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So my gf has been asking me all about my figures and wondering if we could play a game together. Last night I told her all about my BA and she's decided she wants to play out of my armies. I've picked my crons.
Now she refuses to be given a points advantage and has picked out units from my force that she definitely wants to include. These are: vindicator, baal with flamestorm, ml devs, a magic powers man (librarian) and sanguinary guard.
I do not want to over complicate the game by including flyers, fortifications or allies but do want to introduce concepts such as transports, different mobe distances and basic usrs such as scout and infiltrate.

Here is the list I have picked for her including the units she wants:

Librarian
Jump pack, force axe, shield and rage powers.

5 scouts
Bp & ccw, power weapon

10 assault marines
Power weapon

5 assault marines
Melta gun
Rhino

5 sanguinary guard

Baal predator
Flamestorm & heavy flamers

Vindicator

Vindicator

5 Devestators
4 missile launchers

1250pts

For my necrons I have picked:

Overlord
Mss, ws, sw
Command barge

10 warriors

10 warriors

10 warriors

5 flayed ones

5 scarabs

5 scarabs

5 destroyers
1 with heavy gauss cannon

Annihilation barge

Annihilation barge

1250pts

Tried to balance taking anni barges and scarabs by also taking flayed ones and destroyers.
With the BA the second vindi is in case the 1st goes kaput. The only things that can be changed in that list are the assault squads, scouts and 1 vindi. I have a lot of BA models so fire away with replacement suggestions.

Would you consider these lists balanced against each other?

Well tips of advise you can take it or leave it, the best way i have found to start someone into 40k is squad vs squad. Seams like next to nothing, but it helps them get a feel for it. Ive gotten 4 guys into the hobby, and started it that way every time. Then in everygame up the points 250 points or so. Theyll get the hang of it.

It is a very good suggestion. I have suggested a 500pt game but she wants to jump in at the deep end. If its too much for her to take in at once we could drop it down to a couple of squads each. She did grasp a ton of the background fairly quickly though.

alright whatever floats her boat ya know. Take it slow though, try not to include to many over complicated special rules.

Cheers. Do you think scout and infiltrate should be as far as I push the usrs? Maybe drop the mss for an extra warrior to avoid that confusion as well? Or just not even bring up things like challenges?

Why don't you make then Scouts SR/CC? that way you don't have to deal with the USRS. If she likes Baal with flamestorm, give her two. they are super fun vs. crons, and it will give her something easy, but still good. Two tanks are better than 1!!

Having also gotten lots of people into the game, including girlfriends, don't worry about showcasing USRs. It's enough trouble to walk someone through all the basic rules, and frankly the number of unique special rules and exceptions to core rules in even a simple 40k game would make anyone's head spin.

If she really wants to play at 1250 pts then go for it, but the game might drag with so much explaining every turn. 750 is probably the most I would want to do for a first time game. Be prepared to streamline things if necessary, especially when it's in her favor (the training demo I like to give is a platoon of guard vs some space marines, and I usually don't bother issuing orders for the guard - one more complicated thing they don't need to know about, and it subtly nerfs my side).

Snipers is a good call. Could replace the pws on the scout and assault marine sarges and the rhino + squad with another baal with hflamers? Then she has 4 tanks which im sure she will like.


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Yeh good call everyone. I'll dump the usrs (and transport) to avoid an unessessary amout of rules. If she finds it too much we will stop and drop down points like you suggest. Thanks everyone!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh I forgot to include the devs in her list. Will edit now.

Just start with a low points game. Like 3-400 so she can learn about shooting and moving. You overcomplicating it I think.

Right. This seems to be the general consensus. I will suggest a small battle first then to introduce her. Then we can scale it up. Im sure if I show her this thread she will agree.


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Thanks!


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Hows this for a 405pt introduction?

10 assault marines

10 scouts
Bp & ccw

5 scouts
Snipers

405pts

Vs

13 warriors

12 warriors

2 destroyers

405pts

Much easier I think

Although you could drop the scouts for a Libby if she wants one.

Brilliant, we'll go with that when she finishes work then. You've all done a good job convincing me to lower it!

