We had our rematch of the Death Guard vs. Tyranids vs. Strike Force Justinian tonight, and because tomorrow is a public holiday we all stayed slightly later and managed to finish the whole game, AND I won 8-7-4! 🎉 (We _did_ slightly fuck up one rule up about injuries and so my Heavy Gunner did better in close combat versus the Space Marine leader than he should have, and ended up killing the leader.) Instead of ten Genestealers, my friend playing the Tyranids took three Tyranid Warriors instead and used, uh... some different type of Aliens miniature for them that looked very cool.
The Death Guard felt extremely thematic, it was just a slow, steady, plodding advance across the battlefield, and they were hard enough to kill that they were difficult to dislodge from the objectives once they were on them. My plasma gunner was my MVP, he only shot three times but each one was a killing shot, taking out two Space Marines and a Genestealer. I also took the dual-plague-knives Fighter for the first time and he did okay, but he _definitely_ served well as an extra close-combat threat beyond just my leader. The Disgustingly Resilient rolls were a lot swingier this game than usual, I either did fantastically well (my Plasma Gunner took nine damage from the Space Marine sniper and would have died but ended up rolling so well he only took four, and subsequently ended up vaporising the sniper in his own activation), or really badly (my Fighter took something like ten damage in his first melee combat and saved NONE of it), with nothing in between.
As with the first game, we had a couple of very cool cinematic moments, my Fighter facing off against one of the Warriors and a Genestealer, and one of the Space Marines shooting at another of the Warriors while one lurked behind him ready to pounce.
After our last game of Kill Team (https://virtualwolf.org/media/posts/2542) I figured I should probably paint up my Plague Marine who has the double plague knives because he's a beast in close combat and against Genestealers my ranged Marines weren't super-useful. I re-primed him using a zenithal highlight and got him fully painted this weekend, and am very happy with how he came out! There's zero drybrushing except on the sand on the base, it's entirely Contrast paints and manual highlighting.
I also realised that I've been painting Plague Marines long enough that I have essentially the three stages of evolution of my painting technique. On the left in the second photo is one of my first Plague Marines from nearly six years ago now, using regular paints which looks fine but takes so long. In the middle is my second batch from eighteen months ago where I was using Contrast paints to greatly speed things up, but still had a plain white undercoat and the highlighting was still done by way of drybrushing. And on the right is this latest guy, with the full zenithal undercoat and manual highlighting!
Sunday night Kill Team tonight was a three-player match, Death Guard versus the Space Marines of Strike Force Justinian versus a Tyranid squad of just Genestealers, on the Gallowdark map. My friend who was playing Genestealers actually used the xenomorph miniatures from one of Aliens games and it looked SO COOL having them lurking around inside an old ruined starship!
We only got through three turns rather than the full four, the Genestealers won 5:4:4, but it really could have gone any way, and I was in with a pretty solid shot of winning if we'd had time to play the final turn. Most ridiculous moment of the game was one of my regular Death Guard Warriors being on two wounds left, getting smacked in the face for five melee damage from a Genestealer, and rolling FOUR successful Disgustingly Resilient rolls so he only took one wound so he had a chance to hit back and take the Genestealer down from its starting 8 wounds down to 3. There was also a very cinematic moment of the Genestealer leader fighting in close combat against the Space Marine leader (the Space Marine leader got utterly shredded).
Had a game of Kill Team tonight, my trusty Death Guard versus the Space Marine Intercession squad. I lost 17-14, but it really could have gone either way. I was let down at the very end by the Death Guard's lack of movement, and I can take solace in the fact that I completely wiped the Space Marines off the board. 😛
I think I might FINALLY make use of the female Space Marine-looking heads I bought almost two years ago (https://virtualwolf.org/media/posts/1966) and put together an Intercession squad myself, because that squad is apparently a pretty good one to use to really get used to the rules (I've played a reasonable amount but just CANNOT keep in my head all the ploys and TacOps, I don't know what it is but I just can't do it).
First night of a planned fortnightly Kill Team gaming session at @[email protected]'s tonight! There were four of us, one hadn't played before so I played the introductory game with him, sans Tac Ops and equipment. He was playing the Adeptus Mechanicus Hunter Clade, versus my revolting Death Guard. We got part-way through the final turn but called it because I was up 7-4 and he wasn't going to be able to come back from that.
He really enjoyed it though, and I'm keen to start playing more regularly so I can actually properly remember the rules (and also learn how my Corsair Voidscarred play, because the miniatures are SO GOOD but I don't feel like I have a good handle on them yet).
Post-work Kill Team in the office again! This time we went back to the Compendium teams, Death Guard versus Adeptus Sororitas with a fireteam of Sisters Repentia. I lost 15-11, but almost entirely due to forgetting about my damn TacOps. 🙄 It likely would have been at least a draw had I remembered them, if not an outright win.
That being said, player of the match definitely goes to my leader who faced down this entire corridor of Sisters and ended up killing ALL of them. He was down to 1 wound left in the very last turn, and was let down by some extremely poor rolling on my part and ended up getting killed contesting an objective.
In news that will shock nobody, the only reason I was in the office today was for after-work Kill Team. 😛 Sadly didn't win this time, it was obvious how it was going to turn out by the end of the third round so we called it.
Tonight's game of Kill Team went very differently from the first one a few weeks ago! I ended up absolutely thrashing the friend I was playing against, 8 victory points to 3, and we didn't end up playing the fourth turn because he was down to one single unit at the end of the third.
Though he kindly pointed out after the game that my deployment was very bad and he held back a bit from just totally destroying my troops on the first turn so it wouldn't be a lopsided game. 😅
We actually finished the game! 😮 I lost, partially because we weren't playing with the extra bits to allow for more victory points to simplify things, but also because there was so much to keep track of I kept forgetting about various abilities. Still, keen for the next game!
We played another (partial) game of Kill Team tonight! And for the first time EVER, everything was fully painted. 😮 We only got a turn and a half in thanks to us taking a while to set everything up, but we're definitely getting the hang of it.
I was playing Death Guard, and they have a rule called "Disgustingly Resilient" where if they would lose a wound, you roll a D6 and on a roll of 5+ the wound is not lost. It doesn't matter how many wounds, just ANY wound. One of them was attacked and was going to be dealt 9 wounds (out of a total of 12), but my Disguisingly Resilient roll was amazing and I was able to reduce it down to 4. 😂