Last night was my first night playing at the Ordo Fanaticus game club in Portland. It's a rented space above a retail shopping center, with several large rooms full of gaming tables. There's even a whole room full of terrain and battle mats like you can see that we used below. If you want to just show up and play, the first time is free, and after that you can either pay $5 per visit, or $30 for a year and $2 per visit, or $100 for a year with no fee per visit. Game nights are Tuesdays and Sundays.
It seems like a very friendly bunch of guys. I had a chance to chat with a couple of them before my opponent showed up, and the spirit of the club seems to be just to get together to play and have fun, with much less of a focus on being very competitive. This, I think, is a really good thing. I've been two nights now, once just to check it out and meet a few people and watch a little bit of a game of Necromunda, and I went last night for my first night playing 40K, against a guy called Joel who I arranged a game with on the club forum. One he showed up, I was focused just about entirely on the game, and ended up leaving pretty soon after, just offering brief greetings to some of the others around. I'd say there were probably 15-20 people there in total while I was there last night, about the amount I'd seen the first time I went, possibly a little more.
Joel was super cool. It was my first time playing against his army, Genestealer Cults, and I'm still a pretty newer player anyway, so he took care to explain all of his units to me at the beginning of the game, and even went out of his way to point out a few examples of strategies he was using and why, and furthermore offered a few pointers to me about tactics I might like to take in certain situations, and explored various hypotheticals. Basically, it was a very friendly game all-around, not at all a win-at-all-costs sort of thing. He even said he felt a little bad about how the evolution of the mission (as objectives disappeared) forced him to funnel a lot of his force directly into mine in what might otherwise seem an aggressive or cutthroat manner.
He also offered on a few occasions to back the game up by a move or two or phase if I wanted to go back and change something I'd done or forgotten to do. I didn't really need to, though. I managed to play decently without forgetting much of consequence or doing anything regrettable. This was partly due to the "pre-flight checklist" document I put together for myself to print off with my BattleScribe rosters for each game.
For my part, I am totally fine with however a game plays out, even against very competitive players. I just don't happen to feel the need to play that hard myself, most of the time. I had a great time playing with Joel, and as we were wrapping up we made a tentative plan to play again next week, a 1500 point game, my White Scars versus this same Genestealer army of his at a larger size.
Here's what the table looked like once we set up the terrain.
Below is after deployment, at the start of the first battle round. We were playing Lockdown from Chapter Approved 2019. I had to choose the deployment, and rolled for Dawn of War style. He won a roll off and chose to be the attacker, and so I would be the defender. The thing about this mission is that the 6 objectives begin disappearing over the game, at the beginning of each battle round. Objectives 1 and 6 stay on the table the whole game, but 2-5 disappear at the beginning of the battle rounds of the same number. You place the objectives in turn, but at that point they are not assigned numbers. Its only after all the setup and deployment and such that you assign numbers to each objective. Each player gets to assign either 1 or 6, the ones that will be around the whole game, then you pick an objective and roll a d6 until you get an unused number, and that objective takes that number, and repeat until all 6 numbers are assigned.
I ended up having 5 and 6 very near where a lot of my army was deployed, and 2 over where the rest was deployed, so I was starting off with a pretty decent setup. He had a squad hidden in cover on 1, and 3 over on the other side of the board by his Basilisks. 4 was in the middle and uncontrolled to begin with.
As the attacker, he went first, but he didn't do a whole lot on his first turn. You can see one of the blips below near the hidden objective 1. A squad of cultists with web guns (I'm not sure of the actual unit name) appeared here in his first turn, and that's all. The only other thing he did in his first turn was to fire his three Basilisks at my Heavy Weapons Squad, but he was only able to kill one of the three models with all that fire.
In my first turn, I moved models up to hold objectives, and since there were still no enemies on the board to speak of, the only model I had that fired was the Leman Russ below with the battle cannon. It took a couple of wounds off one of the three Basilisks directly across from it. The picture directly below here is just after the start of the second battle round, when objective 2, which the squad below was controlling, disappeared. At this point, this squad and the characters here had nothing else to do on this half of the table, and would start to book it over toward the rest of the action to their left.
My CP and Victory points counts after the first battle round are below. My army gave me 10 CP, and I spent one on a relic, and two to make a tank into a Commissar for morale purposes, so I'm at 7 here.
