Ladies and gentlemen, Slow Grow is back! 3 weeks at 500 points, then 750, 1,000, 1,250 and 1,500.
I'm running my Imperial Guard again, and having suffered from a lack of troops in previous small point games, I decided to start out with:
Lord Commissar with Power Sword
Platoon Command Squad with 4 Melta Guns
Chimera with Hunter Killer Missile
2 x Infantry Squad with Flamer
20 Conscripts
Veteran Squad with 2 flamers, 1 grenade launcher, Demolitions
We tried out this new fangled card based mission malarky. Red D6s are objective markers. We got the simple "you have 3 objectives each turn" thing. There was a diagonal deployment. One flamer squad went into the dilapidated Firebase on the right.
Here's my deployment. Can you spot my deliberate mistake?
Yup. I'm meant to deploy behind the line.
There we go, that's much better.
I'm facing a Chapter Master with a burning blade on a bike, two small bike squads - one with grav guns and one with flamers, and a single attack bike with a heavy bolter.
Bikes rush forward all over the place and control three objectives to gain D3 victory points.
An orbital bombardment nukes the command Chimera, which proceeds to explode, nearly wiping out an infantry squad and blowing up a few conscripts.
I run the three survivors of the infantry squad into the bunker, and the veterans also run forward to grab three objectives as I've drawn the same card as my opponent.
The Chapter Master comes looking for my Commissar Lord.
Two flamers wipe out the Veterans.
A challenge is issued, and accepted, and the Commissar is turned into a fine red mist by the Chapter Master. The conscripts break and run, succeed at fleeing and make it two inches!
We couldn't remember if you could flame into vehicle firing points any more, but decided to let people anyway because it was cool. I fired a few shots and through a couple of grenades out the windows, but it wasn't doing much good!
The infantry squad came out in the vain hope of grabbing an objective, while the conscripts were gunned down and run down by the bikers.
A valiant sergeant held on for a couple of turns against the Chapter Master as his squad was cut down around him, but finally, he was despatched, leaving the Marines victorious with only a wounded Chapter Master to show for it - and no other Marines dead or wounded.
Wow - I wouldn't have wanted to face off against that lot!
ReplyDeleteBy the way: what the hell is a grav gun?
Graviton Gun. The old Rogue Trader era weapon which kills things by increasing the gravitational field around them. GW brought it back in the latest Space Marine Codex.
DeleteIt's a bit weird to explain how they work, but they basically "roll to wound" by successfully rolling your armour save - it turns out heavy armour is really, really bad for you if someone doubles or triples it's weight. So they roll 5+ to wound against Guard, but 3+ to wound against power armour.
They do more odd stuff to vehicles, but that's not too important.
Bad army match up is always the risk at 500 points - if I'd brought a Colossus, half his army could have evaporated turn one!