Ok, so after a hilarious, and successful game 1, my second opponent was Ned "Ed" Merrick from Boston, Mass. Ned has only been playing for less than a year and already has a nicely painted Blood Angels force.Ned was another of the fantastic players i had the pleasure of playing at colonial. Not only was Ned a fun guy to play, he also enjoyed a cocktail or 5 while playing, so needless to say, we hit it off like Nascar and the deep south. Anyhoo, Ned won the die roll and chose to go first, dang, sneaky blood angels.
the mission was a spearhead and Ned deployed his force in mass right in the middle of the board. I chose to take the total risk option of deploying nothing at all. This actually worked out well for me as he moved his force up, and left a 5 man assault squad to defend an objective deep in his corner. I dropped in a tactical squad with a flamer and combi plasma right on top of them.
what started out as what i thought was some bad luck for Ned, turned out to be the norm for both of us. I killed 4 of the 5 thanks to his yahtzee of 1's, and then his box cars leadership test, his last remaining angel ran off the board. The next 2 turns i piece mealed my force onto the board and hoped that Ned would continue his putrid shooting. Turns out, my hopes were answered and he failed to destroy my rhino and drop pod.
I returned the favor by rolling 3 one's for damage after penning his storm raven, predator and razorback. At this point, he was in full assault range from his terminators in the raven and the dispicable Mephiston in the Redeemer. Once again my lucky irish charms were working as Ned missed 4 times from Mephiston on my rhino and the berzerk charge of the terminators failed to destroy the predator! Leaving them both in the open and less than a foot from my table edge. The bag pipes were piping and Vulkan and the assault terminators heard the call. The tactical squad opened up on Mephiston giving him 3 wounds! And Vulkan quickly eliminated the terminators. That would pretty much be the end of any good dice rolling for this game for either of us. Mephiston was smashed to bits by the mighty hammers of vulkan's forge. Ned's redeemer made a mockery of my tactical squad cowering in cover fearing the vile promethium unleashed on them. 7 battle brothers were turned to ash instantly. the remaining marines, failed miserably to pen with not just one, but 2 melta shots. Another burp from the redeemer and the squad was no more.
we traded a few stunned and immobilized vehicle rolls for the next few turns, as well as some heavy handed vodka drinks and i was able to pull out a secondary objective victory while drawing on the primary and tertiary. Ned gratiously bought me a drink as was agreed upon before the game started that the non victor got the first round. I look forward to seeing him again at the Brothers Grim GT in june when he and his pals come down.
