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It was my birthday back in November, and as a treat my fair lady offered to take me to Games Workshop and have an introductory game with me. Now to put in to perspective how much of a big deal this was, she appreciates the arty side of it, but hates the "smelly boy smell", getting ogled at for "having boobs" and just generally thinks the gaming side of the hobby is a little bit silly. So it was a big deal that she'd offered this

So it was that, with our FLGS Manager, Tristan, narrating, we began. She opted for the Marines, I took the Orcs (which suited me, as I'd been using these in other intro games that I'd had). Incidentally, I'd played 2 intro games before, and lost both. Today was to be different though, I could feel it! Not that I really wanted to beat the missus, as I want her to play again, but by god did I want it to be an interesting game! Note that I'm a little sketchy on how every turn went, which model caused how many wounds and what have you but we'll get there! Trust me, the end result was brilliant and a real "did that just happen" moment!

The board was about 48" x 48", craters on the marine side, there were hills and fortifications and what have you, though each force stood in front of them so they won't be playing any role in the game to come. My objective was to make a break for the opposite board edge, it'd be a minor victory if I got my Warboss over as a minimum, a major victory if I got the nobs and boys over too.

We roll for first turn and I grab it by rolling a 4, she pulls out a 1. I have my warboss and nobs together on the left flank, and the boys on right split in to to equal squads, with my Deffkoptas just behind them. She had terminators and a 5 man marine squad with missile launcher opposite my nobs & warboss (she laughed everytime myself or Tris said Nob), her captain and 5 more marines (with flamer) opposite my boys and a MM / PF dreadnought on the right flank (all from my point of view).

Orc Turn 1

My first move was to put the nobs and warboss in front of the Termies & ML squad. The boys got in the face of the captain & his squad, and the Deffkoptas side stepped to face off against the Dreadnought.

In shooting, the nobs & WB (I'll just refer to them as HQ from now on) targeted the ML squad, all saves were made. The boys targeted the captain and his squad, putting one wound on the captain, and the deffkoptas took a layer of paint off thedreadnought.

In assault, my HQ piled into the ML squad, the boys into the captain, and Deffkoptas hung back having a spitting contest. Now things got messy! My HQ annihilated the ML squad, the boys took down (I think) 2 of the marines with the captain, but failed to do anything to the captain himself. The Marines all passed their leadership tests and weathered the green tide for another turn...

Marines Turn 1

Starting with the termies (that were in a crater to begin with), she rolled a 2 to get out of the difficult terrain, which brought her to within an inch of my HQ, the captain and his squad were committed to combat, and the dreadnought stomped towards the boys.

The termies shot at the nobs, though my saves were pretty good and I lost just one wound believe it or not. That was shooting concluded!

The termies charged at my HQ, their sergeant cleaving one of the nobs in 2. My nobs put 3 wounds back on them. "Here you are Linz, 3 dice, you just need to roll a 2 or more on each"... drum roll please... massive shake of the dice.... THREE ONES!!!! Ha! Can you believe it! That's bye bye Sergeant & 2 PF's down! On to the return swing with power fists and my PK. The power fists hurt, taking (I can't remember exactly) 3 or 4 of my nobs out. And now it's my klaws turn, slicing clean through one of the terminators. One morale check later, and the sole remaining termi stood his ground, barely.

Over by the captain, Orcs were cleaved left right & centre, with the captain weaving figure of 8's with his power sword, deftly lopping off limbs and heads with every turn of hsi wrist. The marines were hungover though, I don't think they even bothered pulling knives from scabbard! The Dreadnought had charged in too though, and picked one of my boys up by the skull, crushed it, and discarded the corpse like dirty rags. Seeing this, my boys threw everything they could at them, splitting attacks between the captain, the marines & the dreadnought, putting a wound on the captain, taking 2 marines and tripping up over themselves in trying to stick grenades on to the Dread. Orcs won the combat, but everything stayed put.

Orcs turn 2

Good & quick turn this one! The Deffkoptas threw themselves forwards, resting between my HQ & boys. They wouldn't be doing anything else this turn as all were engaged. the final terminator went down to the last nob(s) and warboss, who then consolidated 4" towards my escape. My boys managed to take out the last of the marines, immobilised the dread (that was awesome, roll one 6 to hit; she says "You lucky bugger", roll another 6 to glance "You're a complete git", roll another 6 to immobilise "How the feth?!" ), but failed to do anything else to the captain, who down to his last wound and struggling to keep on his feet now.

Marines turn 2

One immobilised dreadnought & a captain down to his last wound... This was in the bag! But with renewed vim & vigour the captain set to the cleaving my boys up, I was down to about 9 boys now, then the dread took out another. I struck back and failed to do anything. I lost combat and failed my ld test of rolling a 5 or less and was routed. The captain consolidated towards my warboss...

