10th Edition 40K - First Game, First Thoughts, Reflections on 9th and Blog Update

Hello!

Apologies for the mouthful of a title, this one is going to be a bit of a disjointed collection of thoughts, but hey, here we are. Kicking off with my first game of the new 10th edition 40k: Orks vs Daemons!

This was a 1500 point game playing the standard Only War mission at the end of the free Core Rules. I was bringing the Orks, as is only right and proper for a first game, against Tony aka the Narrative Wargamer with his primarily Khorne based Chaos Daemons.

I took a mix of unit types, but keeping it fairly simple in terms of numbers of extra rules, with no enhancements. Three units of 20 choppa Boyz, two units each of three Killa Kans and Deff Koptas, a Battlewagon and a selection of characters: Weirdboy, Painboy, Warboss and Waaagh! Banner Nob (represented by the Goff Rokker!). The Boss and Banner went together with a unit in the Wagon.

The Daemons were a mix of infantry and big scary monsters. Two units of Bloodletters and a squad of Plaguebearers with a couple of support characters were backed up by a Skullcannon, a Daemon Prince, a Soulgrinder and the Bloodthirster.

Orks got turn one, surged forward to touch the middle objectives while leaving some Kans to guard the home one, did a bit of light shooting, and that was it, turn one of 10th edition completed!

Daemons responded in kind, leading to a couple of charges onto the objectives. Bloodletters cut into the 20 Boyz with Painboy, killing ten, but were stomped out by the return attacks. On the other flank the Soulgrinder went in to stomp a number of the Weirdboy's Boyz but took no damage in return.

Ork turn two meant WAAAGH! time, and the Weirdboy and friends sneakily jumped out of combat in order to charge the Skullcannon and take the daemon home objective! I'm pretty sure I didn't get Da Jump to work out this well for me in the entirety of 9th edition!

I plugged the gap they left with Killa Kans and the Warboss unit. Extra attack Kans punched some holes in the Soulgrinder before the WAAAGH!-boosted Warboss finished it off with nine strength eleven powerklaw attacks! Elsewhere the Painboy unit got a model back and then charged the Plaguebearers to ensure they didn't wander onto an objective - this mean the daemons were scoring no points on their turn!

The counter attack came in hot, with the angry Bloodthirster jumping over to mess with the Kans on my objective. The second Bloodletter squad turned around to go back for the Weirdboy/Boyz, and the Prince helped out the Plaguebearers. The big lad obviously did his thing, murdering the Kans and then killing a nearby Kopter with bonus mortal wounds, however the other two combats went a bit differently. 

Bloodletters cut down a load of Orks, but in the WAAAGH! turn the remainder fought back hard and killed the entire unit! This scrap would eventually result in the Skullcannon killing off the remaining Boyz and the weirdboy, and only just suriving the resulting deadly demise! The Daemon Prince had it go a bit differently - he used a big 14 attack sweep, but between the new 5+ save and 5+ Feel No Pain, he was unable to make a real dent in the Boyz, though was essentially immune to most of their attacks with a FNP of his own added to high toughness and 2+ save. At the end of the game the Plaguebearers were all gone but the Prince had still not managed to completely wipe the unit!

In turn three most of my remaining forces swarmed the Bloodthirster, including a second WAAAGH! being called for the Warboss/Banner unit. The 'thirster took his toll but eventually the Warboss smashed him down, leaving the daemons with not much, just the remnants in the ongoing combats around the objectives mentioned above. As a result Tony picked up his first victory point in turn four (as a Boyz mob failed battleshock) and the eventual score was, I think, 11-3 to da Boyz. WAAAGH!

So, my thoughts? Overall I really enjoyed it. It certainly felt like it will be a generally smoother and slightly quicker game once we've all learned the rules properly, and though there were a few weird rules interactions we weren't sure about, it seemed like a lot of the fiddly little details had been taken out. Simplified but not simple, as they say. My big takeaway however was that most of the units seemed to do more or less what they were supposed to, in a way that 9th tried to achieve but didn't quite. The big tough daemons took a lot of killing with T11, decent saves and loads of wounds. Rokkits were bouncing off them and buckets of dice from choppa attacks were only chipping off the odd wound occasionally. Similarly a mob of 20 Boyz with a character was a bit of a wall, taking a serious sustained effort to remove. Anti-elite Bloodletters were cutting down around 10 a time and then getting battered by the return attacks, and all the characters were adding powerful abilities. I could see myself running quite a lot of them!

