BOYL 2014 - 40K 2nd edition Squats vs ???

Curis

Member
Afternoon all,

I'm going to be at BOYL on the Saturday. My formative experience of wargaming was Warhammer 40,000's 2nd edition – and I'd like to take a trip down memory lane to those halcyon days of Datafaxes, Wargear Cards and cardboard ruins. All the glory of the Dark Millennium boxed game with its myriad templates, card decks and psychic powers.

40K 2E was also important as it was the last time Squats had an official army list! I will be selecting 1,500 points of classic Citadel and Ironclaw Space Dwarf blighters using the army list leaflet that came in the boxed game.



Are any of you capable of fielding 1,500 points of opposing army using any list of codex? If it could be using the appropriately aged miniatures all the better!

Curis
 

cheetor

Member
I will be busy with other 40k related stuff at BOYL, but I cant wait to see the Nethyr Edge/Furnace Valley short space bearded guys in hand. I have been watching you assemble them on and off for a few years and they are an inspiration.

I hope that you get a cool game in with them :)
 

cheetor

Member
Curis":27rf0qwd said:
I'm looking forward to meeting you in person, cheetor! I love your armies too.

Thanks.
Its going to be a fun weekend. I hope that someone trumps up and that you get a game or three in.
 
Hi Curis,

Remember me? Flame on!

I was thinking of coming along on the Saturday and could bring a suitably vintage 1500 point army or three. Fancy a game? If so pm me and reserve a table and I will come up for a game or two. Can't promise to know the rules though as I'm struggling with 7th ed at the moment for my sins but I have a full set of the rules and cards etc.

Cheers

Graham
 

Curis

Member
Graham! Hello!

I think I bumped into your Chris at the Forge World Open Day recently.

I'd love to play you on Saturday. I'll go and reserve a table.
 

Curis

Member
Though all my Squats were released before 1994, Graham's were actually painted back in the day, making them even more authentically retro. His is a gorgeous force, with conversions born from a mix of passion and restrictions of the early Eldar range.





Graham'd also brought an allied contingent of Slann – meaning we were both using defunct alien races.



Both our armies were informed by the 'Black Codex' – a pamphlet in the starter box with concise versions of every list. That list was the last official list Squats had, and I've played them with counts-as or home-brew rules ever since.

Counter Strike

2E stands out in my memory for its avalanche of cardboard. Admittedly, real games wouldn't have used EVERY reference sheet – but we did out of a combination of cardboard fetishism, and because it had been twenty years since we'd had to remember the Chainfist's armour penetration value was D20+D4+D6+10. This meant that our gaming area was festooned in datafaxes, wargear cards, psychic powers, strategy cards and polyhedral dice.



Weirdly, 40K has seen a card resurgence with the Psychic and Strategic Asset decks. Fashions come around.

yUm jaM! i liK JaM!
As squad after squad of of Eldar opened fire with shuriken, the big red sustained fire dice slowed the game down to a crawl. Every Eldar rolls a pair of sustained fire dice to determine how many shots they fired and records the ensuing jams. There's no way of batch rolling those red cubes of tedium. Luckily there were enough jam counters to cater for Graham's bad rolls.

Warhammer 40K 2E Eldar" width="650px" /></a>

Despite the atrocious jamming, Shuriken Catapults sliced through most of my Squats. The players on the table over were having a game of Rogue Trader, and chipped in that the weapon had been toned down from Rogue Trader - when its Following Fire rules meant it could keep firing indefinitely.

The Pain of Vehicle Squadrons
My Bikers attempted to use the Flank March strategy card to appear on the Squat right and unleash their twin-bolters. I think twin-linked weapons worked much better in 2E – instead of a reroll to hit you rolled once, and then multiplied your hits (and misses) by two. Anyway, Graham cancelled my Strategy card with the Traitor Strategy Card and then we fell in a bit of rules hole. But importantly I got to again field my vintage Bike Squadron from all those christmasses ago. Thanks Dad!



