I haven’t played 40K in literally years, so I jumped at the chance when my friend Ellis said he was available for a game this afternoon. We tried something simple: 1000 points, Alpha-level Cleanse Mission. Ellis played Witchhunters (mostly Sisters of Battle) while I played my Undivided Chaos Space Marines. I don’t have the most recent codex yet, so we agreed that it would be kosher if I played by the old rules.

It was also a chance to bust out my sizable but mismatched collection of sci-fi terrain, including the Necron terrain trilogy.

Here’s my army list:

• Chaos Lieutenant w/plasma pistol
• 8 Chaos Marines w/heavy bolter, meltagun and aspiring champion w/power weapon
• 8 Chaos Marines w/heavy bolter, meltagun and aspiring champion w/power weapon
• 4 Chaos Terminators w/chainfist, powerfist, powerweapon*2, combi-bolter*2, combi-flamer, and reaper autocannon and Aspiring champion w/powerweapon and combi-melta
• Chaos Dreadnought w/TL Lascannons
• 4 Chaos raptors w/flamer and Aspiring Champion w/twin lightning claws

My army was primarily drawn from what I owned, which explains the really random Chaos Termies (which also clocked in at a full quarter of my army points). My opponent will list his detailed SoB list below, but essentially it was a Palatine w/retinue, three units of Sisters, and two Exorcists.

The battle went the whole six turns, with the first three mostly spent with each of us foot slogging it into the free table quarters. My termies went into one quarter while my raptors and one unit of marines went into the other (kind of hanging back a bit, actually). The other unit of marines, the lieutenant, and the dread all stayed where initially deployed at first.

Ellis’ exorcists took out two termies and shook/stunned my dread until both were destroyed or immobilized/weapon destroyed by the dread and a lucky shot from the reaper autocannon. It was turns four through six where things heated up. The raptors charged one unit of Sisters on the boundary between his deployment zone and the free quarter and soundly defeated them before the Palatine (who had been going toward the center but came back to support the Sisters).

Back towards the center, the termies met their end when the other two units of sisters used an Act of Faith to convert 6’s to wound into AP1. They then polished off the second unit of marines too. In the last turn, the dread and the first unit of marines tried a “hail Mary (or whatever passes for Chaos)” by shooting at the Palatine’s retinue, trying to bring it below 50%. Unfortunately, it was for naught, and the Lieutenant threw himself at the Sisters, desperately hoping for something, but to no avail.

In the end, though, some error in guessing distances threw the Sisters solid win into a draw. The dreadnought, still surprisingly intact, held one quarter uncontested. The two Sisters units held another quarter. The Palatine’s retinue and the first unit of marine contested a third. But the second Sister unit, whom Ellis assumed was still in his deployment zone, had in fact moved out of it, leaving the fourth empty! Despite getting badly thumped by my opponent, the game was a draw.

In retrospect, I should’ve dumped the termies and invested in rhinos. Of course, that presumes I have rhinos, which I don’t. I was sort of battling with the army I had, not the army I wanted. I also played it too conservatively, peppering the Sisters with heavy weapons that lacked the AP to really do much damage rather than jumping into HTH where I really could’ve done something.

But, for the first game in a long time, I had a lot of fun. I know many are down on 40K these days, and the Chaos Space Marines’ new codex is apparently pretty stale, but I think there’s something to be said for my “Go Play” philosophy, namely that even playing poorly-written games is better than no games at all.  And playing with friends can make those games a lot of fun.