So, after some um-ming and ahh-ing, I decided to tip my toe into the 40k universe. That's right, my age old Daemons from fantasy decided to spend a holiday period in that other universe (complete with fancy new rules!) and to help me learn the rules ropes, I played against a mate and manager of my local GW store.

While I have a sizeable fantasy army, we decided to make a small 40k game of 1500 points (and because I was playing against staff, it wasn't for the store's tournament at 1250pts). I was also lucky in that my opponent graciously allowed me to play the game on my fantasy bases (because I simply forgot to swap them over beforehand).

--

The Daemon Prince of Tzeentch moved up, it's energies shimmering and flexing as it's warp energies were contained within realspace by the belief and servitude of it's more mortal servants.

Its patron had directed the immortal to wage war against primarily a coalition force made up of it's brethren, Tzeentch Daemons and that of the dullard Khorne. Murmurings amongst the Immortal's champions, dreaded aspiring sorceror's indicated that even a manipulative Keeper of Secrets was supposedly taking part. With barely a thought, the Immortal used a portion of it's essence to find out if the rumour was correct, although clear answers eluded the Daemon Prince.

The Immortal had long since given up pretense of mortal fragility such as anxiety, but regardless, it had no intention of failing his dread patron. Without looking back it sent it's awareness and perceived his forces.

Stomping to the rear was a Defiler, on the Immortal's far right a lone survivor of the Obliterator virus moved upwards. Just to the Immortal's right moved up a group of fell Tzeentch Terminator champions all armed with the flickering energies of Lightning Claws, to his left stalked forward a group of combi-weapon Terminators and moving in his shadow were his minions and former brothers a group of ten Thousand Sons space marines lead by an aspiring sorceror and to their left a small group of 5 Chosen armed with melee weapons.

STOP screamed a voice in the Immortal's 'head' snapping it's awareness back into localized space just as they passed some ruins on His outer right hand side, his awareness once again limited by the perceptions forced upon it by manifesting upon this planet within this fleshy form. The voice, indistinct but all commanding was rather insistent, and the Immortal knew for sure that this is where the combat would take place. That this holy ground would be where decision would be made, inscrutable to all, even to such as a Daemon Prince.

Sensing the change upon their leader, the other forces readied themselves. The rubric marines deathly silent while the Obliterator vaulted up the steps to stand on the highest level of the ruins.

Then, they all waited.


I have no idea what these models actual wargear was as while I checked I didn't copy it down (the match was very friendly, especially since it was my first real 40k game). Also, apologies if the Chaos Space Marines are in the wrong order as they appear in their FOC, remember I'm newist of the new I can be to the game system.

The game type that we pre-decided upon was a simple Annihilation match.

Chaos Space Marines
HQ
Daemon Prince of Tzeentch, Wings, Warptime, Breath of Chaos.

ELITE
5x Chaos Terminators (Tzeentch?) with Combi-Weapons
5x Chaos Terminator Champions (Tzeentch?) with Dual-Wield Lightning Claws.


TROOPS
10x Thousand Sons Space Marines w Aspiring Sorceror?
5x Chaos Chosen w Aspiring Sorceror?

HEAVY SUPPORT
1x Obliterator
1x Defiler

Chaos Daemons
HQ
Kairos Fateweaver
Keeper of Secrets (all upgrades)

ELITES
3x Flamers
3x Flamers
3x Bloodcrushers (all upgrades)

TROOPS
8x Bloodletters (muso)
8x Bloodletters
7x Pink Horrors w Changeling, Bolt
6x Pink Horrors w Bolt.

-

Deployment
As the story. The CSM player opting to refuse his left flank and deploying his sole Obliterator on the top level of the ruins.

For Daemonic Assault, I opted to deep strike all my Tzeentch forces in my first turn (also the first turn of the game because I 'won' the role off and decided the table-edge. Because I opted for the table-edge I apparently got the first turn (if I knew that this would mean I'd get the first player turn I wouldn't have done so. However, I deployed this way so he wouldn't get access to an even larger set of ruins, but as it turns out there was multiple story ruins located on the far edged flanks no matter which combination or direction I or he would have chosen, in short this would have been unavoidable in hindsight.)

Rolling a dice to see if I got my choice or not, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Tzeentch was feeling pretty nice to me at the moment and I got my wish.

