What We Do in the Shadow War

I had been getting really excited about Shadow War, and was a bit nervous that the actual experience would disappoint. It did not. Got in a couple of Games on Saturday, and even tho they both ended up being fairly straightforward, we could see how much possibility there is here. I remembered to take pics for one, so here's a mini-BatRep:

Kharvash the Reaver leads the Culties on the offensive. He learns to drive them before him in the future

Gunner Urthgu attempts to take out a couple of Immortals as they move into his field of fire, but misses badly, leaving Kharvash to get gunned down by Gauss fire

Before he can extract vengeance, Urthgu has problems of his own, as a Deathmark teleports in right by him and snipes down a Cultist

Despite being encumbered by his Autocannon, Urthgu Charges down to confront the interloper...

...Only to be downed by the Xenos assassin, who doesn't even need to turn to look to drop his prey!

Tivzitch, the last standing CSM, decides that it's time to take the remaining Culties and GTFO

Sorry about the pic quality. I just had my phone, not my real camera.

I think we need to mix up the Terrain a bit better in the future. There were too many solid buildings, combined with high stuff that didn't really break up LoS too much, so the one really good approach across the Board was also too good of a fire lane. On top of that, I forgot about the requirement to shoot the nearest guy, and put my Leader out in front of the Culties, cinematically leading them on. Gonna make them go first to soak up some fire in the future.

The other Game probably would have made a better BatRep, but I forgot to take any pics at all. Ended up being a total charlie foxtrot of a Raid, with my Opponent putting the Objective over near a board edge, which of course ended up being the edge I rolled for my Deployment Zone. But I realised too late that I didn't have any Krak Grenades or anything, because I had only considered other Fighters as targets, so it devolved into a mess of close firefights and HtH, with both of us starting to take Bottle Tests very quickly. My opponent failed his first (reasonable, as I had inflicted heavy casualties, and only lost one of my four Raiders), giving me the win this time.

We also discussed a number of House Rules. The main one we're implementing is letting people save Points from their initial build and Resupply actions, rather than having to spend them all in one go. For a number of the additional Factions, spending Points only in 100 Point blocks gets really awkward, and it's near crippling for Tyranid Warriors in particular. We'll see if it ends up letting Teams grow too fast, and if so, will look into some way of reducing how many Points are awarded each Mission.