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40k is not about the final score. It's about those moments lead up to the final die roll, so let's "forge the narrative" here. What is the most epic moment in a game you recently played from a narrative standpoint?

I actually had two in one game last week:

Necron CAD vs. Space Wolves CAD.

My opponenent's Thunder Wolf Cavalry charge a group of Warriors with Illuminor Szeras attached. They manage to take out 3-4 Warriors, but we don't break. In the following shooting phase, Imhotek the Storm Lord takes one look at the cavalry who had the audacity to stand against his forces. "Oh", he says "you call yourselves 'Thunder' Wolves? I'll show you 'Thunder", bitches!" and uses his lightning. The only enemy unit to take damage is the TWC. He does 5 wounds to them. TWC roll their 3+ saves: 2, 1, 1, 2, 1. Only one wolf remains on one wound. Szeras makes short work of him.

SW turn 2, the Wolfen make it into melee with the same unit of Warriors/Szeras. Szeras does all of one wound, the warriors to nothing. The Wolfen absolutely destroy the unit, leaving on one Warrior alive. I roll my leadership check. 1,1. Two turns later, said warrior is still holding against five Wolfen! He rolled probably two dozen 5s and 6s that night! My solo Warrior stared into the eyes of the god of death and said "Not today!" When the Wolfen eventually overwhelmed him, his consciousness was placed in the body of an Immortal back on the tomb world.

We lost killpoints 6-1.

A Vendetta hovers into the DZ last turn of the game to grab line breaker witht he score at 9-9 (10-9 once it hovers in).
3 long fangs are all that are left that side of the table and in range.
2 miss, one hits.
Vendetta jinks and fails. Las rolls armor pen and gets a 4.
Rolls on the damage table and gets a 6. Poof goes the Vendetta salvaging a draw.

ALRIGHT I had something entertaining happen to a single dude only just a couple of days ago in a 4 player free-for-all in a Relic Mission. My 5 man scion squad, consisting of two meltas, drops in between a depleted marine squad, a Venerable, and some necrons with the relic. They miss EVERY shot at the Venerable sadly enough, and when it's the SM turn, he decides to shot the necrons with his tacticals, wiping the robots off and leaving the relic exposed, though he can't capture it. The Venerable then decides (even though it's on a remaining hull point) to blast away the scions, leaving just a single melta left (who passed his leadership check) and then the dreadnought charged him...Overwatch, the melta hit, then penetrated it, and blew the damn thing up! And after all those misses the previous turn!

My turn later came on, I run my scion, try an pinch the relic in the ruins, which I do...But sadly the remaining marines just gun the poor sap down, but it was close, and bloody hilarious to see it happen!

I've had a few epic moments...

First game with the 7th edition Necron dex, my bud charged 5 Bloodcrushers with the Grimoire and Prescience on them into 12 Warriors, a Cryptek, a Lord, and Imotekh. They dealt 19 Wounds, and I couldn't tank them on Imotekh (as he was too far). So, I only got my 4+ Reanimation against their attacks, and I popped the Rez orb, letting me reroll. One warrior tanked 12 wounds before dying, and after that, the Cryptek only took one wound. I then proceeded to smack back and deal 2 wounds, tying combat.

Also, in the same game, the Nightbringer went toe to toe with a Lord of Change that had the Grimoire on himself, along with Precognition (reroll everything essentially, even saves). Nightbringer actually ended up winning after 2 or so game turns in combat.

Then I had an Overlord on a barge (5th edition dex) pretty much solo most of an Eldar Army, Reanimating 4 times that game, and ending it with running over the enemy Autarch Warlord with HoW.

Then with my Tyranids, I had 4 Termagants left in a squad, and they were being approached by some Fire Dragons with an Exarch. The Termagants charged, lost 2 in Overwatch, killed 2 Fire Dragons in CC, 1 Termagant died, and the remaining one Swept the Fire Dragons.

Then, more recently, I play my Nids in a 2v2, with my teammate also playing Nids. We were up against Admech and Eldar. My 4 Warriors with a Prime charged into their Imperial Knight, being aided by a Carnifex. The Carnifex did nothing, but the Warriors took out 4 (the remaining number) Hull Points using their Rending Claws. It then exploded and took all but 1 and the Prime with them.

