Manchester

Ryan, aka as Manchester on the Deep Space Forums, came out to the St. Laurent Battle Bunker for a 2000-point game of Cleanse against me. Ryan plays a Chaos army called Thousand Sons, which is generally known for its resilience and implacable advance. We played the omega-level of the mission, which includes rules such as escalation and concealment. Though Ryan definitely won this game based on skill, I will say that the escalation/reserves rolls helped; almost if not everything in his army arrived on the table in turn two, while I slowly came in over the whole five turns following the first, and some stuff (like one of my Falcons) never came in. I conceded in turn five. He had completely dominated me.

In particular, I remember our first turn of deployment where his one unit was a basic troopo, and my forward unit was my trusty Warp Spiders. In turn two, the otherwise desolate and barren area weas suddenly filled with a Land Raider, a Predator, a Rhino, a bunch of troops, some Terminators and some demons... all focused on my poor Warp spiders. I suggested to him that they should get a special "Crapped My Pants" modifier of -1 to their rolls, but he didn't seem to think I was serious.

Take particular notice of just how well Ryan's army is painted. He's won some awards for his work, and it's not hard to see why. Particularly neat is the model he made to mark when his Thousand Sons Marines take one of two wounds; it's a ghost flying out of a fallen Marine body. It's quite awesome.