Welcome Back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing blog for hobby and competitive progress in Warhammer 40k. Last Time Around I talked about playing some vacation Kill Team games, planning my army for the 2024 Grand Narrative, and a bit more hobby progress with my Night Lords. I promised some games played this time around and by god, I’m going to deliver, even if those games are a bit smaller than standard tournament lists.
10th Edition Boarding Actions
While I wasn’t much of a fan of the Imperial Agents Codex and said as much in our review (RIP my Deathwatch), I was a big fan of the new Boarding Actions rules – check that review here. Boarding Actions was my favorite way to play 9th edition and it might be my favorite way to play tenth. It’s fast-paced, tactical, and interesting to play, and the new rules really tighten things up by making it more balanced and fitting within the 10th ed rules framework. I made the trip over to my local Warhammer store on Saturday to meet up with Greg Narro for some games, and ended up getting in four games that day. I won’t go into heavy details on them, but I’ll offer some thoughts on each.
I took Bryce with me, and he started some work on his Terminators – we primed them gold that morning and he spent about an hour coating them in Agrax Earthshade and doing some drybrushing before he decided he’d had enough. He usually tops out at about an hour of painting time, and not too long after that the missus showed up to pick him up and take him with her on some errands, making for a solid day on our part – he gets some hobby work done and I get to play Warhammer while the wife gets the house to herself all Saturday morning, and I get to play Warhammer all day. Finding compromises like this is the key to keeping your hobby going – I can get away with a lot more hobby time to myself if I trade away Saturday mornings, and I’ll happily bring Bryce with me to the hobby shop for a few hours while the missus sleeps in.
Bryce’s biggest contribution to games that morning is choosing the method of my destruction. Specifically, he picks the Aspect Warrior list Greg brought as the first army for me to play against.
Game 1: vs. Khaine’s Arrow
I brought my Boarding Actions terrain to the store and set it up for The Furnace Symmetrical mission, while the store’s setup was already set up for Access Junction Primus. I’d end up playing three games on Primus then jumping to the Furnace for game four.
Greg’s Aeldari force is a Khaine’s Arrow list, running oops! All Aspect Warriors. He has a unit of Dire Avengers (split into two groups of five), Howling Banshees, Striking Scorpions, Fire Dragons, and Fuegan. For this game I bring my Thousand Sons in a Chosen Cabal Detachment, with an Infernal Master (rocking the re-roll shots Enhancment), a Sorcerer, and three units of five Rubrics, decked out with Warpflamers. Even with this, it’s a rough matchup – the Thousand Sons army mechanic here is better against slower armies, where you won’t immediately lose ascendancy for half the game, and for most of this game Greg’s in the driver’s seat. In particular, the Aeldari ability to just operate hatchways mid-move is massive, giving them a ton of tactical flexibility.
I do OK early but miss some key saves against Fuegan with the Infernal Master and though I managed to kill him, he stood back up and shithoused me – I never made it to those midtable objectives to really contest and Greg wins it, 100-45.
Game 2: vs. Tomb Ship Complement
For this game I break out the Arch-Contaminators, the terminator-heavy Death Guard Detachment. Greg’s list is rocking a unit of Immortals, split into two, a unit of Warriors split in two, a unit of Ophidians and a Hexmark Destroyer. My Arch-Contaminators list is a Terminator Sorcerer (with +1 damage/strength on his shooting attack with Trademark Weapon), a Lord of Virulence, one unit of Blightlords, and a unit of Deathshrouds. I put the Deathshrouds into deep strike reserves – 4″ movement is a bitch.
This one goes completely the opposite way – Death Guard have some nasty tricks in Boarding Actions and the 1-2 combo of using Toughness for the contested door roll-off and contagions going through walls and doors means I’m usually rolling with a +2 or +3 advantage to hold doors closed with T6 terminators. This allows me to dump a unit of Deathshroud in front of the door the Ophidians wanted to use and sit there while my Blightlords and Sorcerer cleaned up at midtable. I win this one 85-20.