Ive had a 3 man Tactical Squad (with no sergeant left) kill a Mawloc in CC. Those lads then went and sat on the enemy's Emperor's Will objective and win me the game. They were then allowed to paint their second gauntlet red after that.

My opponents have the most epic moments.

One guy had a tri lascannon predator which snapped shot my heldrake, penetrated, and got it to explode as I failed the 5++daemon save. Turn 2

Another guy had a ork cannon pop out a vortex of doom on my imperial knight turn 2 and rolled a 6 denying me ion shield save or any kind.

I mishapped with Abaddon and terminators, my opponent gets to place him anywhere. He places them far off in a corner where it took 2 turns to get near an obj or shoot at enemies. Failed to get close to charge anything. Biggest waste of points.

I had a space marine scout with a sniper rifle get charged by an Avatar of Khaine. In overwatch he managed to strip off the avatar's last wound.

I like to imagine my unflappable scout holding in the face of unimaginable horrors his squad lying dead around him and only his love of the emperor and dreams of being made a full battle brother keeping him from fleeing, because a space marine shall no no fear. The avatar, turning it's burning wrath upon him decided that this tiny montkiegh would be an easy target. With blood and flame the monster bore down upon him, but calmly, almost gracefully he squared his sights upon the almost imperceptibly small soul stone roiling in the demonic chaos. With a prayer to the Emperor, he let his round fly true. All around him, the essence of the demon began to dematerialize, the giant sword that had an instant ago been a tower of flame, thudded heavily to the ground mere meters in front of him. The demon was dead. The Emperor protects.

(the most recent one)

Perturabo and his terminator body guard teleports next to my rapiers, killing them like nothing. Meanwhile my tanks are now in a compromised position, and my praetor and body guard is still waiting to teleport in.
In an effort to save the tanks, a Solar Auxilia Lasrifle section affixes bayonets and charges
Perturabo, presumably laughing at this 'threat' hardly fires any overwatch (3 misses)
The lasrifle section charges, forms up, and attempts to stall the primarch and terminators... killing 1 terminator and wounding the Perturabo!
The return attacks are devastating, the squad fleets, but are not overan, the man who wounded perturabo still somehow alive (pPerty whiffed his hammer swings )
The section, severely weakened, falls back to HQ (flees off the table edge)


This is the same game where Perturabo's Veteran tactical squad shot him in the back with a sniping frag grenade and wounded him... when he JUST recovered back to 2 wounds through IWND that last turn, my opponent was a single 5+ roll away from killing his own primarch!

I had an inquisitor in power armor survive 2 rounds of 2 cheese build eldar jet bikes squad shooting and assault and hit and run shenanigans.

He also managed to blast 2 goons with his plasma pistol.
He basically survived about 25wounds before frying his fingers.

Just the other day I had a relic eternal war mission in some marine vs marine action. I finally bought and put together a few power armor grav cannon guys for when I play non-BA, so I was using a couple in tactical squads in rhinos.

We get to turn 5 where he has a squad of 3 marines running away on foot with the relic after we had a devastating clash wiping out most of both armies. I have a rhino with the grav cannon inside, one of my few units left, move full tilt after them, snap fire out the hatch from max range, 3 hits, 3 wounds, 3 failed gtg saves, game ends before he can get another nearby squad over to the dropped relic and I win off 2 bonus points.

I have more hilarious moments than epic unfortunately.

Usually my army is either completely rolled or steamrolls. The Dice Gods be fickled as it is.

From a narrative standpoint, a friend and mine were playing a campaign of Tyranids vs. Space Wolves. We're three missions in and the Shadow in the Warp is closing in on the planet. The genestealer cults have run amok and the planet is mostly in chaos. There's a small warband of space wolves left on the planet. They're only hope to protect the last choir of astropaths long enough (5 game turns) to break through the Shadow in the Warp and send a call for reinforcements. The SW start of surrounded on all sides by genestealers, gaunts, a few warriors and a flyrant.

In two turns the SW are decimated by withering fire from the gaunts and they pull back from the fort walls to the inner compound. They surround the choir of psykers and are in turn surrounded by a closing ring of tyranids. The genestealers bust through the lines and make a bee line for the choir. Some wolves heroically manage to fall the broodlord and all but one of the stealers, but a grounded flyrant and swarms of gaunts have breached the walls and rush to the choir. There are 3 epic turns of bloody close quarter melee as we contest the objective (the choir) against the defending space wolves.

