Summer of GW?

Hi all,

You've got to love Halifax weather.  The Cub and I set up a game outside a few days back, and a fairly big one too.  Weather was perfect, forecast good.  Then the clouds rolled in ;)  We were doing fine, until a massive gust of wind blew in out of nowhere, and took out the terrain, and both our army boxes, scattering Khorne Daemons and Salamanders all over the yard.

*sigh*

After a few days to recover from the trauma ( ;) ), we relocated indoors, for our first official game of 9th edition 40k.  We played 75 Power Level, which probably translates to about 1500ish points, and it felt about right for an afternoon or evening game.  I got the Beloved to take some pictures, but they're all from the start of the game.  Enough to get the flavour, anyways.

Most of the Daemons (some still lurking in the Warp).  I'm enjoying the Soul Grinder, he's due a paint job.

I took a pure Khorne Daemons list.  It's not going to be setting the competitive scene on fire, but it does fine for a casual game at home.  Cub took his Salamanders, and it was a good match up - he had the edge in shooting, I had it in close combat, but neither of us was completely skewed.

Daemon prince lending his re-roll aura to the Soul Grinder and a Skull Cannon.  

In the new edition, scenarios are tied to game size.  We played "No Man's Land", which is one of several progressive objective-holding games (you get more points the more of an advantage you have in controlled objectives), and which has the option to take a secondary objective giving bonus points for holding the centre.

Tried deepstriking Bloodcrushers for the first time.  It worked pretty well - there used to be a unit of Hellblasters there ;)

Secondary objectives are now a big part of the game.  I took ones that encouraged me to control the board and get into Cub's deployment zone, while he took the scenario one (control the table centre) and one which gave him points for taking out my Warlord (my Daemon prince).  It meant that in addition to the normal fencing over objectives, he spent a bunch of the game trying to zone me out and chasing units around his backfield, while I had to be very cagey with how I used my DP (which is one of the hardest hitting units in my force).  It made the game much more "thinky", but not in an oppressive way.

A good chunk of Cub's backfield, and at the bottom, his Warlord, a Salamaders character, "Vulcan He'stan"

We started fairly late in the day, so had to call it at the end of turn 3 for time.  I was winning on points, but Cub was due to pull ahead the next turn, and the game was going to come down to a couple of clutch fights on Cub's side of the table.  Could have gone either way, but things were tipping in his direction.

Gratuitous shot of bloodletters.  Slowly working through the latest batch I picked up.

It turned out to be a really fun game, and I wish we could have played it out.  There's been quite a few small, but cumulatively significant changes to game play, many of which seem to have been designed to counter "gamey" rules exploits.  I have no doubt new ones will be found, but for now, we're still working through what we don't know we don't know about the new rules, and exploring new missions etc.

Things have been a little slow on the historicals front.  My painting mojo has slumped in the last month or so, particularly for historicals (I've had a unit of 6mm Austrian dragoons staring at me accusingly from the desk for some time).  Although I've been picking away at GW stuff, that's slowed a bit as well.  Not sure if just busy with work, the weather, or one of those occasional slow patches, but I've long since learned not to try and force things.

On the plus side, things are looking up for the local historical scene in general.  I may be getting in some "virtual" gaming on Tabletop Simulator in the next little while, and I've been chatting with one of the local players about working towards a post-Covid project.  I could use a spur - the Victrix Carthaginians I picked up a while back are mostly still sitting in their box, mainly due to analysis paralysis over basing and rules.  With a clear objective / plan in mind, either they, or one of the half-finished 15mm projects, might get a spur.  Further info as things develop.

Hope everyone is doing okay out there.

FMB