Graham also had a light vehicle squadron in the form of 5 Jetbikes with a Vyper. Resolving shots against these squadrons was a gloriously retro (read: tedious) procedure thanks to the old Datafax location tables. We powered through as the results let us use lots of cardboard counters to record which fairings were buckled, which crewmen were wounded, which engine tanks were going to explode the next turn...

We're really glad this was streamlined away in 3E. Graham whipped out his old acetate vehicle targeting matrix and reminded me that there had been even more turgid days of 40K.



This is Graham's Vyper mercilessly gunning down my Battle Standard Bearer, whose Refractor Field had saved him from death three times in that game. The Thunderer Squad in the ruins above saw he was swiftly avenged. I say swiftly – they had Heavy Bolters and resolving the sustained fire made it proloooooonged.

The Psychic Prolapse
The Psychic Phase – the card-heavy subgame. I remember several games of the 90s thwarted by both players forgetting to bring the Warp Deck. Or one person forgetting and the other one being cheap not wanting to pay the £20 for the rules but still field Psykers, banking on using his opponent's cards. Sometimes that cheapskate player was me.



Ahhh, shuffling the cards, feeling the ebb of the Warp as the cards rippled through my fingers. Graham had a Level 4 Farseer, and me a Level 2 Ancestor Lord. As Graham sourced the gorgeous 6" Eldritch Storm template to devastate my Guild Bikers, I played the Daemonic Attack card which cancelled the power and saw Daemons dragging his Farseer into the Warp. My Mission Card awarded me a massive +5 VPs for this fluke event.



Who needs tactics when Fortuna's on your side?

Lords of Battle
For the great climax of the game, Graham charged his Wraithlord into my Ancestor Lord. It would have been a LORD OFF, but back in them days Wraithlords were just called "Eldar Dreadnoughts". My tiny bearded dwarf didn't even come up to the knee of this eldritch war engine.



We refreshed ourselves on the combat rules, thinking the Dread's power glove would effortlessly squish the Squat. But the exo-armoured old bugger with his 4 attacks and weapon skill 8 won the combat and got four hits. Aha! Ancestor Lords had buff stats. And with his basic strength 5, which I then increased by +2 by expending the Force Card stored in his Force Sword, I thought I would pure muller the robot. But in 2E the lowest armour on the Dreadnought was 18, which my 7+D6 had no hope against

The game ended after Turn 4. Graham was declared winner by virtue of outnumbering the Warmaster's surviving forces several times over and us not wanting to work out VPs.

2E creaks a lot, but we found it surprisingly playable for its age and a lot of fun to run through the old procedural mechanics.

 

cheetor

Member
That's a great report. It's weird to think how much 40K I have actually forgotten at this stage. I had completely blocked the horror of some of that stuff (shruriken catapult sustained fire jams for example).

Although second ed doesnt hold much nostalgia for me (RT and 3rd ed are my favourite editions) your game was one of my visual highlights of the weekend. Beautiful old models and armies and you guys looked like you were having good fun. Great stuff.
 

Curis

Member
I didn't come over and watch your games at all - soz! There were so many exciting things to see and people to meet – easily enough to fill the entire weekend. I regret not pestering all those bloggers I recognised.

I had lots of problems in 2E with my Kult of Speed army. First enemy shooting phase and my Sunz bikes went everywhere, and the Skorcha fired with a different-sized flame template every turn as it lost pressure. Very characterful for skirmishes, not great for massed science fiction battles.
 

cheetor

Member
I managed to entirely miss the Dredd game - something that I would plan an entire weekend around under normal circumstances. That adequately illustrates how many cool things were going on I think :)
 
Cracking write up Chris. Still think my Wraithlord should have stomped your oap !

Now wheres my PDF? ;)

Graham

ps less than flattering shot of the Apperley belly there. :(
 
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