By the end of turn 5 there are 15 gaunts and a flyrant overwhelming the remaining 2 space wolves in close combat, but that doesn't matter because the psykers bust through the Shadow and achive the game objective. Win for the Space Wolves, although they are for certain dead the next turn.

Crushing a Leman Rus to death in melee will always stand out in my mind as awesome. Did it with my Riptide.

I've had a couple in my last few games, but my favorite was my first game using my wife's Orks (she's into the hobby but doesn't play). I had a nob squad with the warboss charge a squad of 5 Wolf Guard Terminators. I knew there was little to no chance that any WGT would survive, but that would leave my unit, presumably weakened from combat, standing in the open not 6 inches from 10 Grey Hunters with plasma guns. I had 10 gretchin standing 9 inches away from the Grey Hunters, and I saw in their eyes the fury of Gork. Or Mork, it's hard to tell. I declared my charge and braced for overwatch, where I promptly killed a Grey Hunter by believing that his plasma gun would overheat. Not a single hit against my tiny warriors.

I rolled the distance and got a perfect 10, which I now needed because the closest model had been that fallen Hunter. We got into combat and lost 5 grots and their ork master, but these gods-among-grots had a job to do and damned if they didn't get snake eyes for their leadership check. They would go into the next round and lose all but one gretchin who would roll yet another double 1 to hold fast.

That hero was killed in the third round of combat but he held until his warboss and the nob bodyguards could come to clean up the Space Wolves.

That warboss, so moved by the grot's heroism, now carries his tiny body with him into every battle...or at least whatever parts haven't fallen off his boots yet.

I was testing out Nids builds. I had 1 gant on the table my opponent was a BA player, he had about 1200pts left out of a 1850 point game.

he failed a charge and I won the game with 1 gant on the 1 Objective

I recently played an apocalypse game using the tetragon of darkness apoc formation. My keeper of secrets rolled the +1 wound/IWND and 4+ FnP rewards and singlehandedly killed Dante, 10 assault marines, and a daemon prince of Nurgle over the course of about 3 game turns before breaking out of combat in my turn and then being gunned down by a warhound's Vulcan Mega-Bolter. Still, it managed to hold pretty much the whole flank by itself thanks to that re-rollable invuln and fnp.

Not sure if epic or just hilarious, but in my first game in two years I was on the verge of being tabled, with only my damaged chaos rhino left, and with a lone iron hands commander closing in with a thunder hammer and one wound left. I decided to turn and fire all weapons, and missed completely, then on my openers turn, the commander charge my immobile rhino, and slammed the thunder hammer into it, penning it twice, and exploding it. However, being that the commander was already wounded, the explosion actually managed to kill him giving chaos a mild revenge.

I was playing 1000 pt league game with my orks vs. eldar. The eldar was all hornets and 3 spinners in a unit. We deployed on the short edges so I knew I was doomed, but Grukk is one hell of a Warboss and my foot slogging boyz would somehow make it. He kills my tankbusta trukk and one of 2 units of boyz retreat, Grukk still advances with his unit. Next my kans go, the Boyz recover and head up the other flank, all fire goes to my mek guns in cover, those tough grots hold out another 2 turns before my Boyz reach the spinners and wreck them. Grukk plowed forward and was left with but a single Nob in turn 4, they break off from each other and destroy a hornet each. Grukk takes more fire to the face, but I make every FNP. He rampaged through 2 more hornets, the Nob gets linebreaker, the Boyz wreck the other hornets. A single hornet got an objective and linebreaker to draw. I was sure I was going to lose after the first 3 turns of being gunned down, but Grukk pulled through showing no mercy and proving how a 'eavy armor Warboss can survive Eldar firepower.

I'm playing a casual game as Tau vs Grey Knights/Inq.. I have a group of 5 piranhas with fusion blasters lurking in my deployment zone waiting for deepstriking/shunting things. After cleaning up a group of teleporting termies the piranha head up the field to pop vehicles. (this is a casual game so my piranhas are equipped with automated repair system, and d.pods to eat up points) My piranhas all get wrecked besides one who loses his Fusion Blaster in the process so my opponent stops shooting at it. My turn comes around, roll a 6 to repair my fusion blaster, snap shot at a venerable dread, roll a 6, not in melta range so i needed a 6.. I got it. Then I roll a 6 on the pen table blowing up the dread... Pretty sure this event made my friend stop using dreadnoughts, haven't faced one since

Ordo Malleus Inquisitor fights against not one, but two Bloodthirsters. Wielding her nemesis Daemon Hammer, she parries every blow the first Daemon throws at her before smashing one of its knees to bring it crashing down to the ground. The Beast howls in anger and its fist crashes into the ground to steady it. The inquisitor effortlessly runs up the arm onto the monsters shoulder before smashing the hammer into the side of its head. The Bloodthirster spasms, and then goes limp. the blood thirster falls face first into the ground leaving the inquisitor standing on its back.

