherency in close combat.

 

The psychic phase was a bit of a disaster. Whilst Moon had finally risen and was able to blast a cultist with his Hood of Hellfire, he couldn't stop the Machine Curse being placed on top of my predator! Gah! This completely shut it down. I had a chance to nullify it in the next psychic phase before my next turn, but I couldn't count on that. Quickening was cast again, and then I overreached and tried to use the special card that had led to Moon losing a power earlier. He promptly lost against the level 1 magus, again, and was stripped of Quickening. I was not a happy chaos lord...

 

Edit: And here's the predator neatly Machine Cursed like:

 

Phew, this is taking a while. I need to get on with my Sunday, but I'll get the other two turns up later.

Edited May 12, 2019 by Achinadav

[Platuan4th]

Transports doesn't work in 2. editions.

 

Sure they do, so long as you take one of the factions that could add on the extra Stormbolters. Load it with a 10 man squad, add on as many Stormbolters as you could afford(since there was no limit to how many you could add beyond having models inside to fire them) and treat it like a highly volatile mobile pillbox of sustained fire dice.

[OakRiver]

Awesome!! Second Edition was my introduction to the hobby, so thank you for the trip down memory lane. 

[Achinadav]

Halfway through and I think we were reaching a point where it could have gone either way. With my predator out-of-action, thanks to its Machine Curse, I needed the cultist turn to go badly. If I could nullify the Machine Curse in the psychic phase, then I'd get my predator back in turn to unleash its fire power. But would luck favour the filthy Khornate scum, as it had so far? Or would it swing back towards those that seek only worship of the Dark Prince & His/Her/Its perfection? There was only one way to find out...

 

The movement phase of the cultist's 3rd turn began with the Leman Russ motoring forwards a little bit and turning to point back towards the centre of table:

 

This is when I realised that the butt end of my predator, in its glorious pre-Heresy livery (read as: not completely finished assembly [need more spikes} and not at all painted), now had a battle cannon and lascannon pointed at it. Gulp.

 

One of the squads of beastmen mobbed my daemonettes:

 

 

Who laughed in the face of such overwhelming odds and lasciviously looked forward to the combat phase...

 

Meanwhile, just above and to the right, the cultist squad bravely pulled back from their comrade, Bob, who thought he was heroically rallying his comrades to face the terrible foe. When what he was really doing was slowing them down:

 

And at this point I started going through the rules for firing into combat. We were both convinced that they were in the book somewhere, but couldn't find them (We went for roll to hit and then randomise hits between the models in the melee).

 

On the right the cultists consolidated their positions around the tower:

 

From my perspective, they were lining themselves up beautifully!

 

Meanwhile, the bloodletters charged the Apostle's Fist! (They actually did this at the beginning of the phase, because that's when you do your charges, but whatever):

r

 

Its quite interesting to see the combat from both sides of the table like this. From my side, Jarmin Moon looks like a cheerleader and very well protected by a wall of impregnable ceramite. From the other side, the terminators look like a very flimsy barrier between the blood letters and Moon.

 

Shooting was a mixed bag. On balance, I think I got off lightly! The cultists blazed away at Bob & the two daemonettes that were about to munch him. Three hits, two failed saves from the daemonettes (Bob didn't even get one) and all threre were dead And as I type, I realise the daemonettes should have taken their Break test now, but we forgot (we also forgot Fear tests at the right time, but when we did them retrospectively, everybody passed that needed to).

 

Then it was the Leman Russ's turn...I was prepared for pain...And then the battlecannon missed and scattered for the second time The lascannon managed to punch through the hull and detonate something important in the crew compartment. One of the heavy bolter gunners brought the farm. Fortunately the others all survived. Then the PDF's missile launcher missed with a krak missile! I was very relieved. My predator couldn't swoop in and complete my mission. But if I could get rid of the Machine Curse, then it could rip the heart ouf of cultist army with two turns of firing.

