Death Worlds

Got a game in last night with the new Death Worlds missions from White Dwarf 388, which was a nice change from the standard 40k scenarios. We rolled for the Breakthrough mission, which had each side trying to break through the opponent's line in a doubles game where my Ulthwe allied with Chaos against Black Templar and Necrons.

The random tables for environmental effects were cool, though lack of familiarity slowed things down a bit as we searched the tables and tried to figure out how to use our shiny new effects, but I think with a few more games of practice we'd be able to fire through quick enough. 

Looking at some of the tables I'm pretty keen to fire down my Necrons with this at some time, since several of the rolls will provide good synergy with my Writhing Worldscape C'tan, but even with my Eldar we had some good results, mostly damage to enemy units coming across the field.

And in true Eldar style I managed to grab us a last minute win with a quick turbo-boost into the enemy deployment zone for a win of 14-11. Hurrah for fast skimmers and jetbikes!

The main thing I took from that game was just that it's nice to be playing something other than the standard 3 missions. Anything to shake up the game in these dying days of 5th Edition is good in my books, and I look forward to seeing what GW offer us in the way of missions for 6th.

Further Reading

Blood of Kittens: I bought a White Dwarf and I like it

Way of Saim Hann: Mission Burnout

Path of the Seer: Combat Patrol

Combat Patrol, now that's what I call Ulthwe Strike Force!

Yeah, Combat Patrol. Now there's a game type I hadn't played in a long time.

I was round visiting a friend the other day and he suggested we play a game of Combat Patrol. After giving us a refresher on the rules we set about it, a three-player game where my Eldar took on Space Marines and Orks.

As a game type it's a lot of fun taking such a small force, you're severely restricted when it come to choosing your list (only 400 pts, limits on multi-wound models and models with armour values, etc) which means you're not just on a scaled down version of your full size list. I was glad I'd brought my Eldar along, as this was the perfect opportunity to put down something themed on the Ulthwe Strike Force from the old Eye of Terror codex.

11 Guardians - Scatter Laser
Warlock - Singing Spear, Conceal

3 Jetbikes - Shuriken Cannon
Warlock - Singing Spear, Destructor

1 Vyper - Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon, Holo-Field, Spirit Stones

The Vyper was definitely a good choice for this game. It started the game by obliterating the Space Marine Razorback and ended the game by blowing up the Ork Trukk, and that's not even mentioning the number of infantry it helped mow down in the intervening turns. Guardians were reasonable, though I think if I were rewriting this list I'd look at replacing them with my Swooping Hawks, sticking with the mobility the rest of my army offered. Jetbikes also performed well, the Warlock only got to use Destructor once before dieing to wound allocation late in the game, but used it to kill off the majority of a unit of Ork Boyz.

Lists aside, I enjoyed having to consider every model I was using; in most games losing a handful of Guardians in a turn is no bother, but in this case I was then forced to hold them further back than I would have liked the rest of the game after taking casualties to Space Marine shooting in turn 1.

I'm definitely hoping to get in some more Combat Patrol in future as a welcome break from the same old 40k missions.