Commentary: Cities of Death

Didn't have my camera but I loved my first go at Cities of Death. The new "stratagem" rules bring a new element to the standard WH40K game: working with the environment. No longer taking cover when you can get to it... in CoD, you work the environment to your advantage. The mission was "High Ground": a scoring unit must occupy a designated ruin at the end of 6 turns. We played to a draw but it was still a satisfactory game.

- At Alpha level I was afraid we'd be too crowded. Turns out the rules for placing buildings are very well thought out and the 3 major structures in a 4x4 left plenty of room for a pair of 1500-point forces to duke it out.

- Being Scout units, I was able to position a Devilfish right near a building and use the Rappelling Lines stratagem to drop off Pathfinders all over the tallest building on the first turn. From that vantage point, their Markerlights were all over the enemy.

-My brother's Dark Reapers also reached a cover within the first turn and started to drop Barrage fire all over me from the safety of the Basilica Administratum. For any survivors, he'd use the building's "Power Generator" stratagem to reroll his damage. My numbers dwindled quickly under a hail of non-stop damage.

-Thankfully, I got my own lucky dice-rolls as combinations of Railguns from my Broadside team and Seekers started taking out his Wave Serpents. Strictly speaking, this isn't a Cities-specific observation but it's a matter of realizing that the right tools for the right job is the way to go.

-I think what really set this game apart was that we chose to simplify our choices. What really slows down any game is when we need to look up wargear stats in the rulebook. I played a very unorthodox game by not fielding any Crisis Suits. Instead I kept a unified theme where almost everyone from the FireWarriors to Piranhas to the Devilfish all had Burst Cannons or Pulse Carbines. Strength 5 isn't great against much except supressive fire, but it does the job well.

We avoided any slow-downs from trying to sort out who had what weapons and upgrades. Compare this to playing against an Inquisitor's Retenue where the single unit has 6 or 7 individual characters, each one armed differently and with different skills. Indeed, I think we broke a personal record for how fast we completed a full 6 turns that night.

The end result: the game came down to the final turn, each of us scrambling to move our last remaining legally scoring units into the objective ruin. I could not hold off the sheer firepower coming from the Dark Reapers who had their upgrade. My units were being decimated despite several lucky cover-save dice rolls. Sensing that I wouldn't be able to win by capturing the objective, I outflanked him using my speed - a Hammerhead armed with Burst Cannons and an Ion Cannon with the Devilfish (also a Burst Cannon and a pair of Gun Drones) brought a total of 14 dice rolling on the table... it was enough to kill off the remaining Eldar Guardian squad that was making a break for it.