Well, I haven't got quite as much practice in as I would have liked for Northern Invasion 4. In fact I only got one game in. This means that I will have to fall back on my existing knowledge of my arms strengths and weaknesses and try and apply it to the new situation. While the list I used in this game is not the list I'm going to be taking there is a lot of overlap and I learnt a few things.
Deployment
For this game I decided to split my deployment, with the bulk of my units on the left, my wyverns and company command with warlord (creed) behind a large 30 blob squad and promethium pipe line. On the right flank I put a 20 blob squad to support the melta vets. If I had thought about it a little more i would have realised he'd pod in his dread right in front of my lines and placed the vets over there, probably dismounted as well.
He dispersed his forces across the board with his scout squads to the front, his attack bikes in the center, devs on his right (top left) and main bike squad on his left (top right) he held his pod and dread and also a Storm and bolters scouts in reserve.
Our warlord traits were not very effective this game, with creed gaining preferred enemy and relentless and his, a captain on a bike, gained rerolls to 1's (can't remember if this was to hit and to wound or just to hit), it was out of the BRB, that's all I know.
Turn 1
Turn 1 was quite quiet, we both traded shots with little effect. From memory he lost a few scouts and a assault bike and I lost a few guardsmen from the prodded dread.
Turn 2
Started well with the arrival of the reserves. However, it all went down hill from there. 3 autocannons with tank hunter and 3 twin linked lascannons managed to do 1 hull point of damage to the dread, not really what I was hoping for. Most of my other shots did little as well, the best result was taking out the majority of the scout squad in the table centre, but I couldn't quite finish the job.
His turn 2 went a lot better, charging in on my blob squad. Luckily with the priest and the sheer numbers there was little he could really do, apart from tie them up for the rest of the game. Rather annoyingly he also took out my chimera for first blood and also a victory point. This meant that the vets foot slogging, even though they didn't really have anywhere to go as the dread was locked in combat. At this point I should say that the red yogurt pot below is actually drop pod (it was a list testing game), but with all the other pots on the table as scenery, it got forgotten about, which was useful as it had a deathwind launcher in it!
Turn 3
Things got better at this point, as I managed to take out the assault bikes, even though my demo charge on the vets did nothing! 3 meltas, a grenade and a charge did enough though, plus they consolidated on to an objective. The main blob squad on that side though was suffering and down to 3 models though, so much for objective camping.
Not masses happened in his turn, the removal of the last of the blob squad on the right flank and some damage to the vets from the big bike squad. the combat on the left continued. If I remember right at this point the dread fluffed all its attacks though!
Turn 4
With little left on the table to take objectives at game end, I decided that I need to change up the plan slightly. I had a handful of vets on one objective and nothing on my objective. Somehow I managed to take out the Landspeeded Storm and the scouts inside, not really sure how I did it now, luck I guess, although I imagine that the Vendetta had a hand. I do remember that 3 of the 5 scouts died in the crash which helped. Also the vendetta dropped on its cargo of special weapons boys, who tried to flame the dev sgt to death with 3 flamers and failed, the 3 rapid fire lasguns also failed to make a dent as well.
In his turn, the bikes carried on moving across the board, the dev sgt ran away, or rather ran to the centre objective. His librarian also decided it was time to stop hiding at the back doing nothing.
Turn 5
In some cases it was a little to late for both of us. I did what a could and charged up my Wyverns, going flat-out to get the objective, also forcing the bikes to either charge or drive around. If they charged they would have been stuck at the front of the first wyvern and possibly not able to claim the objective, as if they wrecked the wyvern, which only the captain could do otherwise, they would have been stuck between the chimera wreck, the wyvern wreck and the other wyvern, which may or may not have also been wrecked. I also dropped of the Valkyries cargo, putting both flyers in to hover mode as well. The platoon command squad went for the centre objective, where the marine scouts seems to have disappeared. they may have been the scouts I destroyed in the last turn and not the ones that were in the storm, as there seems to be one of the storm riding scouts contesting the vets objective in the endgame picture. Anyway, they claimed that one. The vendetta had some fun, and roasted a librarian with 3 lascannon shots, even with a storm shield. Strength 9 to the face tends to have that effect!
In his turn, he did the sensible thing and ignored my wyverns, instead going around for the squishy squad manning the objective on the left of the table, who where swiftly dispatched by HoW attacks and the captain and his burning blade. The punch fest behind my lines continued, if it had been able to go to extra turns, I think I would have lost, and then my warlord would have been for it. There was a bit of rule bending going on with the combat, I say bending, its more like using to my advantage. With such a big base size, I could get a lot of guardsmen in contact with the dread, and thus keep my priest alive by selecting guardsmen to die. With only a couple of attacks each turn coming my way against a squad of 20+ models, it was going to take time to whittle down the numbers.
Oh, and the dev sgt tried to be a hero and challenged the platoon command squad in the middle and took a krakk grenade to the face charging in.
End of play
Well, at the end of play, the board looked like this. The bike squad are strung out like that to enable them to either hold the left objective or contest the centre one. I think he would have liked to split the bike squad, but his captain may not have had enough attacks to kill the unit, so he went all in. His last storm riding scout, ran up to contest the vets objective and the scouts that had been hiding in the trees on the right came out to grab that objective.
So, at the end of the day, for the primary objectives, I claimed my objective for 1 point and that was it. My opponent claimed one of the board objectives, the one on my right flank. One objective, the one on my left flank went unclaimed as he chose to contest the centre objective with his bikes and my platoon command squad, and his objective was contested by the lone scout and 2 vets.
Victory points for units destroyed was a different matter, I had scored 5 points, for killing the Landspeeder Storm, killing a units of Scouts, the Attack Bike Squad and a unit of Devastators, plus killing his Librarian. While he had scored 3, for killing the Special Weapons Squad, the Blob Squad on the right and destroying the Chimera.
For Secondary points, I had Line Breaker (just, completely by accident) and he had both First Blood and Line Breaker.
At the time this meant a 7/7 draw. However, I have since had a check of a few things, not related to this game and found out a couple of points, namely that both the Priest and Primaris Psyker are Independent Characters. I had always just thought they were Characters, not Independent Characters, the same a Commissars. This changes a few things, Look Out Sir rolls to start with, but also means I can chop and change units during the game, which could be handy. It does also mean they give up a victory point when they die, so in fact the game should have been a 9/7 loss. Which is annoying.
So, lessons learnt: Apart from the above point, taking a single Chimera is pointless, to easy to destroy and is easily out manoeuvred. The melta Vets are back in the Valkyrie. I also need a better heavy hitting unit, so the plasma CCS are back. With orders and the plasma, I should be able to deal with a lot of threats, its just a shame I couldn't squeeze in Kurovs Aquila, rerolling those 1's is always useful with squishy guardsmen. Krakk grenades would have been useful, but I'm still not taking them, there still way overpriced, and will be even more so with the new grenade FAQ ruling.
So what's the plan? Well that's in Fridays post!
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