2008/04/03: Lunchbreak 250 (40k)

Played Matt L at a lunchbreak game of 40k. About 250 points each, barring error (*), with him on Nurgle Chaos Marines and me on Space Marines. The arena was small, a round table about 2.5' in diameter, but definitely enough room for that size force. Somewhat interestingly, we put down so much of Matt's terrain that it took a few moves for the shootin' to start. Those turns then largely consisted of Matt advancing on my dudes as I tried to maintain coherence, stay in cover, and still set up some choke points with the terrain. This worked a bit in the end as it funneled his assault down a little, but for the most part I think it just kept me from bringing a lot of shots to bear. One nice cinematic move was deking him out by swinging my unit around a copse of trees, then swinging back the other way to bring on a Flamer spot on with the line of dudes he'd so kindly setup to broadside me if I had come out the other side of the trees as expected. Not a ton of carnage in the end, but it looked cool and could have been devastating.

Playtime

About ten minutes to setup, an hour fifteen of business.

Result

The armies of the Imperium were killed, infected, corrupted, and generally thoroughly stomped on, no doubt to become undying horrors for the forces of darkness...

Lessons

Missile launchers continue to plague me. They should be so cool, but as Heavy weapons they're difficult to bring to bear---either the whole unit has to stay put, or you're down a shot for the round. I'm not sure what to do about that. The Plasmagun in my squad was a nice bonus though, as it pretty much scored every time it got a shot off.

I'm also having serious doubts about the value of covering dudes. It just seems much more important to risk losing them, but get the shots off as fast as you can.

(*) Seriously, he had a lot of dudes on the table. One of us must have screwed up, or my dudes are carrying way too much useless wargear. That's entirely possible.