First Game of Epic Goes Down Badly

My first foray into Epic since playtesting over a year ago and I lost although not as badly as I expected. I made some small errors with my own list, missing that I had two leaders in my marine formations because of the Lord and the Icon bearer both have it, and an obscure mention that chaos formation get a +1 to their initiative when there are no rival chaos factions nearby (i.e. Khorne versus Slannesh worshippers).

I tried some experiments to get a feel for the game. Mostly I found my marines to be very disappointing in terms of shooting and assaults, but maybe that was one bad assault where Adam got a lot of firefight going on when he charged and I failed almost all my around saves. I expected that equal number of guardians and marines would see the marines come out on top but I was sadly mistaken. Got to get them in base against those type of firefight specialists.

I also kept my big formations packed too closely together which allowed Adam's Night Spinners to spank me cruelly. Putting 3-5 blast markers on a formation per salvo really stung. Lesson Learned.

However, despite all the spanking that occurred I felt I could have made a better showing except for two things:

1) 12 marines and 6 rhinos (and one blast marker) within 10 cm of 2 revenant scout titans, my turn to activate first. I try to go for an assault to put those annoying things out of misery and I roll a one. I use the Supreme Commander reroll, ah-HA! Rolls another one. DOH! My shooting is sadly not up to the job and the scout titans slip away next activation to ruin my nearby predator formation. Meanwhile since my marines were packed up tightly from getting out of their rhinos last turn, the Night Spinners make me pay.

2) I teleported six terminators (screw the "Chosen" moniker, they're Terminators! Get over it already!) into cover in turn two. Night Spinners fire and kill two breaking the rest! Man, I roll armour saves in Epic worse than I do in 40K!

It was a great fun game and I think with some practice I can get better. A large degree of my frustration with Chaos right now comes from the fact that there are so many cool units I want that simply have no models: Defilers, Death Wheels, and Obliterators. I did get some ideas to convert defilers though, and I think I can convert up some Oblits and a Deathwheel or two. Need some daemonic beasts too. Man, this game is addictive.