To properly kick off the new year of gaming at PAGE, I got in a round of 40k tonight with Kiril, a guest visiting from Bulgaria. He said there are so few players where he lives, he had to bring an army to the US and look for some games while here for winter break! Hopefully he’ll return at some point, a great guy and a good player.

Rules

We tried out the first scenario for the upcoming Combat Patrol tournament. Army rules are on the tournament webpage, but are the usual Combat Patrol constraints except at 750pts rather than 400. In this scenario, a lonely listening post has been struck by the leading edge of an incoming assault! The Defender player must hold the outpost long enough to make contact with command and relay the warning. The Attacker must overrun the base and prevent that from happening.

• Goal: A single objective is placed along the central axis, 12″ from the Defender table edge on a 4’x4′ board.
• Deployment: Defender deploys 16″ from their table edge; Attacker deploys 8″ from the opposite edge.
• Play order: Defender deploys first; Attacker chooses to go first or second.
• Other notes: Standard mission rules (end game, Reserves, etc).

The match consists of two games with players alternating as the Attacker and Defender.

Armies

Kiril brought an infantry oriented Imperial Guard contingent, roughly consisting of:

• 40 regular Guardsmen; in the first game they were in 4 squads but in the second he grouped them into 2
• Veterans with 2 meltaguns and a heavy flamer riding in a Chimera
• Autocannon and mortar teams
• Platoon command squad with 2 flamers
• Company command squad (violates Combat Patrol 3 wound rule, but not a huge worry for these games)

The Kingbreakers in turn brought out:

• 10xTactical Squad w/ Powerfist, Plasmagun, Missile Launcher, Rhino (240pts)
• 10xTactical Squad w/ Meltagun, Plasma Cannon, Razorback (220pts)
• 5xSternguard w/ Power Sword, 2xCombi-Melta, Razorback (190pts)
• Thunderfire Cannon (100pts)

Battle 1

Kingbreakers begin the assault on a heretical hive city, accused of conspiring with the Xenos Tau to gain advanced weaponry, by storming the outlying listening posts!

The Kingbreakers’ Thunderfire Cannon and Combat Squad Jericho with his plasma cannon bunker down behind debris on the outskirts of the base, hoping to rain plasma and shells down on hapless Guardsmen in the hills around the bunker. Razorbacks with Tactical Squad Titus and Captain Angholan [proxying a Sternguard Sergeant] with Sternguard Squad Harbinger move to advance up the west and into the bordering foothills. However, the transports are shredded to disassembled components by heavy incoming Guard missiles and the squads find what cover they can behind the burning ruins.

Meanwhile, Tactical Squad Scolirus leverages the heavy fire poured onto Titus and Angholan to race deep into enemy territory. Their transport is destroyed as wall, but not before delivering their vengeance directly into the enemy mortars pummeling their now-exposed battle brothers Titus and Angholan.

Regrouped from the explosive loss of their vehicle, Angholan leads the Sternguard clambering over the rocky foothills into cover but are surprised by a group of Imperial Guard veterans dashing into the battle in their Chimera. The firefight is brief but lethal; Angholan and his men are eventually brought down by sheer numbers and profligate quantities of fusion blaster [melta] fire. Harbinger’s only solace as he barely escapes after being critically injured is having flushed the conspiracy into the open, reporting the fusion weapons as sure evidence of traitorous pacts with the diminutive xenos!

Meanwhile, Sergeant Titus leads his squad in a running gun battle with the Chimera and many supporting heavy weapons units. Though tougher to break than expected, the Chimera is eventually destroyed in a dangerous close action krak grenade attack. Its burning hulk provides meager shelter by which Titus, the sole survivor, attempts a daring lone assault on the objective command post. Alas, it is too much, too far, even for that mighty warrior of the Imperium, and he is unable to brush off its defending crew and prevent successful transmission warning of the Kingbreakers’ imminent main assault…

Game 2

For reasons unannounced and unclear, an Imperial Guard unit assults a small Kingbreakers outpost!

The bulk of the Kingbreakers on hand rapidly assemble a basic gunline defending the outpost perimeter. Squad Scolirus leads the charge to take the fight to the enemy, rushing to outflank the enemy and directly attack its supporting units in the rearguard, his transport zig-zagging and popping smoke furiously to avert heavy incoming fire.

Unperturbed by the swift reaction of the Kingbreakers, the Guardsmen move quickly, rushing forward through the foothills to the west of the outpost in an attempt to avoid incoming Thunderfire and plasma cannon fire. Mechanized Veterans rapidly deploy, moving with all haste to engage Jericho’s plasma cannon contingent lurking outside the outpost. The Veterans are quickly withered though by Squad Jericho, the plasma cannoneer blasting away at full tilt to dangerously close minimum distances in a successful last ditch effort to break the experienced shocktroopers’ thrust.

