The Armageddon Diaries: Game 1 – The Blood Angels Hit The Table!

I wasn’t going to write this… but Jim pointed out a) it was my turn after he’d done the battle report for the other week’s Hallowe’en game, and b) the god folks who follow this blog have been waiting over two years to see my 1991 Blood Angels finally get some action in!

We did the campaigns that came with the 2nd Ed box set a few years back, (the Dark Age Of Peace & Sanity, if you will) with my lads in their former incarnations as Deathwatch Marines, but aside from no longer being able to locate the campaign book (oops) we fancied pitching in and doing a full blown “proper” 2nd Ed game. So, the table was set – well, pretty much left as it was from Yonkers the other week – and off we went!

We picked 1000 points, Jim knocked up a list from the newly christened Black Ork Cav featuring Warboss BludGuzzla, a Nob, a Bigboss, the Dread, a Battlewagon, a Dok, a Mek, two mobs of ten Boyz each and two of twenty Gretchin each… 64/65 infantry a Dread & a Battlewagon, pretty formidable!

To oppose them, I picked a Tactical squad with flamer & missile launcher (tooled up with frag, krak, melta & plasma shells) and figuring that the best way to oppose lots of bodies (mostly T3 Grots) would be LOTS OF GUNS I backed that up with a Devastator squad packing a pair of missile launchers tooled up with the same selection of shells and a pair of heavy bolters. Captain Tycho would command the force and after picking that up I was left with 32 points so I tooled him up with a couple of bits of wargear to help him in close combat.

We drew Mission Cards, me getting Engage & Destroy, Jim getting Take And Hold, and we agreed that his objective would be the ruined church in the middle of the open countryside. Orks deployed first as was their wont with a lower Strategy Rating:

The Black Ork Cav – quite a spectacle, I must say Jim!

The thin red line of heroes deploys to meet them..

They do say quantity has a quality of it’s own.. and looking at that lot I couldn’t help feel a little uneasy..

To everyone’s surprise, the Orks got first turn and advanced, a barrage of autogun fire reaching out and knocking out BOTH my missile launcher marines! So, a good start…

Frag missiles and bolter fire lay low a few Grots, but maddeningly they keep passing their morale checks

Surviving Devastators take cover and loose pot shots against the Grot mob screening the Ork boyz

..and then a technical hitch seems to have stopped us getting any more photos.. which I’m thankful for because frankly my Marines – the ones I’ve spent the last TWO AND A HALF YEARS painting – performed utterly abysmally.. aside from a few Grots downed here and there, my sole remaining missile launcher whiffed to hit the Dread THREE TIMES before being killed by a Gretchin, heavy bolters jammed left right & centre and the only time I rolled higher than a 2 was doing the morale checks, then I couldn’t roll less than 11!

As a result, Captain Tycho’s entire command was either killed or ran off, the last pictures of the man himself show him heroically charging the Ork Warboss and Nobz in a last ditch attempt to deny them their objective:

And to be fair, he did a good job, Captain T is a MONSTER in close combat.. but after finishing off the Warboss, the Bigboss and the dozen or so Orks round him simply opened up and turned the proud Captain into Peter Weller from the opening scenes of RoboCop..

Jim, in fairness, didn’t gloat too much, and even admitted that my luck with the dice was beyond appalling, so we’ve agreed that a rematch must happen… and then we figured well, why just repeat the game? Surely Captain Tycho has now been imprisoned by the Orks and it now must be critical for the Marines to rescue their leader? Plus just what was Warboss BludGuzzla IV looking for in that ruined church?

So with that in mind, I think a 2nd Ed campaign may be in the works… of course if the Marines are going to raid Da Black Ork Cav home turf, we’ll need to knock together some suitable scenery.. and because we’ll be needing some armour I’ll need to finish my Techmarines… OK, I think we’ve got a plan!