Dark Angels vs Plague Marines: Preparation

After a great weekend painting, this week has yielded no progress as life got in the way. The big game on Sunday draws near and it's looking increasingly unlikely that any further progress will be achieved before then.

I've been struggling on a list for some time. Knowing that Bull's Dark Angels will undoubtedly be bringing something new to the party and having read the new DA codex, I've felt rather on the back foot. This is the love/hate relationship many of us have with list building. It doesn't matter how many points the game is, you can never quite squeeze in what you would like. This meant that, when I went to a lot of tournaments in the past, I never fielded the high cost characters and vehicles – one shot could often taken them out of the game, leaving you hamstrung for the rest of the battle.

In 'fun' games like this there is no such consideration – hamstrung be damned, I want to crush and intimidate. I like to embrace the role of the bad guys, even if I end up with my grand plan in tatters at the end of the day. I thought about filling my army list with high-cost scary units – things that would truly give you nightmares and that most enemy units could not deal with in a one-to-one situation. However, that would give me so few models that if the dice gods deserted me (which they often do) then the game could be over in less than four turns.

So, I have taken on board the results of the previous outings of my Plague Marine army, thrown in some new stuff, dumped the rubbish stuff. As I said earlier, this has meant I couldn't fit in everything I wanted, but I've come to a happy compromise. It has involved the addition of allied detachment to the main force but I'm confident of the devastation that will be wrought.

I also look forward to the day when we can have a real Apocalypse sized game and I can bring all my Chaos toys to the table.

But this weekend's game we're hoping to have a guest or two join the battle. There will be photos aplenty, team break downs and analysis and possibly some video replays. There will also, no doubt, be plenty of banter in the aftermath of what is going to be a fantastic game.

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It had gone very quiet. There had been no sight or sound of the Dark Angels or their reinforcements for weeks. Had they gone? Had a Nurgle virus wiped them out? Not likely thought Typhus. They're keeping their heads down and their cards close to their chest. It did not matter; the chaos force that Typhus had gathered would be more than a match for anything these Dark Angels could throw at him. Anticipation was growing, manifesting itself in a restless twitching of his armoured gauntlet. In less than 48 hours all hell would break loose and Cherbull would be drowning in the Dark Angel dead.