40K: My first victory!

Ok, I'm too excited to sleep right now, even though it's nearly midnight, because I just won my first game of 40K this year. I admit, I haven't been playing nearly as often as I used to (I'm down from 1-3 games a week to 1-3 games a month), but still. I haven't won yet this year. I don't know why, but I've been having a REALLY hard time adapting to 6th edition. Maybe it's just the lists I'm using (mostly vanilla Space Marines or the newer Chaos Marines with an incomplete list). I know I still don't have all the new rules down very well. Maybe I just ran too hard in 5th edition and there's too many habits for me to kick.

In any case, that all changed tonight.

So I'm at the game store. I wind up doing a 2000 point game versus my friend Angelica (yes, I actually know a girl that plays 40K!) and a newcomer to the store, Rob. I'm doing 2000 points of my Iron Hands, versus each of them taking half of a 2000-point Tyranids list. I dunno why, but the bugs have always made me nervous. Even though I play them myself on occasion (so it's not like I don't know them), and even if I'm using, say, my Thunderwolf list, there's just something about a half-dozen or more monsters with T6 and 5-6 wounds a piece coming at me that intimidates me.

Tonight wasn't much different. I had my core list:

Clan-Commander Talok Vorrax (counts-as Lysander, and with the warlord trait that makes him scoring)
Librarian Molvech

Terminator Assault Squad
Ironclad Dreadnought w/ Drop Pod

Tactical Squad w/Razorback
Tactical Squad w/Razorback

Assault Squad
Stormtalon

Predator

But I added a few more toys to get it up to 2000 points, in the form of a Vindicator, Thunderfire, and Devastator Squad.


Arrayed against me was:

Swarmlord w/Guard
Flying Hive Tyrant

Zoanthropes w/spore
Hive Guard

Termagants
More Termagants
Warrior Brood

Carnifex Brood
Trygon


Here's an approximate reconstruction of the table in VASSAL (Yes, I know they're Raven Guard here, apparently no one bothered to do Iron Hands sprites).

I setup first, hoping to get in some extra fire, but they seized the initiative. The game immediately began to go downhill from there.

My Vindicator was blown up on turn 1. I failed four of the seven armor saves I had to make (as is fairly standard for me). When my Stormtalon came on turn 2 to chase after the Flyrant, it missed or failed to wound all seven of its shots. In fact, turn 1, the only thing that actually did any wounds were my Devastators killing the Tyrant Guard and the Dreadnought popping up and actually hitting with his meltagun for once (seriously, the last five games he's missed that opening shot and usually never gotten another chance to fire). In fact, the Dreadnought ALMOST took out the Tervigon by himself, which would have been amazing, but the beast managed to get a lucky hit after being knocked down to its last wound (there may have been a joke about tongue raping in there too, not made by me, but have you SEEN the model for that thing?!).

Things weren't going well by turn 3. I was down the Vindicator, a Razorback, my Devastators were gone, and I had a Trygon sweeping across my line, with more stuff getting closer and what fire I was able to return didn't seem to be doing much (either in failing to wound or my opponents passing the vast majority of their saves).

BUT! Hope was restored when Clan-Commander Vorrax took to the field! Looking to stem the advancing horde, he teleported in with his Terminator retinue just outside the Aegis Line. As I expected, the Carnifexes took the bait and charged, only to be soundly annihilated. Additionally, thanks to a combination of Enfeeble from the Librarian and subterranean shells from the Thunderfire, the Swarmlord was slowed enough that he didn't even reach my line until turn 4, giving me time to soften him up. He only managed to bring down the Predator before sheer weight of fire did the same to him in turn. By eliminating him, the Termagants in the far left (which my opponents had been moving forward to try and shoot at me) were forced to Lurk well outside capture range of their objective. My Clan-Commander immediately rushed to the Trygon that had just eaten the squad holding my middle objective, and purged him as well, securing my lines once more.

Meanwhile, the Librarian and Assault Squad finally decided to take the fight to the enemy, and also jumped out, charging and defeating the Zoanthropes, before leap-frogging over the Hive Guard to engage the Warriors, though their performance there was less impressive and they were dragged down quicker than I had hoped. Commander Vorrax charged a brood of Termagants trying to claim my right objective, and forced them to withdraw due to being outside Synapse range.

When the dust settled on turn 6, I still held all three of my objectives, the Tyranids held one of theirs. I also had accomplished Slay the Warlord and Linebreaker, while they had First Blood, for a total of 11 Victory Points to 4. I had my Clan-Commander, two Combat Squads, and the Thunderfire remaining, while my opponents had two large Termagant broods, a badly wounded Tervigon, four Warriors, and a lone Hive Guard. All told, the whole battle took over three hours (including a food break), so it was pretty protracted.

But holy frak was it fun! I RARELY had battles like this 5th edition. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion by turn 2 which player was going to essentially wipe the other off the board. I can only think of one game off-hand in a tournament where it was even close like this.

I admit, I was nearly ready to concede by turn 2 given how awful some of my rolling was going (I even literally threw some of my dice out!). But that is not how a true son of Ferrus fights! We stand until the end, until the last man is fallen! So I fought on, and won! I shall be as iron, for the iron endures!

So yeah, I had a TON of fun tonight. Major props to Angelica and Rob for being so sporting and giving a good fight. I kinda wish I had taken pictures now, heh.

And yes, I realize now I had four Heavy Support choices. I didn't realize it during the game, and neither did my opponents. My Vindicator did literally nothing because it got blown up the first time anything shot at it, so I think it's all good anyway. :P

EDIT 8/23: Added end-of-battle picture.