It's official, I'm actually a wargamer again!

I played my first wargame, in several years, last week!

I never really stooped wargaming, and I have had a strong need to wargame for quite some time. However, my gaming group has gone through quite a few changes over the last few years and we ended up being more of a board game group (who talked about wargaming a lot), than anything else.

I considered going along to my local wargames club (Aberdeen Wargames Club), but as my spare time is pretty much limited to one evening a week that would have meant loosing touch with the friends I game with at the moment. Anyway, we finally got our act together and settled on a system that was familiar to all of us, that we already had armies for and wouldn't tax us too hard to get back into, Warhammer 40K. Del had been playing regularly with another friend and Jeff and I both played it a lot a few years back.

So, we had decided on 40K, Del has been playing 5th edition recently, but on checking my much used rulebook it turned out to be 3rd edition. I also found a mint copy of 4th ed. ( I must have bought it about the time we stopped playing, probably read it once and then put it aside until the next game). Jeff was in a similar position, he also had a 4th edition copy. Fortunately, Ebay is your friend when it comes to older versions of 40K. Both Jeff and I managed to pick up the the smaller version (from the starter box) of the 5th edition rule book. I got mine, including the scenario book, a new set of dice, those horrid plastic rulers and the new (day-glow) templates, all for around £5!

As Jeff and I hadn't played for a long time Del offered to referee the first game and introduce us to the "new" 5th edition rules. We decided to start small and work up to some larger games. So initially we will be playing 400 point games. I fielded my Tau and Jeff brought along his Necrons.

I like my games to have a bit of narrative to them and know the terrain I planned to use I came up with the following:-

Early in the game things look quite positive for the tau!

Planet QV973alpha (Imperial Designation): Located in the quarantine zone that exists between Imperial Space and the Tau Empire. The planet was surveyed and found to be barren and uninhabited, although it was also discovered that certain geological features (crystal spires) displayed fairly severe effects on the warp around the planet! A team of scientists led by the Inquisition was despatched to investigate the nature of these "Crystal Spires". It was found that too much work around the geological formations caused heretical mutations and the research base was soon abandoned. The planet received the"Restricted" designation and was scheduled for a planet wide bombardment to erase all taint from it. However, the Imperial fleet has been busy elsewhere, and as such QV973alpha has been forgotten.

The incursion by the Imperial force did not go unnoticed!

1. The planet may be barren, but it is far from uninhabited! Hidden by thousands of years of harsh weather, a Necron tomb (Jeff's Necrons) is located on the far side of the planet and the arrival of the Imperial teams roused a small force to investigate the unwelcome intrusion...
2. An Eldar Craftworld (Del's Eldar) was not far from the planet while the Inquisition was conducting it's experiments. The Eldar felt the disturbances in the warp and sent a scouting force to investigate...
3. The Tau (my Tau) had been watching the Imperial ships as the came and went from the planet. Fairly sure that all the humans had left, the Tau sent a small ship with an advanced scouting party to see what the humans had been up to and to see if there was anything of the humans primitive technology left that could be of use for the Greater Good...

With some decent shooting the Kroot could easily take out those metal aberrations...

You'd think the Kroot had the upper hand here wouldn't you...

The idea was to have two games over the evening. The first would have two opposing forces rushing to take and hold the base. The second game would have the winner of the first game trying to hold the base while Del's Eldar tried to take it from them...

Who is that coming through between the buildings?

We can take them! Not with shooting like that you can't...

Jeff contemplates a rules question...

As it turned out we didn't get enough time to play the second game, but the first helped us all get back into the rules without too much mishap. The game went fairly well (at least from Jeff's point of view). I made a couple of serious tactical errors early in the game and then suffered some appallingly bad dice rolling, which led to my small Tau recon force being completely wiped out.  As it turned out, sending the Tau up against another shooty army that was in many ways more resilient than them, and also putting quite a lot of cover on the table definitely went against me...

We haven't got another game for a couple of weeks, but we will be returning to 40K. I imagine the Necrons will be squaring up against the Eldar next time. We will possibly increase the army size to 600point as well, so that we may get some vehicles on the table.