[Battle Report] So It Begins Again | Ninth Edition | Only War | Combat Patrol | Night Lords vs. Blood Angels

2023 began with the welcome discovery that a colleague's husband had long been 40K-curious, and was raring to give his new Blood Angels a field trip. I'd just assembled my birthday present - a nice little suite of Chaos terrain - and my Night Lords were ready to defend their turf.

We opened up with a cheeky Combat Patrol game: a starter set's worth of Blood Angels for him, and the Dark Vengeance contingent plus a unit of Raptors for me.

Bladeguard and Chosen make a beeline for the central platform and its objective...
while the Helbrute tries not to be seen by those Eradicators.

Outriders encircle the landing platform: Raptors take the direct approach.

The Cultists holding the loading construct take their hits, but that's OK:
there's enough of them to hold the mark!

Eradicators press forward to draw a line to the Helbrute...
but the Raptors are en route to intercede.

The Outriders complete their sweep, and the Raptors are themselves victims of
a vicious charge in the back...

Weight of numbers is with the Chosen, and they carve their way through the
Bladeguard to take control of the central pad.

Pinning the Eradicators in combat let the Helbrute do its thing; he's loose,
he's angry, and he's charging the Outriders, ripping two of them apart and
fully securing the last objective.

 It's a 9-5 win for the Night Lords on their first outing. We did re-rack and play again, with a closer 7-5 as the Blood Angels pressed harder on my home objective, but nevertheless: a very successful start!

Combat Patrol games felt... swingy. Losing the Helbrute early in our second attempt definitely robbed me of the ability to do significant damage; meanwhile, the Blood Angels' characters stayed safe but rapidly ran out of squads to support from those positions.

We had some teething troubles with the ninth edition rule set, too. M'colleague struggled with the separated hit/wound/save roll - a Bolt Action veteran, he was used to hit/save without the faff in the middle - and with tracking how the profiles of the models interacted with weapons, and the additional layers of modifiers from Traits and Doctrines. 

For my part, I couldn't fit the rules for terrain features and exactly what benefits and difficulties they proposed into my poor old head. Back in my day it was either Difficult, Dangerous or Impassable, and it gave a 4+, 5+ or 6+ save, and that was basically it, unless you were messing with Cityfight.

Nevetheless, we persevered...