Daemons - Turn 1
First of all; I totally need to find that application that lets you recreate battle reports with pictures that I see on websites ocassionally (notably that Ulthuan website) but here's what happened in a nutshell:
• Kairos deepstriked in the no-mans land very close towards my opponent's deployment zone, although also out in the refused flank location.
• Both flamer packs ended up being deployed within spitting distance of his 5x Terminator squad with combi weapons. One of which just outside his deployment zone facing in, and the other just alongside his Termie squad inside his refused flank.
• Both Pink Horror packs landed out in no mans land in just under 18" range away from his deployment zone.

The Shooting phase was rather interesting, the flamer packs wasted his Combi-weapon Terminator squad between a combination of 4 Breath Wea-I mean Template weapons and two Warpfire shooting attacks dealing altogether about 7 wounds, which my opponent failed all saves. Kairos (I mean, Fateweaver) then followed up with a Daemonic Gaze against the Daemon Prince, wounding it several times and also attempted to Bolt the Defiler but only rolled a 1 or 2 for the damage result (whichever result I got the Defiler was allowed to ignore).
My Pink Horror squad with the Changeling shot at and managed to cause only a single wound upon the Daemon Prince (but by this time it meant it only had 1 wound left), and the second smaller Pink Horror squad attempted to duplicate the effort, but apparently weren't awesome enough to do so.

Chaos Space Marines - Turn 1
Quickly recovering after the quick destruction of his Terminator squad, my opponent decided to move his defiler forward till it was practically hugging my Flamer squad that was within his refused flank. His Daemon Prince I believe tried to trigger Warptime but failed and his Obliterator squad moved forward fractionally so it was at the very tip of the ruins. The Thousand Sons moved a little further forward and to my opponent's right so they were standing more flush behind the nasty Terminator Champions and the Chosen squad moved forwards. The Daemon Prince flew until was just in front of my smaller Pink Horror pack.
His shooting phase was much (much) better than mine.
A combination of Plasma Cannon (from the Obliterator - which I should have Glamoured, but I was under the believe that the Defiler was going to shoot before he charged, realising that was silly after the Obliterator shot, I decided to use it when the Thousand Sons fired but I'll get to that), and Thousand Sons wiped out my Changeling unit.
The Chosen unit managed to shoot and kill the unit of Flamers that were just infront of the old Terminator location.
The Changeling attempted to glamour the large Thousand Sons unit, my intention being to rapid fire shoot (or just -shoot-) the Lightning Claw terminator squad in the back, but the Thousand Sons Aspiring Sorceror leader apparently has a good enough leadership to thwart that idea of mine. To punish me for my temerity, the Thousand Sons shot and killed my Pink Horror Changeling squad as indicated above.

In the Assault phase, the Defiler proved to be as obvious as I feared and engaged in combat with my unit of Flamers (the ones inside his deployment zone) and cut them all down. The Daemon Prince assaulted the smaller Pink Horror squad yet only managed to cause I believe 2 deaths (I lost another one due to combat resolution). After I took the Flamers off, we all believed that both squads could have been within the 6" Oracle radius, but I decided that because I had already taken the models off the board, then they were 'lawfully' killed.

Chaos Daemons - Turn 2
With baited breath, I rolled for my reserves. I failed each and every one with either a roll of 1 or 2. This was going to be very painful.

With the Defiler destroying the Flamers and consolidating towards my Kairos, I decided to fly to the Defiler's flank. Being a moron, I confused game systems momentarily and thought: "He can't see me, I'm outside his frontal charge zone!" If I was actually paying attention I would have just stood where I was and shot with all three weapons that phase.

No other unit was either on the board (all those 1's... *grumble-grumble*) or was engaged with a Daemon Prince ( /lesigh).

With shooting I shot the Bolt at the Defiler and failed my armour penetration. I fired my Gaze at the Chaos Chosen squad eliminating 2. If I wasn't an idiot, I would have Brea-Template the Breath/Wind (don't have my codex right here to check on what it's actually called) the Defiler to glance on 4's as well... but like I said, I can be a bit of a forgetful twit sometimes.

