We've started up a 2-man/4-army Planetary Empires campaign. It's ruleset is an interesting way to shake up the "same old, same old" of the standard 40k missions and, on paper at least, seems like a relatively balanced way of making sure that players who lose a territory or three don't wind up steamrolled and snowballed right out of the game. In brief, someone with fewer territories gets to field a somewhat larger army, while someone with more territories gets a variety of bonuses conferred to their army.
On Planet X, old rivals Tau and Raven Guard square off to maintain their feud.
On Moon Y, the Blood Angels seek to purge the Eldar's witchcraft.
For Round 1 of the we played a single RG vs. BA game, with the Raven Guard boosting to orbit to contest a Blood Angel manufactorum. Deployment was rolled as Dawn of War and mission was rolled as Seize Ground; however, since this was a 750 point game that was starting a bit after 9PM we adjusted to Annihilation for simplicity's sake.
Deployment complete. The RG have a pair of Rhinos on the field with 5 Tactical Space Marines in each. In reserve is a Captain in Terminator armor, a 5-man Terminator squad, a 5-man Devastator-lite squad (a combat squad with a lascannon and a missile launcher), and a Land Speeder. The Blood Angels reserve everything: Librarian with jump pack leading an assault combat squad w/ 2 meltaguns, Sanguinary Priest with jump pack leading an assault combat squad w/ sergeant and guy with powerfist, and a Sanguinary Priest with jump pack leading a full assault squad w/ 2 meltaguns. All of the Blood Angels troops are Tactical Space Marine models standing in for Assault Marines, so keep that in mind.
Middle of Turn 1. Not much do do, really.
Middle of turn 2. The Land Speeder's deep strike scattered into the terrain and passed the difficult terrain test. The Captain suffered a deep strike mishap and I placed him against the far-left table edge on the difficult terrain; the picture is cutoff and doesn't show him. Thanks to Descent of Angels all of the Blood Angels arrive and land pretty much where I want them to. The Librarian used
The Blood Lance to wreck the right-hand Rhino while the 10-man squad and the other combat squad were ineffective upon arrival. The Blood Angels also fired off a melta shot, immobilizing the Land Speeder.
The Captain huffed and puffed and came running out of the fog of war, but still has a long way to go. The Devastator squad, which had been conferred the Relentless Universal Special Rule thanks to a RG-held Command Bastion on the metamap, arrived from reserve but missed a krak missile shot. The Terminators also deep-strike in and scatter only marginally, landing safely. The combat squad from the right-hand Rhino assaults into my Librarian-led combat squad and breaks them, and the stupid idiots flee off the table in one jump. The other combat squad disembarks and moves around the building, but takes a couple casualties from my meltaguns (I think, though why I would've shot meltas at TSMs instead of Terminators escapes me). The Land Speeder gets off its only shot of the game, I believe, but doesn't get a kill.
The bottom of turn 3 sees everybody piles onto the Terminators and chops and hack and swing with chainswords and a couple power swords.
By the bottom of Turn 4 the last Terminator is dragged down, joined by the right-hand combat squad, but the left-hand one wanted in on the action, too. The Rhino kind of looks around with a pained expression, since he can't shoot into the scrum, and the Captain shouts, "Hey guys!
*pant*pant* Wait
*pant* for me!" The Devastators don't roll well on their run and traipse along, enjoying the shell-blasted scenery.
Turn 5 and the game ends. The melee is still going on, but the writing was certainly on the wall. Raven Guard won 4 KPs to 2, I believe, and managed to wrest control of the manufactorum away from the Blood Angels.
