I played (40k... and I liked it!)

So I played against Jeff, aka Ultimate Rival, yesterday morning after I got out of work. It was pretty fun, and I started to remember part of the reason I enjoy playing 40k... I love painted models. I'm not a fan of half-painted, and even less so regarding plastic grey, so being able to face off against a fully painted army (to a really high quality, to boot!) was... amazing. Mind you, I say all this, and *my* models weren't painted much more than basecoated black... so... yeah, I need to step up my game.

He brought Tau/Eldar, and they looked sexy. I brought new Codex: Marines without any of the new toys (just the same-old Plasma-spam list I made when the Dark Angels codex came out earlier in the year... with a few tweaks to bring it in line with the different 'Dex.)

I don't really have an exact list of all the stuff Ultimate Rival brought, but there were two 12 man Firewarrior teams, two Skyray, two Riptides, two Ethereals, and a metric ton of Kroot (45, if memory serves!) Also, two squads of Eldar Jetbikes lead by a Biker Warlock or some such.

I had a mostly Mechanized Marine list, two Tactical squads with plasma gun, plasma cannon, and combi-plasma in Rhinos, a Predator Destructor, a Predator Annihilator, a Mortis Autocannon Dreadnought, a Melta/Flamer Dreadnought in a Drop Pod, a Lascannon/Missile Dreadnought, a 3 man biker squad with two Plasma and one combi-plasmagun, and a Chapter Master with a combi-plasmagun, artificer armor, the Burning Blade and a Bike, and a random 5 man Assault marine Squad with two flamers and meltabombs... and a Land Raider Crusader.

In summary, we played BAO tournament style, and it was actually really cool. It didn't end well for me even after an incredibly terrible first turn of shooting for the Tau. I then pushed up, and the Tau basically just laughed and shot anything that got close off the board. Even though I was ROFLstomped (again...) I always end up enjoying my time playing against Ultimate Rival.

Also, here's some pictures:

This one came out waaay fuzzier than it seemed when I took the picture.

You can't hide from the 'Tide!

Vaya con Dios,
Timothy