Aside from the specifics of this game, I am excited to play more 10th and experiment with more stuff, though it's not all perfect. Balance is clearly going to be way off initially - and it always was going to be with a reset regardless of play testers, but I think the decision to 'power level' the points didn't help. I certainly don't hate it, it is nice and easy to just pay single costs for units, but I don't love it either. There's a lot of stuff that's just a no brainer, like the Deffrolla on the Battlewagon, that just hurts you for not modelling it that way (or alternatively encourages breaking WYSIWYG). I'm fairly confident that these sort of issues will be sorted in time though, through points updates and the full books.

Looking back over 9th edition, I can honestly say that I really enjoyed it, though it was clearly flawed. Once the complexity and power started ramping up it became very hard to keep up with and it clearly was not designed with the 'casual' player in mind. It had moments of actually being very well balanced and interesting from a veteran 40k player's perspective, but it must have been an absolute nightmare to have tried to get back into the game after a break of several years, only to come up against peak Drukhari or Tyranids and be wiped off the board in a slew of badly costed units and stacked special rules.

I think 9th had a bit of a reputation for being a tournament focused edition, but that's not strictly true. 9th brought is Crusade, and many, supplements with narrative rules - a lot of which I've spoken about at length! I'm glad GW decided to refine the Crusade format however, it seems like it will be much more balanced for random games between mismatched Crusades, and it also looks like the narrative element is kind of baked into the system a bit more. 

I feel like 9th will be remembered as a bad edition by many, but I think it was quietly important. This was the edition where GW decided to allow themselves to change decades-old rules and try to make units play like they are actually supposed to. Orks are supposed to be really hard to kill, so they got toughness 5 after having T4 since the early 90s. Same with regular (and chaos, eventually) marines getting two wounds, and multi-meltas having two shots, and Eldar covered head to toe in armour getting a 4+ save. So many changes to rules and stats that were almost set in stone before, so that the models in the game felt just a little bit more like they 'should' do. They didn't always get it right of course, but I think that will be the positive legacy of 9th, being carried forward into 10th and beyond.

Now, with all that said, for me personally the shift to 9th also signified a shift to not recording every battle on this blog. Some get summarised as part of a larger post, some just get posted to Instagram. I don't always have the time or energy to do big write ups anymore, and though I did beat myself up about 'missing' a few, it is ultimately something I've decided I'm perfectly happy with. As I've always said, this blog is mostly for my own benefit, so I make no apologies for not getting out content regularly or to a specific standard. So what this means for the future is... not a lot really. I will continue with sporadic posting with no intent to cover everything, just a general overview of what I've been up to. I hope that if you are reading this you will find it entirely reasonable on my part, but even if you don't, thanks for reading and please stay safe out there.

Video Boarding Action Battle Report - Tyranids vs Space Wolves

Hello!

Back with another Narrative Wargamer YouTube battle report! And this time, it's with the new-ish Boarding Action rules - though rather than using expensive, probably out of stock plastic terrain that neither Tony or myself own, we made a battlefield with card Necromunda and Space Hulk tiles. With that in mind we picked a thematic match up with my Tyranids taking on not-quite-terminators, in a mostly Gravis armoured Space Wolf force. The Wolves were kindly lent to Tony by fellow Narrative Wargamer Podcast contributor, Chris of the Unrelenting Brush.

In any case, after their kin inflicted a minor loss on the Tyranids, the Space Wolves were on the hunt, venturing into a space hulk looking to burn the nest, but the Nids were certainly not going to go down without a fight, especially as they were able to employ specialist organisms bred for this kind of battle. This would most certainly be a brutal, close quarters battle of ceramite against chitin...

I really enjoyed the differences here between a regular 40k game and Boarding Action. It really felt a lot more tactical than a normal 500 point game of 40k which usually goes one sided very quickly in my experience. The terrain and various changes to actions and overwatch etc meant there was a lot more thought going into how to negotiate the battlefield and it helped kept units alive a fair bit longer. I hope that comes across in the video, and you enjoy it - and maybe it'll inspire you to give it a go as well, especially if the barrier to entry has been access to the official terrain. 

