This was my first Adventure with 40k, and miniatures in general actually so it predates my papercraft terrain adventures by a year or so, but I thought it would be fun for some to read and express why I'm "semi-retired" as a 40k player.
I was much younger than I am now, probably around sixteen, if not younger, and me and my brother were going to spend the night at a long time friend of ours' place. Little did I know until the last minute we were going to L.A., a two hour drive with no traffic, to the closest Games Workshop.
My brother showed interest in the video game version of 40k to Micheal, our friend, and he then suggested a trip to L.A. to show him, and by extension me, the original game it was based off of, then they both decided to not inform me until we were already in the car.
So off we went, me feeling nausea due to the old air in the car and the codex for Chaos Space Marines being shoved at me. I tried showing interest but wasn't really into very much. We eventually get there after two hours, and several instances where my lunch tried to redecorate the inside of the car. I get out, happy to breath fresh air once again, or really smog from L.A. but anything is better than stagnant dusty old air. Either way my mood improved significantly.
We all walk in to the store and I'm instantly taken by the atmosphere. A giant space marine looming over me, standing watch for any Xenos, heretics, or forces of Chaos through the window, the amounts of paints and other goodies everywhere. It instantly sucked me in.
The clerk put me and David, my brother, through a crash course of painting and gameplay, even letting us keep the miniatures we painted after, and answered any questions we had. I was already sucked into the hobby, but little did I know I was going to be consumed by it in just a few seconds.
We are then lead to a door in the side of the store and let through. Again I am blown away. Tapestries and guns alike, all fan made, adorned the walls. Beautiful tables with wonderful terrain, both resin and from scratch all made by employees or donators, and the laughter and enjoyment of people crushing their foes underfoot. Places to make and paint your miniatures, and everything that said this was the hobby for me.
We find an empty table and all share Micheal's armies. David and Micheal chose space marines and I got to borrow his Necron army. All prebuilt by Micheal so we can get quickly to gameing.
I had a redumentary understanding of the rules and my army and its abilities was a complete mystery to me, but I understood one thing completely: That I must mercilessly crush my foes beneath my feet and savor in their squirming and cries of defeat.
I quickly put my hq unit and one elite squad into the obelisk and moved it to the center of the field where they disembarked. I completely forgot about moving the rest of my army so these were all I had. Luckily natural terrain caused the two opponents' armies to bottleneck at the middle of the field, right into the HQ untit, elite squad, and Obelisk where they were mowed down until they got close enough for close combat, bringing everything to a stale-mate at the center. A third party saw the action and asked to join in, but was eradicated in entirety. I lost two or three units in my elite squad, but suffered no other losses. Then the turn limit we agreed upon come up.
After we tallied up the scores I came out on top. My friend had played for six years and even with my brother backing him up who had more experience than me, albeit in the pc game version is still experience compared to none, and even a third party joining in, they lost to someone who didn't even know miniatures existed outside the obscure D&D references in tv shows and movies.
We then moved onto an objective based game. They had to capture the "Wholy Necron Tree" as I dubbed it as we had no other marker for them to capture from me. Bare minimum, 1 hq, 1 elite, 1 troops to each of them. I had 2 full troop squads and an Hq unit. I was based in a building with the farthest wall from them collapsed. Little more of a walkway around all the windows was left of the second floor. I elected to split the troops up into the windows between the two floors, there was just enough for each troop to get one window to fire through. I left the HQ unit in the center of the 1st floor with the objective. The building was situated on top of a hill. Micheal and David started on opposite ends. There was 15 turns for each person, they had to kill the HQ unit and capture the objective for them both to win. If they couldn't do both I won, if nobody had the objective it was a draw. It began.
David sent his terminators first with the rest of the units hiding behind them as cover, let the toughest guys take the brunt of the attack and act as moving cover. A brilliant plan, if he didn't make a beeline towards me and instead opted for a longer route that allowed his terminators some cover and allowing them to survive as Micheal did with his Dreadnought and his troops. David's entire Terminator squad was decimated, though His HQ unit, captain clad in terminator armour, and his troops made it fine. Micheal made it about the same time, his Dreadnought leading the way, killing several of my troops through the windows (of course I didn't know at the time that I could roll to revive them -_-) and the rest of the troops plus his Captain fireing upon my Necron Lord and killing him mercilessly at the 15th turn. All David has to do is simply move to capture the objective and they would have won. For those of you who don't understand the moves in WH40K, it goes movement->shooting->CQC and can't be changed. Our turns went Micheal->David->Me. I could have simply decimated whoever captured the objective, but wouldn't have been able to recapture the objective. David was about to move his unit to capture the objective, all was lost. My perfect 0 lose record was going to die there.
I then activated my silver tongue powers. "David, wait. If you capture the objective now, my entire army would just waste you. Why not try to get rid of enough of my units first so they won't be a danger next turn." He fires only once. One of my troops falls. Micheal realized it too late and his father (the one spectating the entire time) laughs as an evil grin spreads across my face. "You lost." My brother is confused. Micheal face palms as I point towards the turn counter. He realizes too late and tries to decimate any who are close enough to capture the objective once again, then realizes how perfect I positioned it. Even the farthest troop of my farthest unit away could come into base contact with it and only one unit of any squad had to be in base contact for it to be counted as under my control. He manages to take down two more units. But it was all in vain as when it was my turn I simply moved one unit and the game was over.
Eventually I got my own army and chose Chaos Space Marines, eventually becoming even more unstoppable since I added my Daemon Prince to my collection. Three games later with him in my roster and neither my brothers or anyone wants to play against Drazel (like I'll tell you my real name
), "The Red Reaper" Thus I can't find a friend to face me. I need to get my figures fully painted so I can join tournaments. Moral of the story: When you start to get past 10 games in a row without a single loss, take a dive and keep you're opponents to play against, because they won't let you get any higher than a 20-0 win/loss record before they simply won't play you.
so I'm trying to get my brother into it and also going to try out a different army to see if that would lure out my old buddies into playing me again :3