 

Multiple combats could get complicated in 2nd edition, with each fight basically being a little duel. We managed to amplify this by having the outnumbering working in both directions in both beastmen vs. daemonettes and terminators vs. blood letters. Anywho, beastmen vs. daemonettes got pretty bloody:

 

The lone daemonette dropped faster than a bad habit. I think she totally punked out, lost the first combat and died straight away. The beastmen were actually pretty tough, as they were armed with chainswords and bolt pistol, so they could force me to reroll my highest score. That and Toughness 4 with 2 wounds meant I had to do pretty well to score a kill. In the more massed combat, I did a lot better. Between them, the two daemonettes managed to off a couple of beastmen and went a long way to evening things out. Unfortunately, the second one eventually dropped and the sole remaining daemonette ran for it.

 

In the blood letter fight we discovered that things were going to be a bit drawn out. It was actually a pretty even fight. The 'letters had swords, so could force rerolls on my highest dice, and had higher initiative, so one a strike on a draw. But their Strength is low and the terminators were getting 4+ on 2d6 saves. Punchy McPunchFace, my terminator with a power fist, turned one to goo. It then failed its regenerate rolls (phew!). So I came out slightly ahead.

 

The psychic phase is a bit fuzzy. I think we went right through the deck, possible for the 2nd time. What I do remember is that I finally managed to off the level 1 magus with a Daemonic Attack special card  Apparently he went willingly to the arms of his masters, but I'm pretty sure I heard a scream when he realised it was my 6th daemonette hovering in the warp that welcomed him into her "loving" embrace. Heh, heh, heh. Then I think Moon fried a cultist, before one of the cultist coven cast Hellfire at Dol Barack and his little group. This 2" template gives out Strength 4 hits and remains in play. Not too bad, I survived the hits and was planning to move forwards anyway. What I didn't manage to do was nullify that dratted Machine Curse! So I was going to lose at least one turn of my predator's shooting.

 

Was I going to be able to pull it back? I needed to get a good round of shooting in and win against those dratted blood letters. So Jarmin Moon charged in! He was a pretty tough customer and his Force Rod would auto-wound the daemons without a save. He ignored the one on the end and ganged up with the chainaxe dude on one of the 'letters to even things out.

 

1st Coterie turned to bring the beastmen into their sights. They didn't move, to let them rapid fire their bolters. Dol Barack & 4th Coterie casually sauntered out of the Hellfire and prepared to unleash their guns at the pesky cultists cowering at the bottom of the tower. The shooting went well. Between frag missiles, boltguns, flamers and Master-crafed Plasma Pistols,  much carnage was wrought:

 

1st Coterie blasted away and broke the beastmen in suitable vengeance for the daemonettes That was more like it. Even without the predator, I was happy with the result.

 

In the swirling melee between terminators, Jarmin Moon and the blood letters, it was all a bit of a stalemate. The termie on the end with a power mace splatted his blood letter. But a rash of bad rolls for Moon and a couple of draws meant lots of terminator saves. Fortunately, 4+ on 2d6 is pretty easy. The blood letter did fail his regeneration roll, which meant there were only three left and one of them was outnumbered 3 to 1!

 

The psychic phase was really short, because I'm sneaky/lucky I drew Energy Drain again! This was another thinky moment. If I used Energy Drain I would get rid of the Machine Curse and the Hellfire. But I would miss out on a chance to Hood of Hellfire a blood letter or to use Acquiescence. And might also give the cultist demagogue and remaining magus a chance to do something sneaky in return. I did have a nullify for the Machine Curse, but in the end I went with Energy Drain and brought the phase to an immediate end. Better safe than sorry.

 

Then my daemonette rallied and Turn 3 was over.

[Achinadav]

Going into the final turn, I think we both thought that things could go either way still. A good round from either one of us could sort things out. I'd pretty much given up on my mission, still didn't know what the cultists were upto, and was going to basically try and blast my way out of it.

