Friday 20 January 2017

NI4 friendly game 1

So, this is one of the two friendly games I played at the end of Northern Invasion 4 all the way back at the end of last year! Its taken a while to get them up here but I wanted to get them posted anyway. I also have two other games sitting in the draft folder written up and ready to go from several months ago, from back at the tail end of last summer I believe! Ill post them sometime soon as well, but they could sit in the draft box for sometime yet waiting for a space. Anyway, here's the first of the two batreps;

This game was played after I had finished the tournament on the Sunday. There were a couple of young kids hanging around watching what was happening, and one of them asked if I would play him, after having played 4 games in a day and a half I was a bit gamed out with my guard but I had my Eagle Knights in my bag, so I decided to change it up and play with them. 

We played around 1800 points, I say around as I think my opponent in this games had around 1834 points or something similarly odd and I managed to cobble together just over 1810 using my 1500 point list plus a few bits I had lying around. I could have allied in 300 points easy from my guard, but I felt like just winging it with what I had. 

In the end my list was something like;

Captain with stormshield and relic blade (which I forgot about!) with a command squad with champion, novitiate, and 3 vets with sstormshield and powerswords. 3 5x man tactical squads started on The table with the command squad. In reserve I had 2 10x man assault squads, 5x man vanguard vet squad and a 5x man death company squad. 

So a descent of angles style setup, and not optimized in anyway, shape or form. But a fun list and completely different from my guard army!

My opposition had a marine list, with; captain, librarian, 2 10x man tactical squads, 5x man sniper scout squad, 10x man terminator squad, 3x man bike squad, dreadnought, and a land raider. I think he may have had a 5x man devastator squad as well. All in all, a pretty normal marine list, nothing to strong or broken and pretty much what you'd expect from a young player.

As I said, this game was for fun, so we dint bother with warlord traits or missions and went for just killing each other. Probably a mistake on my part, as it was pretty clear that I was out manned and out gunned! But oh well!

After 4 tournament games I didn't feel like keeping detailed records of the friendly games (not that my records are very detailed) so things are a bit sketchy, however ill fill in what I can from the notes and memory.

Turn 1

With not a lot on the table my opposition mostly moved forward, generally shooting anything that was in range. With just a couple of tic squads and a command squad on the board, turn 1 was a dull affair.


My lines, tac marines in the building bottom left and tac squad in the ruin just in front of the command squad.

The enemy deployment,heavy armour on the right with the raider and dread, with the bikes for some speed. The left is held by various tac squads. His snipers had infiltrated just being the hexagonal terrain in the center.

Moving forward,the bikes blast forward, leaving the raider behind, both closing on the marines in the lower left building. There is also a razorback hidden in the central terrain. 

Turn 2

And my reserves arrive, all 4 squads arrive but the DC misshap and end up being placed right in to  corner of my deployment zone. Not a great start, but at least they survived!


The two assault squads arrive, more or less where they were supposed to.

The vanguards arrive as planned as well.

The "squad"! 

Im not sure what was really going on here, but there was defiantly some rule bending. I decided not to say anything at the time, as the kid was having fun playing a game and it was a casual game. The squad consisted of 10 men with a missile launcher, 2 plasma, melta, flamer, 4 bolters and sgts with plasma pistol and power fist. Looking at the picture the marine on the far left may even be holding a grav gun? Not strictly codex adherent but defiantly tooled up for any eventuality!

This is all that survived from the vanguards unit, not a great start for the squad. I was hoping that most would survive and charge the squads, doing damage with all the ap3 weaponry they have.

Turn 3


The lone survivor, the sanguine priest. Not quite as I planned, and it didn't get any better!

At the top you can just see everything turning to face the two assault squads, with predictable results. At the  the razorback disembarks its cargo of marines.

Turn 4

The tactical marines view

This was the last stand of the tactical marines, half a squad against 3 termies, a dread and a tooled up captain. It want going to end well, although as it happened it didn't end this turn! The marines got lucky with a failed charge from the termies, which blocked the dread from charging. Lucky but only delaying the inevitable

The Knights elite prepare for battle

On the otherside of the table my command squad and DC were reading for battle, there were plenty of units around to charge. The razorback has been destroyed, I think as a result the DC squad, but I don't really remember!

Turn 5

By this point in the game it was pretty obvious that I want going to win! I had few models left, mostly my DC and command squad who could have done some damage to the squads nearby at the back right of the table, but numbers we defiantly against us!

End game

With only a couple of tac marines, and a reduced command squad and DC squad against the at least half his army, not great. One the plus side the last of the assault marines had pulled off a minor mirical and destroyed the raider with a melts bomb! 

The end result - loss - didn't count points but looked like a loss to me, whether you counted points or units, I can't see how itcould really have been anything but a loss. 

The game was fun and I really wasn't playing to win, juathave a good  which I achieved. There were a few issues, many classic to young players. That "squad" for one, very much a case of "I've a bunch of models, ill form a  with them" plan, not codex compliant in any way, but its a friendly game. Some of the movement distances were a little questionable. Measuring the front model and moving it only for it to end up near the back of the squad at the end of the movement and lastly there is the  shooting measurements, where the tape measure moves depending on which end your looking at. These aren't major issues and in many respects are down to youth and lack of experience. Its only through games like these that they will learn, that's if they listen to what their told that is!

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