I wrote up a narrative battle report for this but then the computer crashed and I lost it. So I'm just going to do a descriptive one this time. We used the 2nd edition rules much to our regret.
So the mission was that the one group of World Eaters led by their Chaplain were coming to recover some data from an old Word Bearers shrine that had been destroyed in the run up to the Word Bearers turning traitor. It had some handwaivium on it that would make things better somehow, or at least better for the Chaplain.
(the battlefield, it is part of an overgrown jungle surrounding a ruined temple)
The chaplain had 20 marines broken up into 4 battle squads of five each. Each group had either a heavy or special weapon and two of the groups also had a sergeant. One had a missile launcher (definitely a MISS-ile launcher this game) one had a meltagun, one had a sergent with a combi-bolter flamer and a heavy bolter, the other had a plasma gun and a sgt. with a powerfist.
The Chaplain had one of the teams with him and got to infiltrate close thanks to his boat. The other three squads had to come on the table edge.
(The chaplain and his chaps just getting out after a nice paddle)
They had to get to the gold thing with the tech priests in the middle of the temple ruins and get the two tech priests off the table beyond the water.
(The gold thing in the middle of the temple)
The other World Eaters had a mondo notion to bring this plan to a screeching halt.
(the other World Eaters, they also had 5 terminators in reserve)
Their prime mission was to kill the Chaplain but if they could also kill a lot of the enemy too then that would be stellar.
The Chaplain lost the initiative and tried to make up for it by running towards the temple. He wanted to get the heavy bolter in a position to fire on the enemy as they advanced. It didn't work out so well for them and the other side got to the temple first as 2E dreadnoughts are pretty fast.
(Here we are, where are those damned tech-priests)
("Oh, no you don't, I'm getting the jelly one.")
So they moved to get a position on the enemy and stay away from the dreadnought.
As it worked out the enemy decided to split up and come around from two different sides. The Chaplain squad went into overwatch and the enemy tripped that getting a face full of bolter and heavy bolter fire. When the smoke cleared they had lost all but their flamer guy who failed his break test and stood rooted to the spot, able to shoot, but out of range of anything.
(Caught in the overwatch)
He got better later.
The dreadnought and the Captain both maneuvered for some shots on the Chaplain, he moved to cover and tried to distract them while the rest of his guys ran up to get the techpriests into the building.
(dreadnought shooting at you)
(Captain shooting at you)
(you turn into a bubbling crater, seriously the multimelta on the dreadnought did 19 points of damage to the guy, it would have literally killed 6 of him.)
A firefight ensued between the two sections of Astartes on opposite sides of the ruined temple but no one could hit anyone else because of the rubble in the way, everyone was in heavy cover. After eliminating the Chaplain though the dreadnought and the Captain took the Chaplain's squad in enfilade, eliminating a marine a turn.
(cross temple firefight)
Then the terminators showed up.
(Ruh-roh, Shaggy!)
The whole time the missile launcher guy is shooting missiles at something. We're not sure what exactly it was but it may have been the dreadnought because in 10 shots he did hit that three times. Oh, and he needed a 3+ to hit it. None of the missiles did any damage to the dreadnought, although one did make the pilot reflect on his goals in life for a turn.
The terminators managed to get some shooting on the squad at the temple. They eliminated one guy with their heavy flamer and then got three hits on the other three. Those three hits turned into three wounds and with a 3+ save all three saves were failed, down went that squad.
Just at that time the squad that was escorting the tech priests made it into the building and got hosed down with enemy fire also all failing their armour saves. The crossfire was fairly intense but the 1's and 2's coming up on the die were even more spectacular.
The guy with the meltagun was trying to provide some distraction for the guys attempting to storm the temple but 1's don't hit even with a meltagun at short range so the Terminators ignored him. The bolter rounds were a little more succesfull forcing 3 terminators saves at a 4+ on 2d6, but they all rolled 5 to save (literally, a 2 and a 3 twice and a 4 and a 1.)
At this point, with the tech priests dead, the Chaplain dead, a terminator squad, a dreadnought, a captain and a full half-squad facing them the loyaists decided to make like a hockey player and get the puck out of there.
Playing the 2E rules didn't really bring back many good memories. It took a while to find all of the relevant information for stuff, all of the weapons were slightly different in annoying ways, the calculations for shooting modifiers weren't so bad except for the weapon stuff that got forgotten often. 20 year old me would have enjoyed learning all the subtleties in this and all the different things, 40 year old me doesn't find much joy in that and wants a smoother game. Part of the problem, of course, is lack of familiarity. Point wise I think the bad guys had about 1000 pts and the good guys had about 800 pts so it wasn't too bad as far as unbalance is concerned. The big difference in the outcome came largely from dice rolling. The bad guys did average, the good guys had some really bad rolls. The missile launcher kept missing, that guy really balanced out his good performance the other night with this showing. The meltagun didn't do anything either. Out of his four shots, sometimes needing a 2 to hit, at worst a three, he managed 1 hit. Which then rolled a 1 to wound.
The guys with the heavy bolter did okay with their shooting but crappy when it came to armour saves, they didn't have to make many, but when they got caught by the terminators there were four of them left and they all died to a man, not from the heavy flamer fire, which killed one of them but from the three bolter shots.
The bad guys dice were okay, not great but pretty average. They missed most of their 5 or more to hit shots. They did have some spectacular rolls on the sustained fire dice. In one round with three termies firing their storm bolters they got 7 hits.
I actually found my sustained fire dice without even really looking though so that was a good thing.
Overall I think this experiment in 2E was a failure and I'm very much reminded why we were so happy when 3E came out.
April 04, 2011, 05:52:43 AM