 

The cultist movement was basically all about lining up targets with a couple of calculated risks. The PDF and Leman Russ were fine where they were; they could both see my predator and were lining up on its rear. The cultists that had "held off" the daemonettes with some inventive shooting into combat lined up along the bridge. The last daemonette was in trouble:

 

The beastmen, who I claimed were broken but clearly weren't, dashed forwards and hid at the bottom of the same tower as 1st Coterie. There were two bits of ironwork between them and we'd previously agreed that this was too dense to allow shooting through.

 

Meanwhile, at the other tower, the cultists and the coven's bodyguard repositioned themselves. The lone survivor on the left tucked hiimself behind a wall whilst the magus, who you can't see, lined himself up to face my predator. The magus had a meltagun and it was worth a punt! I started to wonder if  he had Armour-piercing Ammo like Gul Karnak...

 

You can't see the demagogue in his final position. He actually moved in between the two walls in front of him, in order to hide completely, wimp.

 

Then all hell broke loose in the shooting phase. Well, sorta. My daemonette brought it, pistols are helluva accurate at short range! The Leman Russ proceeded to miss wildly. The PDF missile launcher struck the turret of my predator and I was a little worried...Except it the most heavily armoured location and the missile bounced off, as did the magus' meltagun.

 

Our remaining melee swirled around with blood letters parrying and terminators making 4+ on 2d6 saves. They managed to pulp the outnumbered blood letter, which freed up Jarmin Moon to follow up 2" towards the demagogue. I was feeling mean & sneaky.

 

I think the psychic phase was unremarkable. Couple of nullifies flying back-and-forth? Probably a cultist getting melted by Moon's Hood of Hellfire. But nothing so important that it sticks in mind. Could I do enough damage in my final turn? Would the Dark Prince see fit to give me victory even though I had failed to break through my opponent's lines? Read on to find out! Dun, dun, duuuuuuuunnnnnn.

 

My movement phase was also about careful repositioning. 1st Coterie turned on the spot to face the high tower full of victory points, ahem, I mean cultists. 3rd Coterie stayed where they were, like they had the whole game, to fire with their missile launcher, whilst Locke probably shifted to fire at the tower (I'd written him off as being able to do anything useful). 4th Coterie angled round. Their bolter dude didn't move, just pivoted, whilst the two flamers lined up. Jarmin Moon charged the demagogue! Surely slaying the Voice of Khorne in personal combat would earn the favour of the Dark Prince? My predator rolled forwards and lined up shots at both the magus and the cultists on the bridge, thank goodness for 180 degree fire arcs that can't see around your own nose

 

Shooting was fun! Dol Barack offed the acolyte on the left and between 1st, 3rd & 4th Coteries, maybe with a shot from Locke, most of the cultists got clear out of the tower:

 

The Word Bearers really showed the difference between genetically engineered transhuman super-troopers and cultist chaff My dice had suddenly lit up and everything was coming together. The lefthand heavy bolter on my predator, now ably manned by the driver, blasted away at the cultists on the bridge and got 5 hits with the sustained fire dice. Four wounds later and they ran for the hills! (Or maybe 4 hits and three wounds, because I have a blurry photo of three kilt-wearers hiding behind a building and there were 6 on the bridge) The other heavy bolter missed its shot at the magus with meltagun! Oh the humanity! And then the autocannon lined up and coughed twice (1 sustained fire dice is sometimes all it takes), the two heavy shells heading unerringly for their target.

 

In a last minute twist, the magus had a Displacer Field! Oh no, unmodifed 3+ save! The first shot struck before the field activated and whisked the magus away, but the second went through where his head had been as the arcane device kicked in just in time. But an autocannon does d6 wounds and the magus had 2 wounds. It would all come down to my fancy new red & gold dice as it tumbled across the field of battle. As the short teleport brought the magus back to reality a few inches away (or feet if you're a tiny miniature) the die came up a 2! Awesome! Mini lap of victory! The shell had caved in the magus' chest and left him gutted. I really felt like this round had gone well.

