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Also Last Weekend there was an Event held at Element Games, ran by the guys from the Serpent’s Lodge group. This is what I got up to.

What did you Play?

This year, like most years, I decided to run something completely different than whatever is just sitting in my collection. I could have taken the DA or even the DG to the event, but no. I just had to build up a new project entirely for this. In short: Alpha Legion Assault company with some Allied Custodes.

The List (in Brief)

• Headhunter Leviathal RoW
• The Scythe, Praetor with Paragon blade
• V3X, Vanus Infoctye Assassin
• 2x 15 Marine Assault Squads
• 1x 5 Marine Lernean Terminators (with Conversion Beam Cannon)
• 2 Apothecaries (1 Jump pack, 1 multi-melta)
• 1 Contemptor Dreadnought (Double Conversion Beam Cannon)
• 2 Kyzagan Assault Speeders
• 1x 5 Marine Headhunter Kill Team (Combi-meltas and Multi-Melta) Allies
• Shield Captain Exod, Solarite Gauntlet
• 1x 5 Custodian Guard (2 Solarite Gauntlets, 1 Vexilla)
• 2x 1 Contemptor Achilles Dreadnoughts
• 2 Pallas Attack Speeders

Army Pics from a previous Game

Wait, Traitors Allied with Custodes?

No. You can play any of the Legions as Loyalist or Traitor. Unlike the 1st edition of the game where certain Legions were locked to Traitor only (looking at you Word Bearers) the restriction now is on a unit by unit basis, with the Loyalist and Traitor tags. Alpha Legion don’t have any of those tags. So you could even run Alpharius in a Loyalist army, if you really wanted to. This is also how you can fit the Loyalist-only Assassins into your lists too.

Tell Us About the Games

Okay okay, this was only going to be brief. 5 Games over 2 days. I don’t have as many photos from the event simply because I got stuck in to playing and we were time-poor both days. I’ll come onto that in a bit.

Game 1: vs Loyalist Salamanders

I think the first thing to mention here is the structure of the missions themselves. They all ran end-of-turn scoring, all ran to 5 turns and all had secondary effects that you had to check. Some where once per game round. Others were not. This mission had 5 objectives player placed across the table. Once you scored an objective you picked it up, and starting with the next player turn alternated placing objectives back down on the table. Sounds simple enough.
Except when you place an objective you need to know what the closest unit is as it started taking d6 (+3 if placed within 3") S5, breaching 6+ automatic hits. Okay, fair enough. We’re trying to collect survivors from escape pods or the like. But you also need to take a Pinning test for every unit that is not touching terrain at the start of the turn. And if you pass (for any reason, say you’re immune to pinning from being Cavalry) you take 2d6 S5, Breaching 5+ hits. So either hug a wall all game or be pinned. Or be exploded.
My opponent was running Covenent of Fire with Vulkan, and a handful of Land Raiders. Safe to say that since the Raiders were immune to the damage they could place objective markers back down without fear of taking damage, and then just walk a scoring unit on top of it. I could not. Custodians died to Vulkan. This was a loss.

Game 2: vs Cults with Big Things

I’m told there’s a couple of ways to play the Cults and Militia lists. This was one of them: Needle Rifles on 20-man blocks of Infantry, carried around in Trucks. And a summoned Bound Samus. And a Greater Brass Scorpion. Quite an eclectic mix when you start 8" away from your opponent. Did I not mention that? In another completely different mission your deployment was split into two halves. The first half had to be within 36" of a table corner. The second half could then be placed within 12" of a unit you had already deployed. Combat was going to happen on T1 regardless. Scoring was also very different, it was Kill Points only but you could only score units killed if they were withing 12" of a Line unit.

Some standout moments from this was the Infocyte Assassin taking out the Brass Scorpion in mutual destruction, finding out that with enough shots you can Poison-out a Dreadnought without issue, and that no Custodes don’t survive that much firepower. I managed the win here, soon as he was out of scoring units it was easy enough to bounce Assault Marines into things to mulch them up good and proper.

Game 3: vs EC and Outflanking Fulgrim

Game 3 and another completely different mission. Objectives would slowly be pulled towards the centre of the table. As would terrain. Look, I don’t mind moving objectives around, but I hate effects that move terrain around. Especially when there is only 3 pieces on the table and a corner-to-corner valley. Stand out here was the Double Conversion Beam Cannon Dread, that chalked up another game unwounded (it’s 3rd) and took out a Land Raider before casually beaming Sunkillers and other high value targets. The game came down to ‘I need to kill Fulgrim to win this’. He died to a chainsword of all things. Which was nice since he ate a full unit of Custodians without breaking a sweat.

Game 4: vs Thousand Sons Teleporting Shenanigans

First game of the second day and it’s the exact same mission as Game 1. Okay, I know how that plays. We’ll spend a goof 5 mins at the beginning of every player turn working out what effects we’re being hit by. This is only compounded when you have to resolve a Deep Strike, and various Leadership tests for rallying. That Beam Cannon Dread? Made it through the game unwounded and took out a Sicaran Punisher, amongst just Beaming various TS units to blind them. Custodians died to buffed Sekhmet and a Praetor with Thunder Hammer.

