Tale of 4 Gamers, game 1

A Tale of 4 Gamers:

I’m actually double-dipping and combining this effort between 2 game clubs. My local game club is the Berks Warhammer 40K Group. Founded about a year ago, the group has grown from 4 players in the Berks County, Reading PA area to about 30 and growing. As we network out and meet more players, we are hoping to expand our group to join up with other surrounding gamers.

My other group is a large group of friends based out of Harrisburg PA at the Adventurer’s Guild. This is truly a game store for gamers. Rich has a terrific store, and I hope one day we get something like this in the Berks area one day. (I’m working on it).

So as it stands, I am beginning starting my Space Marines army finally. This is my 3rd army for Warhammer 40,000. I wanted to do something different, and in reading up on stories and fluff, I became very interested in the armies involved in the Badab War.

I don’t like playing “standard” armies that everyone plays. I like my armies to be unique to some degree. My Goff Orks have lots of checkerboard patterns, thanks to me getting plenty of down-time to paint. My son’s imperial guard army that we collect is also like that, each man is done in a variant of U.S. Woodland Camouflage pattern, and though it was tedious and took a lot of work, it was well worth the effort and has it’s own “unique” look to it.

Now onto the Space Marines. My son, who will be 8 this month, really likes the color green. He liked the fluff of the Salamanders as well. I wanted something different, and was looking initially at doing Minotaurs, Lamenters, or even the old version of the Fire Hawks before they were lost into the warp and became the Legion of the Damned.

After reading more on the fluff, I saw an opportunity with the Lamenters chapter to really “start over” and rebuild my own army. Also, I saw a lot of opportunities for converting stuff, showing battle damaged vehicles along side “new” vehicles. My improved skills at becoming proficient with painting checker patterns also would present a terrific chance to showcase some of my painting skills here.

Since I really didn’t want to invest money into 2 armies, I’m expanding the story line of the Lamenters rebuilding with aid of the Salamanders, thus allowing me to incorporate both space Marines chapters into one army. The Yellow of the Lamenters and the Green of the Salamanders actually looks really good together as well.
The Lamenters were lured into betraying the Imperium back during the Badab Wars thanks to manipulation by the Astral Claws Marines. After losing the Badab wars and repenting, the Lamenters were sent on a 100 year crusade against Tyranids, leaving them with only 3 companies worth of troops left.

I take this story at the rebuilding part and go with my army based upon the rebuilding of the 5th company. I did this for a few reasons. One is that there are no articles on the web about it. This gives me a lot of leeway with writing up my own stories. The other is that in codex chapters, black is the trim color for 5th company marines. Black and Yellow looks great together, and me being a huge Pittsburgh Steelers fan, I really like the colors. Also, I chose the 6th company of Salamanders for similar reasons, as it’s an off chapter and hopefully gives me leeway of writing more stories and fluff for my armies.

I had started collecting Marines about a year ago, but really had only painted one lone marine miniature of each chapter so I had a “base” to work from. I also did paint one Rhino for each, hoping one day to get involved in a venture like this and start playing small, 500 point games.   So, as it stands, I have plenty of Marine stuff, but not much of it painted. I started working on a base list to start with, and this is what I have to run with for my first block of 500 points:

Lamenter's 5th Company (With support from Salamanders 6th company).
HQ: Captain: 120 points
Troops1: Tactical Squad Alpha: 170 points
Troops2: Tactical Squad Beta: 90 Points
Troops3: Scout sniper squad: Sigma: 85 points
Dedicated Transport: Rhino (35)
500 total points
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Captain Raymond Xavier (X, Ray ---nick name): (100), With Power Sword: (15), melta bombs (5)
* Troops: Tactical Squad: Alpha : 10 Space Marines (170), with Sgt, Flamer, & Missle Launcher
* Troops: Tactical Squad: Beta: 5 Space Marines (Salamanders): (90), 4 marines, 1 sgt.
* Troops: Scout sniper squad: Sigma: 85 points (4 scouts, 1 sgt = 75) (sniper rifles, 1 missle launcher (10)
* Dedicated Transport: Rhino: Lamenters: (35), standard as book, no upgrades.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So far, I have played 2 games with this list.

The first was fun, and considered a “training” mission, since it was against Salamander Space Marines of the 2nd company. So we basically write this up as a military training exercise, using the Space Marine equivalent of laser-tag.

GAME 1: Was capture and control, spearhead deployment.

My Lamenters got to go first. We played on a 4’ x 4’ board, using some snow terrain I aquired from War Torn Worlds. This stuff is great, all painted and textured, and made from recycled tires. I’m going to have to invest in more of this stuff, it’s really nice quality and the rubber construction makes it very durable.

We each had an objective marker in our deployment zones. I positioned my scout snipers (in snow camouflage [white primer]) upon a snow covered hill. The 5-man squad of Salamanders was holed up behind a wall, in wait mode, holding back to help protect the Lamenter’s objective. The 10 man squad was in the rhino, and behind them was Captain Raymond Xavier on foot.

The Salamanders brought in a Command Squad, 5 scouts with shotguns outflanking, another tactical squad and a dreadnought.

My scouts fired their Missle Launcher and would have destroyed the dreadnought, but it made it’s cover save, as it was hiding behind a rocky outcropping. The dread made its cover save, keeping it in the game from an embarrasing turn 1 kill.  I rolled the rhino 12” forward and popped smoke launchers. This would end up saving it from lascannon hits and krak missle hits on the Salamanders turn.

We exchanged fire and troops moved forth. The Rhino closed up and deployed Alpha squad and they gunned down half of the Salamanders tactical squad near the objective. Scout snipers took pot shots at other marines, killing one or two.

I also positioned my tactical squad to cut off the dreadnought from going near the objective, and managed to take it down with well placed shots from Krak grenades and Krak Missles.

We both kept each other at bolter range, firing rapid fire rounds into each other’s squads. It came down to my Lamenters making more armor saves than the Salamanders. Eventually, my Captain closed the distance, running every turn and assaulted the remnants of the command squad, taking down the last marines and their Captain Ver’Asa in close combat.

The battle ended with Lamenters in control of their objective marker and Captain Raymond in contest of the Salamanders marker. Our first game, our first win!