First game of 6th ed

Managed to get a game in against a friends BA tonight, my first with my Deathwing since February and also my first 40k game since 6th ed dropped. I have to say it was an interesting experience.

My list was basically Belial, a Divination Librarian, 3 Deathwing Squads, two Vindicators and a Land Raider. His list off the (top of my head) consisted of Astrorath, Death Company and DC Dread in a Stormraven, a Tactical Squad, an Assault squad and the rather surprising addition of some Devastators with Plasma Cannons. Can't remember the name of the mission we played (not owning the 6th ed book yet to check) but it was the one where Fast Attack become scoring (like that helped me, being the one slot Deathwing never use) and the value of the objectives were randomised.


After a closely fought first four turns, whittling down his force and pretty much neutering his plasma squad with shooting and driving him back towards his table edge, losing only my Vindicators in return. Then the victory got whipped out from underneath me when he managed to turn the tide quite nicely when the Stormraven finally arrived from reserve, with the Redeemer of the Lost pretty much taking out Belials squad and another Terminator Squad single-handedly

I gave him the game at the end of turn 5, what with me having only a single squad left and having to dash off to catch a train, but it was a good game. Despite being cut short, I took a lot from this game. Here's a small list:

-Terminators, even Tactical ones, are awesome now. They're ridiculously tough in combat,although little has changed at range
-Fliers are scary - his Stormraven was a game changer, mainly due to the fact that i knew I had nothing to shoot it down with. I need to tackle this problem or get some of my own.
- Wound allocation is a little weird. I had no choice but to let Belial die to the Death Company shooting before combat, as all wounds are are taken on the closest model until he dies. Very unrealistic that all shots happened to hit the commander, leaving his squad untouched
- DA Librarians are useful again, especially Divination ones giving out re-rolls. I'm also looking forward to trying out a Pyromancer one in the game against Orks I've got scheduled for next week
- A HQ with an Axe is a scary scary thing - Astorath doubly so.
- Vehciles are fragile, but still useful in a Deathwing list to draw fire away from the Terminators by providing a massive threat if not dealt with

 - Combats involving characters suck, as apparently you can't pick them out in combat unless you challenge them, which majorly sucks for DW, not having tough characters to take them on with. This seems a little weird to me, but we were running out of time so I didn't press the issue. I'll look it up at some point

All in all I rather like 6th edition. The game seems to flow quite nicely, seems to have got more balanced and is great fun to play too. I'm looking forward to seeing what else this edition brings. As i mentioned, I have agame against Orks next week. It should be fun, although I think I'm going to have to rewrite my list to include some Cyclones, or else have a serious think about my anti-horde capability. I'll post up my thoughts soon....