Had a round of 40k yesterday at 50 PL. It was a blast, reinforcing for me that 40k is a great casual game at 50 PL (1000 points) so long as you’re not taking it too seriously. I could see myself doing a campaign around this points level. The match was 3 hours long with drinks and chatter, which really isn’t bad.

Here’s a few shots:

At game start I pulled a feint, which is the giant blob of orks on the left flank here. I used my psyker to jump them to the top right corner of the mat. This allowed me to concentrate forces on the right flank while my opponent was spread out.

Ultimately, this is what won me the game.

This is a shot of his warlord getting eaten alive by Orks while valiantly taking out a third of the unit.

Here’s my warlord charging into some terminators with a few warbikers. We wiped the unit.

Board state one turn before ending. I seem to be missing photos, but my opponent did land some beautiful Thunderhammers which took out my warlord… before dying to a mob of ork boys. That was really the theme here. Overwhelming might of bodies. It was definitely the 40k narrative on the board during this game, which I love.

Next time he’ll come back at me with some heavy armor, so I expect a more even game.

I do still struggle a little with 40k. Not as much happens in a match, and they do drag on. It really requires the exact right opponent to be enjoyable, which… isn’t the mark of a great game.

But man, the armies look beautiful when fully painted. Even my army isn’t fully painted here, but I still think it looked great. The board is my quick 3D printed industrial set. The mat is from FLG, and I rather like it. It was easy to use the marked off zones as area terrain.

I’ll use this as motivation to get back to painting my Orks later this month. My real aim is to play Apocalypse, the new ruleset, but at normal game sizes. I’m hoping to be able to put down a normal number of models (160ish for Orks…) and play a game in 2 hours. Wish me luck.