The drought is over!

Well, the wife and I have moved into our new apartment in Fairview Heights. It's had it's ups and downs as I'm sure anyone who's ever moved can attest. I loath moving and all that it entails. It was easy when I was in the Corps...if it didn't fit into my sea bag, I didn't own it. Now, however, I've a large baggage train (wife), a nine year old daughter, and a 40k hobby. None of those things keep me connected to my former life as a gypsy bachelor, but I think I'm better off in the long run. ;)

Speaking of 40k, I lost my Internet during the move and that has (obviously) been restored. Access to my 40k and Pathfinder content via the web has been restored, and it has done wonders for my grouchiness. I also managed to get in a game of 40k tonight at my new FLGS: Fantasy Games in O'Fallon, Il. This will be the worst battle report from me to date as I forgot my camera, but I'll do my best.

First off, I played a great guy, Tom, who fielded a fun yet effective Chaos Space Marine list. From memory his list was: vanilla lord with a chosen squad with a mix of plasma, melta, and flamers as their special weapons all riding in a land raider. There was a 10 man squad of marines on foot with a lascannon, a mounted plague marine squad, a mounted squad of thousand sons, a 5 man lesser daemon squad, a triple lascannon predator, and a plasma cannon dreadnought. There were meltas, fists, and plasma pistols sprinkled here and there throughout his list. My current 1850 list can be found here. It's been a while since I've played a chaos list without Abaddon or a Daemon Prince (and I've never played against Thousand Sons) so that was something new.

We played annihilation and dawn of war. I won the roll for side and neither of us deployed anything having all of our forces roll on at the start of turn one. We completely forgot about nightfighting which might have dramatically changed how the game was played, but I can't remember a single dawn of war game where I have remembered that rule, so I have only myself to blame (again).

Our deployments weren't at all fancy: we set up in a line in the middle of our deployment zones. I moved forward as far as I could while he held back fairly close to his table edge. Turn one saw him blast my landraider and a dreadnought right off the bat and I was working uphill from there. Remembering nighfighting might have kept them alive that turn, but that stuff happens.

I think I can say that neither one of us were too focused on kill points until the end game, and it was a slug fest till the end of turn 6. Without pictures, I won't get into too much detail but I managed to hold off his advances early on and had a very productive 5th turn. At the end of the game we calculated that it was a 7 - 7 draw, but Tom neglected to count his unit of lesser daemons and declared me the winner 8 - 7. I was previously happy with a draw since the game was so close, so a win was awesome.

The guys from the store seemed very cool, and my game with Tom was amazingly awesome with storybook moments of H.Q. dramatically battling H.Q., and sole survivors hanging on against the odds. In a way I'm almost ok with not having my camera because I got a chance to just B.S. with the guys and enjoy the game without having to worry about getting "a good shot for my blog". I also met up with Chambers from The Back 40k fame, and it looks like Tom may be spearheading an effort for us to get together and play a bit of Apocalypse in the near future. Perhaps I might get some use out of my Imperial Guard? You all have seen a lot of my Salamanders, but nothing of my guard as of yet.

All in all, it was a fantastic night, and I look forward to getting in some more games with the locals (in which group I am now included I suppose). Just remember: No matter how close to St. Louis, Mo. I live, I will always be a Cubs, Bears, & Blackhawks fan. :)