A Savage Maw and a Bloodied Nose

As I looked out of the window this morning and saw a layer of freshly-fallen snow on the ground, I couldn't help but think it was a good omen for my Fenrisian warriors as they prepared to fight their first ever battle.

The last four weeks has seen me spending hour upon hour painting the basecoats on my army - at the moment a humble 1500-odd points' worth - and I thankfully managed to finish them a day before battle.

They weren't pretty, they weren't finished, but they were ready to fight.

In the end, my opponent and I agreed on a 1200 point battle which meant that I had to take a fairly bare-bones force in order to boost the number of models on the field - one special weapon and one heavy weapon in total, the rest mainly boltguns.

I did however manage to field a Wolf Guard pack with Jump Packs and twin Wolf Claws which weighed in at a massive 350-odd points for the five models.

We played a fairly basic scenario with five objectives to capture.  No bells and whistles for our first battle, just a straight fight with a clear mission.

And my enemy?  None other than our fellow battle brothers, the Blood Angels!

My Wolf Guard squad worked against me numbers-wise as my twenty-nine models were faced with around forty Space Marines across the board.  Given that I had a combat-geared army, the sheer number of bolters bearing down upon me was a great concern!

To cut a long blog short, we lost in then end - 3 victory points to 2.  It was a close call, but the weight of numbers and some shocking tactical decisions on my part led to something of a massacre.

My enemy fielded a small unit of just four Death Company, and they were complete monsters in combat!  Things started well for me when I charged my Wolf Guard into combat with one of his Assault squads and completely massacred them in one round!  I was quite impressed, but he answered by cutting through a nine-man pack of Blood Claws like they weren't even there!

I wasted one of my Assault Cannon-armed Terminators by putting him with a pack of Grey Hunters and spending the entire game guarding one of the objectives - the only thing that came into range of my one heavy weapon was an empty Rhino - which of course he destroyed.  Still, this warrior had no real effect on the game whatsoever.

Njal performed well, but I managed to lose the game with him in the last turn by forgetting to use the Chain Lightning result on the Lord Of Tempests table on the one Assault Marine that was holding one of the objectives.  If I had managed to kill him with it, the game would have been a draw!!

Still, it was a fantastic game which flowed really well considering neither of us have played 40K in ten years (and therefore never with these rules), and I can't wait for my next battle.

Now to finish those paint jobs...