I had joined the Games Workshop fandom at the tail end of 9th edition. I started out learning standard Warhammer 40k and ended up choosing the Black Templars as my army. While attempting to learn that, I was shown Kill Team which of course I also bought a rule book for and tried to learn. Around this time I discovered they had a whole nother game called Age Of Sigmar with even more armies and so I had to check that out. Then they hit me with Boarding Actions and finally 10th edition. I think I blew some sort of fuse in my brain at that point and had to check out of all of it. I never really felt like I had a firm grasp of the rules for any of those games. It was just too much too quickly.
Playing Space Marine 2 got me back into 40k and this time I decided to focus. The boys and I chose to play 10th edition and that’s all we are doing. At first we were just building armies of around the same point value and then throwing our models at each other in a straight up fight to the death. This helped us learn some of the basic rules but the game isn’t really balanced for this style of play so the battles were not especially interesting. Finally kiko, Jerry and Eric came over and showed us how the game is supposed to be played which means using control points. That’s how we have been playing since and the games have been so close and exciting!
We started off with 500 point armies because there’s so much to learn. Today we played our biggest games yet at 1200 points and it was a lot to keep track of but we had a blast.
Gabe is playing the Tau and they seem like a tricky army. Today he beat my Black Templars and it seems like he has figured out how to play to his strengths. Stealth units, lots of hard hitting ranged attacks and the ability to start your units way forward using the Infiltrate rule. He also finally got a handle on using Marker Lights which allow certain units in his army to “observe” for shooting units making it easier for them to hit. It’s a complicated army but it all came together today and he pulled out his first win.
Noah on the other hand has yet to lose with his Death Guard although I did manage a hard fought tie today. His army of poison spewing monsters is full of tough ass units who hit ridiculously hard. The real difficult part about fighting him though is his “Contagion Aura” that spreads every round andt means enemy units within range of his putrid stink have reduced toughness and it’s harder for them to save against attacks. It makes fighting him in melee a real nightmare. The only downside I can see to his army is that they are slow which I need to take more advantage of I think. I’m starting to get a better idea of how to fight them and today may have been a tie but I learned a lot. I can reduce some of his potency by bringing units that have invulnerable saves, using Lethal Hits in melee to get past his high toughness and hitting him with all the ranged attacks I can to try and soften him up before the close combat fighting starts.
I spent 6 hours today playing 40k (one game with each of them) and I am mentally fried. It’s possible that you also dove into the Games Workshop pool and found yourself in the deep end. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if it’s your first time being introduced to their special brand of “plastic crack”. I'd recommend picking one of their offerings and really focusing if you want to avoid an early burn out. Coming back and just doing 40k is exactly what I needed to do in order to fall back in love with the hobby.
-Gabe Out
