Setup was my usual desert board. It was nice to play two pretty much completely painted armies on a pretty much completely painted board. The glowy green crystals were also nicely appropriate for the crons
We played a pretty long game - it went on for the full 7 turns, and in fact the sun went down round about turn 5 (I quite like that GW have noticed that the sun both rises and sets, and have reflected this in the new Night Fighting rules.) To tell the truth, Prim was winning for most of the game, but I managed a rather sneaky last-turn objective grab/objective contestion that had us draw on objectives, and as we had both killed each others' warlords it fell to first blood, which was me. Score one win for the 6th ed stinkies
My thoughts on the way the new CSM play are pretty positive. I'm still happy with the simple fact that I can just use my 5th ed minis with no conversion work required. Prim opined that this isn't such a good thing, as the very lack of radical change left him feeling a bit uninspired with the new 'dex. I can totally see his point, but from a purely selfish perspective not needing to pull arms off and resize squads is pretty helpful.
One thing I did find is that units that used to be a bit meh in the old codex (e.g. spawn and possessed) are now bitchin' good. My spawn effectively won me the game by eating his entire unit of Destroyers in the 2nd turn of the game, granting me first blood. The spawn unit actually survived for quite a long time, largely due to having the mark of nurgle (T6) and 3 wounds apiece. The last one ended up falling after a round or two in CC against a unit of 'cron warriors. He would eat a couple, then They'd Be Back in the next phase. Probably plays merry hell with the digestion, I'd imagine.
The possessed were completely owning the center of the table at one point. In turn two they disembarked from their rhino and waded into the middle. They were promptly charged by a small horde of scarabs (8 bases, 3 wounds apiece. yeesh). Fortunately for me, possessed seem to be a good deal better at dealing with scarab attacks than land raiders, and the daemonic chappies managed to munch their way through 3 bases before the bugs even got a hit on them. In fact, over the next few rounds the scarabs completely failed to kill a single possessee, probably helped by the fact that my terminator lord was in there too.
Not even the Canoptek Spyder could make a dent in them, and in fact he ended up getting munched by them too
S5 - there when you need it 
Eventually, however, the possessed went down to concentrated fire from a squad of Deathmarks (bastarding things, so they are. 2+ to wound, my arse
), one of those flying abominations, and a full squad of cron warriors. The lord went the same way, sadly. This left the center of the table firmly in Prim's hands. By this point I was really running out of dakka.over on the right hand side of the table, Prim floated his Wraiths down to take out my Chosen. However, it would appear that today Papa Nurgle had his eye on the lads in purple, and they remained resolutely unkillable. Eventually, although the Wraiths nobbled my Blight Drone good and proppa, the combined shooting of Esmerelda (the bells!) and the Chosen sorted out the Wraiths and secured me the right hand flank.
The left hand side was initially pretty quiet, with just one squad of plague marines idly making their way towards an objective. All this changed when Prim paradropped a squad of 'orrible shield and glaive wielding elites, accompanied by the Necron Overlord onto the hapless stinkies. Since none of these chaps could charge after deep striking in, my plague marines took a pop at them with their two melta guns. This was a Bad Idea, as the crons promptly saved the one shot that hit, and owing to their special Captain America Shields, ricocheted the shot right back in the face of my squad champion. He reacted as most do to a melta gun shot at point blank range to the head, collapsing into a heap of headless goo.
Round about turn 2 is when it got interesting on the left, as that's when my daemonic allies saw fit to turn up. Epidemious and 13 accompanying plaguebeares 'ported in with a view to assaulting the shieldycrons, but as the crons themselves had found earlier in the turn, couldnt actually assault from a deep strike. As it turned out they couldn't assault in the next turn, either, due to rolling snake eyes for their charge range. Come on lads, it's slow and purposeful, not slow and pointless
Anyway, they made it into combat eventually, and Epidemious spent the next couple of turns avoiding challenges from the 'cron lord, while the bearers soaked up power weapon hits. This state of affairs continued until about turn 6, at which point Epi's Tally popped a doozy and went over 20. Suddenly all the nurgle units were wounding on a 2+ in CC, and ignoring armour saves. At this point Epi boldly stepped into the fray, and he and the remaining 1 plaguebearer managed to kill off the Overlord and his shieldycrons.
So, overall, a win for the stinkies, largely due to Epidemious' frighteningly dangerous ability. The possessed, spawn and chosen all did very well, and made Papa N proud with their resistance to getting clobbered. On the side of the crons, the new flyers (Stu had 2) are pretty horrible, and you basically just have to position yourself so the flyer has to fly past you. That, or capitulate to GW marketing and get some flyers/AA guns yourself. Scarabs and Spyders are nasty, nasty things, and should killed at the first opportunity. Flame the buggers if at all possible.
I like the way 6th ed allocates hits in order of proximity. This make sense intuitively, unlike the previous edition's wound allocation rule. Random charges don't cause as many problems as I imagined they would, and overall the game plays pretty smoothly. This was no doubt helped a lot by Stu's own encyclopaedic knowledge of the rules, and he was always willing to help me out when I got confusticated.
So, once again, many thanks to Stu for coming down. I'm looking forwards to my next game against Badruck next week. Thumbs up for 6th ed 40k