Game 5: vs Word Bearers with Summoned Daemons

10-man brick of Gal Vorback lead by Erebus, and some Brutes in the Warp ¹. And lots of just ‘good stuff’ with an army full of Augury Scanners and Artificer Armour on everybody. If there was a save that had to be taken, you bet it was on a 2+ save one at a time unless it was AP-relevant. Conversion Beam cannons took out 5 Gal Vorback from scattering on T1, not what I wanted but I’ll take that. Those guys still ate the Custodians though. A loss, with some interesting moments like that in.
Oh the mission? 5 objectives on the board, after you score your opponent can move an objective 12". if they do, you get to move one of theirs 12". Nice in theory, barely came up. What did come up was the random effect - every round roll a dice. 1-2, nothing happens. 3-4 all units count as being 3" further away. 5-6 every unit that is within 6" of a friendly unit rolls a dice, on a 1 they have to snap-shoot at the closest friendly unit. I lost this game, but at least I didn’t shoot myself.

Final result 3-2.

Thoughts on my List

It performed well into a mix of things, only having to fight the two Primarch’s was a blessing. I know someone that fought 5 over the course of the weekend. Custodians die in the same way as Terminators on foot - either mass fire or buff up a unit and hit them hard. The Double Conversion Beam Cannon Contemptor laid waste to so much that I want to play it again, though they are really only effective in games where you can blast something from across the table. Still, it managed a worthwhile kill tally and survived the event unwounded.
Likewise my Praetor, The Scythe, didn’t die. Don’t know how I managed that.

What about the Narrative?

sighs
There was some fluff on the missions themselves as to why the mission was as it was. For example, that last game was set in a dense fog (or other kind of smogged up area) so your units would have trouble seeing anything. but the narrative of the event started with ‘hey guys, last event the Traitors were repelled from landing on a planet so your job is to keep them at bay.’ And finished with ‘congrats, the Traitors have made enough headway into the planet now’. That… was it. And I don’t know if I’m misremembering that.
Look, I’ve been to most of the Narrative events held by the guys at the Warhammer World team. I kind of expect a round-by-round update on how many zones we’ve taken, are we repelling the Traitors from the city, has something blown up in a manner that shakes the moral of one side or not. And those guys do it really well. So to come to an event for a game where the narrative is supposed to matter only for it to be ‘well, I guess it matters for a story at our next event’ feels just… bad. I’ve walked away from it and couldn’t even tell you what the story of the weekend was supposed to be about. Compare that to a WHW Teams event and we were fighting, round by round, over defending a city from the encroaching reach of Mortarions forces. With zones held and lost and recaptured throughout the day. I don’t know, maybe if there was more time for the event…

The Elephant in the Event Pack

I don’t know if the guys at Serpent’s Lodge are sending out feedback forms. I’ve not received one. But the single biggest issue of the weekend was the timings for the games. 2:45 (hr/min) per game is fine. 30mins for lunch, when there is not an on-site cafe is not. 0mins break between games 2 and 3 is not acceptable. Considering all the extra dice that needs to be rolled, all the times we have to check what the random mission rule is and resolve it, every game felt like it was against the clock. It felt like we had to rush and couldn’t play at a reasonable pace. I’ve done enough events now that I know I can get through a game with time to spare. I should not need to feel rushed, especially when the gaming space is available after 6pm so there’s no need to rush. Especially when sign-in for the event starts at 8am!
I can forgive extra random effects on missions if there was a longer break between games so you had the time to read a mission, work out what was happening, set-up and start (or grab a drink). The missions themselves were fine. But the time management was just not. And it heavily puts me off attending another of there events.

The Prince mentioned Hobby, what was that like?

If you’ve been to a Horus Heresy event then you know, the hobby ‘standard’ is pretty high. Everyone had fully painted, fully based armies. Yes there’s a range of skill involved in painting an army, but we had a nice mix of display armies and tabletop ready ones (mine generally falls into the latter). I didn’t get many pics on the second day when armies where out for display simply because I wanted a sandwich and there wasn’t a lot of time to go get one (see my previous comment)

Overall.. Would I do another Serpent’s Lodge Event?

Honestly I’m angling towards no. Not unless the events pack they have has more time to breath between games, even if just 15 minutes. The games were fine, but I could feel myself getting shorter and sharper with people over the course of the weekend because that time pressure was adding unwanted stress that I needn’t have had.

I don’t know how many events I’ll be at this year, I have some pretty big non-hobby plans coming up that are needing attention. If nothing else I’ll be around to help out our Prince as he starts up and runs events later this year. Until then, Peace out Y’all!

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1. I should have built an Esoterist for this event ↩︎