On his second turn, the brunt of his army appeared in from deep strike, including a unit of 20 Acolyte Hybrids near objective 4...
another unit of 19 Acolyte Hybrids only 3" from my guys on objective 6 (due to a stratagem--they couldn't charge that turn), a Kellermorph, a Patriarch with baby, and the Genestealer banner guy, whose name I forget.
His Acolyte Hybrids near point 4 shot and killed my remaining 2 models of my Heavy Weapons Squad...
and then charged my Platoon Commander in such a way that they could still control the point. He didn't want to actually kill my guy, because he wanted his unit to be in combat with him, so he only put a few guys around him to prevent falling back. Unfortunately for him, his guys that had to fight did kill my model, opening this squad up to be shot at on my next turn.
The unit of 19 Acolyte Hybrids he brought in shot and entirely killed my 10-man infantry squad that was controlling point 6. Further shooting accounted for a Commissar, half of my infantry squad screening my Leman Russ, and some wounds on the tank itself. I had played a defensive strat on the tank, spending I think 1 CP on that to go down to 6.
The body count going into my second turn. I had yet to kill anything of his yet.
First things first, I spent 2 CP (down to 4) on Send In The Next Wave! to bring by my Heavy Weapons Squad, as shown below. This next pic as actually after movement and shooting in my second turn. You can see where the tank and infantry off-screen to the right perforated the majority of his mid-field Acolyte Hybrids. There was a Smite involved from Aradia Madellan, too, if I recall. My remaining half an infantry squad on point 5 in this pic and my tank in this picture and the resurrected Heavy Weapons Squad shot into the other large squad of Hybrids, and killed maybe half of them. Rolls were low and weapons inaccurate in this game, for the most part.
Back to him for the beginning of the third battle round. One thing he did was to charge his remaining Hybrids at my Company Commander after he'd used them to shoot my Heavy Weapons guys off the board again.
He had a few Hybrids left from the mid-field bunch that charged my remaining infantry on point 5 and killed them in combat to take that point from me.
I must have skipped taking pics of a turn, because by this next one my tank and Yarrick and the Command Squad have finished off all his Hybrids.
My force coming from the far side of the board had made it to point 4 and held that for a turn (leftmost guy below), and are still moving westward at this point.
This tank had started to ignore the Basilisks altogether in order to ship in against all the Hybrids.
Said Basilisks, and his one squad still in hiding still on point 1.
They finally come out, just before shooting up half my squad nearby.
At one point both of my tanks were down to exactly 1 wound left, as the Basilisks started to roll well toward the end. I had used a strat to repair a wound one time at some point. (3 CP remaining)
I guess we are still in the fourth battle round here, since objective 5 is still there. At this point his Patriarch charged my tank, which wasn't able to overwatch due to a psyker power, and his Kellermorph charged my Command Squad to get control of the objective.
I fell back with my tank on my turn. I had a good reason for moving it in that direction at the time, but I have forgotten it, now.
I used an order shown below so the remainder of this squad could fire after having advanced into range.
He used a Psychic Power to finally kill my Leman Russ Punisher, after he'd advanced back to the objective 6.
The Basilisks finally finished off my other Leman Russ....
and my remaining infantry squad...
... and Aradia Madellan
This left me with just a Commissar and Platoon Commander to kill the Kellermorph so he wouldn't get Linebreaker at the end of the game.
And they did it! And that was the end of battle round 6 and the game.
Takeaways?
Most GSC units are fairly low toughness, so heavy bolters and my Punisher assault cannon chew them up good. Even my lasguns were doing well against them. You have to be wary of their deep strike capabilities.
I could probably have had more heavy weapons trying to take out his Basilisks. I could have kept my battle cannon Russ on them, and I could have had my autocannon squad on them, as well. That may have helped, especially when they started to roll well later in the game.
I probably should also should have maintained the screen on my Punisher Leman Russ, and not allowed his Patriarch to ever charge it. The reason I moved them away was to take the nearby objective, but I could have done that a different way, definitely.
Another Psyker or two might be good. We had a few times where we were able to deny each other's attempts, and those felt pretty crucial each time. I had a Smite be denied that could have helped out at one point.
As I mentioned before, I'll probably face this army again next week with my White Scars at 1500 points, so this'll give me some things to think about in the meantime.
