Imperial Guard vs. Space Marines

I had my first game of 5th Edition 40K this past Tuesday, taking 500 points of my Imperial Guard vs. Chris' 500 points of Space Marines.

The lists were necessarily pretty basic. I had Yarrick as my HQ, three squads of Penal Legionnaires, and one Armored Sentinel with a lascannon. Chris took a Captain as his HQ, a Rhino, and two squads of Tac marines, both with a flamer and missile launcher. For my Penal Legion abilities I rolled one squad of Knife Figters and two of Psychopaths. This meant that I had an assaulty IG force going against a fairly shooty Marine force.

We rolled up a Capture and Control mission with a Spearhead deployment, and things did not go well for my IG at the beginning. I left my Knife Fighters on my objective and moved my other two squds forward with Yarrick in charge of one of them while my Sentinel stayed back to snipe the Rhino while trying to avoid taking fire from any missile launchers. Chris moved one of his squads forward in the Rhino while keeping his other squad and Captain back as a fire base protecting his objective.

First blood was to me in the second turn when I destroyed the Rhino with my Sentinel. I had hit the Rhino in the first turn, but then had an "anything but a one" moment and naturally rolled a one for penetration. The destruction of the Rhino was the last bit of luck I had for a while as the Marines bailed out and proceeded to shoot up the entire squad that Yarrick was leading, leaving only Yarrick and the squad sergeant. Yarrick fell back to join the other squad of Psychopaths and was able to charge them into the Marines which went a bit better for me.

I still lost a couple men to shooting before I got the charge, but once in assault Yarrick and his men were able to win the combat and then run down the survivors, wiping out the Marines. Then the Marine Captain, who hadn't been involved in the first assault, charged me and wiped out everyone that was left, including Yarrick. I figured the best I could hope for at this point was a draw, even if Yarrick got up again due to Iron Will. Then I noticed something.

Chris had strung out his squad through the woods in front of his objective, leaving only a couple of Marines on the end actually controlling the objective. I realized that if I charged that unit on the end away from the objective that he'd have to pull his troops off the objective in order to react to my assault. Even if I was wiped out he wouldn't be able to consolidate back onto the objective that turn. Given that it was Turn 5 and that I went second, this gave me a chance to actually pull out a win if the game ended that turn.

Yarrick did get up thanks to Iron Will and I was able to charge him and that lone sergeant from the first squad into the Marines, pulling them off the objective. Through incredibly bad rolling on Chris' part, both of them actually survived the assault, which was nice since that would probably let me keep them off the objective for another turn if the game went to turn 6. That brought us to the end of turn 5 and the roll for the end of the game. Chris told me to make the roll, and I rolled a 1... game over, IG wins!