Pick up game and total losses

Points: 1500
Mission: Recon, gamma
Opponent: Gareth Bowen
Opposition: Tyranids

Minor Loss

Losses:

3 IV Company Tactical marines
1 VII Company Tornado
4 VII Company Tactical marines
1 VIII Company Dreadnought
1 VIII Company Tornado

1 Codicier
1 Predator Annihilator

Rather than go into a report on the game which was basically swap table edges save a few pot shots either way, I'm now at the ten game mark so I thought I'd give a summary of losses so far.

IV COMPANY LOSSES:

49 Tactical marines
20 Assault marines
8 Devastator marines
4 Dreadnoughts
5 Speeders
5 Tornados
1 Rhino

VII COMPANY LOSSES:

36 Tactical marines
5 Assault marines
4 Dreadnoughts
2 Speeders
5 Tornados


VIII COMPANY LOSSES:

1 Dreadnought
1 Tornado

HQ LOSSES:

4 Librarian Codiciers

ARMOURY LOSSES:

3 Predator Annihilators
1 Whirlwind

So with ten games gone one of the battle companies is pretty much dead, a handful of marines and supporting officers are left. They almost died at an equal rate as a whole company, unfortunatley though I have taken out another companies support vehicles aswell. However I have been using a very similar list for a while longer than I was planning and having seen the support eliments die I wanted to drop them, I now finally can so we'll see if the other companies can do better or worse than the, now dead, forever missed Fourth Company. Poor, Poor, Captain Arisis his company is all but dead and he hasn't even fired a shot.

Pick up game

Points: 1500
Mission: Recon, gamma
Opponent: Steve Leaves
Opposition: Templars

Massacre win

Steve and I were assisting at our club (Spiky Club, Reading) annual fantasy tournament "Tides of Chaos" and after an easy first day we arranged a game on the spare table on the Sunday. Much to the disgust of the other players we threw oodles of scenery on the board and started rolling up mission (Eh whats one of them). Steve has a very mobile list with several bike squads and big squads in Rhino's, with a couple of tanks in support. The scenery had a fairly large centre of low levels so there were plenty of good firing corridors and a nice woods to hide my right flank which the infantry dived up leaving the armour to hold the approaching Templars. First turn i was lucky a immobilise the vindicator creating a bottle neck of Templar tanks allowing me to pick them off one at a time. Steve had to quickly re-route his bikes to deal with my armour and try to free his tanks some space to manoeuvre. But the my Tactical squad in rhino rushed his bikes and destroyed them. Mid game Steve couldn't even start to move his forces near my lines so went in for the kill hoping I couldn't take all his tanks and marines before he got to me. The Codicier then came into his own, holding up marines with Fury and then charging in selling his life very dearly. I really need to stop using suicidal Codiciers but they seem to work quite well. So with Steve's lines held I moved into his lines getting everything bar the Codicier and Assault squad there.

Losses:
1 IV Company Assault marines
5 VII Company Assault marines
1 IV Company Tactical marine
1 Codicier

Pick up game

Points: 1500
Mission: Take and hold, gamma
Opponent: Dave Richardson
Opposition: Orks

Minor Loss

Dave's Orks are a walking hoard which came second at last years second round qualifiers for the GT. So the army is pretty competent and Dave knows it inside out. Featuring lots and lots of boyz i had to be ruthless and efficient with my shooting and only enter assault on my terms- a lot easier said than done. My plan was pretty simple, flank the Orks and close in on the centre from both sides and not front on, meet in the middle and hopefully have enough stuff left. It seemed to be working early on with the devastators flying frag missiles into the boys, however a Predator Annihilator zapping two or so Grots a turn is a little disheartening. Mid game Dave hit the speeder squadron which brought up the abandoning crew point. One of the speeders with stunned the other shaken, with no returning shots and therefore another turn of shooting a had no choice but to hide the still mobile speeder effectively killing the other but keeping the squadron scoring (see the earlier post for the outcome) So the game came to the last turns and i hadn't done anywhere near enough damage but hadn't suffered to badly so i committed the Tacticals forward in the hope charging Orks has got to be better than being charged, it almost worked- if it wasn't for all the other Orks i couldn't get to. The end result, lots of dead Marines one of the most costly games yet.

Losses:
6 IV Company Assault Marines
9 IV Company Tactical Marines
1 IV Company Devastator Marine
2 VII Company Tornados
2 VII Company Dreadnoughts
4 VII Company Tactical marines

1 Codicier

A couple of quick points

So here's a quick not of what i have decided counts as a kill/death/destruction etc:

Any Model which losses its last wound due to failing a save or a waepon which would ignore that save.

Any Vehicle which suffers a Vehicle destroyed result.

Any deep-striking model that is counted as a casualty due to landing in terrain or an enemy model.

Any bike or speeder that is destroyed kills the driver/pilots (Assault marine/6th company in the case of bikes and solely 7th company with the speeders)

Any veteran who is killed in terminator armour also destroys the armour.

So what doesn't die:

Any model which takes wounds but is not removed from play is considered safe/alive and re-usable.

Any vehicle that suffers any result other than "vehicle destroyed" (Outright or by crashing due to immobalised results ) is considered safe/repairable and re-usable.

Any models that flee of the board re-group and are considered safe/alive and re-usable. (It certainly helps i'm using marines in this instance as it makes more sense)

Any sacraficial pilots are treated as fleeing models. (The squadron would decide that in the interest of the company the downed carfts pilots should fall back)

Any models held in reserve, for whatever reason, and do not enter the field of play.

