Actually playing 40k?

 

I don’t remember the last time I played 40k. (though here’s the last time I painted something 40k, and the last time I played in a 40k tournament!) Duke asked me the other week if I wanted a game, for old times sake and I said sure, if he organized it. Turns out he was more motivated than I thought, because we played the next weekend. 🙂

The rules were: 7th edition 40k, 1000 points, standard Combined Arms detachments, “no fuckiness” (no Lords of War, purchased terrain or flyers), and discard/redraw Maelstrom mission cards that were impossible (“impossible”, not “really hard”). I pulled out my Ork codex and started reading, as I think I’ve had a single game with this book, and maybe a single game in 7th ed. I couldn’t promise I would try to play 6th ed instead.

First — the new books are absolutely stunning. The ork codex made me desperately want to buy new models, the Gorka/Morkanauts are gorgeous, all the paint jobs are great and the page references back and forth are well done enough that it feels easy to find what you’re looking for.

I built a list to throw Duke off — no vehicles. I usually play all vehicles. 🙂 I took a Weirdboy, because PSYCHIC POWERS, 2 units of 24 boyz with 2 rokkits and a nob with pkeach, a unit of 12ish shootas, 1 unit of 12 lootas and 2 units of 5 deffkoptas.

Duke also tried to throw me off by playing Guard instead of Tau! He had a Russ, a Chimera full of vets, 3 sentinels, some autocannons, some lascannons, some Guardsmen, some of them with heavier weapons than others.

We rolled a Maelstrom mission scenario that had us drawing up to 3 Maelstrom mission cards at the start of each round. I really wanted to draw at the end of each round, because one of the things I miss about other games is the need to be involved in the game when it isn’t your turn. 40k is almost “sit back and wait” on your turn, except for some armour saves. Having next rounds cards in my hand during my opponents turn would give me something to scheme about, and also give me a bit more information on how to make tactical decisions about where to Jink/Go to Ground (just about the only decisions you have to make on your opponents turn).

We set up, and I outflanked with the 2 units of deffkoptas, and him with his sentinels. I put down my 3 units of boyz and lootas, screening my lootas behind the boyz. I discarded 3 Maelstrom mission cards before my turn started — the last of which because Duke’s only Psycher’s head exploded on his first turn! Turns 1 and 2 were mostly jockeying for position. The lack of Warboss in my list meant I couldn’t Waaagh to ensure I could get into his men! I don’t like forced models, and it’s disappointing that I think to play the melee game with Orks you need the Warboss. Also disappointing the the Weirdboy doesn’t have “first class” gear support — he can’t buy anything. Whereas you can buy the Big Mek things and maybe, with the right list, make him your Warlord.

A photo to break it up. I think near the end of turn 3. I’d had some lucky draws with mission cards and had cards for objectives that I already held. I gave them up, because I needed to press forward to clear out some of his firepower. My Weirdboy jumped a unit, trying to get onto an objective, but scattered away and landed in a pie-plate shaped huddle, no where that was useful. Duke wandered his vets over, cleared them off the board and then had free reign of my left flank.

One unit of deffkoptas didn’t come on until turn 4, which was very bad for me, and when they did come on they were on the wrong side! This left the above vets available to claim objectives in my deployment zone, as well as claiming Linebreaker (1VP for being in enemy deployment at end of the game) and some other mission cards.

Duke was ahead 9 to 4 at one point, and I was getting a little down because the dice weren’t pulling it off for me. Turn 3 I scored no points at all. The mission we drew, you had to score every turn. Because you draw up to 3, having cards still in your hand at the end of the round meant you had fewer available options to score points. I discarded a card that looked hard to get (which I ended up regretting) just to keep some variability in my hand. Particularly near the end of the game, drawing more cards gives you more options to get the +D3 VP cards, which is huge in winning. I got 3VPs from a card for killing his leader, another 1 because of just killing his leader, and 1 more from shooting an entire unit down, putting it at 9-9 which brought my spirits back up.

The thing I don’t like about certain games, is when you don’t feel like you have a game to play. If I hadn’t scored 5 in that round, it would have been a severe Duke-win, which means my turns 4-5-6 would just be me wandering around and seeing if I could stop Duke from scoring more, rather than having the ability to win. Getting those cards in hand, studying the board to determine how to get them, and executing the best I could, and then being rewarded for it, felt absolutely amazing.

This game feels more like Malifaux than it does 40k — you aren’t necessarily trying to kill everything to get points. The problem with “kill everything” games, is that the goal is to remove your opponents power from the board. To remove their agency, and their ability to play. When you make things other than killing the objective, you ensure that both players can continue to have fun because you still have things you can do. This is why Malifaux is brilliant, and why the core 40k ruleset is brilliant.

 

At the end, half of my deffkoptas performed well, and the other half failed repeated Ld7 tests to get me points. I didn’t have enough models in turn 6 to win the game, but did have enough to leave the game feeling like I’d done my best. The score, as shown above, was 15 to 12 for Duke.

Afterwards we talked a bit about the meta-game. Duke’s plan was to have a game, to see if it was still fun. If it wasn’t, that would have been another nail in the coffin of 40k — we haven’t played for a while, and if it hadn’t been fun then what would be the reason to keep all these hundreds of models around?

I went home and re-opened my codex and started dreaming of how to fit a [G|M]orkanaut into my case.