8Th batrep

So, my first game of 8th. It was pretty much as I had expected after reading quite a few reports on other sites and watching a few bits and pieces on Youtube. 

I took a very slimmed down force for this match, with a few options I'm not so sure on but fancied trying. The game was 700 points of guard vs 716 points of guard/scions/admec. My army consisted of a valkyrie, wyvern, priest, psyker, Creed, platoon commander, command squad (medic, box, standard and sniper), two infantry squads ( one with Flamer, one with autocannon and Flamer, both with vox) and a vet squad (3x meltas and heavy Flamer). A pretty reasonable list, with a good around coverage, with some anti-infantry and some anti-armour and bringing 7 command points to the table.

My opponent had a mix of units, with an oranger dunecrawler (with the array), a techpriest dominus, a unit of rangers, a scion squad and tempestus commander, a taurox, an infantry squad, heavy weapons squad (autocannon) and commissar. Again a fairly mixed bag of units, nothing too scary though, although the dunecrawler with the skyfire array did look quite scary. This army brought 6 command points to the table.

We decided to keep things simple, played dawn of war deployment and went for the kill points eternal war mission. We did this to keep things simple for learning the rules, as it was my first time playing and my opponents third (I think?). If I remember right I started deploying first, placing my wyvern in the center for the best board control. We then alternated until I placed my last unit, my valkyrie (with the platoon commander and vets inside) before my opponent placed his last two units.

My final deployment. There is an infantry squad, along with priest and psyker, in the ruins behind the valkyrie.

The blob in the center are the guards with all the admech at the far side. 

Turn 1

And my deployment advantage was eliminated in short order, with my opponent stealing the initiative. He did little this turn, just moving up the dunecrawler and the two squads.

The majority of fire went in to my valkyrie and wyvern, trying to damage the two toughest units on my side of the board. Now, this is where the key changes really made a difference, as both my valkyrie and wyvern were able to shake of a lot of the damage that would have hurt them in 7th. The valkyrie would not have survived all of the fire power coming at it in 7th, at least not without greatly reducing its fire output anyway. In this game it survived completely unscathed. Quite a change right there.

Dunecrawler vs Valkyrie. Who will win?

My turn was pretty simple as well, the valkyrie moved up and the wyvern fired that was pretty much it. Now, first off I played the valkyrie wrong, forgetting the -1 for having moved with heavy weapons, not that it helped much.

The combined firepower of the two units took out a few guardsmen and rangers, nothing exceptional. At the end of turn one, neither side had really done much damage and neither side had to take any moral tests.

Turn 2

This turn most of my opponents fire went into the valkyrie, chipping away at the flyer and taking a couple of wounds off. Not enough to take it down a level, but it was a start.

In my turn I decided to take it the biggest threat, the dunecrawler. For this I moved the valkyrie along and dropped off my vets, making sure that they were well within melta range. As a result of 3 meltas, with reroll to hit orders and a command reroll, 3 hits were converted to 2 wounds and 11 damage. Just enough to destroy there dunecrawler, however, the crawler had the last laugh, exploding and taking out 2 vets, wounding the platoon commander and damaging the valkyrie! It did more damage to the valkyrie exploding than it did during the previous 2 shooting phases! The rest of the vets went to work on the rangers, as did the valkyrie itself, removing quite a few models.

The left flank takes a pounding.

Dunecrawler destroyed.

Turn 3

This turn the reinforcements arrive for the AdMech, although due to some excellent positioning by my troops, the scions could not get close to their intended target. Now, when I say excellent positioning, what I mean is our fluke. Anyway, they dropped in and shot what they could, taking down the wyvern a few more wounds and taking out a few models from the infantry squad on my left flank.

The scions drop in.

On the otherside of the board, everything went in to the valkyrie and vets,  chipping away at the wounds. At this point the valkyrie  was dropped down a level and the vets were wiped out, leaving just the platoon commander.

In my turn I focused mostly on the recently arrived scions. Using the power of the wyvern and the squad nnext to it to take it down to 1 scion and the tempestus prime. At this point the psyker charged in to fi wish them off.

The platoon commander also chose to.charge in, in an attempt to take outthe last remaining ranger.

As a result to the combats, the scions were destroyed and the psyker consolidated on to the prime. The platoon commander decided to just tackle the ranger, who politely returned the favor.

You can also see the squad on the left moving up.

Turn 4

There was more shooting at the valkyrie, chipping away at the wounds, I think by this point it was getting dangerously close to falling out the sky. The wyvern also took some more damage, finally being destroyed by the taurox battle cannon.

In the combats, the prime was destroyed by the psyker, but not before inflicting some damage of his own, leaving the psyker on one wound. The platoon commander and ranger carried on tickling each other. Also getting in on the action was one of the infantry squads, who charged there guard counter part on the other side of the table. The difference between the boys of Cadia and the men of Catachan soon became evident as the cadians were wiped out to the man, due to a little help from the priests aura.

Guardsmen get ready to charge

Catachans show the Cadians how its done

Consolidating in to help the platoon commander

After the infantry squad had finished wiping out the cadians, they moved to join the combat between the ranger and the platoon commander, just managing to move one man in to the 1" zone around the combat. The idea was to try and take out the ranger and help out the commander.

End of turn

Turn 5

We were getting short of time at this point, so we skipped a few stages, namely the movement  as there really wasn't much to do and the shooting was used to take down the Valkyrie. My opponent then charged in his commissar and Magos in to combat and took down a few of the guardsmen and the platoon commander. In return the remaining guardsmen took down the ranger and took a wound off the commissar.

We skipped to the combat phase in my turn, the priest charged in, but apart from that it was a bit of a slap fest, with no-one doing anything else. I forgot that I could shoot the Sgts pistol, but I doubt it would have made any difference.

When the dust had settled, there was not much left on the table. more than I was expecting due to whats been said by others. The game was good and although it lacked a bit of flow and there were a few rules mistakes, I did enjoy it. When we had totalled up all the points the score was 6 to 4, and a win to the Hjaltland LI.