Special Operations: Killzone

Well, a friend of mind and I played a few games of Killzone Thursday evening at the FLGS.  This was mainly as the FLGS had finally finished their expansion adding a tonne of new tables to play on.  A total of 7 games of Killzone were played (before we left, I only participated in 4).  The first two were my Iron Corsairs against Morguemeat's Storm of Sorrow.  (You'll eventually be able to learn more about the Storm of Sorrow Warband here.  Who appears to have posted about his thoughts on the games already.)  Sadly I neglected to bring my camera so was unable to get any photographs of any parts of any of the games.


The list I ended up bringing broke down as follows:

1x Wolf Guard with frostblade, plasma pistol, the 6+ invulnerable save general skill and the 6" FnP leadership skill (I shoulda gone with just a power sword, as I kept forgetting about the +1 S)

1x Wolf Guard with power sword and bolt pistol

1x Wolf Guard with chainsword and bolt pistol (who is now named Firstblood)

1x Long Fang with a Heavy Bolter and Suspensors

3x Grey Hunters with a Melta gun and a Plasma gun


The Sorrow's team was 4 Termis and a mook marine.


All the games played were Mission I.2: Encounter. Mainly for consistency.


The first game Morguemeat chose to go first, the terrain favored me.  I set up my vanguard in a nice piece of cover that they didn't end up leaving.  The rearguard set up the long fang on the third story of a building with good LOS on the field, the plasmagunner in the ground floor doorway of the same building, and the rest of the rearguard roughly behind the vanguard's terrain piece as close as I could get them and I gave morguemeat a sound beating, though firstblood was killed in melee by a chaos terminator.  It wasn't really that interesting of a game and ended on turn 2 or 3...


The second game Morguemeat again chose to go first and again I chose the same table quarter.  This time however, he deployed his forces in a ruin to the one side of the deployment zone.  A much better strategy in my mind.  I deployed my vanguard the same as last time, along with the longfang and plasmagunner, but other 2 rearguard models shifted over to a ruined wall just inside my deployment zone that provided 3 nice firing holes at the other edge of the ruins Morgue had setup in.  His force moved through the main ruin while mine took pot shots through the windows.  His Termi with his big gun (a reaper autocannon I believe it was) got caught in the open by a plasmagun shot on it's way over to join it's teammates in the ruins.  Again on my team Firstblood died first due to his charging terminator again the powersword wolf guard joined the battle and slew the terminator, but I also ended up loosing the melta Grey Hunter, the basic Grey Hunter, and the Long Fang.  My leader did make an epic save vs death sometime in there by actually rolling a 6 on his invulnerable save. ^.^

At this point we took a break and mingled with some of the observers and other players around the area.  This ended up causing our terrain setup to be lost.  So when we re-setup, we ended up with 2 different terrain layouts so we could run 2 games at a time.  Morgue and another Space Puppy player played on the first while I was on the second.

My third game was against an Eldar team, that had a psyker of some sort for the leader, 2 fire dragons (or somesuch) and 2 other sets of 2 models (I can't remember what either of those were called, one set had really mean long range weaponry, and the others died before they did anything). He chose to go first and set up the 2 unknown models and his leader in the vanguard, and the others in the back kinda spread out.  Sadly at this point there was 5 or 6 games running and the terrain ended up being a bit thin.  I positioned my vanguard (all 3 wolf guards, and the melta guy) behind some tank traps with my rearguard clinging to what little cover was available back further.  His first turn had nothing happen...  at all.  Mine put a lot of firepower into his models but did no damage between his invulnerable saves and the FnP AoE on his leader.  His second turn saw his vanguard retreat back toward his table edges and the death of Firstblood.  From there, we basically traded kills model for model (except I got his leader as my 2nd or 3th kill while mine lasted all the way to the last of mine that were killed).  In the end I ended up routing due to rolling a 10 vs Ld of 9 >.>  All in all it was an extremely close game the whole way.

My last game was against the other Space Puppies player and I mopped the floor with him.  I don't remember much about his list other then it had a Terminator with Wolfclaws in it.  I switched tables so was against someone already familiar with the terrain... though he chose to go first and I ended up with a reasonably nice quarter.  I set up my vanguard behind yet more tank traps (why there were so many tank traps in the middle of both tables I dunno).  with the rearguard kinda haphazard in the back where they had good lanes of fire. His first turn involved his vanguard missing my two models in range with his pistols and his rear guard moving up.  My first turn involved killing his leader.  A plasma shot from my leader took out his first wound, the power sword wolf guard missed with his bolt pistol, and the long fang splattered him with three 6s to hit, and two 6s and a 5 to wound.  He rolled a 1 and and two 2s for armour and died.  His second turn had his termi assault Firstblood, with my power weapon wolf guard reactive assaulting to join the battle.  The Termi rolled bad but still killed off Firstblood, but Firstblood and his companion in some amazing luck put 5 wounds on the Terminator (3 of which were power weapon).  The terminator failed 4 of the 5 and went squish into mush.  My last turn had my models move up, shoot the death all but one of his remaining troops (I think there were 4), and the last died to an assault.  Ending the game with a complete tabling.  The dice gods were not with my opponent's puppies.

The 7th game of Killzone for the day was the other Space Puppies vs the Eldar group.  I didn't see how that one ended, but the Space Puppy termi was the first model to die and didn't get to do anything.  Morgue and I headed out after I purchased some a new tube set of greenstuff.

All in all, I like the Killzone format, and really can't wait to see what the team is cooking up for the campaign side.  It was hard to set up a force in only 200 points with 25 points of skills.  I'm thinking I might suggest our group relaxes that to 30 so we can have 3 specialists instead of just 2 and a generalist.  Some of my earlier lists suffered from the 40k unit norm of equipping everyone the same.  But after seeing some of the lists posted by the killzone team, I rebuilt and feel my list is much more interesting.  I did find it funny that in just those 4 games some of my team started building up some flavor and fluff.  Firstblood taking the first face full of dirt in each game, the wolfguard with powersword rushing into whatever close combat was nearby and earning the title Terminator Slayer for having taken one down in each battle he participated in (that had one).  Now I just need to choose a paint scheme and get my Spec Ops team painted.