In other news however, that won't be the last time my Tyranids will feature on the Narrative Wargamer channel. Much as Chris did with his Space Wolves, I am lending Tony my Tyranids for some months, and there is at least one more game in the pipeline featuring them...

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there.

Tempest of War Battle Report - Death Guard vs Aeldari

Hello!

Another Tempest game, again at 1750 points. As I said before I am trying to play mostly Tempest to see out 9th ed, and as part of that I am planning on attending a 1750 point Tempest event run by Wooden Spoon Wargaming soon. As such, this is more or less the army I'm planning on taking - Death Guard led by Mortarion! 

Now, fair warning, my battle reports are usually pretty vague and focus on the main thrust of the battle rather than all the details. I also find that Tempest is a little harder to remember in detail because of the revolving secondaries. And this game was over a week ago at time of writing. So what I'm saying is it's mostly going to be pictures!

That said, it was a good looking game as it was against Sharpy, who always puts on a good table, and his Aeldari, which are always a bit of a mix of classic space elf units. For this one he brought a Farseer and an Autarch leading Warlocks, Guardians, Warp Spiders, Shining Spears, a couple of units of Rangers plus their jet bike equivalents the Shroud Runners, Dire Avengers, a War Walker, a unit each of the Wraith constructs and the centrepiece - the Avatar of Khaine. His Craftworld traits were to reroll a wound roll once per unit per phase, and to get +1 to hit after a unit has lost a model - which is very nice on those tough Wraith units.

Arranged against them were my Death Guard forces, running as Mortarion's Anvil as usual. The big lad was of course here and the warlord, but I chose not to splurge too heavily on pregame CP to dish out a load of traits and relics elsewhere. Here it's a battalion and a super heavy aux, but this list will fit into the Arks of Omen detachment if it's in use.

HQ: Lord of Virulence (Acidic Malady), Malignant Plaguecaster (Plague Wind, Curse of the Leper)

Troops: 7 Plague Marines (power fist, blight launcher, sigil, two plasma guns), 2x 10 Poxwalkers

Elites: 7 Blightlord Terminators (combi plasma, blight launcher, flail of corruption), Helbrute (fist and multimelta), Foul Blightspawn (Revolting Stench-vats, Viscous Death)

Fast Attack: Foetid Bloat Drone (Fleshmower), Myphitic Blight-hauler

Heavy Support: Plagueburst Crawler (entropy cannons, rothail volley gun)

Lord of War: Mortarion (Miasma of Pestilence, Gift of Contagion, Putrescent Vitality, Warlord, Gloaming Bloat)

Deployment was a pair of opposing triangles with a bubble missing in the middle, 9 inches around the centre. The mission was to hold one, two and extra points for claiming an objective with an action - which was a bit of a problem with me since most of my troops can't do actions (a revision of this list might add in some cultists for this reason). I choose to keep the Terminator armoured units in reserve in case some appropriate secondaries came up, with the Eldar left the Warp Spider and Shining Spears to sneak through the webway.

Aeldari got the first turn and moved up to take shots. Nothing really died apart from some Poxwalkers but the Shroud Runners got in some sniper shots at the Foul Blightspawn, reducing him to one wound. With the Avatar marching up the middle it was obvious there was a challenge issued...

Which Mortarion gladly accepted! Fight! Fight! Fight!

Elsewhere I moved out to try and get towards some objectives, with the Plague Marines engaging some Rangers and smashing them off a point. Shooting was fairly ineffective with the combined firepower knocking off a Wraith construct or two.

Not too many points on offer here, but the big duel raged on, with the Avatar skimming a few wounds of Morty but dropping by half himself.

Turn two saw the Aeldari use their speed and tricksy ways to surround the Death Guard, pouring fire into the units on the flanks. Wraiths caused heavy damage and threatened to take objectives...

But more significantly the Shining Spears made it into melee with a strands of fate 6 to tie up the PBC and steal my backfield objective! Morty eventually slew the Avatar (though it fought on death to wound him further) but the Aeldari's champion was just a distraction to allow the rest of their forces to spring the trap!

