Well my dabbling in 40k continues... I have enjoyed several games together with my young son, fielding my squats and orks from the late 80s/early 90's against each other.
Last night I even took them down to the club for a try out against one of the guys there. It was rather amusing to see the looks on the younger players faces, wondering what on earth are they!? The older more savvy hands were quick to inform them; basically an 'imperial guard variant' in todays-speak, that was discontinued by the 'Evil Empire' many years ago, probably before half the current players were even born!
"Cor, they're cool" - looking at the squadrons of Guild Trikes equipped with pintel mounted MultiMeltas...
"You've got to bring these back again" , was a common request...
Well I played using my fan-made squat codex, against Mikes Grey Knights, which were not what I was expecting (Terminators and Marines - Nope!), henchmen, demon-possessed humans, an Uber hero (expectedly) and a psyker Inquisitor (expected), and a bunch of tanks - chimeras and a land raider. The Land Raider is huge - makes my one from the 80s look like a dinky toy...
The battles was for objectives which had to be held by troop squads.
I got to go 2nd and took the customary first turns firing... and lost my lascannon armed thunderer squad - boo hoo. On my turn, my guild trikes wiffed and missed just about point blank shots at the chimeras. But my Rapier nailed the Land Raider, blowing it apart spewing the Uber hero and Demon-humans out all over the place..
My Warlord and Exo-armoured Hearthguard (the famous eggs-on-legs) were charged by the Uber dude, and went two rounds with him before killing him - miracle of miracles! The Thunderhammer helped :-)
I was taking lethal fire from his twin-linked autocannon firing Dread' and most of my bike squads and trikes got wrecked pretty quickly before hitting anything...
However in the face of such incompetence from the bikers the Warlord sauntered over to the chimeras and managed to charge one with his Thunderhammer, destroying it and all on board, before being melted by troops in the 2nd chimera... Still, I think he deserved a posthumous Man-of-the-match!
Time was drawing to a close and is it happened my Warlords charge had been just enough to push the chimeras back from the objective, and my ground hugging Brotherhood squad hung on by their fingernails to secure the centre objective, giving me a 1-0 victory!
If the game had continued it still could have gone either way...
Jolly good fun, and I learned a lot. Perhaps most importantly, the way units score now, and the use of Deep Strike and Reserves. I think next time I'll try bringing the Trikes on in reserve and see if they do any better.
The game is certainly better than when I last played back in 80s/90s, and I am up for more.
I'm just not prepared to pay the ridiculous prices now being charged by GW for their figures.
So...I'll stick to my squats, and look to increase my options with them, and even have plans to scratch build some Termites and an IronEagle Gyrocopter.
So, I am on the look out for any 80s/90s 40k squat figures you might want to get rid of, at a sensible price. Yeah yeah , rarity value and all that but they're still just a basic metal pewter figure, so if you want rid and have sensible price in mind, please get in touch (Emails to link in sidebar under pirate picture).
Many thanks.
Scott
PS I'll try and include some pictures of the next game if you're interested?
