First game of 6th edition (yes took that long!)

Had my first game of 6th edition last night.  Yes it's been a while since I have played 40k - a combination of our blood bowl league being full steam ahead + some lack of desire to start learning all the changes mean it has been out a while before I got a game in.

Played against a new opponent Leo who lives about 10 minutes away and we used smallish (1250pts) armies to ensure it didn't get too messy and we were able to (mostly) finish in an evening.  I brought some of my lately acquired Flesh Tearers since I just wanted to use them in a game.  We played mission 5 (the emperor's will?) and diagonal deployment.  I put my objective near him because even with the jump packs I knew he would have me outclassed for speed so I just wanted everything pretty focused.  Fortunately I rolled the warlord trait that gave me move through cover so my land raider was immune to dangerous terrain tests (Leo seemed confident this was correct, please let me know if that's wrong!)

My army had;
* reclusiarch in terminator armour
* 2x sanguinary priests (one terminator armour, one jump pack)
* 6 terminators with a cyclone missile launcher
* 10 assault marines with jump packs, 2 meltaguns & power fist
* 6 death company with jump packs, infernus pistol & 2x power weapons

His army of Eldar had a farseer, 5 warlocks, an autarch?, a couple guardian squads in falcons? wave serpents? (whichever one has that dirty new force field that it can choose to shoot with) a fire prism and the crimson hunter.

Below are some pics and a bit of description - hope you enjoy!

autarch? & warlocks flee

Probably the turning point of the game, first psychic power goes off, but 2nd his Farseer perils and he spent his last token to save himself (some helmet wargear item).  Then immediately another warlock perils and dies (no save anymore?) and being in a squad of 4 they take a morale test - fail - and flee off the board.  First Blood to me! (+1VP)  Lesson learned for Leo, keep a minimum of 5 guys to start in that squad so 1 perils doesn't cause that morale test.

land raider advances to fire on transports & death company use as cover

Leo also zoomed his transports over near his objective, near where I was setup - so I moved my land raider forward and jumped the death company in behind to hide them from his fire prism.  I left my assault squad in cover deep in my deployment zone as the fire prism LOS to them was blocked.  The land raider missed with the multi-melta and while the assault cannons hit twice they failed to glance.

land raider blocking LOS and attacking fire prism

A dismal round of shooting for both Leo and I meant not a lot happened, at this point it is after my land raider stunned his fire prism which it shook off with some piece of wargear.  He then moved all his vehicles around to focus on my land raider - after the crimson hunter caused some glances, his fire prism lanced my land raider and blew it up - all the terminators inside survived.

terminators destroy the fire prism

So in my turn the terminators duly charge his fire prism and wreck it without even needing to resort to power fists!!  Go go Reclusiarch Crozius!  The cyclone did fire before charging but missed with both krak missiles (never hit once all game with krak missiles!)  No consolidate move?  Yikes!

assault marines fail charge roll - damn difficult terrain

I had also decided to finally charge my assault marines into battle.  Perhaps failing this charge actually turned out to be beneficial as I think Leo was still more worried about the damage possibly caused by my terminators.  Oh and my sanguinary priest was the only one to fail a difficult terrain test, and he promptly failed both armour and feel no pain to die outright! D'oh!

transport explodes, terminators in the open

This photo looks quite a bit later in game, so I'll try to fill you in.  His crimson hunter flew over and shot at my death company, missing with 1/2 it's shots.  Then my assault marines blasted it out of the sky with their meltaguns (fortunate they both rolled 6's to hit!)  Leo disembarked his Farseer and guardians from 1 transport and used it as cover and shot at my terminators - who lost a couple guys.  His other transport fired at my death company and killed 1.  Now this looks like right after my terminators charged into his transport (I cared less about his squad and more about their ability to move, they are nearly 1/2 the table away from the objectives at this point) I blew up his transport and in his turn he shot a bunch at my terminators who tanked without any casualties.  His second squad tried to battle focus to get within range of my assault squad and shoot them, but I rolled every save I could (a couple shots were AP2)

eyes on the prize

In my next turn I turned around and focused on that second guardian squad with my assault marines and my terminators, gunning down something like 6-7 of them and they failed their morale test and ran off, they would continue to fail and flee for the rest of the game.  I also assaulted his second transport and wrecked it with my death company.

death company can assault vehicles rear AV10 pretty well thanks to furious charge

This is nearing the end of the game (we had to finish on turn 6 which was lucky for me, as in turn 6 his guardians basically wiped out my terminators except for the sanguinary priest - which allowed them to charge him and a possible turn 7 could have seen a battle go on for one of the objectives) that's slay the warlord for Leo (+1VP) so I decided to jump my assault marines into the furthest objective to capture it (+3VP) and jump my death company to the nearest one to deny it and that's where we had to stop - which left me winning.

If we had the time to go to turn 7, it was very probably that Leo would have been able to capture the nearest objective to his guardian squad with farseer (unless my lone sanguinary priest could have held them up) thanks to their battle focus they could have probably consolidated from assault, moved, ran, if within range of objective - shot up my 3 remaining death company - if outside of range wait and assault them and thus move close enough and capture the objective which would have given him the tie (we both got the bonus VP for Linebreaker.  So I felt pretty good that the worst I could have achieved was a tie.

That was completely down to being smart with my one scoring unit and I think a combination of poor dice luck and perhaps a bit of getting caught up in killing units by Leo.  He probably should have been more cautious with his movement early so he could have gambled a bit more later.  All in all a pretty fun game but man did it really feel like a 5th codex vs. a 6th codex.  His eldar seemed really awesome for the points cost - especially those transports and I'm pretty sure if his warlocks hadn't fled off the table in turn one that would have changed the complexion of the game entirely.  Codex creep seems alive and well!