Playing With Myself: A 40K Solo Play and Solo Learn Experience

My thoughts:

• The Wolf Guard could probably have charged turn 1, getting in some early damage and preventing them from being shot.
• I’ve been playing Synaptic Adaptation wrong.  I’ve been rolling it per point of damage when it is per successful wound.
• I’ve not noticed that Smite does d6 damage if you roll high enough on the psychic test.
• Once the game got to round 3 I was barely involved.  I was just rolling dice for situations I could not influence.  I didn’t really make any significant decisions after turn 1.  I’m starting to feel this is how the game is.  Is this the case?  Is the game all about building and deploying your lists and then mostly watching to see how it unfolds as little more than a dice rolling spectator?  While I can see some casual enjoyment in that, its too expensive and too long a game for that to hold much appeal for me.  Or am I just not in to the game enough to appreciate its tactical options yet?  Do I need a game or two against a real opponent to see what the game really is?
• A 6×4 table is huge and a little impractical in my home.  I imagine this is the case for a lot of people
• Diagonal deployment zones cannot accurately be measured while terrain is on the board.
• Only really being able to score VPs once the game is over largely seems to makes them irrelevant, given everyone appears to die before then.  In my whole 3 games I’ve never seen one side score x and the other x+1.  It’s always a landslide after a tabling.  Perhaps if they could be scored every round and there was a target to hit (first to X, or first to have Y more than their opponent?) to win instantly they would be more relevant?  For a game known for encouraging narrative play, the games do seem to be be geared towards just killing.
• This game took forever.  I think I started setting up around 3pm, playing near 4pm, and didn’t finish until 9.15pm, and still needed to tidy up..  I did take a break for dinner and I was constantly stopping to take photos and make notes and I do still have to keep checking rules and stats, but that still seems like a long game.  hopefully I’ll get quicker soon!
• I really hate the Gargoyles.  Not the stats.  They are fine.  The models.  individually they look ok, but they take up more of a storage case than a unit should (A whole box for 1 unit!) and they are awkward to move around the table
• I hate the flight stands too.  They need to be glued together to be picked up without falling apart, but once glues together they also need 1 models worth of space per stand, meaning the Gargoyles need more than one box to store or transport.  If anyone knows a way to dry fit flight stands so they stay together but can be taken apart for storage please let me know.

Questions:

• Can models with flight see over all terrain?  If so, at all times or only during their activation?
• Do models with flight essentially ignore terrain?  Can they end their movement on top of any non-harmful terrain?
• Toxin Sacs do 1 more point of damage.  Is this as part of the same attack or a separate attack?  If 2 marines are involved is that 2 damage to one guys, or does the first guy die to the hit and the second to the Toxin Sac?
• Does the Toxin Sac trigger when the model with the Sac is wounded or wounding?
• Do models with flight block line of sight
• How do you handle Toxin Sacs and saves?  Do you roll vs the 6’s separately, or do you saves counter 6’s before non-sixes or the other way round?
• I have the Wrath and Rapture set so I can try my hand at Age of Sigmar eventually.  Is AoS significantly different to 40k?  Does it feel different?  What if i was playing with the same Daemon models in both games?
• Additional question: Forests and LoS. I assume a model on one side of a forest cannot see a model on the other side? I assume we are not expected to model each individual tree? Can a model just inside one edge of a forest see and be sen by models outside the other edge? Across any depth of forest?
  In Warmachine models cannot see across a forest of any thickness, but once inside, they can see or be seen through up to a depth of 3″. Thereafter LoS is blocked. How does 40K handle this? I may be overthinking it.

I’ll be going up to 1500 or maybe 2000 next game.  I’ll be adding some proxies for stuff I don’t own.  if you have an suggestions for models for me to look at please speak up.  Each side wants 3 HQs, and more psychers all round seems a good idea.  I’ll be reading the Stratagems more closely and seeing what models I  need to take better advantage of them.  I’ll also take a look at the scenarios with changing objectives.  Perhaps that’ll open up the game for me?

I might not get a solo game in this weekend, as I have a living opponent so I’ll be playing Warmachine for the first time since mid February.