 

Close combat was a mixed bag. My terminators continued to be tarpitted by the blood letters and couldn't finish them off. Which was a bit of a shame. I think it shows how evenly matched that fight was. Jarmin Moon won his combat with the demagoge very convincingly. That's what happens when a 7 -8 foot tall psychic super soldier attacks you on your own Four hits, three wounds (probably). Enough to kill the blighter. Except he had a 4+ daemonic save...nooooo....and saved one of them (the numbers may be off, but he was definitely left with one wound). Jarmin Moon nashed his teeth and waited for the psychic phase...

 

...where he tried to immolate the git with his Hood of Hellfire. Pretty much the final roll of the game, because we got really low warp flux and no power to do anything, was the demagogue's daemonic save. Little would we know, but the whole outcome rode on this! He passed. Drat. If only I'd had one attack power left, I might have been able to off hiim.

[Achinadav]

That's run quite long, thanks for sticking with it if you've read right through. This was the first time we actually bothered to tot up the VPs. Before it had been pretty obvious by the carnage that I'd won. This time it was too close too call.

 

The cultists offed 2nd Coterie and my daemonettes, plus I hadn't summoned one so I counted him as dead. That was 5 VPs right there. They'd also damaged my predator for another VP and, unbeknownst to me, completed there mission by claiming the two of the three highest points on the battlefield! They had the High Ground mission, which came in White Dwarf. Furthermore, the PDF troopers had a heavy weapon, and that gave them a bonus VP for a total of 9.

 

I'd munched my way through a couple of cultist squads, all 3 of them I think (the 3rd was broken), and done a bit of damage to one of the beastment squads. I'd also offed both magi and a few other characters. That brought me to a total of 8! A loss for the glorious Word Bearers and a well earned victory for the cultists. This narrow margin really shows how close the game was right the way through and how massed bodies can make it difficult for elite armies with low body counts.

 

We both made a couple of non rules errors (there were some of them too) that we'd have done differently. My opponent felt like he should have split his beastmen squads instead of keeping them both on my left. I agree; they were tough and some melee grunt on my right, instead of yet more cultists, would have made it a tough prospect. I think the PDF did a great job, but I would have put the Leman Russ in the middle, instead of on my left flank. This would have forced me to deal with, instead of just refusing that flank and hoping! And what I would have done is put 1st Coterie, Gul Karnak & Barack on tank hunting duty and got 2nd & 3rd Coteries blasting it with krak missiles from turn 1. And I've sent my rhino & predator steaming up the left flank together, where they wouldn't have had to do as much manoeuvring as on my right.

 

But what would I have done different ly with my opponents deployment as it was? Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't have put anybody in the rhino. I'd have left Jarmin Moon and the Apostle's Fist running towards the cultists with 4th Coterie and Dol Barack. Together they could have steamrolled through blood letters and cultists alike. I think I would also put 2n Coterie further to my right, because they really couldn't survive more than 1 turn of the Leman Russ' attention. Then I would have sent the empty rhino in behind the predator, to guard its rear from the Leman Russ. And hope it didn't get trashed and crash into my predator! I'd have done the same with my daemonettes. Well, I might have put them all on the ground floor and charged the lot into the beastmen. That might have given them the weight they needed to survive another round. They did mean that 1st Coterie made it to the end unscathed.

 

This was the second game that I got out manoeuvred by failing to think of how my opponent might move. The first time was in an Adeptus Titanicus game (link in sig with report) where i didn't think what would happen if he backtracked with one of his titans. This ended up with my warhound getting caught in a crossfire between an enemy warhound and a reaver. It blew up :( This time I failed to think what an unopposed Leman Russ would do. The answer being turn and get my predator bang to rights. I was lucky to just lose a crewman. So I might consider putting 1st Coterie and Gul Karnak over on my left flank. With two power fists, and an Armour-pericing meltagun, in the squad, they could have done quite a bit of harm. Dol Barack only got to shoot a couple of cultists with his Master-crafted Plasma Pistol. So putting him way out on my left with 1st Coterie might have meant his Haywire Grenade got used. We'll never know!

 

Ultimately, a tense game that was a lot of fun. Plenty of "do I or don't I" moments an a well deserved victory to the cultists.