First Blood for the win?

Well, I have to say that Secondary Victory Conditions are becoming really important...  Squeaked out a win against a good Chaos list from Joe L...  Really it was his Warlord rolling the "I can Outflank" that allowed him to attach to a Terminator Squad in their Land Raider...  So, they wound up coming in on Turn 2 or 3, but more importantly, they were not on the table when my Sternguard hit the field.  So, my Combi-Meltas of Doom were more or less usless.  We instead dropped in, Heavy Flamer to the fore and hit a Squad of Nurgle Marines that had disembarked their Rhino to shoot up my Scouts...  The SI Ammo is REALLY nice.

Yes, I had Scouts out in front to grab the "relic" objective.  Joe seized initiative, so the lads who infiltrated, scout moved and were ready to grab the objective and flee were instead gunned down in the open...  Well 4/5 of them, the last one DID escape for a turn, moving the ball back to where my Tac Squad would take it and move it back to my lines.  Game ended after turn 6 when the Terminators and Typhus (? big named Nurgle character) killed the last member of the squad in HtH...  But since they needed to pick it up in the movement phase, no one had control of the ball as time expired...  Line Breaker was claimed by both armies as his Terminators and my sole remaining Death Company Power Axe were camped in each other's DZs...  Both of our Warlords lived, and with my Death Company charging and killing the Nurgle Rhino on turn one, my claiming "First Blood" won the game.  Normally, I get it from Sternguard dropping and Melta/Plasma firing something to death, but I'll take it...

So, it seems that paying attention to the VC, especially the Secondaries is the way to get a lot of wins without having to sweep the field :-)...  Not always possible in this game.  Also, I have yet to find any particular disadvantage for "MSU" (multiple small units?  I cannot really remember the acronym) in this edition...  The old one, 1/3 of the missions were Kill Points, so it punished an Army bringing lots of cheap kill points.  Now, really it just means you risk giving First Blood easier, and with Night Fight (assuming people forget Search Lights/don't have them), loads of terrain blocking LOS, etc...  Even that is not a guarantee for stand off armies by any means...

So, next week I'll have at least one, probably 2 actual Drop Pods ready to roll, the Predator will be done and I think all of my Infantry, bar the Tactical Squad, will be fully painted.  Still not sure they are worth it frankly.  Let me re-phrase that, I still think they suck.  The Las Cannon whiffed the whole game, the Plasma fired only once, and the guys just died...  I'd rather have another Assault Squad I think as at least I can re-position them more easily or at least get the cheaper Razorback...  So, thinking I'll have the fully painted army next week, 90% done now...  Decent army all in all, probably won't win any GT's, but fun to play and it WILL give some of the "net lists" a headache...  Others though it will simply die to :-)