Celebrating 50,000 Hits

Evening Gents. I'm just kicking back with a cool drink on a sweltering 43 degree day looking over the crazy number of visitors that have stopped by my little blog this week.

Over the last two and a half years my hit counter has slowly risen in small increments. I try to blog regularly but usually one post a month is all that eventuates from my sporadic hobby time. As a result, this is only the 67 post on my little blog while other blogs of the same age are at well over 100 posts. Never the less, I noticed last week that I was only a couple of thousand hits from the 50k mark and I thought to myself "That will be a nice milestone to hit in 2 or 3 months time". I'm surprised to say however, I completely underestimated how many people would be interesting in checking out the cavalry! In a week my Rough Rider Army post has clocked over 4500 views which is about 10 times more then I expected it to be seen in a month. The result is that I have absolutely smashed past the 50,000 hit mark by several thousand.

The Ruins of Medusa V: The Issue of Inquisitor Sasppenny.

Prologue

The situation was tense. Fifty of the Emperors beloved Blood Angel Space Marines surrounded the mixed Praetorian Guard force. Neither side had moved as they waited. Fifteen, twenty, then thirty minutes passed. The two ranking officers, Major Holtman and Colonel Ackland, exchanged knowing glances. Finally Ackland offered, 

“I say, this is getting rather ridiculous. Hmm, Stand fast old boy, I’ll see to it.”

With that, Ackland marched out to a Blood Angel shielded in gleaming gold armour. After saluting he said 

“My Lord Captain, Do you have orders?” 

The Blood Angel Captain blankly stared down at the Colonel from his ornate battle mask. There was silence for a moment, then in a booming yet softly rounded voice the golden marine spoke, 

“We are here, as are you, at the bidding of Inquisitor Virgil Sasppenny. We await His holy orders.”

“Yes Lord, but may I respectfully point out that the storm will soon descend on the planet again. If the Inquisitor has been waylaid we cannot stay here indefinitely. We engaged a traitor force on our journey here; it would be unfortunate if some ill fate had befallen the Inquisitor.”

There was silence, until finally the Blood Angel spoke again, 

“Noted.”

Ackland tuned to march back to his fellow Praetorians, a sea of scarlet girt by blood red. He whispered to himself

“Sorry my good chap, but old Sasppenny won’t be giving out any execution orders today.”

 Inquisitor Virgil Sasppenny, Missing In Action on Medusa V, presumed dead.
Search attempts withdrawn due to warp storms. 

2000p game. Killed everything. Lost nothing. Over by turn 4.

...and I really mean I lost nothing- not even one Guardsman fell.

The game was Guard verses the new Chaos Space Marines (of course), against my regular opponent.

The question is; am I just really good at playing Guard or is the new Chaos codex a bit poo? I suspect it’s a bit of both considering that I have played Guard pretty much non-stop for the last 15 years and also a few people have griped about the codex on the blogosphere.
(Edit: Or a third point, as people have pointed out in the comments, it was a lucky match-off of a Rock vs Scissors battle!)

Free cover? I'll take it!

I have a narrative battle report that will follow this post but I wanted to simply discuss the point first.

The Ruins of Medusa V: The Incursion at Camp Exceller

The shortest game of 40k I have ever played, all over by turn 2!

+++++++++++++++For The Inquisition Eyes Only+++++++++++++++
The Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition 

Inquisitor Virgil Sasppenny: Interrogation transcript of Corporal Neill, Imperial Guard soldier present at Demonic incursion Medusa V 2 748 856.M41.

The Ruins of Medusa V: The Action at Scourged Hill

Several weeks after the skirmish that became known as the engagement of “Vanquish Vally” a mixed patrol force were scouting an area nearby.

The Ruins of Medusa V: The Engagement of Vanquish Vally

1st Expeditionary Regiment -Veterans of Medusa V (Represented by a DKoK list) 

Lady Lieutenant Reave.

The ‘Fleet Regiment’ was holding a defensive position overlooking a forested valley to the west of Hive Perseus. Their two Earthshakers and three Heavy Mortars were ready to respond to any enemy that advanced on this flank although strategic analyses had suggested this was unlikely.  As the morning fog began to lift from the valley a Sergeant from the 3^rd squad alerted the two lieutenants (Creswell and Reave) to the sound of cavalry approaching. Before either of them could ready the men, Colonel Ackland, commander of the 3^rd Brigade- Macharian Thunder Guard, stormed into the camp with his horse frothing at the bit. He was accompanied by his mounted command squad and a further 10 veteran cavalry troopers. Lady Lieutenant Reave snapped a salute and called “Officer on parade…”  But she was curtly drowned out by the red faced Colonel - “Stand too; Chaos is here; Nurgle Marines, Commence Bombardment! Lieutenants! Fan the men out! Cover the Guns and Hold Fast!”

Medusa V: The Lost Magistratus

Not all of the civilians made it off Medusa V when the storm came.  It was assumed that they were killed. They were, but they didn't stay dead!

I finally went and brought a copy of 6^th ed from my GW and I was dying to give it a go, so I thought a small solo game was in order.  I also wanted to try out Spyrle’s custom solo mission, but in the end I ignored a few rules (+2 attacks to traitors on the charge, the ‘They came from the warp’ rules,  and the ‘traitors must fire first’ rule). It wasn’t that I didn’t like them, but I could see with the force that I had put together those additions would have made it too one sided. Really I wanted to see how 6^th played out with two matched infantry armies and there was enough other stuff to try and remember! All the other rules in the scenario worked really well, so I may give it a full go another time.