Our first doubles event and our first event at Warhammer World.
A quick 15 minute walk from our hotel had us at Warhammer World, along with everyone else, in a queue (Brother Handro: as is tradition... ) sign in was quick and easy so we grabbed a coffee and a bacon sandwich!
Our team name, The Bolter-wanderers , was a last minute thought so as not to besmirch our good (Der H: well maybe neutral... ) name of The Hobby Butterflies.
The organisation seemed good, and pretty quickly we were up against our first opponents; Custodes and Dark Angels. The Custodes ran a shield captain, 2 squads of 3 Custodes, a Telemon and a Caladius. The Dark Angels ran a delegatus with jetbikes, a sicaran Venator, two javelins, and two veteran tactical squads in rhinos.
We set up well and held our objectives scoring a reasonable number of Victory points, but failed to wipe any units. The dark angel acid rounds reliably denied any armour saves and with a 2+ poison, AP 1 barrage from nearly everything we couldn’t hold our ground. Two Javelins hit hard, and our flank fell on turn 4. In the end they won on VPs, gained a point for slay the warlord and were well ahead on points of units killed. A solid loss saw us move down the ranking system to a more balanced second game.
Game 2 seemed to start so well, with our match up being mostly infantry! Space Wolves with 2x 15 man grey slayers, 5 death sword, Geigor and a wolf priest. The heavy hitter was a contemptor cortus. The Dark Angels ran two basic tactical squads, 5 destroyers with a moritat in a termite, 8 heavy bolter marines and 3 phosphex quad mortars. Ouch.
War of lies is an interesting mission with objectives scoring anything from -D3 VPs to 3 VPs at the end of the game. Kill points were in play! The grey slayers ran, as they do, and were up in our grill early doors. The Termite by my Rhino and bogged down our initial advance, and the quad mortar shatter shells destroyer the sicaran.
Our counter hit the Dark Angels hard and pretty soon the heavy bolsters and mortars were gone. The grey slayers on the Emperors Children flank failed to hit hard, but did clear a unit of Kakophoni whilst the other unit of Kakophoni fell to the Moritat, after taking out all of the destroyers.
The wreck of the Sicaran and an immobilised rhino blocked Brother Handro’s advance and left him penned in against grey slayers.
The game ended with them winning on kill points anyway. With some good rolls for the objectives adding a further 6. Overall; better, not great!
Game 3 was against Solar Auxillia and Thousand sons! Solar Auxillia had one of my favourite models, a commander mounted on a Krieg death rider steed! Two infantry squads, a Dracosan, a Leman Russ and two flyers; a Thunderbolt and Lightning (Brother Handro: ...very very frightening!).
Deployment was triangles at each short edge with the same we mission played on Friday. 3/5/7 VPs for scoring units or tanks in own/no-man's land/enemy deployment zone. The Thousand Sons and solar auxillia tanks moved up, with the Sicaran Omega hitting one rhino, immobilising it (Brother Handro: let’s try to remember the Rhino repair rule). Given the range all of the demolished cannons were short.
Our turn saw effective counter fire destroying a rhino and the Sicaran, with the Scorpius clearing most of a veteran squad. The slow trundle continued most of the game with the midfield contested and our own deployment zones safe. The flyers hit hard and took out both Scorpiuses but failed to tip the game. A long-winded combat of Brother Handro’s Delegatus against the remaining Thousand Sons vets failed to be resolved despite the assistance of the Kakophoni! In the end, no one won on primaries, no one slayed a warlord, with our win on last man standing by 1 VP. Huzzah!
We packed up and dropped off our armies at the hotel before returning for the quiz. All in all a good day, 2 losses and a win. Time for day 2!
Der H and Brother Handro