Game 3: vs. Boarding Strike Marines
For game 3 I decided to run my World Eaters in a Boarding Butchers Detachment against Andrew’s Space marines. I took Kharn, two units of Berzerkers, and a unit of five terminators, while he had Aggressors, a Gravis Captain, an Ancient, Jump Assautl Intercessors, and regular Intercessors. That’s a hard nut to crack for this list and while I made it out early using the blood tithe for +2″ Movement, I failed three 7″ charges on a pivotal turn and ended up eating shit as a result. This one ended up being a draw, only because I held the middle objectives early enough to get a lead Andrew couldn’t quite match with kill points nearly wiping me out.
Game 4: vs. Boarding Strike Marines
For the last game of the day we switched over to the Furnace. This mission has a large, controlled area with two objectives in it worth double points. I ran my Arch-Contaminators again here, putting them in the furnace, reckoning they could handle the heat if I had to purge it – the furnace has two control points which, when activated, do D3 mortal wounds per turn to the units inside. At the top of the table my Sorcerer cleaned up on the power armor yabbos while the Spawn stayed alive long enough to cause problems and the game ended before we realized it was over – we literally got to the bottom of 5 and were like “oh wait,” letting me score the 60-45 win.
I managed to get in four games of boarding actions in about six hours, taking a break for lunch with Greg and Andrew mid-day. Overall it’s a very fun time and I’d love to see more Boarding Actions events where you can run four rounds in a day. I think for that format I’d do a two-hour first round followed by 1.5 hour rounds afterward, making it easy to give players a bit more time to get comfortable before running through the following rounds. Boarding Actions really does deliver on what GW’s classic Kill Team format promised, giving you a way to play a real game of 40k in about an hour, i.e. on your lunch break. No shade to Kill Team – that’s an incredible game in its own right, but that game has become a wholly different beast and tactical in much different ways.
As a testament to this, I went back over to the shop on Wednesday to get in another game against Max, this time taking Vectors of Decay up against a Khorne Daemons Infernal Onslaught Detachment.
Game 5: vs. Infernal Onslaught
Max’s list was a Bloodmaster, two units of Flesh Hounds, and two units of Bloodletters, split into five models each. The Daemons are particularly nasty in BA because they can just all Deep Strike, so if they go first their second turn ends up very nasty – though they have to balance that against only being able to deep strike one unit per turn. Max used the movement on his Flesh Hounds to pin me in early, and it took me half the game to dig out. Once I did, however, I just tore through his Bloodletters. One pivotal game moment saw his Bloodmaster crash into my Plaguecaster, only to roll triple 2s on his wound rolls and bounce completely before dying to a staff bonk. Ultimately I think Khorne Daemons have some very nasty rules – being able to move and fight through walls and doors is really good, and their speed makes them very dangerous. On my end I took 3×7 Plague Marines but upon reflection 4×5 was probably the better move.
Hobby Progress
Doing this blog has been great because it forces me to finish at least one model per week. And with that said, here’s my Night Lords Icon Bearer:
That said, one model per week is not a sustainable pace if I want to finish the army by mid-November, especially if I want to avoid some nasty crunch time. So I’ll be looking to do a bit more work on them this week and next, knocking out a larger number of models in batch fashion, or at least getting 5-6 to “just finish this off with an hour or two of work” status, which is typically what I aim for with my batch painting. The challenge as always, is complexity – the gold trim really messes up any plans I have of going quickly.
Next Time: Practice Games and Hobby Progress
I’ve been light on competitive games recently but my plan is to try and get in a practice game this weekend with the Renegade Raiders list I’m bandying about, and potentially refresh where I’m at with my Thousand Sons. Still have to line those games up, but hopeful I can have those done and have something to write about with them next week on top of the hobby progress. From the looks of the NOVA preview, 40k releases are slowing waaaay down in 2024 so I should have more time to actually do hobby and practice games instead of writing review after review. At least, that’s the plan – see you next week.
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