Orcs turn 3

My warboss (down to his final wound) was 12" from the end of the board, which he swiftly move for, bringing it down to 2" away by rolling a 4 when running. The boys brought themselves about, but weren't able to do anything else this turn.

Marines Turn 3

The captain, bleeding from so many cuts and wounds, servos failing him, dragged himself towards my warboss, choking on the bloody dust of the barren plains. With extreme effort, he pulled his bolter up to his chin, gazed down the sights, and with the lightest of exhalations, squeezed the trigger...


Summary

The Warboss, sensing victory as he reached the borders of the arena, turned to survey the carnage that his boys had caused. Panting from the exertion of running so far, sucking in great lung fulls of desert air, he caught a glint of sun light reflected off bright red armour in the dust. Realising it was the 'umie bossman, lay dying in a pool of scarlet ground, the Warboss let out a guffaw of laughter, and turned to make his final step over the boundaries, before he felt his legs kick out from under him as the bolter round entered his lower back and blew his intestines out of his gut as the mass reactive shell exploded in his mid riff!

End

Seriously! I couldn't believe it, I'd rolled pretty much nothing but 5's & 6's all the way through the game, she'd rolled barely anything over a 3, then all of a sudden the captain is freed from combat and snipes the last wound off of my warboss! It was truely, the most awesome and cinematic of endings that I could ever expect to see in a game of warhammer lol

And the best part is that she might be interested in playing another game!

Thanks for reading

Definitely sounded like a good game. I enjoyed reading the narrative.

And my wife also agrees with your lady, we went to a store near us & everyone stopped talking and just looked at her the entire time. She later told me "It's as though they have never seen a live female before!" lol

LOL. The largest truth I saw in this was not the staring comment, but the unwashed masses comment. I mean really, the rest of you gamers, you are leaving the house, could you at least hose off a little. Sweat is not cologne.

J

Thanks! I really enjoyed writing it, especially the narrative, though sorry that the very end was a bit rushed (we had guests & I was struggling for a short, punchy way of putting the image across!)

On the gamer-stink, it's not sweat in my flgs, just "boy smell" as she cals it, too much testoserone in one place, fortunately BO is either non existent or whipped out good and quick as our store is pretty well ventilated!

Interesting... my girl friend says, "you smell like boy" and thats supposedly a compliment. I don't really know what "boy" smells like but I can't imagine its good...

Anyway, yea good battle report, everybody loves a comeback! This is one of the reasons I actually prefer 500-1000 point games to 1500-2000 point games.

Not only can you get through a game quicker, but in a smaller scale conflict the actual fire fights and conflicts are a lot more epic...

akaean wrote:Interesting... my girl friend says, "you smell like boy" and thats supposedly a compliment.

Maybe it's a compliment if she says "You smell like boy...baby" or something like that.
Better that then to have her remark "hmmm...you smell like another girl."

Did you play the game hoping not to win so not to crush her enthusiasm for the game? It's something I'd have done.

CuddlySquig wrote:

akaean wrote:Interesting... my girl friend says, "you smell like boy" and thats supposedly a compliment.

Maybe it's a compliment if she says "You smell like boy...baby" or something like that.
Better that then to have her remark "hmmm...you smell like another girl."

I dunno, I get mixed messages. I took a shower at her place yesterday and after she said my hair smelled good- which was interesting because I used her shampoo... so who knows...

Glad to hear she might be interested in the whole gaming and painting package.

And my wife refuses to go into GW stores for the reasons you stated too (even if I am with her)

Awesome story and epic battle with a great ending.

That's pretty much how it started with my girl as well and now she has at least 1700 points worth of Eldar. However she does not like going to the store either for the same reasons all you guys are saying.

Hopefully your girl can get as much into the hobby as us

akaean wrote:Interesting... my girl friend says, "you smell like boy" and thats supposedly a compliment. I don't really know what "boy" smells like but I can't imagine its good...

Anyway, yea good battle report, everybody loves a comeback! This is one of the reasons I actually prefer 500-1000 point games to 1500-2000 point games.

Not only can you get through a game quicker, but in a smaller scale conflict the actual fire fights and conflicts are a lot more epic...

I've yet to play anything larger than Assault of Blackreach, so I've yet to find out which I'll personally enjoy more, though the biggest driver for me would have to be the narrative so maybe smaller games are the way to go! Time shall tell...!

CuddlySquig wrote:

akaean wrote:Interesting... my girl friend says, "you smell like boy" and thats supposedly a compliment.

Maybe it's a compliment if she says "You smell like boy...baby" or something like that.
Better that then to have her remark "hmmm...you smell like another girl."

Did you play the game hoping not to win so not to crush her enthusiasm for the game? It's something I'd have done.

