[HKJGN]

What was your first Epiphany of the game? when did you realize something you thought you never would after playing Warhammer 40k? please be detailed as i love great stories!

My Epiphany was today, I was playing a 'League' game at my local store, its a 200 point league system that rotates upwards 200pts every week, i just got started recently and i haven't really understood why there's all this fluff in the WH40k story, i've had big following games before like Battletech and D&D but even then the story didnt make the game, they were just two seperate aspects that i enjoyed.

I was competing against my friend and her Tyranids, she had 11 Termigaunts and 3 warriors one with a Venom Cannon, and i had 10 RAS marines. At first i thought i was gonna get pummeled, but she had this concern of engaging my marines, so i struck first for her hesitation. i swept across the field while she hunkered down in a barracade expecting to get a shot off, she fired with her venom cannon a couple of times while i rushed forward, one drifted way off but the second landed right on target, luckily only killing one marine

i put my marines into assault with her termis and in one swoop took out the entire squad, 12 unsaved wounds, butchering her poor Gaunts before they really got the chance, they had there counter but it failed, only taking down one marine. the venom cannon laid down another heavy blow that struck my marines, taking one more before i assaulted her Warriors.

Her Warriors were the difficult part, due to some really bad rolls i had failed to make several wounds before i had lost all my marines and my sgt was routed (thankfully, i had killed two warriors) leaving just my uninjured Sgt and her Warrior, i made a hail mary shot with my pistol as i charged back, actually wounding the blasted thing before we were in assault again!. her Rending claws were nasty but luckily i had scathed from bieng hurt a couple of rounds. but my last attack made absolutely no wounds, and then she rolled two six's on her rending talons, obliterating my Marine.

what i realized after the fight is that unlike normal tabletop games, when i took my pieces away and was talking with everyone else, was that i never felt the tinge of guilt or uncomfortable regret of losing, i was strangely proud. i felt this surge of intense pride for my little marines for putting up such an incredible fight. It felt like even though they had lost, they had given it their best, and there wasn't anything else that could have been done. there wasnt the dismay of not owning 'Super Awesome Kill Guy 1' that cost 4,000$, there wasn't the feeling that i was beat by a player without skill who just had alot of money to blow on the rarest, biggest units and i was just stuck with my mediocre soldiers due to bieng lesser.

In the end, i walked away with this shivering thrill of the fight, i have to admit that i feel that i was right in picking the Blood Angels, nothing thrilled me more than the assault. with numbers on the line and the chances of greatness or failure being as simple as a 3 or a 4 on a dice roll, it got me pumped!. it was like gambling but like the Angels themselves i had nothing to lose, just kill or be killed.

i came away from today realizing that the Story of your army is almost as important as the composition of the army itself. you have to like the armies history and their heritage, otherwise those wins and losses don't mean anything to you, they're unenjoyable, because in reality the only thing that dictates a win or loss is mostly blind Luck.

 

[the-ad-man]

heh, sounds like you had 'that game'. where 40k really takes hold of you

things like that are awesome, heres one of mine:

i was playing ig, against orks in a take and hold game. turn 2 and he slams his big mek and 4 nobs into a sentinel of mine. for 2 turns this swirling melee fails to decide the victor (none of the orks had a power klaw, so were hitting at str4/5 against av12)


so, now turn 4, i charge in an entire platoon of guardsmen, command squad and 3 infantry platoons for a total of 35 men. surrounding the orks i make my attack first (I3) and wipe out his nobs, then the mek's last wound came to the last armour save, literally, 1 dice to decide if he survived or not...very tense. he failed

my many, many men roar in victory and charge 20 or so boyz that were on their way, lucky i got the charge - 74 attacks!! i forget how many died in this combat, but the orks managed to flee turn 6

to this end, im modeling ork skulls on a squad of veterens, to comemorate the event

 

[Serpion5]

For a while after I started this hobby it was just me vs my mate or bro. Then when I got a car and a job I was able to visit the nearest GW regularly.

Unfortunately, that game has become shrouded in my memories somewhere amid years of gaming and modelling, but I find constant enjoyment by striving to replicate it. I never write a list purely for win, in fact quite often the fluff I put behind it can get quite detrimental to the list I write.

But that only makes victory so much sweeter. A particularly memorable game happened when I wrote a necron ;list I called ponderous advance. One Lord, then nothing but warriors and as many flayed ones as I could take.

The game against my friend`s blood angels soon descended into a bloody melee so typical of those red bastards, but in the end the sheer numbers and resilience won out. Also my stubborn refusal to allow the Lord into base contact with anything brandishing a power weapon...

 

[hippypancake]

best moment ever just happened last week.

I was playing my friends guard and Yarrick and Arjac were duking it out. 1st turn Yarrick shoots Arjac wounding him (I cried a little inside as it was the bolt pistol) then I through my hammer and missed (once again crying inside) when we got into assault the fun started he swung his powerklaw and managed only to hit Arjac's shield. Then Arjac swung back and pretty much hits Yarrick in the face. Needless to say he died. But then he came back and shot Arjac again as he was walking away from Yarricks body. Which I promptly took and then assaulted him again KILLING him again and consolidating. And then Yarrick like that little prick he is CAME BACK! so literally the entire game it was Arjac and Yarrick beating each other senseless until Arjac finally failed his invul save.

