Planetary Empires: Round One! (part 2)

Round two was upon me and I pulled the Dark Angels of the 'diabolical man-child' who's house we were playing at and who's campaign we were playing in. Really dude has some lovely stuff, his terminators and Captain in particular are well done. Luckily for me his dreadnought had a 'bounty' placed on it by one of the other players, meaning in a previous game the dreadnought tore someone up and they decided to put a 'one beer bounty' on the guy - whoever destroys the unit with the bounty on them collects the bounty. I positioned the relentless Long Fangs just out of range from the dreadnought, which had a plasma cannon, and deployed the rest of my force.

 The two highlights of the game were in round one where the dreadnought exploded from the 5 krak missiles hurled at it (that's a free beer to me for collecting the bounty!), and then in round two when the flanking bikers assaulted the Long Fangs only to cause one wound and then be assaulted by a nearby Grey Hunter pack. The rest of the game moved to its inevitable conclusion as the Wolves closed in and proceeded to assault their way to a win. The game ended with the final Dark Angels removed form the table as a grey hunter pack popped the surviving Vindicator from behind with meltaguns on turn 5. Props to the Rune Priest who nailed two terminators with JOTWW. In rolling for veteran abilities the wolf pack with the Rune Priest got fearless, so his ability is useful now and the relentless Long Fang pack received fearless as well. (rolling alot of 6's for abilities!)

Game three put me up against an Ork Horde army led by a Big Mek with a shock attack gun. In this game I got to have an additional 150 points because of my Manufactorium Tile (from the map), which my opponent didn't have, which means I get more points in the battle. So I grabbed a Venerable Dreadnought, which was same one I just blew up the previous game (thanks Mars lol!), with lascannons and missile launcher to make up the points.

The game started off with the relentless long fangs dumping 24 wounds worth of blast templates into a 20 ork strong mob, the dreadnought vaporizing the Big Mek and the Rune Priest sending 7 orks to the center of the planet with JOTWW. It continued downhill from there as boy's were sent to their doom by the Rune Priest (who now has a bounty on his head!) and the long fangs who continued to pump small templates into ork squads the entire game. At the end of the 5th turn there was one Nob left on the table staring at a Grey Hunter squad about to charge, luckily we rolled a '1' and the ork lived to fight another day! Another game rolling two veteran abilities nets me 'acute senses' for the long fangs and re-roll dangerous terrain for the dread. Yes, the Space Puppies come with acute senses, but you get what you get on the chart!

It was a long day with many games back to back, at the end of it the Space Puppies were unscathed with some awesome veteran abilities to boot:

1x Rune Priest with Wolf Tooth Necklace, Chooser of the Slain and Melta Bombs, (fearless) Wolf Guard with Combi Melta and Power Fist, 8 x Grey Hunters (fearless) with Meltagun, Power Fist, Wolf Standard in a Rhino

2x Wolf Guard with Combi Melta and Power Fist, 9 x Grey Hunters with Meltagun, Power Fist, Wolf Standard in a Rhino

1x Longfang Pack with 5x Missile Launchers (relentless, fearless, acute senses)

1x Longfang Pack with 2x Missile Launchers

1x Dreadnought added for last game (reroll dangerous terrain tests)

Looking at those skills and the pile I put on the long fangs you might be wondering about piling the veteran abilities on those long fangs, well its a double edged sword. If the unit should be wiped out they will loose 2x veteran abilities, if the unit is knocked below 50% then they loose one ability, so I can choose to loose acute senses and fearless while still retaining relentless. However, they are worth like double victory points, so while I get to keep relentless, its a risk having them be so valuable. The other thing is once a unit starts in one of the table they have to stay in that table (page 263 of the big red book), and you can't get the same skill twice. So as long as I win the next game my long fangs will get 'tank hunters' to go with their relentless...

Now we wait until the 'Conquest Turn' which happens every other Sunday where you get to roll against the territories of other players who you beat. The 'goal' of the campaign is to be the first player to get 10 tiles, so winning games allows you to try and take away territories from other players!

Next week another update!

still practicing_

Tallarn