Onto the Assault phase, something my opponent was practically crackling with glee with. With typical gusto, the Daemon Prince cleaved its way through my sole remaining Pink Horror squad, dropping another 2 and leaving a sole remaining Pink Horror. Resigned to my fate, I rolled my dice getting a 5 to hit. Slightly perking up, I rolled another 5 to wound. Thinking that it was enough to actually kill the Daemon Prince (due to another mate who had wandered up, thinking for the moment that Pink Horrors had a Strength of 4), my opponent dutifully rolls his armour save and rolls a 1. All three of us thinking that this Pink Horror had actually killed the Daemon Prince (and my opponent particularly cress fallen since he had only just taunted me with a: "You have to roll a 5 and then another 5 to kill and then I have to fail my armour save!") he takes the Daemon Prince off the board. It was only after this that my two mates thought about it and said: "Hangon, the Pink Horror needed a 6 to wound!" but my opponent graciously thought: "no he's dead" because he had already removed it from play (and probably to bounce back my favour of not checking to see whether the flamers were able to reroll for Oracle).

Chaos Space Marines - Turn 2
All his units that were able too, sans the Obliterator and Defiler moved forwards. The Chaos Terminator squad obviously gunning towards the lone Pink Horror (mistaken) Badass. Personally I think the Pink Horror should have been immediately elevated to a Lord of Change after getting a personality and individual 'intelligence' insertion, but Tzeentch obviously couldn't give a rats ass what I thought and ignored my plea. The Defiler moved slightly backwards and to the side to line up opposite Fateweaver. Ironically I suppose, it's movement suggested it wasn't going to attempt to assault Fateweaver (simply because it wouldn't be in assault range)

The CSM's shooting phase was a particularly distressing time for me. The Obliterator attempted to shoot at my lone Pink Horror and got a Gets Hot result and took a wound. Then the Defiler opened up, shoot at Fateweaver (with something -- honestly it's not very important). I crowed: "You know, it's pretty freaking hard to actually kill Fateweaver though; he has 2 3+ ward saves." I then promptly failed both saves by rolling a double 1 and then I failed my Ld test by... one too. Holy crap! It was rather hilarious really since my opponent had just crowed about his Daemon Prince only to have Tzeentch (or one of his representatives) bite him in the ass by getting a lowly Pink Horror to kill him, and now that I crowed about Kairos Tzeentch decided to savage my behind too. I cried inside, but I was far too manly to openly weep.

As to the Chosen and Thousand Sons, I honestly forget how successful their shooting was (I was still in mourning you see) largely. What I do remember that one of these squads (likely the Thousand Sons now that I think about it) fired at the Pink Horror, and did 7 wounds. I saved all but one of these. My bad ass Pink Horror vanished back home.

Chaos Daemons - Turn 3
The Gods noticing my plight (or so I'd like to think), I rolled for my reserves my results allowing all but my Keeper of Secrets to arrive. My Bloodcrushers scattered almost into the ruins on my table edge (I was rather stuck on where I wanted to put them. I wanted them more into no-mans, but I rolled quite highly for scatter distance. I didn't want to put them in a position where the Defiler could charge them, and yet I also didn't want to put them in a position where they'd receive a charge against the Terminator Champions. I also figured that while I could put them behind my opponent, the game table was relatively small, so I could actually scatter off the edge, which is something I didn't want).

I placed my first Bloodletter unit (the one sans Instrument) a little off centre to the left of no mans land (practically lining up behind the old super Pink Horror's location) and rolling my deep-scatter dice. I swear the dice gods are just giving me crap now, not even disguising it as slight misfortune anymore. Of all the directions I could have scattered I of course scattered directly towards the one piece of impassable terrain that I conceivably reach. Rolling my eyes, I rolled for mishap, already bracing myself for a one (I had of course, put aside my ostracised dice to one side, the dice that failed Kairos for me. Of course, I expected more of the traitorous little bastards to single out too by this time). I rolled a 4 (which was kinda surprising I think that the dice weren't as mean as they could have been) and my opponent promptly placed them at the back of my 'deployment zone' in a crater, a little to the right of the ruins that the Bloodcrushers nearly scattered onto.