But the best part was when we looked up from our intense game to see that the entire store had come over to see what I was constantly swearing at. We honestly never noticed they were there until we finished our acting out of what the two were saying which went along the lines of this

Arjac kills Yarrick 1st time
"Muhaha I have killed derr kommissar!"
Yarrick comes back
"No you didn't"
"Wtf how did you-"
"Part necron bitch"
Arjac kills Yarrick again
"Finally I killed him"
Yarrick comes back again
"Nope just kidding"
"Motherfu-" *Throw hammer and kills him* "Stay dead now"
Yarrick comes back
"I don't wanna"
"Son of a Bitch"
Arjac kills him the fourth time
"I'm not leaving until your dead"
Yarrick gets up again
"Suprise!"
Arjac kills him again
Yarrick gets back up and kills Arjac
"THAT'S RIGHT BITCH OWNED IN THE FUCKING FACE!"

needless to say there were small children with their parents there and we were asked to leave after the game was over xD (but the manager thought it was hilarious)

 

[Farseer_Iowan]

LGS regular and a buddy of mine had been trying to get 40K to take hold more as it was being dominated by another Tabletop game with steam jacks which I do enjoy playing. So there idea was an escalation league. I had picked up the Black Reach box and some SM models but there was no wow factor and ended up selling them... So the league comes around and here i am wanting to give it one last go but was in a tight spot money wise and hadn't played 40K seriously since 4th edition (started playing way back in 2nd ed) first came out ... So it came to me, I always played SM of one flavor or another. So i was toying with building another army on a limited budget when a friend sold me his HUGE 5000 + points Eldar army (since he never used them and wanted to do more with Fantasy and other games) for $50... So to me it was like I was meant to try 40K again. All I heard was Eldar are a finesse army and you have to do this and this and.... I played them my way and really enjoyed playing with something other then SM, every win, lose, or draw I enjoyed and savored trying new ideas with different models... it was great... So now the LGS is doing a Fantasy league and I am doing Skaven (have never stopped playing fantasy)... right beside the skaven army being built is Necrons........ oh thee passion has been reignited...so to summarize my Epiphany was i needed to get away from the Space Monkeys/puppies/angels/fists/souls/etc and branch out....

 

[HKJGN]

I'm glad to see i'm not the only one that's had such a strange moment of clarity when playing this game! It truely is a fun and exciting game .

Now to build me a Storm Raven! :|

 

[the-ad-man]

I'm glad to see i'm not the only one that's had such a strange moment of clarity when playing this game! It truely is a fun and exciting game .

Now to build me a Storm Raven! :|

yes sir!! ...wait....

 

[GrimzagGorwazza]

My moment came before i could even afford to buy the rulebooks. It was back in second edition and the only way of getting the rules was to buy the boxed set nad i couldn't afford it. I already had the Angels of death codex and my brother had the eldar dex but that was it. We had't learned the rules. Using fudged warhammer quest rules we reinacted Last stand at glazers creek (for those of you that don't remember this old battle report imagine the film Zulu with warhammer). The blood angels were beset by waves of eldar, goblins, orcs, skeletons and anything else we had models for. We played until the last marine laid down to die...it took several weekends and despite the fact that it was noa real warhammer game and was using the wrong models and rules it was so damned cinematic that it was totally worth it.

 

[Marneus Calgar]

I think mine was recently whilst playing against Space Wolves I was playing Thousand Sons (almost recreating the battle for Prospero), I though I was going to be outgunned, outmanned and destroyed basically. We deployed, and began. We also selected Objectives (2 each so 4 in all - I only had two scoring units though...). He had first turn, so he decided he would get into combat almost straight away with my thousand sons, scoring a few wounds upon me, but I managed to pass around 4 wounds on my invunerable saves, which was pretty incredible since I tend to roll rather badly. I eventually killed his Rune Priest and didn't think about moving into my objective...

THe next round I had obliterators come down, and managed a few shots on his Marines, killing a few, and I then managed to get my other squad of Thousand Sons plus Ahriman in cover. I had also attempted to fire a psychic power at my enemy (not killing any). But I was winning, since I had killed about 4 or 5 Space Wolves. I began thinking, that this is very much a themed game, Thousand sons getting back at the Imperial scum that had ruined their home planet 10,000 years before.

This kind of added a bit of an edge to the game, I had to try and win, I saw what tactic my friend was using, he was determined to win too, realising that we were battling for the pride of 10,000 years previous, this give a bit of a fun fluffy point to our game, it was the first game I had truely enjoyed in a long time. I think I can say the same for my friend, Master Belial.

I guess what I'm getting at is the moment of epiphany was the fact that we don't have to have a big game to have fun, we need to have a managable force and a nice fluffy story to have a fun time. We had a 1k point game, and based it around the hatred of Space Wolves and Thousand Sons. I was really great fun!

 

[Unforgiven302]

Back in the Rogue Trader days all my 40k friends, (6-7 of us if I remember correctly) got together for one big-ass game. Apocalypse before Apocalypse was a part of the game! Myself and 3 others were space marine collectors and for this game we fielded them all together. With somewhere near 250+/- marines and terminators we had something like 12 land raiders, 10 or so dreads, 20+ rhinos and at least a half dozen predators along with a handful of bikers, land speeders and jet bikers. Our opponents were Eldar, a crap-ton of Eldar. War walkers and dreadnoughts by the dozens along with enough heavy weapon platforms and guardians to fill a hot tub, it looked crazy.

We didn't have a table big enough to handle all the models so we played it out on the concrete basement floor. When you had to watch your step when moving units for fear of stepping on models and terrain, I realized this was epic. It took 2 months of weekends and the odd evening to finish the game.