40k Demo game

By TheGraveMind

My female counter part has been watching some of my 40k games over the past few months. She'll accompany me to the club, or sometimes to a tournament or such. Eventually one day she asked me to teach her. I agreed and dug up one of the old Quick guide reference sheets.

I went over the rules with her a couple of times and then we moved on to doing a demo. We cleared off some space on the dinner table, and I pulled out some models. I game myself 5 bolter marines, and she received 6 Eldar fire dragons. (we used the 4th profile with the 4+ armor save as I don't have the new codex yet, and I didn't want to confuse her too much as she referenced the book).

I line the models up about 24" away from each other. We roll for first, and I get it. I move up 6" and single tap my bolters. 5 shots, 4 hits, 3 wounds, 1 dead eldar. She moves up 6", is just in range with three of them, 2 hit, 2 wound, and 2 dead marines.

I move up a little, and double tap, killing two, she kills one marine with bad rolls, and it goes down to 1 to 1 after a few turns and I kill her last one.

Reset and she goes first, same thing roughly happens. We try a few more times, till she gets the hang of move>shoot>(assault) and the needed to hit, to wound, and save.

Then when we set up the next time, I only move 5", so when she moves up and start to shoot at me (expecting me to be 12" away like I have been), I tell her to check range. She is a little over 13" away and gives me a face. I explain to her the battle focus rule, and she runs forward 3 inches and is now in range. she then tries to get smart and kite me as she stays right at 12" and then runs backwards. I explain to her how it is easier for me as I have a longer range gun. I then demonstrate by keeping out of her range and taking a few shots a turn.

I then introduce a small wall for cover and showed her how I can use that instead of my armor save to protect me from her powerful fusion guns. She tries to use battle focus to move around it and get a better angle. I introduce her to the assault phase and charge her. We slowly grind it out in combat, and I win that. I then tell her we will reset that and let her overwatch this time. Now she kills my lead marine, and I fail my assault.  She then tears into my squad with fusion.

There was the occasional round or two where she should have been killing 3 to 4 marines but rolled poorly and killed only one, or when she should have only lost 1 eldar but lost 3. She got to witness the die gods early on and see how much of a dice game it is. 

I had guessed that she would like eldar, and let her read through the fluff in the 4th edition codex and she loved it. I've been letting her practice/help paint some of my older marines to get a feel for painting minis. She can't wait to get some of her own eldar assembled and painted. Then we'll start using multiple squads and really see how the battle goes.

The couple that rights Sci-fi warfare in the grim dark future has fun together right?