An Epic return

2nd Game of the year, plus 2nd Blog Post.

Ric and i had arranged to play this game before the new year, as generally that is how far we need to plan ahead to get a game in.

This time it was 3000 points Epic, Standard tournament game, Imperial Guard vs Eldar.

The table

Guard mustering for war

Eldar, lots of tanks

I opted for my fairly standard guard list, with a mixture of infantry, tanks and a few pieces of artillery.  Ric opted for a very tank heavy list, with everything mechanised apart from a few scouts.

This game was defined by two things:

• The Guard won initiative, every turn.
• Poor Activation and Rallying Roles.

We played three turns, and my Guard won initiative every turn.  That has never happened. I cant remember the last time I had the initiative in a game of Epic, mainly due to the poor strategy rating of guard against the much better ratings of Eldar and Marines. 

Poor Activation roles was a serious issue in this game, especially for myself. My poor old tank company never managed to fire a single shot all game, failing its first activation, then the Eldar managing to get past their supposedly impregnable armour  and kill enough tanks to break the company.  

Loads of tricksy Eldar Tanks.  Too many for my liking!

Guard Infantry in a sticky Situation

Rallying was poor on both sides, with one Eldar tank formation broken on the first activation of the game (Artillary for the win!) and never managing to rally for the whole game. 

Activation continued to be poor on both side, with my guard especially suffering an annoyingly large (even for me!) number of ones.  In turn three we both managed to fail at least 50% of our activation tests, leading to a lot of frustration.

The final act of the game was a failed activation test on a group of Eldar Vypers, which broke the formation and forced them to withdraw, which actually handed the Guard the victory with 2-1 on objectives.  

I cant think of a more undeserving victory than this.

Still great fun though and as always Ric was a gentlemen throughout, even in the face of my increasing frustration. The Guard must have run out of batteries for the radios or something.....

Next week a return to one of my favourite games, Chain of Command....