Not learning my lesson, I positioned my second Bloodletter unit in the same location and rolled for my deep-scattering dice. I kid you not; I once again scattered towards the only location that would have given me a mishap. Luckily, I didn't roll enough to once again materialize into solid rock, but I was uncomfortably close to the Terminator Champions. Just for clarity's sake, what I was actually trying to do was deploy in no mans land by masking my Bloodcrushers by the two units of Bloodletters and then combo charge individual units starting with the Terminator's, eventually clearing them then the Thousand Sons unit (or circumventing it with the Bloodcrushers) and attackign the Obliterator. Alas.

Running, I moved all my units. Apparently needing to roll for difficult or something just to move out of cover my Bloodletters near the ruins were already in I attempted (and passed) the terrain test to try and move out to try and position themselves as best they can to smash into the oncoming Champions (as soon as possible of course - in hind sight the way I did it was stupid because I was moving towards the Defiler, for some reason I was thinking one had Fury, but I only realised my mistake after I had ran them the direction I chose. This would doubly bite me in the ass as you'll soon read). My Bloodcrushers attempted to close the distance towards the Champions as well (they would be in range for everything regardless of whether they stayed where they were or not). My forward lot of Bloodletters actually ran behind the statue that seems to be the bane for deep striking daemons in an attempt to put as much distance between them so I could benefit from my Furious Charge (if my Keeper came down this phase I would have Pavanned the Terminator's backwards too).

Chaos Space Marines - Turn 3
The Terminator's moved forward as did the Chosen and Thousand Sons. The aspiring sorceror inside the Thousand Sons attempted to bolt my Bloodcrushers only to Perils and die, and the Thousand Sons attempted to shoot and wound the Bloodcrushers as did the sorceror's final Bolt. Because of wound allocation my muso and icon were the only ones that were wounded (I took Icon mainly to allocate as I saw fit, if I understand that part of the rules correctly anyway). The Chosen shot at my forward Bloodletters and kill a few (including my muso) while the Obliterator lined up a Plasma Cannon shot, killing the Icon, muso and putting a wound on the Fury).

The Defiler shot with a (giant) blast marker at my Bloodletter's peeking out from behind the ruins. Of the 8 total he killed 5 (after wounding against 6!)

The Terminator Champions assaulted my Bloodletters near the statue. It's amazing that I'm playing 40k yet keep on thinking everyone bar my Bloodletter's have 4" movement...

The assault was pretty interesting. With my 16 attacks I managed to inflict 4 killing blows (with him loosing all but one Terminator Champion) but in return I lose everyone bar two Bloodletters.

Chaos Daemons - Turn 4
I roll for my Keeper of Secrets. With a breath of relief the monstrosity finally decided to deploy and I put him behind my enemy's Chosen troops. Rolling my scatter-away dice, my Keeper actually landed back a bit but relatively close to the Defiler's position (yet I also still wasn't out of assault range against his Chosen unit).

My Bloodcrushers moved forward towards the Terminator Champions whilst my other squad of Bloodletter's, suitably cowed by the display of the Defiler (and realised what an idiot I was to move them in the way I did) ducked to the left and into cover of the ruin's.

My Keeper of Secrets squinted evilly towards one of the Chosen and killed one, my opponent craftily deciding to remove the closest from the Keeper. Having seen through this dastardly shenanigan, he pavanned the unit an entire whopping 1" closer to the Keeper.

My Bloodcrushers were still outside Assault distance! but in the shooting phase I ran forwards.

Continuing on from the Bloodletter combat with the Terminator champion, I only managed to wound twice. With a baited breath we awaited his invulnerable save throws: two Five's. At this point I have to admit that I was seriously starting to consider throwing in the towel, but who am I kidding, I love bloodshed. Because it was a friendly match (although honestly; how friendly can it bloody be really if almost everyone (just the 1k Sons I think actually) is running around with AP3 Bolters?) I decided to be a Daemon (read; man up) and continue on. His Terminator Champion consolidated back towards my Keeper.

Chaos Space Marines - Turn 4
First of all, his Defiler moved back towards my Keeper of Secrets in preparation of an assault. His Thousand Sons moved towards my Bloodcrushers as did his Chosen. His Shooting was rather final. His Obliterator shot at my 3 remaining Bloodletters that were poking near the doorway of the ruins with a Lascannon but was successfully warded. His Chosen fired for (no) effect on my Bloodcrusher and his soulless Thousand Sons peppered my sole Fury Bloodcrusher as well, melting it away with all those damned AP3 Bolters.

