So I am sure you guys are tired of these threads, but I just wanted to share a few feelings after I finally got my first play session in. Hopefully you guys can also alleviate a few slight concerns.

So me and my friend played 4 games it took us roughly 4 hours, which including changing decks and a few short breaks here and there. For me that time seemed to go by fairly quickly, unlike in standard 40k at the moment where things can slightly drag.

Basic rules wise it seemed fairly simple, I had seen some review videos, watched the team covenant gencon video, and read a few threads here and there. (Tangent, there does not seem to be too much churn in posting at the moment, probably because it so new and so the playerbase is still getting on its feet, but generally new threads posted at the start of the week are still the latest threads by the end of the week, and there seems a great deal of crossover with different sites with many of the same posters and duplicated threads the few main sites I have come across: FFG, Reddit, BGG, CardgameDB)

Neither of us had played the game before, my friend knew nothing about it, we both have played invasion in the distant past, and he has played a slight bit of very casual magic.

We both picked up the game very easily, since I had read around a bit, I was able to teach the game fairly easily. The only problems came from the additional text on cards, like army, or the unit subtypes like scout, power, psyker etc, since we mostly didnt come accross things that utilised them so wondered what they were for, or when we did we were trying figure out which units were army for instance because it didnt come up often it remembering wasnt reinforced. Remembering the action windows is probably the next thing to master.

Game wise we played with just the practice decks to get a feel for the game. We both enjoyed how it played, it felt smooth, however balance seemed to be an issue when using practice decks only. Starting hand quality seemed to be big, because even slight leads tended to compound.

Game 1 was Marines vs orks. Marines won handily, but as it was my freinds first time playing we dismissed the ease of victory

Game 2 was Dark Eldar vs Tau. I was once again victorious this time with DE, it was closer but it was still relatively obvious from early one who was going to win.

Game 3 was Astra Militarum vs Tau I again was victorious over my freind who stuck with the Tau. My freind just felt he couldnt do anything to catch up since his starting hand was bad even after a mulligan.

Game 4 was Orks vs Space Marines. I lost going with the orks, I started with a poor hand I mulliganed to an even worse one. Again there was a snowball effect with resources. It also seemed hard for the ork player to win in any case, maybe it was just down to luck of the draw but both Marine vs Ork games had Orks struggling to deal with the various marine shenanigans, Looking back it seems the way for the orks to win was to just mass on planet 1, relying on the fact that exterminatus cant hit planet 1.

The tactical spreading out of units that is often key for command struggle tended to fall flat due the balance tippers the Marine side can reveal in the combat phase.

Plus the way both games went the Marines seemed to really take advantage with some of there units, You got lots of small stuff, here gave some area effect, big stuff here have fury of sicarius (especially useful when a lot of the ork stuff we came across got better by damaging itself including the warboss), or pull them to a different planet with sicarius chosen.

Overall we both had fun, but there was a concern with the snowballing that happened in every game. Obviously we are both new so we dont have all the tactical answers, and our first impressions may be wildly off the mark.

I imagine it will get a lot better with using normal decks, but as a first introduction the practice decks while good for introducing rules don't inspire confidence for game balance. So when introducing to newer players I'm not sure I will play more than 1 game with the practice decks.

I have a second core so I can start making my own decks, probably mono decks with 2 sets of floating neutrals (one for each player). I'll have to wait till next play session before deciding to get a 3rd core set, currently the £30 wouldn't seem worth it with the worry on snowballing a bad start or bad decision and its over would get tiresome very quickly.

Overall I'd give give it a 7 out of 10, could fall back if snowballing effect continues, but as a basis to work from and with how LCGs tend to work its much more likely to go up than down in my estimation.

Nice review. I think you are correct in your assessment that playing the beginner decks is more or less a crapshoot of who draws the better hands... from magic to starcraft to dota... its always better to have an overall strategy to combat than plopping stuff down randomly and hoping for the best. That is where the deckbuilding aspect allows you to tweak and supplement your strategy, and hedge the bad starting hands, which i think was the missing component from yalls games.

You are absolutely correct that armies with a lot of small stuff are generally preferable... big hitters are nice, but the 1-3 cost units with a hammer or two are universally more valuable: if you are only deploying one unit a turn, you probably arnt going to win many command struggles, which means you arnt going to get many resources, which means you cant afford to play many units next turn...etc etc... this easily becomes a vicious cycle.

There are some subtle nuances of deployment and retreating that arnt readily apparent until a couple of games are under your belt, which can lead to tripping over your own deployment / a snowballing effect of losing pieces before you can build upon them. For instance many beginners forget/arnt aware that at the end of each combat phase, ie: when all units are exhausted, either player can retreat any number of units. If you see that you are in a hopeless battle, or are in a weaker position for resources, get out of there and set up for a future battle! Mid game is dominated by who has units already deployed at the combat planets, as well as who has a better supply train of cards/resources... it can be tempting to use shields to try to save your early game units, but its often its jsut wasting precious resources without changing the outcome when you could jsut fall back and redeploy to a more tactically advantageous position.

Glad you had fun, and are looking to delve into the deeper strategies of the game!

You may find snowballing an issue in the first few games but once you start using 50 card decks this is not so easy.

Also check out the boardwipe cards, Doom, Exterminatus, and Warpstorm, all pretty much designed to counter snowballing in one way or another. Once your opponent is familiar with these, even the threat of their being used is nearly as helpful as actually using them.