Another Thursday, another sizable crew at Redcap’s for 40k.  Buford and I had planned to pair up for what he steadfastly insisted on being a friendly training simulation among friendly loyalist chapters.  It wound up a little different though and not a straight up match.  As we were about to deploy a young kid showed up with a fresh new Dark Vengeance box—seriously, he’d bought and assembled all of it (well) sometime between Sunday and Thursday, which is impressive—for his first ever game of 40k.  There wasn’t anybody around hanging out unmatched, so we worked his Dark Angels into my team.

Overwhelm

I frequently wind up playing with guys coming back to 40k after a hiatus.  But it’s been a couple years since I played with someone totally new.  It was somewhat educational to reflect on just what a daunting prospect that is.  Even as a teammate with about 600 points in an 1850 point army, there’s just so much going on.  In an actual game against anything but the most basic Marines (Chaos or Loyalist) or maybe some other basic infantry, it’s also got to be hard to pick up the rhythm with so many special cases.  Here Buford’s bikers were getting turboboosts, Hammer of Wrath attacks, Outflanking, etc., so just all sorts of additional complications.  It was also a good reminder that 40k has a major stamina component.  Even I find it fairly hard sometimes to stay focused on a Thursday as we get down to bottom of the night.  Here the kid was definitely overwhelmed after the first two hours or so.  Really we should have either stopped the game after Turn 3—Buford was killing it anyway—or significantly dropped the points total before we started.

Consider a new player facing the current generation of Necrons, especially Necrons + Forge World, and just imagine all the rule variations and crazy powers going on.

One thing I did find interesting is the different pathways into 40k that are out there now.  For example, I started running through the different units and weapons, and the kid already knew a lot of them.  Turns out he’s read a lot of the Horus Heresy books, played a couple rounds of the Dark Heresy roleplaying game, and finally picked up the box set after watching a couple guys play at the shop on Sunday.

Also, everyone’s aware of this, but that Dark Vengeance box is awesome.  Great miniatures, and the Marine half alone at an off-the-cuff calculation is worth something like $200.

White Scars

Obviously everyone’s talking about how awesome the White Scars are now.  That seems pretty clear when you read the new codex, but for me at least it’s difficult to see exactly how awesome until you see them across the table.  No one advantage seems over the top in isolation, but add them all up and it’s pretty brutal.  Troops that move 12″ and essentially ignore all terrain so they’re stupid fast, are T5 with a 4++ or even 3++ invulnerable so they’re stupidly robust, get a free attack on the charge before you can do anything and that attack at S5 so they’re always ahead in combat, can leave combats at will, and—oh, yeah—both they and their friends can outflank.  Now, I’m not saying it’s unbeatable or broken, but I am saying Buford’s lucky he’s been playing a White Scars biker army since before time began or I’d be giving him a lot more flak about it.

Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

One thing to watch out for is going up against Khan in a challenge with your Warlord.  He’s not crazy strong, but he gets a fair number of special attacks, and he’s T5.  If you lose though, he gains D3 extra Victory Points.  Obviously that’s not going to come into play all the time, but that’s a big advantage if it happens, so it’s a fair guess many Scars players will have their Khan coming straight for your dude.

The other big thing is the outflanking.  Khan gives Scout to all bikes and units with dedicated transports.  That can be a big deal, e.g., if it means you’ve got a Landraider full of Terminators now coming in directly on top of your home base.  In this game it was especially rough because we rolled for Hammer and Anvil, playing the long direction of the table, so outflanking was particularly brutal in the narrower confines.

Some assaults are just destined to never end.

Dice

Going into the tournament on Saturday, there are a couple things I still need to figure out how to remind myself more readily.  One is precision shots/strikes from characters, which seems to be a nearly universally forgotten rule in friendly play.  More specifically to me, I always forget that Salamanders mastercraft one weapon for each character.  Probably I need to put some blue dice or something in my tin to remind myself of that.