+ Battlefield: Albany +

Last Thursday I moved to Albany, NY to attend grad school for the next five years. I can't say I'm too happy to be here yet, but now that classes are starting and I'll be cripplingly busy soon enough I'm sure I'll forget about the distance from here to my fiancee and gaming buds back in PA ... Anyway, killing definitely went down in the run up to my big move:

Anarchonquistadores & Khorney Chaos vs Tau & Tau [3000] - A friend of mine just finished painting most of the table in his Battle Basement and hosted a game between the four of us to break it in. By that I mean the Tau's fishy faces as well as the new table. Batrep (with pics!) is here on Dakka, definitely worth checking out. And no, I won't spoil it.

CHAOS ???

Violators vs Ork Fleet [1500] - Back to spaceship fighting, my Violators fleet (the one in the pics back when) took on a new and insane ork fleet. Big named battleship, 2 terror ships and an amazing number of brute ram ships (30). Judicious use of brace for impact and then carefully staying out of ramming lines kept the impact damage down, but I did end up losing a carnage and having the other crippled by the dozen brutes chasing it and just blazing away at it. In a decisive two turns the ork battleship was crippled and hulked, and likewise the terrors ended up crippled and about 20 brutes were dead by the time the greenskin fleet disengaged.

CHAOS WIN

Note on BFG, I have since painted a second Acheron to tentatively replace the Styx, as well as more Infidels to swell the escort ranks with the points saved. And I've also lost anybody to play against. Poop.

Anarchonquistadores vs Space Wolves [1500] - In what would be my final game in PA (for now!), the boys in black & brown took on some all infantry, fistageddon Space Pups. His list was something like Wolf Chappy, Wolf Librarian (5+ cover save power), 3x 15 blood claws (maximum fists, including fisty wolf guard leaders), 1x 15 blood claws w/ bolters (maximum fists, and the wolf guard fister too). The packs may have been bigger, but 15 seems pretty huge to me already.

His game plan was pretty attuned to 5th edition, or at least the way screening works - packs deploy in long lines across the board, stormcaller (5+ cover power) is cast on the front pack, and all the lines run across into your face. Front squad gets 5+ cover, ones behind get 4+ cover for being screened.

For our part, the spiky marines locked, loaded and prepared to shoot the hell out of those fist-spammin' dogs. Even with excellent run rolls - and those long chains were being pulled through difficult terrain for the most part too - I'd get solid rounds of blasting as they came in for the crumping.

This would be Kill Points, Pitched Battle. Delicious.

Wolves 1
Everything ran for me, with the Wolf Chappy in the front pack and the Wolf Libby somewhere around the second and third lines. The bolter squad started climbing into an elevated position in his deployment zone. Stormcaller went off on the front squad.

Chaos 1
Deathscreamer & 1k Sons shuffled around a bit, but otherwise it was right to killing. Really not too many died from the front pack considering, but the blastmaster scored two wounds and the Wolves failed the pin test @ -2. I was pretty surprised that the Wolf Chappy doesn't make his boys fearless ...

Wolves 2
Wolf Scouts appear behind the 1k Sons, downing one with a pistol, missing with their meltagun and then hoping into combat. The rest of the Wolves charged forward, but became a bit bunched up where the front squad had been pinned in place. Also, the bolter squad properly attained their perch and realized they had nothing remotely in range. Stormcaller I think failed to cast this turn ...

In combat the deathscreamer either rolled a 6 and fluffed 9 attaks down to 1 wound, or rolled a 1 and took a wound (both happened at some point). Anyway, the 1k Sons lost 2 robots and amazingly beat down 2 scouts by themselves (no need for lords or sorcerers).

Chaos 2
Unforunately the girls wanted to play already, so summoned in front of his pinned Chappy squad and prepared to be mauled. But first, shooting accounted for a bunch of the second line and knocked the chappy's squad down to the Chappy and a couple fists.

Which wasn't enough to save the chicks, who were mangled by the Chappy (3 dead), dragged down 1 fister, lost some more to the wolf guard fist and then popped a couple from the No Retreat! bunk. The last 4-5 girls made sad eyes as all those big viking marines licked their lips ... The deathscreamer either fluffed or hurt himself, but again the robots clubbed another scout to death leaving just 1 locking them up.

Wolves 3
Charging time?! A nice full strength pack lept to the front line (probably #3) and was stormcalled, and then pack #2 (old Wolf Sorcerer too) piled in with the remnants of #1 to beat up some chicks. Which they did.

Chaos 3
Annnd now the termies wanted to play, so they dropped to the rightmost end of the front, 5+ cover pack, with the intention of blitzing off a couple Pups and then punishing him for extending the line so far out - by charging the last man next turn he would only get 6" of counter-charge, only enough to bring 2 of 4 fists into play. Nobody else felt like moving, so unloaded into that front squad for a bit, opening a gap into the second squad which the blastmaster tapped and pinned! And the powerfist that was hanging out wiht the Chappy was knocked away, thothe big man having previously joined the now pinned squad.

Wolves 4
With the rear pack pinned (including Wolf Libby & Chappy), the front squad barreled into the terminators, though as predicted couldn't get all 4 fists swinging. For which they were punished, killing 0 terminators and losing a few more of their own, breaking and running for it. The terminators could only consolidate in response, making sure to move within 6" of the fleeing squad.

Chaos 4
The enemy had been reduced to the 15 bolter pups in the backfield, 2 running fister pups (so that broken squad was WAY shot up before, apparently), and about 10 pups with Chappy & Not-Libby. The obliterator and deathscreamer / sons moved to hammer the bolter hounds, though the oblit missed the plasma cannon shot and the S4 AP3 guns from the other squad went into the pinned unit. Eevil firepower ultimately knocked that one unit down to the characters + 2 powerfists, due to cover saves and more average rolling from me. Despite having seen the buffs that counter-attak + wolf pelt gives Wolf characters, my terminators charged in and were diced up, given the pups a heart consolidation towards my noise marines ...

Wolves 5
Which they clearly took advantage of, charging those 2 characters + 2 fists into the noise marines in difficult terrain. This actually resulted in the Faux-Libby not quite making it this round, which was unfortunate as the Chappy managed only 2 dead noisy boys with his 6 attaks, and in return the deaf marines hacked down the powerfisters before they could swing.

Chaos 5
The oblit and deathscreamer / sons advanced on the bolter marines, ripping them down to half strength or so. The fisty 10 CSM squad mobilized and jumped into the fight with the noise marines, and the elements of the chaos army that still felt like shooting riddled the rallied 2 marines from that broken pack with bullets and missiles.

The Wolf Chappy felt the wrath of S4 combat weapons, giving up the two wounds he had to give and finally going down. The Wolf Shaman beat upon the noise marines but with limited success.

Wolves 6
The bolters missed and the Shaman-dude fought, dropping a noise marine or so for a wound in return.

Chaos 6
The oblit + deathscreamer + sons smacked the bolter pack off the table, and the CSM fist bite down and crumped the old Wolf Wizard properly. Wolves, tabled.

CHAOS WIN

So a long, drawn out way to say: he ran, I shot, there was some fighting but evil triumphed in the end (because good is stupid and dumb). But I don't have class or work today so long and drawn out it is!

Painting: Ogres
Building: N/A