Shielded behind the Chimera and heroic lead of the Veteran squad, dozens of troopers run in their tracks. Officers bray commands and drive their men on at full speed but, alas, the foothills hinder their mobility too much, leaving them moving forward at agonizing speed, too slow to breach the outer outpost defenses.

Meanwhile, mortar and autocannon crews in the rear fight furiously to pin down Harbinger’s Sternguard overwatching the outpost, and clear a safe path for their comrades bravely, foolishly rushing up through the Kingbreakers’ primary field of fire to assault the bunker. Their work is undone however as the mortar crews are cut to ribbons by bolter and chainsword as the flanking Scolirus reaches their position, and the autocannon teams are forced to evacuate their position by the precise, unperturbed sniping of the Stearnguard. Unsupported by any suppressive fire, the main assaulting group is left exposed in the center field and is decimated by Thunderfire Cannon shelling. As Squad Titus sweeps in to pick off the survivors of the shelling, the outpost is all but secured from the sudden, maniacal foot assault.

Results

Battle 1: Kiril’s IG successful held off the Kingbreakers’ attack. The Marines suffered many casualties, and were not in place to contest the bunker at the endgame.

Battle 2: The Kingbreakers kept the IG at distance, gutting their lead forces and leaving no one in position to charge the outpost in time.

Notes

This was a great battle. I had not previously played against someone very comfortable with the new IG codex, and it was a lot of fun. The army feels very different to fight than many others. It has a soft underbelly, at least as soft as the Tau, with men going down rapidly. However, it has a distinct horde quality and puts up a fiercesome amount of firepower, even without many vehicles. A lasgun may not seem like much, but when a dozen or two of them are shooting two or three shots each at a group of Marines, odds say someone’s going to take some wounds. It was also really neat watching the orders fly around and really change the action of the force. Kiril made heavy use of Run, Run, Run!, Take It Down!, and especially First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire!, all of which worked to great effect.

I don’t think I played the first game very well, splitting up my forces too much and not having clear goals. Instead of trying to sweep the sides and take out the supporting units, I should have just rushed right onto the bunker and parked a couple squads on it. That way I’d at least be contesting it, and putting him back on his heels instead of waiting for me.

The Combat Patrol rules also really hurt my style of play. Without my Drop Pods I was at a total loss, and relatively unfamiliar with the Rhinos and Razorbacks as more than portable bunkers and fire points. At several key points I forget to pop smoke and other similar things. How to use these is something I’ll have to think about before the Combat Patrol tournament really starts up. That said, one neat thing in the second game was having Titus rush out in a Razorback to clobber some units, then popping back in to drive over and quickly block another incoming squad. You can’t do that in a Drop Pod! At least, you know, without an AdMech lifter or something… …

Similarly, I’ll have to think about how to use the Sternguard in this context, if at all. I think without the Alpha Assault aspect of them in Drop Pods, they loss a lot of oomph. That said, their variety of shots was still useful in parking them down as a mini-gunline around the objective. That fit very much in with the fluff in the codex and worked reasonably well, though it’s not how I usually use them.

The Thunderfire Cannon again had mixed results, though it certainly killed a lot more models than in previous games. I think I would gladly trade two, maybe even three of its four shots for it to use a large template rather than the small. Making it a barrage weapon and/or giving it indirect fire would also be a huge boon and make it slightly less tepid. The range is a big plus, even on the shorter table, and it It did kill a fair bit of things, but I’m still iffy on it. Not enough to drop it completely, but more than enough to make me really question it against the power armor I am sure to face in the tournament.

One other interesting aspect of the game were the IG’s mortar teams, of which Kiril had 3. These didn’t really kill a ton of guys, but they kept a lot of units pinned down. Although useful, the Sternguard were severely crippled for much of the second game by being pinned by mortar hits. I’ve never rolled so many failed Leadership checks in my life—and it really hurt—but I’ve never had to roll so many before either. Probably because of my frustration it was actually really neat to watch; it’s exactly the sort of role you can really envision real mortars playing (or, at least, real movie mortars…).

All in all, two great games. Between the orders, mortars, and general fragility but massed firepower, the IG really seemed a lot more like a real army as portrayed in a movie than the Marines and most other armies do. Definitely really fun to play against, and I’m only more tempted now to start up my own group of Cadians…

More photos of this battle are in my Flickr set!