The second Bloodthirster had spent the time killing the Inquisitors companions, their corpses littering the ground, a single agile swordsman all that remains. The inquisitor locks eyes with the Thirster, and takes a running jump, Powerful servo muscles powering the leap. The Bloodthirster bellows a challenge and swings its age, perfectly intersecting the inquisitors course and effortlessly slices through the body. The eyes go wide with disbelief as the Hammer Connects with its skull and shatters it. its taloned hand moves to shield its shattered head by reflex, as it crumples to the ground, shudders slightly, and then is still.

The lone deathcult assassin, moves to aid the inquisitor, but it is to no avail, she looks up as a horde of bloodletters charge at her.
One
Two
Three fall as every strike of her blades finds its mark, but is to no avail, and she goes down to a rain of blows, her body being dismembered by the raging daemons

6 blood claws charge 12 gretchin and a runtherd. thanks to some spectacularly bad rolling on the space marine part they run away after losing combat. we decided that thematically the gretchin had gotten a hold of some performance enhancing fungi that was growing on the objective they were camping and being hyped up on the drug the marines could not catch them.

Had another one this weekend. My Necron Decurion vs a Tau FSE. Basically cheese on cheese. Everything is all tied up going into turn 3. My opponent's Crisis commander Deep Strikes in with a full XV-8 escort. They pop a one-use weapon and fire 54 (Yeah. Fifty-Freaking-Four) attacks at my OL and his 10 Lychguard (Warscythes, not sword and board. That's just how I roll) 38 wounds. I pop my Rez Orb. Thanks to an absolutely unholy amount of luck, I save about 25 of them. That leaves another 13 or so for my 4+ RP. I succeed on 4 of them. But wait! Six of the others are 1s, so because of Reclamation Legion, I get to reroll them! All but one of the rerolls succeed! Now because of Rez Orb, I get to reroll the failures. Two more successes! After a bit of discussion, my opponent told me to go ahead and reroll the other failure (the one from rerolling my 1s) just to see what happens, and it succeeds! After 54 attacks and three sets of rerolls, I pull one Lychguard from the front of the line and place him off the board. The model behind him was Varguard Obyron. We imaged that after the front model was killed, Obyron just set there swatting missiles out of the sky with his warscythe, never once breaking eye contact with the Tau commander. My opponent wasn't even mad, he was just impressed.

 EnTyme wrote:
Had another one this weekend. My Necron Decurion vs a Tau FSE. Basically cheese on cheese. Everything is all tied up going into turn 3. My opponent's Crisis commander Deep Strikes in with a full XV-8 escort. They pop a one-use weapon and fire 54 (Yeah. Fifty-Freaking-Four) attacks at my OL and his 10 Lychguard (Warscythes, not sword and board. That's just how I roll) 38 wounds. I pop my Rez Orb. Thanks to an absolutely unholy amount of luck, I save about 25 of them. That leaves another 13 or so for my 4+ RP. I succeed on 4 of them. But wait! Six of the others are 1s, so because of Reclamation Legion, I get to reroll them! All but one of the rerolls succeed! Now because of Rez Orb, I get to reroll the failures. Two more successes! After a bit of discussion, my opponent told me to go ahead and reroll the other failure (the one from rerolling my 1s) just to see what happens, and it succeeds! After 54 attacks and three sets of rerolls, I pull one Lychguard from the front of the line and place him off the board. The model behind him was Varguard Obyron. We imaged that after the front model was killed, Obyron just set there swatting missiles out of the sky with his warscythe, never once breaking eye contact with the Tau commander. My opponent wasn't even mad, he was just impressed.

I mean, that's just par for the course with Lychguard. That's about average with every game I've played with them.

Do team games count?