His Defiler charged with no small amount of (over) confidence into my Keeper, only to have his owner's face quail when notified that my monstrosity was S7. With 3 Penetrating hits and one glancing, the Defiler was wrecked before it realised it was smashed in the face. My Keeper consolidated 6" towards the Chosen squad.

Chaos Daemons - Turn 5
My Keeper moved menacingly towards the Chosen squad while my sole remaining Bloodletters moved back fully into the cover of the ruins.

I attempted to glare at a Chosen but failed (the Keeper couldn't muster up the necessary anger as he was too distracted by the spectacular whorl patterns still on it's claws left by the destruction of the Defiler). With not much else to do, we launched straight into the assault phase with me doing against the 3 remaining Chosen units a spectacular nothing. In return the Chosen managed to wound the monstrosity. Combat resolution meant I took yet another wound.

Chaos Space Marines - Turn 5
The Thousand Sons moved backwards to stand just across from the combat with the Keeper of Secrets yet not participating and the Terminator Champion moved back towards it too.

In the assault phase the Terminator Champion charged into combat as well. Swift as a rapier, the Keeper lashed out at the Chosen, slaughtering all 3 of them (I was noticing a trend here; my Keeper was crap in my own phase, but he was positively opening whoop ass on my opponent in his phase!). The Terminator Champion failed to wound despite re-rolling to wound with the Lightning Claws. The Terminator Champion failed combat resolution.
"My champion failed his combat, would you like to pursue?"
"Yes. He's dead."
*Shocked voice*"Why?"
"Keeper has Initiative 10"
"...Right. Crap."

At this juncture, we failed the roll to continue the game.
Totaling up Kill Points, it was 7 to him, 5 to me.

-
Post Game Musings
All in all, I think bad luck aside I did pretty well for my first ever 40k game since 2nd edition. I think my decision to split them into a Tzeentch 1st wave and Khorne (with an itty bitty Slaanesh side dish) to be tactically the right choice to benefit primarily from the better ward. I thought putting the Flamers where I did to be pretty ballsy, but if they were put too far back then they'd be largely useless. I also learnt not to tempt fate (especially with someone apparently called the fateweaver) by talking about how nigh 'impossible' it would be to actually fail his saves and his Leadership test.

I took 2 Greater Daemons because I was worried he'd take his Land Raider, as it happened, the Keeper almost single-handedly put me back in the game after munching through two units singlehanded, and most likely would have munched through the Thousand Sons squad as well if the game went on for another turn or two. It seems to be frightfully hard to put wounds on these things.


Anyway, would greatly appreciate any feedback (and thanks to all of it) on my decisions (or if the Bat Rep is too long and thus boring) so over to y'all!

Congrats to the win. I understand even less than you do when it comes to 40K but it was very well written so a good read either way.

I have to say though, man-oh-man, a picture or two between some of those paragraphs of text would have done soo much for this presentation. Gives you something to relate to somehow.. Whether you understand what's going on or not. hehe

Well, congrats anyway.. That Keeper of yours really cleaned house when he finally deicided to show ey!

Cheers for the report, very entertaining read. Also congrats on your performance in your first game, you did well.

However, I would've done it the other way around. Monsters (greater daemons and princes) and slow melee (crushers and 'letters) in the first wave, shooty (horrors & flamers) and fast melee (slaaneshi stuff) second. Especially if you have an icon on the crushers, they're worth putting in the first wave.

Thanks for the replies guys (I lost DaemonReign! Although it was a fun and entertaining game nonetheless -- unless you're congratulating me for using a Keeper which killed things good in which I agree! Congrats to me, she's a Keeper (*groan*)!

I was wondering about that too Zechs, the main reason why I decided Tzeentch first was to take advantage of the extra survivability of their ward save, of course... they melted away regardless under the weight of shots if nothing else (so in short, probably nothing different happened).

I did think it was a shame that I had some crushers with an icon but didn't actually use it other than as an extra wound allocation.

Tzeentch daemons have better saves but they are also generally less tough. And while horrors can always shoot right after deep striking in, bloodletters need to walk to combat, so they're better off dropped early (and generally in bigger packs, as they tend to attract a lot of fire after opponents taste their hellblades).

Hm.. Yeah you're right *lol*
Got those kill points mixed up in the end.