In DG turn two I drew the 'Behind Enemy Lines' card and decided to drop my Terminators into the corners to grab some points and pressure the Eldar back lines. Morty stomped forward and dispatched the Dire Avengers, while assorted shooting dealt with the Shroud Runners, but I was unable to shift the Spears or Spiders.

The Lord of Virulence gooped all over Guardians and charged the Rangers, but I messed up here as due to the funky deployment zones this actually took him out of the zone and meant I didn't score the secondary. He didn't even kill all the Rangers on his first go!

As the game wore on Morty basically cleared a bubble around him, but the Eldar were tenaciously sticking to my back lines and denying me load of points. In particular those Shining Spears just refused to die to close range Entropy cannons.

The Terminators failed their initial charge on the Walker, eventually killing it a while later, but wasting their chonky ObSec presence in the far corner of the board - a poor move deploying them all the way over there.

In the end I wasn't able to cycle through a series of secondary objectives that were tantalisingly close to achievable, but the stubborn space elves weren't having it. 

Dramatically at the end the remaining Aeldari forces made a play for Assassinate, reducing Mortarion to a single wound, but he survived. With the too-late Terminators finally adding their firepower the Eldar were all but scoured from the board (aside from a couple of the cheeky Aspect warriors fighting over my objective), but the points told a different story, something like 90-45 to the Aeldari.

Having recently said Tempest produces really close games, I guess this was bound to happen! Still, it was fun and though not tight in the points it did allow Mortarion to do his thing in his first game, which was cool. Also, lots of lessons learned for the future - primarily regarding those Terminators and their deployment (probably best start on the board) and the chasing of marginal objectives rather than discarding them.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Stay safe out there!

Tempest of War Battle Report - Tyranids vs Space Wolves

Hello!

First 40k game of the year! With the Grim Dice Crusade League wrapped up, and the new GT mission pack out but not really available anywhere, it was time for good old Tempest of War, a format which is probably cementing itself as my favourite way to play 9th edition. Sadly due to work, Christmas stuff and illness I wasn't able to arrange the last game of the Crusade league (I ended up pretty much dead centre of the pack in the overall rankings) but I was now able to play my scheduled opponent Neilson and his Space Wolves, so we made it happen. Since he was looking forward to a bug hunt, I brought my Tyranids, and we had a nice 1750 point game (because his 2000 point army dropped a lot in the recent points adjustments!).

With the new points costs in play I took the opportunity to run a whole load of stuff I'd not taken much and leave out some of the things that were previously such good value. I ran Behemoth as usual, keeping the adaptive trait and fitting into a battalion. The Swarmlord was, of course, my warlord, and I spent one extra CP on another trait. 

HQ: Swarmlord (Catalyst, Paroxysm, Synaptic Lynchpin), Broodlord (Onslaught, The Dirgeheart of Kharis, Alien Cunning)

Troops: 3x 10 Termagants, 2x 3 Tyranid Warriors (talons, 2 deathspitters, venom cannon)

Elites: 2x 10 Genestealers, Haruspex, 3 Tyrant Guard (talons)

Fast Attack: Mawloc (adrenal glands, biostatic rattle), Trygon (adrenal glands, pincer tail, Dermic Symbiosis)

Neilson's Space Wolves were an essentially all Primaris force, heavy on infantry, and as such he had quite a few units. He spend a few CP at the start to kit out his characters and to place the Eradicators into reserve. He had a Captain (aka Wolf Lady), Librarian (Rune Priest), Lieutenant (Wolf Guard Battle Leader?), two units of Intercessors, Assault Intercessors, two of Infiltrators, two of Reivers, Hellblasters, Las Eliminators, Eradicators, Suppressors, Flamestorm Aggressors, a Redemptor and some doggos. It's a lot of stuff at 1750, but I was looking forward to not having to worry about Armour of Contempt!

Deployment. We were playing Vital Ground, which is increasing points for holding your home objective, any middle objectives and then your opponent's objective. It also scores extra points for killing units, which we didn't forget this time! The twist was that we placed an additional no man's land objective, meaning scoring that middle points bracket should have been fairly easy. Deployment was long edge triangles, but we both had forward deploying units, and we both had some stuff in reserve - the Rievers and Eradicators vs the big snakes.

