Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've been running a 40k after school club at my school in China since September and the students involved have been loving it. So far we have the following armies collected by some of the students (all of whom have more than just the start collecting boxes by now): Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Tyranids, Mechanicus, Orks, Demons, Thousand Sons and I myself have decided to collect Scions since all my armies are currently in the UK.

We also have members who aren't collecting yet but are involved to help create scenery.
I've been teaching them a hybrid of 8th and 9th since I have not played enough 9th yet to teach it. Basically 8ths rules with 9ths morale phase and no secondaries, strategems or command points since they are still learning, modelling and painting. Only really going so far as WL traits.

Until today the club had so far played 3 battles. But very recently the Thousand Sons player had invested in Magnus. Therefore, despite the students still learning, they twisted my arm into playing a much bigger battle than we had before - around 75PL (I've taught them both points and PL but we used PL for a quick start). Thousand Sons and Daemons vs Mechanicus and Scions (I allowed a student to use some of my Scions whilst I helped teach).

The students loved it! And because of some of the most extreme rolls I have witnessed in a long long time in 40k it had absolute hilarity involved too.
-In just 3 turns Ahriman blew himself up due to 3 Perils on top of an Aspiring sorcerer doing the same.
-The Scion Plasma bomb (8 plasma guns and a plasma pistol) which had a rerolls of 1 to hit due to Lambden WL trait and total rerolls to wound due to orders scored only 2 wounds due to the TS player making 9/10 4+ invuln saves, whilst 4 Hot Shot Vollyguns somehow managed to cause 5 wounds!
-Gaze of Magnus Smite was unbelievably devastating killing a whole 10 man Skitarri squad in 1 go (9 deaths and an auto morale failiure). Then proceeding to destroy a Ballisati in 1 look the turn after. That's not even counting the other 2 powers or combat.
-4 Warpflamers got into range of 8 Scions and proceeded to roll 23/24 hits... needless to say the overkill was extreme.

We had to finish turn 3 at 6:40pm with Magnus hanging on in the middle of the table with 5 wounds left, in range of a Skitarri squad, a Dune Crawler, and Belesarius Cawl bearing down on him alongside 2 Dragoons. The TS and Deamons had a couple small units of Rubrics and 2 Deamon units left, on top of Magnus so it was all still to play for.

The outrageous rolls happened all game both ways and had the students breathless with laughter, so it was the perfect game for the 4 of them that stayed.

I just wanted to get it down in words so thought Dakka to be the ideal place.

Glad you and your students had a blast! And yeah, almost nothing feels quite as good as getting a solid Super-Smite off of Magnus for a high roll on that 2d6 mortal wounds. You can just look at a squad of the toughest units in the game and go "you don't get to exist anymore" - abrakadabra!

And he managed it twice in 1 game of 3 turns!
It's going to be hard to dissuade them from larger battles after that.

Hopefully opponents had fun as well ;-)

Haha oh they all did. It was a close game throughout. I dont think it would have been as fun for them if it had been a smaller game involving Magnus though so I'm glad they twisted my arm for a bigger game.