Prot's War in the Warp

These are my opening games with the new rules. I can’t say they are fantastic, nor do I feel these will have near the impact of the other rule sets in Ritual of the Damned. To go further, I think I felt a ton more impact from the Eldar supplement, but what this does have is a lot of ‘feel’ and character to the ruleset.

I’m playing games with the new ruleset even though we haven’t seen it released to the full public yet. My goal isn’t necessarily to win, but to see what kind of replay value and strength is coming from this book.

So since that is the case I will be very brief in my description of the games, and the lists, and focus more on how things worked, and felt in game.

I have only a few pictures to share with these 2 games, but let’s dive in to game 1: Thousand Sons vs. Blood Angels.

Of course this is post Blood of Baal, so the Blood Angels are now (in case they weren’t before) hyper-aggressive.

I face off against a list that is meant to be in your face incredibly fast. Lots of Death Company with Hammers, and lots of Sanquinary Guard. Lots of Aura HQ’s and a Libby Dread followed by 2 Vindicators, and lots of Primaris in a dual Battalion.

The Thousand Sons in this game are simply trying out Cult of Time, to see just exactly what restorative powers I could expect: Main power featured is:

TIME FLUX: WC 5. Targets CoT Infantry. Restores one lost infantry model to full health. On a test of (unmodified!) 9+, restored D3 lost infantry instead.

So I’m playing a very basic dual battalion as well, and I’ve brought my newly put together Magnus out for the game (this is my rebuild of Thousand Sons, so you’ll have to excuse all the unpainted stuff).

We are playing one of the new, really fun, Maelstrom CA19 missions, but let’s be honest, this is about ripping into each other and testing the waters.

The Game Synopsis:

I get first turn. This is critical of course because the Blood Angels full intent is to rip across the board at full steam and tear my head off.

The greatest act Magnus would have is an attempt at Infernal Gatway which is really just a mini Orbital Bombardment, targeted at his Primary Vindicator tank. This was SUCH a juicy target because he had so much clustered around that large foot print. The power goes off but is DENIED(!) by the BA Libby Dread!

That said, Magnus pulls off a triumphant Mega-Smite and gets off 11 wounds on said Vindicator and it is just enough to destroy the tank in one, amazing surge of psychic laser beaming. The Tank would explode, but be CP re rolled. What a shot.

I would “sling shot” Magnus back deep into my lines with Ahriman casting Warp Time on him. The rest of my psychic phase was poor, however, I will say I BELIEVE it saved me the game:

Ahriman Casts Doombolt on his Sanguinary HQ (Big guy with wings and Halo. I can’t remember his name but he leads the golden boys and relies on him for an aura.)

Doombolt goes off, reduces the character by 3 wounds and has now forced him down to half movement. This is huge because he can’t go full tilt at me anymore with that character’s support.

Blood Angels strike back.

This would be Part 2 of a big break I needed in this game. (I find it ironic I used cult of time in this game)…. I bought myself some serious time by having his Libby Dread failcast the power to give him wings. This is huge because he’s in front of ruins and he wants to float through the ruins to support the mass of infantry. Not only does he fail to fly, his CP re roll is just as bad. Incredible.

I left my Spawn up high to cause a roadblock. It sort of worked. He hits them with the sanquinary guard, but they are easily and effortlessly wiped.

A lot of my shots hit his advancing stuff in T1, so his Death Company, while depleted hit very hard. I lose a lot of my screen made largely of Rubricae.

With his entire army focused so hard on rushing me, I drop the 5 man Occult squad, the Termie Sorc, and a Tzaangor 20 man squad on his back door. They cause a lot of trouble, including killing two support characters he has in the rear of his main force.

Eventually he gets into me, causing Magnus some wounds but my retaliation of characters is huge and wipes his core of heavy hitting characters and we end up calling the game in Turn 4.

Lessons learned:

Cult of Time is gimmicky. It’s fun, but you quickly realize you’re likely only going to get back 2-3 dudes. And passing the test on an unmodified 9+ is what you really want. Don’t forget there’s a strat that you can use now to do this, so I really question the validity of making a full Detachment dedicated towards Cult of Time.

The other powers helped my ambition to run more Scarab Occult and Rubrics, but they were harder to use than I anticipated. I only got to use the “double Shoot’ Strat once (since you have to sit still to use it). Unfortunately I didn’t have the luxury on using it on my 15 man rubric squad.

I didn’t have a lot of the new stuff in play so my goal for the next game will be to include a heavier handed approach and less goofy stuff. So that will be against Necrons, coming soon.

Prot.