Inaugaural N.O.G.G. - Lead On The Table

It's been a long time coming, but last night was the inaugaural meet-up of the Nottingham Oldhammer Gaming Group (N.O.G.G.). Prompted by Curtis (ramshackle_curtis) and the thread over at the Oldhammer forums, 8 of us headed over to Warhammer World to do a little bit of retro-gaming and dust off our Rogue Trader rulebooks.

The premise was simple - bring a couple of squads, push them round a board a bit, have some fun! Because wargames need a bit of an objective, ours was a hulking wrecked Baneblade in the centre of the table. The Imperials (Squats, Space Marines and later Imperial Guard) were protecting the Baneblade from Riot - a loose group of temporarily aligned no-gooders (looting human mercenaries, Eldar and Zoats). When units died, they were recycled. The objective was simply to occupy the Baneblade for longer than the opponents (more wounds within the footprint for a turn).

The setup

 

I had arrived with some Zoats and a random selection of humans from my cases. Because looting is fun, I decided to put down the piratical crew, led by a space pimp with a cane (otherwise known as one of my Brat gang).

 

The rag-tag humans deploy

On the right flank, more human mercenaries and scum, with the odd alien buddy

The Imperials rain down heavy weapons fire on the humans

A couple of turns in, it was beginning to dawn on myself and Scalene, that bringing standard humans, armed with lasguns and autoguns (and in my case, only equipped with flak armour), was A BAD IDEA. Frag missiles, lascannon shots and heavy bolter rounds were chewing through the poor humans with ease. While in return, Scalene's single missile launcher kept missing, and his autocannon hit nothing before being vapourised!

The looters leg it over open ground to try and reach some sort of cover. In the following turn, the Baneblade is swamped by opposing Squats and Marines

I don't think it is possible to photograph anything more Rogue Trader than Zoats v Squats (the Zoats and Eldar were doing a sterling job on the left flank under the command of Scalene Junior)

Phil (Skarsnik and Old Lead) turned up and added a squad of Terminators to the Imperial ranks. Shortly afterwards my Zoats reinforced 'Riot'.

After braving heavy weapons fire, the Zoats hold the objective

Late on in the game, Scalene's humans took out the Space Marine devastators (courtesy of haywire missiles), as well as the Terminators (meltaguns and shuriken pistol). Scalene Junior finished off the Squats, but lost the last of his Zoats. A final wave of reinforcements saw Matt arrive at the table with a squad of Eldar, while Scalene Junior was given charge of some Beastment with jump packs. Chris (Curis) arrived with Imperial Guard, while some new Squat units turned up for the Imperials.

Come the end of the battle, it turned out that the Imperials had successfully held the Baneblade early on and then at the death, inspite of a dogged assault by Riot mid-way through. The final tally was 5 points to the Imperials and 3 to Riot, meaning the looters had come away without any valuables, and been mauled in the process!

Rogue Trader learning points
It had been over 20 years since I last played a game of Rogue Trader...some of the things I had assumed stayed pretty constant between the editions hadn't. For the next game I will be making sure that:

• I bring heavy weapons (1 multi-melta on a Zoat that didn't play for half the game is not sufficient!).
• I give my squad armour. Flak armour is worse then wet-tissue paper.
• I re-read all the rules about shooting modifiers (to avoid the disappointment of discovering I can only hit something on a '6', when I thought I just needed a '4').
• Close combat is very slow - my space pimp (armed with a laspistol and cane), single-handedly held off a Space Marine Captain and Sergeant with power fist for round after round of nobody hitting anyone else.
• If you don't have all the kit...make it up: we cut out a custom hand flamer template (only to discover later we should have used the small round one!).

So - thanks to all the N.O.G.G.ers who played yesterday evening. It was great to see so much old lead on a table!