See, you say it's better that they say that than "you smell like another girl", though all of my ex's have reacted better to me smelling like them, from shower gels etc, than smelling of the latest £100 aftershave! It's nuts! That or Ijust have bad scent sense

And yes, I soon learnt after meeting her that she's more for fun than competiveness (is that a word?), so I didn't want to ruin the fun by completely pwning her and acting like a nob afterwards. Equally though, I didn't go lightly, as that would only have offended her and achieved the same as if I were being an ass.

There were however 1 or 2 points where the dice gods were really going against her, so her Captains power sword suddenly became twin linked.... and then master crafted... Lol Much fun was had though, I think it just added the right amount of humour to the mix

SilverMK2 wrote:Glad to hear she might be interested in the whole gaming and painting package.

And my wife refuses to go into GW stores for the reasons you stated too (even if I am with her)

Fingers crossed, we were kept waiting for the game for an age, and we were given a couple of the AoB snap together marines for herto play about with painting as and when she feels like it, hopefully one night this week. I had to bite my tongue when she said "I might do them blue and gold"... (I wanted to say "What, like the ULTRASMURFS?! Ffs!!!")

Fido198674 wrote:Awesome story and epic battle with a great ending.

That's pretty much how it started with my girl as well and now she has at least 1700 points worth of Eldar. However she does not like going to the store either for the same reasons all you guys are saying.

Hopefully your girl can get as much into the hobby as us

Thanks man, much appreciated! I keep gunning for a rematch and haven't been told no yet, so watch this space! Really glad to hear that you introduced your missus to the game in the same manner, is she proper in to it now or is it more a case of she's accumulated some models and just left them by wayside? I'd really like to come home from work and just crack on with a little fun match between us, that's the goal!

I guess I am lucky my wife begs to come to the store with me, not to play but keep an eye out on my spending I am guessing. At least they have pc's and video game consoles there and she is going to try the kinect out next time we are there. I told her like bloody hell its saving us money your going to want to go blow 250+ on a kinect and video games when we go. She reminded me of my recent Necron purchase and I shut my mouth.

I still think it's kinda cool that she's willing to come along though, it's nice to have that involvement, even if it is just sitting on the side lines.

Your store sounds incredible! Definitely worth a 10 hour flight for me to come and visit!

On the Kinect, I heard a rumour that the next generation Xbox is coming in 2012, and will have kinect built in. The rumour was on Yahoo, so take what you will from that, though equally it could be worth holding off as if that happens the stand alone units could really drop in price.

I bought mine off ebay when they first came out for £135, sold to HMV for £40 I wasn't using it and wanted Crysis 2, I'm still not sure if that was a good trade!

Fido198674 wrote:Awesome story and epic battle with a great ending.

That's pretty much how it started with my girl as well and now she has at least 1700 points worth of Eldar. However she does not like going to the store either for the same reasons all you guys are saying.

Hopefully your girl can get as much into the hobby as us

Thanks man, much appreciated! I keep gunning for a rematch and haven't been told no yet, so watch this space! Really glad to hear that you introduced your missus to the game in the same manner, is she proper in to it now or is it more a case of she's accumulated some models and just left them by wayside? I'd really like to come home from work and just crack on with a little fun match between us, that's the goal!

This is most awesome, grats on such a fun experience!

My wife won't play WH40k, which isn't a bad thing. She does love to paint and build them and actually made a PCS squad for me out of all my bits, and it didn't look like crap.

But yeah, the whole "Dewd thaz ay gurl." *stare* happens to my wife every time we head to the local game store. Gives us other gamers a bad rap.

I agree; there needs to a personal hygiene and social behavior standard... if it was factored in as a competetive aspect of the game, 40k players wouldn't be considered the trolls of the geek world.

You north americans are strange is this things of girls playing... Wargames are not common here, but on RPG and cardgames, girls are pretty common (a minority, but common) sight...

If she enjoyed to play with you, and why you dont show her killzone or another "lower scale" game, that you could play in home (without all that "boy thing" around?).

Oh, and great description of the game, i liked it...

My GF loved to play WOW for a while, but that got old. I know she loves Anime, so when I saw Super Dungeon Explorer came with Anime style heros, I just had to get it for us for Chrismas. I hope she really likes it. I hope she plays it.

My GF also goes to the store, hoping I will get to play, and she either sits with her laptop or her kindle.

Frankenberry wrote:This is most awesome, grats on such a fun experience!

My wife won't play WH40k, which isn't a bad thing. She does love to paint and build them and actually made a PCS squad for me out of all my bits, and it didn't look like crap.

But yeah, the whole "Dewd thaz ay gurl." *stare* happens to my wife every time we head to the local game store. Gives us other gamers a bad rap.

Thanks man, glad you like the tale! It's cool that your fair lady likes to paint 'em and what have you, that's the next thing on my agenda is to see if she'll try that!