Any deep-striking models that deploy/land off board. (They missed the drop zone/malfunction on the ship)

Hopefully thats covered everything but somehow i doubt it. We shall wait and see.

I have looked into injury tables/vehicle damages and recruitment/promotion of scouts for quite a while now and for several reasons i have chosen to avoid these, so here goes:

Firstly there is no clear amount of scouts in any given chapter. The third ed codex (Which is gospel for the "Sons of Manus") also states that last planet fall 6 Neophytes were accepted with a 54% survival. At best i could add 3 scouts per game but it seems to vague to work with.

Secondly this is an army i will be using for club/friendly games and tournaments. So whilst it'll be fun and no problem down the club to say the grandmaster has one less attack this game due to his arm being replaced by bionics i don't think that'll go down well at events.

Thirdly i think it'll be more interesting to see just how long the chapter would last going from full strength on a single campaign. This may well take me a year, maybe more, probably less (100 or so games at this rate), but for the chapter its a month or so on campaign. Maybe when they are all dead i'll try again with injury charts etc. but i may have to kill myself first.

Finally i did play a couple of games last weekend but i'm trying to write up a couple of more interesting battle reports for them so you'll have to give me a couple of days (We just had a tournament of that other game at the club so i was a bit busy) and i'm also trying desperatly to paint up some terminators and bikers so i can take a bit of pressure off the tacticals.

Cheers, Charley

What counts as dead?

Having played eight games with the Sons, a couple of, um, unforeseen circumstances have arisen. Namely, what constitutes a dead marine?

Situations that have happened in games include sacrificing speeder pilots, by deliberately breaking coherency after one of the squadron was unable to move for a turn, and, as already mentioned, fleeing marines. From this, scattering deepstrikes off the table, and reserves not turning up before the end of the game are theoretical problems I have to come to a decision on.

So, any thoughts?

Points - 1500
Mission - Cleanse, Omega Level
Opponent - Stu Robertson
Opposition - Dark Eldar

Minor Win

Lost:
1 Third Company Land Speeder Tornado
6 Fourth Company Assault Marines
19 Fourth Company Tactical Marines
1 Fourth Company Veteran Sergeant
1 Codicier

Pick-up game

Points - 1500
Mission - Recon, Gamma Level
Opponent - Caroline Pringle
Opposition - Mantis Warriors
Win

Lost:
1 Third Company Land Speeder
1 Third Company Land Speeder Tornado
4 Seventh Company Tactical Marines
3 Fourth Company Devastator Marines
1 Third Company Dreadnought

Pictures

A few pictures of the army, as it currently stands

The whole army, from a distance

Multi-melta landspeeders

Dreadnought, and tornadoes

The Las/Plas squads

Librarian, and friends

Tactical Squad in a Rhino

Heavy Support Section (including the venerable dreadnought)

Pick-up game

Points - 1500
Mission - Recon, Gamma Level
Opponent - David Richardson
Opposition - Dark Angels
Draw

Lost:
2 Fourth Company Assault Marines
1 Fourth Company Land Speeder
1 Third Company Land Speeder
2 Fourth Company Land Speeder Tornados
1 Fourth Company Rhino
5 Fourth Company Tactical Marines
8 Seventh Company Tactical Marines
4 Fourth Company Devastator Marines
1 Third Company Dreadnought

ASMoH - Outcome

Very pleased with the Sons' first outing, as it was good enough to get me second place overall, just missing out on first by 700 Victory points.

I can see this is already making me a lot less reckless and much more thoughful of committing troops to engagements. I am distraught by the loss of my annihilators and also the effect losing a Land Speeder has on the Seventh company. The new list I am looking at is much more troop/rhino based

ASMoH - Game 4

Mission - Secure & Control, Gamma Level
Opponent - James Karch
Opposition - Mentor Legion
Major Win

Lost:
2 Fourth Company Assault Marines
1 Fourth Company Land Speeder
2 Fourth Company Land Speeder Tornados
1 Fourth Company Rhino
8 Fourth Company Tactical Marines
1 Fourth Company Veteran Sergeant
6 Seventh Company Tactical Marines

ASMoH - Game 3

Mission - Seek & Destroy, Omega Level, No Dusk & Dawn, No Random Game Length, No Concealment
Opponent - Dave Pike
Opposition - Blood Angels
Minor Win

Lost:
1 Codicier
2 Fourth Company Dreadnoughts
1 Predator Annihilator
1 Fourth Company Assault Marine
2 Landspeeders
1 Landspeeder Tornado
6 Seventh Company Tactical Marines

ASMoH - Game 2

Mission - Recon, Alpha level with Victory Points
Opponent - Richard Phillips
Opposition - Ultramarines (painted black)
Massacre Win

Lost

2 Fourth Company Dreadnoughts
1 Whirlwind
1 Predator Annihilator
2 Fourth Company Assault Marines
1 Landspeeder
2 Seventh Company Tactical Marines

ASMoH - Game 1

A Small Matter of Honour was a tournament in Basingstoke organised by the Sad Muppets, consisting of one 400 point game, and three 1750 points games.

First game - 400 points

Mission - Cleanse, Omega level, no Random Game Length, Night Fight throughout
Opponent - Stu Robertson
Opposition - Tau
Major level Win

Lost: 3 Fourth Company Tactical Marines