My opponent had brought his homebrewed character that I had unfortunately agreed to prior to seeing the stats (never making that mistake again). The guy was essentially a Primarch with WS 7, BS 6, S 6, T 6 W 6 I 6 A stupid and LD 10. 2+ armour save, 3 (Or was it 2?)+ invulnerable save, FNP, Fleet and Eternal Warrior. He was a level 4 psyker and knew all the pyromancy powers and had a pair of swords that gave him Armourbane, Fleshbane and + stupid to Strength. Oh, and a flamethrower kind of weapon. Think a nastier Heavy Flamer. Oh and his saves where rerollable. And he caused ID with all melee attacks.
He cost 300 and something points (Its been a while so I cant remember).

Anyway this character is called Barrus Magna or something and is meant to be the Space Marine lord of fire. He spends the entire game running around slaughtering anything and everything that gets close to him and absorbing the levels of firepower normally reserved for Super Heavies and living and it is only by sheer stint of endurance and perseverance that I manage to get him down to three wounds. In the meantime my Veterans manage to kill one of the two Vindicators before being brutally molested by guess which model and my Thunderer keeps his two 5 man Devastator units locked down (apparently it was 'OP' because his Autocannons could not get through its armour and he just could not get a glance with the Missile Launchers).
Then comes the crunch - my Company Command section is now down to my Commander, Lukas Caine, a basic commander bod with a Power Sword and Plasma Pistol, the Standard bearer, MoO and my Medic. Barrus Magna sees my unit, which had advanced up to deal with some scouts, and attacks. His shooting and psychic manage to kill of the Standard Bearer and MoO and then he charges and challenges my Comander.
Well, I expect to have to remove all my models at once but something amazing happens, he wiffs and only causes a wound and miracle of miracles, my Commander passes Refractor field's Invulnerable save. My commander then proceeds to inflict three hits.

Me: 'Sweet, three hits'
Him 'Okay, well you need sixes to wound'
Dice: ' 6, 6, 6'
Him: 'Well that still wont kill Barrus!'
Dice ' :1, 1, 1 '
Him 'Reroll hahaha'
Dice ' 1, 1, 1 '

Well, you can imagine the look on his face as his super character died. Now for some commanders that would have been enough but not for Lukas. He then proceeded to withstand a blast from the Vindicator that just clipped him by passing the 5+ Invun yet again and charges the tank, murdering it with his Melta Bombs. Still not satisfied he then withstands a round of shooting from a 5 man Sternguard squad, although his Medic is killed in the process.
That does it.
Lukas jumps up and charges, his plasma pistol howling as it discharges a shot right into the face of a Marine. Completely ignoring the frantic bolter shots whistling past him he ran straight into the squad whom inflict a single wound which he then saves. Two Marines die to Lukas's blade and he turns to the others, retribution in his eyes.
The game ended then but we fought the rest of that combat out to see what happened. Lukas killed both of the Marines. On his own.

And do you know what the best part was?
My Commander did all this with only a single wound left.

He has since been written up as a custom character.

 master of ordinance wrote:

He cost 300 and something points (Its been a while so I cant remember).

Should have been at least 800 points. Cool story anyway, next time this dude tries to pull a stunt like this just tell him that you'll be fielding 2 exact copies of every single one of his homebrew characters he fields. With such a "reasonable" price tag I'm sure he'd have nothing to complain about!

Usually I'm on the more non epic side of things.

Back in 5th I had a squad of 10 purifiers in cover with 4 psycannons with a libby and my opponent drove a rhino rull of death cult assassins right in front of them. I had about 1200 points of fire to poor into the rhino from other sources. Dumped 5 units of str 6/7+ spam into the dang thing and never even managed a glancing hit between misses and lots of 1s and 2s rolled in general and stupid 4+ smoke saves. The last thing left to shoot was my 4 psycannons in my purifier unit. Nothing can survive that right? Nope...makes like 8 4+ cover saves...couldn't even damage a rhino with 30 + str 7 shots...Then the next turn as expected the assassins murdered my hq and purifiers after 0 kills from cleansing flame.

Yet in that edition....it only toke a single melta gun to kill any of my tanks...luck is such a huge factor in this game.

The thing about homebrewed anything is that can anything be worse than WK?

I had someone tank shock my riptide off the board with a rhino.

Jaxler wrote:
I had someone tank shock my riptide off the board with a rhino.

BY THE MONT'KA!! THE MEHTAL BAWKSES ARE COMING!!!