An Epic Encounter

So this Monday I found myself at a loose end but managed to set up  last minute game of Epic.

I forgot to take many photos of this so it wont be much of a write up.

We opted for 3000 points and as it was very last minute and I did not know what my opponent would be facing I selected an already existing list suitable to cope with most situations:

Command Company
Mechanised Company
Tank Company
Infantry Company
Shadowsword Platoon
Sentinel Platoon
Manticore Platoon
Rough Rider Platoon
Hydra Platoon
Thunderbolt Squadron

My opponents force was a bit of a surprise:

Ork Great Gargant
Huge Boyz Mob, fully mechanised
Huge Cult of Speed
Huge Stompa Mob

4 activations.  This was going to go one of two ways.  He was either going steamroller across the board and I would be unable to stop him, or he would stall, allowing me to bring my greater number of activations to build up blast markers and outflank him.

That's a lot of Orks

In the end the latter was the case. I put a row of sentinels across the board at the start of the game to block any movement and the Orks didn't seem to know what to do about them. They marched across the board as far as they could and then stopped, trying to shoot at targets behind the sentinels. This allowed me to bring all my firepower to bear and I slowly started blowing bits of the Ork army. They accumulated blast markers at a frightening rate and in turn two bot the Speed Freaks and Stompa Mob were broken.  Turn three saw a breakdown in eth Guard communication network as a flurry of ones for the activation tests saw the army cohesiveness break down.  The final turn saw the Orks bunched up together on one flank, while the Stompa Mob, having failed to rally for two turns had been reduced to a single Stompa by sustained fire from the Guard Mechanised Company and the Thunderbolts. This allowed the Guard to capture the two objective on the Ork side of the table.

Guard drive of the Stompas

The rest of the guard advanced, trying to contain the orks in the centre of the board, while trying to ensure they cannot take the central Guard objective.   The Tank Company threw itself at the Gargant, stripping it of its shields and starting to inflict some damage, as I mistakenly believed that this was the Orks most expensive formation.  I managed to reduce it to three damage points, thanks to the Shadowsword, but alas at the end of turn thee it still had a few damage points remaining. I lost most of the tank company fro the trouble as well. It turned out it was fairly pointless as the most expensive Ork formation was the Huge Boyz Mob and into the Gargant.  A final sneaky triple move from the Hydra's captured the Ork backfield objective, leaving the guard in possession of all  three Ork objective, while the Orks had nothing, securing a Guard victory.

Less Orks, but still a lot!

An interesting game, and against a very friendly and cheerful opponent. I enjoy epic and its always good to expand the player base a bit further.  Also his army selection was very different from usual, which made fro a different type of game.  I have been playing my Guard fro a while now and need to start at looking at different ways that they can be played.  IN the interest of variety I have also started putting together my Epic Marines as well, and in this case am opting for Blood Angels as they are just about as far from Guard as its possible to get in terms of play style, as they are very aggressive.

 

I'm not sure how long the Marines will take as at the moment I am more interested in painting one off models as opposed to painting loads of the same model. I have been looking a lot at Age of Sigmar as well and recently purchased the Generals Companion, which at £15 is a steal.  I think A review will follow shortly, once I have had a chance to play the game. In the meantime I have been working on my metallic and picked up a Stormcast Eternal from E-bay nice and cheap.  I originally intended to have a bash at NMM gold but chickened out and ended up forking out for the Scale 75 Gold Paint Set, which turned out to be an excellent purchase.  They cover very well and the gold's are nice and strong.  I have always tended to avoid painting gold as I have never found a decent gold paint, but now I have found one I am making up for lost time and hunting about for models that can be painted gold!  Great fun.

Shiny

Side View

Next week we return to the hive as we give the Aliens vs Predator 2nd edition rules a run out to see if they are an improvement.