Space Wolves got the first turn, and immediately moved up to cause some damage. Not a mega shooty army, the long range heavy weapons reached out to damage the Haruspex (who fixed some of it with Rapid Regeneration in my turn) and then the dread went brrrrrt with the Gatling cannon and a load of genestealers went away - though two remained in synapse range to frustrate. In melee a unit of Intercessors charged Genestealers in one of the central ruins, cutting down several but losing three to return attacks. Some secondary points were scored for claiming three objectives, but no units yet killed.

Tyranid turn one saw very little shooting, but a brutal counter punch to claim the middle. The Haruspex gobbled up the remaining Intercessors that had charged the Genestealers, while the Swarmlord and his guard cut down a unit of Infiltrators who had strayed to close to grab an objective - this netted me some points both for the kill and for the secondary card to claim an objective from the opponent. I also had to kill units in melee and kill 30 wounds worth of stuff which were well under way.

Space Wolves once again marched forward, but only one of their reserve units came in, Reivers on the flank looking to shift my two Genestealers hanging on to the objectives. They had secondary points on offer for killing units in the shooting phase, so between the Redemptor, and Aggressors a unit of warriors fell, leaving the Broodlord clear to be blasted off the board as well. Firepower also damaged the Haruspex once again but it remained alive. 

Those Reivers made their charge and displaced the 'stealers, who fought on death out of spite and killed a couple of them in return. Four more wounds for my tally.

Nid turn two, and it was monster time. The Mawloc burst up to cause some mortal wounds right on the Wolf home objective, while the Trygon found a gap right in the corner. The Haruspex regenerated again and went after the Dreadnought, while the Swarmlord and Guard flanked the ruin to get onto their objective - in this turn the Guard were made ObSec by Swarmy.

In the shooting and psychic phases not a lot happened, though importantly the Warriors hit the Suppressors to proc the Shard Lure stratagem and give the Trygon an extra dice to charge in. All the other charges were made, and the killing commenced. The Haruspex dropped the Redemptor to a single wound, though sadly was crushed in response. Swarmlord and the Guard both reduced their respective Intercessor units to just the sergeant. Finally the Trygon did kill the Suppressors to finish off my three melee kills!

Onto Wolves turn three, and the Assault Doctrine. Thanks to my melee butchery, they didn't hold their own objective, so lost some points there, but had an opportunity to gain some back in secondaries, with Assassination - kill the Swarmlord...

The reserves arrived to put pressure on the Termagants on my objective, while the Eradicators marched into their own deployment zone in order to get a nice close shot at the Swarmlord, while the Frost Axe wielding Wolf Lady lined up for the killing blow.

Unbelievably, only one of the six melta shots caused a wound, which was saved by the Swarmlord's psychic shield, leaving the Space Wolf warlord with a lot to do!

Elsewhere, the wounded Redemptor and Aggressors poured fire into the Trygon, then charged in, but in an impressive displace it split attacks to interrupt and kill both the Dread and two Aggressors, then passed a whole load of Dermic Symbiosis invulnerable saves against the power fist attacks.

In the big duel the Wolf Lady failed to do any damage, but passed all but one invulnerable save to survive and stick around.

In Tyranid turn three and beyond the fight for the centre was looking good for the Nids, while the flanks were going the way of the Wolves. The Mawloc kept the Eradicators busy/dead for the rest of the game while the Swarmlord eventually took down the enemy general in the grand duel (Neilson took this photo btw, I just thought it was pretty epic so I borrowed it.) The Trygon killed off the Aggressor but then perished to Eliminators and character support. Crucially the Reivers took out the Termagants on my home objective on the second attempt to net a bunch of points. By the end of the game it was looking very tight.

Tallying up the scores, with ten for painting, it ended in an incredibly narrow Space Wolf victory, 79-77. 

So first game of the year, and first loss. But really, it's nothing to complain about because it was another great, tight Tempest game. My last three have now been a two point loss and two dead draws, so that goes to show the system is well designed to create nail biters. With tenth edition probably on the way in the summer, I'm not sure quite how many games I'll get in before the end of ninth, but I fully intend to make most of them Tempest games if I've got any say in it! Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and stay safe out there.