First Ever Battle

[irishbiker]

As said in the title, this is the first game of 40k I've played so far.

I was up against a friend's ultramarines and we played 1,000 point armies. I had to borrow a Lehman Russ and a necron annialation barge to make up the points.

My list was as follows:
1× command squad
3× infantry squads
2× heavy weapon squads
2× scout sentinels
1× chimera
2× Lehman Russ
1× barge



The game started ok for me. I got first turn and moved my tanks up to claim an objective and hammered him with mortars, dealing two casualties.

Things started to go downhill when he deepstriked assault marines right next to my mortars. I managed to blast them away with my tanks with only the loss of one mortar but his razorback and tactical marines ueed the opportunity to cover the distance and charge them. I lost the chimera and one Russ and had to retreat with the barge. He slaughtereda good number of my infantry but I managed to inflict several casualties on him as well.

We were only playing to five turns and I lost on in history points 3 to 5. Despite losing I enjoyed the game thoroughly and learned a great deal by playing it.

[RedCuffs]

Maybe squeeze another command squad in there to dish out more orders ?
And it looks like you learned the lesson of Force Protection the hard way with those deep striking units.
But it sounds like you did better than me in my first game.
I don't think I won a game in my first year of 40K.

Come the new codex those Leman Russ of yours are going to be able to smash the hits out.
But that'll make them priority targets too.

[irishbiker]

Yeah, I shouldn't have turned everything to deal with the assault marines. Had I sacrificed my mortars and kept the chimera and Russ's firing on the razorback and tactical squads, I may have been able to deal more damage.

[Machine Gun Kelly]

Seem like a good fight. I am not going to give you any advice since my knowledge is way too old. But if GW haven´t changed much there is one concept to remember when playing guard.

Your infantry are there to die. Always be prepared to sacrifice them if it means other part of your army can achieve victory.

[nutty]

Nice write up, I'm not sure what a barge is or what it did during the game.. but the rest is pretty clear.

Deepstrikers are nasty in this edition so it usually best to keep them in mind whilst deploying: they do have to keep their distance from other units so you can use infantry to keep them away from your heavy hitters.

[irishbiker]

Yeah, I remember reading something on this forum about strength in redundancy. Basically a guard army can have so many multiples of a unit that losing one isn't an issue. I haven't got there yet, but that is what I'm planning on.

The barge is an annihilation barge I borrowed to make up points. Since it was early days for me we weren't to fussed about mixing armies. It didn't really do much in the game, I didn't really understand its rules so mostly it just guarded the chimera's flank. It survived everything the marines three at it so it must be a fairly hardy unit.

[emptyhat]

That explains the barge then. I thought maybe you were doing a landing scenario.

[irishbiker]

Another attempt to upload some pictures from the battle. Hopefully this time this will work. Forgive the quality, I took them on my phone during play.

[emptyhat]

Nice. Don't take this the wrong way but it looks like the fun:effort ratio for your game table is tilted heavily towards the fun

[irishbiker]

Yeah, you're right. There's three tables and because my army's still incomplete I got the smallest one. Most of the terrain had been claimed by the bigger tables.

[emptyhat]

It reminds me a lot of when I was getting back into the hobby.

[irishbiker]

I think it's a good size to learn on becuase it means you can get into action quicker and do faster games, but the bigger ones can fit alot more models on them. The board behind me had a 2,000 point three-way between necrons, space wolves and space marines going on.

And on the bigger ones my mortars wouldn't reach all the way across the board, I'd actually have to maneuver them into position.

[nutty]

I especially like how Bowser is overlooking the battle from his castle

For future games (I know it was your first) you might want to switch the position of your tanks and mortars. The mortars can shoot at things they can't draw line of sight to; so they can hang out behind a big piece of terrain without loosing effectiveness. The leman russ tanks however will benefit from a clear fireline (they might still want 'some' cover though) so they can unleash the hurt.

[irishbiker]

I'll keep that in mind for the next game. I didn't really pay much mind to deployment, it was just a matter of getting everything on the board and playing. I'll make sure to take into account mortars and terrain in future.

[ElegaicRequiem]

I remember what a pain it was to just get all the stuff ready to actually start a game. And on a too-small table at that. I remember a 9000 point battle with Reds I had in a tiny little shop where we essentially were taking up all the space in the store for free.

I think that was the day I started to hate chocolate milk-like drinks, but maybe not.

Edit: It was, and that was eight years ago! Wow, some of us have been here too long.

[RedsandRoyals]

Nov 3, 2017 11:50:37 GMT -5 ElegaicRequiem said:

I remember what a pain it was to just get all the stuff ready to actually start a game. And on a too-small table at that. I remember a 9000 point battle with Reds I had in a tiny little shop where we essentially were taking up all the space in the store for free.

I think that was the day I started to hate chocolate milk-like drinks, but maybe not.

Edit: It was, and that was eight years ago! Wow, some of us have been here too long.

That milk cap is still in my bitz box. I'm going to make sure you're buried with it.

[ElegaicRequiem]

Curse you and your Norwegian inheritance.