The Dwarf Wolf wrote:You north americans are strange is this things of girls playing... Wargames are not common here, but on RPG and cardgames, girls are pretty common (a minority, but common) sight...

If she enjoyed to play with you, and why you dont show her killzone or another "lower scale" game, that you could play in home (without all that "boy thing" around?).

Oh, and great description of the game, i liked it...

Thanks to you too Mr Wolf. I can't say that I know killzone (aside from the PS3 game ) though to be honest, we're getting married in March so cash is too tight to start looking at picking up another hobby / game / system. I'm pretty fresh to 40k too, so I'm still enjoying the hobby myself too lol

JonnyB wrote:My GF loved to play WOW for a while, but that got old. I know she loves Anime, so when I saw Super Dungeon Explorer came with Anime style heros, I just had to get it for us for Chrismas. I hope she really likes it. I hope she plays it.

My GF also goes to the store, hoping I will get to play, and she either sits with her laptop or her kindle.

I can't say I know Super Dungeon Explorer and my internet's being crap so I can't look it up! Seems to me that she should enjoy it though, as long as it ticks a few different boxes of things she likes (Anime, check. Game of some sort, check. Involves the both of you, check. Etc...) Good luck to you sir!

Great Bat. Rep. and Awsome narration!

Cheers buddy

Good narrative
Seemed more epic when we are imagining what it looks like, then with pictures.

And good for you for getting your lady to play with you
God knows most of us would want that.


EDIT:
Actually, I myself had something...well interesting happen in the last month or so.
Here at my school, a girl chose to interview me for out Yearbook. As it turns out, she asked what I do outside of school, and I mentioned that I go to a FLGS (but not in those terms) on Tuesdays. She thought it was really cool that I am a Wargamer (which I had also mentioned).

So a a few weeks later, which was this Tuesday, she wanted me to explain more about what actually goes on. I explained about wargaming in general, so I brought up different sizes, like the FoW size, to Warmachine size. I also talked about how some game systems are more expensive then other ones.

She also asked what game I play, and I answered WH40K (again, not in that term). Some more discussions, like how some armies do well in melee, others in ranged, and some in-between. She also wanted to know why I play it, and my answer was for the challenge (as I play DE, which was also touched on later when she asked what army I play), meeting people, unwinding, and for funny moments, such as a Guardsmen beating a GD on the table top.

And as I said before, she asked what army I play, which is DE. When she then asked why, I replied that it was for the challenge of having powerful, fast, but not very tough units.

I had never seen her or met her before, yet she thought it was really cool that I did this on Tuesdays.
Just my own little story.

forruner_mercy wrote:Good narrative
Seemed more epic when we are imagining what it looks like, then with pictures.

And good for you for getting your lady to play with you
God knows most of us would want that.


EDIT:
Actually, I myself had something...well interesting happen in the last month or so.
Here at my school, a girl chose to interview me for out Yearbook. As it turns out, she asked what I do outside of school, and I mentioned that I go to a FLGS (but not in those terms) on Tuesdays. She thought it was really cool that I am a Wargamer (which I had also mentioned).

So a a few weeks later, which was this Tuesday, she wanted me to explain more about what actually goes on. I explained about wargaming in general, so I brought up different sizes, like the FoW size, to Warmachine size. I also talked about how some game systems are more expensive then other ones.

She also asked what game I play, and I answered WH40K (again, not in that term). Some more discussions, like how some armies do well in melee, others in ranged, and some in-between. She also wanted to know why I play it, and my answer was for the challenge (as I play DE, which was also touched on later when she asked what army I play), meeting people, unwinding, and for funny moments, such as a Guardsmen beating a GD on the table top.

And as I said before, she asked what army I play, which is DE. When she then asked why, I replied that it was for the challenge of having powerful, fast, but not very tough units.

I had never seen her or met her before, yet she thought it was really cool that I did this on Tuesdays.
Just my own little story.

If you do not ask this girl to come down and see what it'sall about, and then take her for a coffee afterwards I will berate you heavily, and repeatedly. With a big hammer. She's clearly interested, get your FLGS Manager to host an intro game for you. Stir in some drama and a bit of comedy while you're at it.

I completely forgot to get pictures of my game, I was too worked up about just having a game with our lass! I thought afterwards that I should have done it, hopefully some of the narration makes up for the lack of pics though!

Personally, I like using our imagination. Would be more difficult to imagine the Warboss getting shot when you just show the pic of it

Hehe, good read.

I always have this when I demo the game to someone who is on the fence, my dice suddenly start singing with angelic voices and I roll nothing but 5's and 6's. And nothing is more of a turn-off than getting hopelessly routed in your first game.

I have actually reverse cheated quite a few times in these situations, quickly scooping up a few of my hits as misses when it gets too out of hand.

That's exactly what we did, it was obvious and she knew about it, it just made it a bit more fun though, much better game than one where one player dominates the whole thing