It is a ruddy good job I listened to you all and reduced the points!!! She really enjoyed it but the game took quite a while.
We ended up playing the following:

5 man scout squad
Bp & ccw

5 man scout squad
Snipers, missile launcher

5 man scout squad
Snipers

10 assault marines

425pts

Vs

2 destroyers

6 warriors

6 warriors

6 warriors

8 warriors

418pts

We used refinery, cathedral and ruins terrain I own. I set these up so her sniper scouts would be able to use the refinary tower and a cathedral 2nd floor as vantage points. I let her realise this was a good place to put them herself. I also placed a LoS blocking bunker around the centre but closer to my deployment for her combat scouts to infiltrate behind, along with other pieces of terrain they could hide in (non LoS blocking). Without prompting, after my deployment (I was going second) she placed the scouts behind this piece of terrain so I couldn't see them. I explained the combat squad rule to her and she decided to split her assault squad into 2 squads, one deployed on either flank of her deployment. I spread my warrior squads across my deployment rather than concentrating them, the destroyers started in a second refinary tower.

Turn 1. I explained the movement of regular infantry and jp infantry which she grasped very quickly, also grasping difficult terrain tests. Her assault marines moved forwards, her scouts all stayed where they were.
Shooting phase: her scout squad with missile launcher shot. I showed her the tables for 'to hit' and 'to wound', she got these very quickly, even when I threw a spanner in the works by mentioning that snipers have a S of X and always wound on a 4+. Fortunately there were no rends on this round. The most difficult part for her to get her head around was the armour save vs ap value, the reason she explained later, after she understood it was because the armour save and ap are the opposite to everything else - they are the lower the better. Once she understood this and understood that once determining if an armour save is allowed or not, the ap plays no further part, she was fine. Both her scout squads shot at my destroyers, causing no damage due to insanely lucky armour saves. Nothing else was in range to shoot. And nothing was in range to assault.

I moved my necrons forward (barring the destroyers) to get them all into shooting range of one of the assault marine squads advancing towards me in cover. 26 necrons managing to kill one marine, the destroyers picked up the slack and killed 3 more after some abysmal cover save rolling by Debbie. The remaining assault marine fled 12" backwards to his original statring position. Throughout my turn she was remembering things such as: same S and T leads to a 4+ on the 'to wounds' table, bs4 hits on a 3+, bs3 hits on a 4+, if ap is the same or lower than armour saves you don't get one, you roll 2d6 for ld tests.

In her turn 2 her 2nd assault marine squad moved to within 9" of one of my warrior squads, whilst the scout squad came out of hiding and appeared within 8" of the necron squad next to the other already threatened squad. I explained to her about charges and how I didn't need to be worried since her dice rolling was atrocious.
In this turn her sniper scouts wiped out my destroyers and took out 2 more warriors, rending shots occured here, a rule which she took on board straight away. Also both the assault squad and scout squad made combat. I had spoken too soon.
I explained to her how many attacks each model got base, what gave each bonus attacks and let her calculate how many attacks her squads had. Also explaining initiative steps.
Her assault marines killed 2, whilst her scouts killed no-one. In return 2 of her scouts died. Neither of us failed out ld test. I made 2 rp rolls my warriors.
I advanced my remaining 2 squads up the board to take on the snipers, 14 shots resulted in 3 dead snipers and made the sarge and remaining sniper retreat back 4" (downstairs). In my assault phase, both of debbies units were far more successful and my ld rolls were poor ending up in both getting sweeped. Allowing her to understand almost the entirety of the assault phase by now.
The game carried on for 2 more turns which resulted in me finishing off the solo assault marine and damaged sniper squad whilst staying out of LoS from the other sniper squad. The necrons put up a brave last stand with the last two assaults and one rapid fire round, killing 4 assault marines and another scout, the 8 man squad surviving for 3 assault phases to allow the last 6 man squad to get some diatance. But it was not to be, as the last assault marine and 2 scouts swept the final necron unit off the board.

Debbie had enjoyed herself, she had won, and she was happy. Going so far to ask me if we can have a few more battles when my holiday comes up the week after next! Pretty awsome result!

Sounds good mate. Glad she enjoyed it.

It went a lot better at 425pts than it would have done at 1250pts I think. So cheers for that advice.
Next up is a 600pt battle: BA (she really likes them) against my old school chaos space marines.