Got some painting done but mostly been playing some games. The local hobby club has been running a campaign based around the current Vigilus setting, and I've been part of it with two kill teams. A Deathwatch and Imperial Guard one. I've actually made a name for myself for my Guard kill team not suffering a single death over the campaign so far. (Guys get knocked out in battle, but no one dies from their injuries.)
Yesterday was a bit of a special event. A massive 8,000 pt Imperial army vs 8,000 Chaos vs 8000 'aliens' which included orks and genestealer cults. The two aliens were technically on the same team, but campaign bonus' were given based on independent faction results. So If the alien team got 3 objectives the whole team would win, but Genestealers would only get 2 bonus pts and orks 1. Etc etc. I started to take pictures but time was a huge issue throughout the game so I ended up putting my camera aside and forgetting about it.
There was a trick though. It was tanks and vehicles only. No knights, flyers or lords of war. You could take troops if they fit in a transport but 75% of your list had to be vehicles. I joined with another Imperial guy so we'd both be able to play. I had 2 Russ tanks and a Chimera filled with veterans (The same veterans from my kill team). My plan was to try and act like a little wolf pack. Drop the veterans on an objective then run around as a group of 3 trying to pick off weak targets.
Imperial forces deployed along one long edge, with chaos on the other (north). Genestealers along the East short edge and the Orks the western. My little group was part of the Imperial effort to hold the Eastern sector. The game was split over two boards that had a small number of buildings, pipes and roads on the eastern edge, and transitioning into an open badlands area with a road running from east to west. A spaceport landing pad occupied the north western area.
It was a blood bath. Baneblades and artillery everywhere, a pack of about five defilers and half a dozen hellbrutes rampaged through the middle of the genestealer army. My two tanks, named Caribou and War Thunder wracked up six kills between them before getting blown to bits by some kind of forgeworld land raider variant. The Chimera lasted another turn before falling to a Genestealer cult Russ and its escort of mad max dirt bike maniacs.
Remarkably the veterans might have done the best. They stormed one of the few buildings, pushing a group of GS Neophytes out, and held the objective for all six turns. They withstood constant shelling, multiple assault attempts from the remaining infantry, and even killed a host of different vehicles. By the end of it only the sarg, the melta guy (Who I was protecting the most) and the rocket team survived.
The final score was Imperials with 10 pts (From a somewhat modified objective system), Chaos with 9, Orks with 7 and Genestealers with 1. So it was an incredibly close game, with Chaos and Xeno's almost tied and Imperials in the lead just barely. Honestly because of their deployment the aliens got the short end of the stick, but it was a blast playing and they all had fun. GS Cults had a real good ambush plan, but bad dice rolls killed some important units and then the defilers/hellbrute mob got right into their center. There was an interesting battle within the battle for infantry. Most people didn't bring many infantry. Transport tanks didn't seem super popular and the battlefield was really open. Combined with the intense firepower what few infantry squads did come got ripped apart pretty fast. This led to a number of half strength squads using what little cover they could to scrabble and brawl for a small handful of objectives or good hiding spots.
It was tons of fun. At one point an ork speed waagh tried to race up the road to help the Stealers, destroying both chaos and Imperial tanks left and right, but just couldn't make it in time.
After seeing how well the game went there's talk about doing some similar games. Like an infantry only, or even just some more themed ones based on how the Vigilus story goes.