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.

Strange Bedfellows

You might remember in this entry I was talking about a weird match between four players: Eldar and Orks teaming up against Noise Marines and Daemonhunters. This was one very strange game but, I dunno... the combination of personalities, armies and just the overall chemstry made it so much fun. We had to call time after two turns (Games Workshop was closing), but we all agreed it was a great game.

Well, last night we got the rematch we were looking for. We upped it to 1500 points, but otherwise we had the same teams, same table, same objectives and even took the same table sides.

It was seriously one of the most bloody games I've ever played. By the end of turn 6 there was almost nothing left on the table. I lost everything except one Farseer and two Falcon tanks. My Ork partner lost absolutely everything except one dreadnaught. Similar losses were felt on the Chaos/Daemonhunters side.

Two things to take particular note of: Gabriel (Orks) has one awesomely painted army and has even picked up an award for his efforts. Not bad for a guy who's only 14 (or was it 15? Whatever). Also, Winston's purple Slaanesh Land Raider was set up to have speakers on the side, playing music from a small MP3 player that was shoved into the body of it. For at least three turns we listened to "Barbie Girl" and that annoying Spice Girls song. The longer the music went on, the worse we wanted to shoot it. It was a really cool idea, though.

Oh, by the way: Eldar and Orks lost (the enemy got about 100 points more than they needed to break a tie)... but it didn't feel like a loss. It was such an awesome game that I walked away with a great feeling.