So I’ve managed to complete one of my gaming goals for the year by playing a game of 40k at HATE Club! I dug out my trusty old Deathguard to play against a veritable Genestealer Cultist horde in 55 power level game using Maelstrom of War.
This was probably my favourite of the few games I have played of 40k 8th Ed. It was only the 2nd time I’ve used the proper Deathguard Codex rules rather than using the old Index or proxy Chaos Space Marine rules so that helped to add flavour. The large amount of LOS blocking cover meant that movement and objective grabbing was key. GSC are trixie with their stratagems and I had a squad of terminators deep striking in so there was plenty of back and forth with interesting decisions to be made every turn.
That said I still don’t think I have a great handle on using Stratagems and it was a long game to be playing on a ‘school night’ after a long day at work. I think to really enjoy 40k I’m going to have to try and organise some weekend events where there is less time pressure and more opportunity to play with larger forces – I don’t think I’m going to be able to invest the time playing frequently enough to get much quicker so sticking to playing with and against more elite armies would probably be sensible!
Heretic 30k 
Sounds like you had fun and I agree, those stratagems can be tricky if you don’t play very often. I’ve found that a good way to pick up on them is to just pick out a couple before the game that you’ll think you’ll use and go with those. Once you’ve gotten a handle on them (one game should suffice) then pick out a couple more while retaining the ones you know and you’ll be a Strategos in no time!
Yes – I needed to be much more prepared. Focusing on a couple which are most likely to be useful and then printing them on quick reference cards is probably the way to go 😉
Yes, having a quick reference is useful. My husband bought me the Death Guard cards, which I found highly useful when I was playing. Putting a couple of useful stratagems at the bottom of one’s army list is probably also a good place for it, I think, since the less pieces of paper or computer files you have to deal with during a game the better.
I haven’t played in quite awhile, but I do remember finding a lot of the DG abilities useful. Two I particularly liked, which were also cheap at 1 CP, were Cloud of Flies so people couldn’t shoot their whole army at my terminators and focus them out, and The Dead Walk Again, because I like to use great masses of poxwalkers. The tactic I used there was to put the poxwalkers next to my own cheap infantry (mostly daemon allies) and then if you shot at my, say, bloodletters, who I wanted to get into melee, then they’d change into more poxwalkers and if you shot at my poxwalkers then my bloodletters had a great chance of getting into CC.
The one where you can have your vehicles auto-detonate was fun too, I remember, though I learned of this one when it was used against me in a game, lol.
I have a sneaking suspicion I might have bought the DG cards and put them *somewhere* 😉 I haven’t actually played with any poxwalkers yet, but I do have some painted up so can probably field a squad of 10-15 as a objective deckchair unit. The terminators were super effective – I’d like to get some of the new plastic ones as mine are a mix of bits from the old Forgeworld upgrade kit, plastic CSM terminators and some Kromlech bits.