Yeah, Combat Patrol. Now there's a game type I hadn't played in a
long time.
I was round visiting a friend the other day and he suggested we play a game of Combat Patrol. After giving us a refresher on the rules we set about it, a three-player game where my Eldar took on Space Marines and Orks.
As a game type it's a lot of fun taking such a small force, you're severely restricted when it come to choosing your list (only 400 pts, limits on multi-wound models and models with armour values, etc) which means you're not just on a scaled down version of your full size list. I was glad I'd brought my Eldar along, as this was the perfect opportunity to put down something themed on the Ulthwe Strike Force from the old Eye of Terror codex.
11 Guardians - Scatter Laser
Warlock - Singing Spear, Conceal
3 Jetbikes - Shuriken Cannon
Warlock - Singing Spear, Destructor
1 Vyper - Scatter Laser, Shuriken Cannon, Holo-Field, Spirit Stones
The Vyper was definitely a good choice for this game. It started the game by obliterating the Space Marine Razorback and ended the game by blowing up the Ork Trukk, and that's not even mentioning the number of infantry it helped mow down in the intervening turns. Guardians were reasonable, though I think if I were rewriting this list I'd look at replacing them with my Swooping Hawks, sticking with the mobility the rest of my army offered. Jetbikes also performed well, the Warlock only got to use Destructor once before dieing to wound allocation late in the game, but used it to kill off the majority of a unit of Ork Boyz.
Lists aside, I enjoyed having to consider every model I was using; in most games losing a handful of Guardians in a turn is no bother, but in this case I was then forced to hold them further back than I would have liked the rest of the game after taking casualties to Space Marine shooting in turn 1.
I'm definitely hoping to get in some more Combat Patrol in future as a welcome break from the same old 40k missions.
