Couldn't wait to paint up my Dark Imperium miniatures (Dark Angels), so invited Elliot over for my first game of 40K and used my Betrayal at Calth miniatures as a practice army. Here's the terrain set up.
Elliot and I played the introductory scenario (Only War or Total War, or something like that). We set up 4 objectives and then started deploying units. Ultramarine squad standing by.
I took the first turn and started to cross the street towards all the objectives strung across the centre of the battlefield.
Elliot's 3rd and 5th edition Dark Eldar took advantage of my exposed position, and swooped in with warrior-laden flying transports.
A depleted Space Marine squad fell back and clustered around the central objective as the Dark Elves closed in.
Meanwhile, my Terminator squad teleported in behind the Dark Eldar lines and moved in to seize another objective. By this point, I was way ahead on objective points (we were playing a Domination variant where we scored VPs at the end of every turn). However, Elliot was beating the crap out of my troops, and my numbers were dwindling away.
Elliot's own deep-striking Eldar moved in to stem the flow of objective points to me. They were eventually polished off by my Word Bearers and Dreadnaught.
In the end, my VP grab didn't matter. On the bottom half of the final turn, Elliot finally tabled me (taking out the last of my Terminators with Incubi), and he had fought back on the victory point side to overtake me by a point as well. Good game, Elliot! And a great introduction to 8th edition, and 40K in general.
So, thinking about it, I really like this set of rules. As a novice, I found the rules to be intuitive, and the game was smooth to play. There was tactical variation, and we had fun all the way through (the Rye helped). In the final analysis, I'd say I enjoyed these rules more than Warmachine. And that's saying a lot. I've been playing Warmachine for over 10 years.
More 40K to come, I'm sure of it.
'Til next time.