This is one of two batrep that i have lined up, the other was a practice match for the tournament back in October! With the release of the guard codex and all the posts dedicated to it over the last few weeks, i haven't got around to posting them. This batrep was from a game a just the other week and was not the game i had been intending to play. I had been lined up to play a game against a Tau player and even though i didn't know his list, although i suspect he might have brought his new toy, a Stormsurge, i had brought a pretty rounded list. As it turned out my last minute stand in opponent brought 3 knights. Now I'm not going to go home and cry about it. When he agreed to play last minute, he told me he only had one list ready for 8th and it had to be 1500 points. Now it's usually pretty easy to drop points from a list, you just drop a unit here and there, so i did think not was a little odd to say that but i didn't enquire any further and just stuck with my previous list, a list that turns out to be completely useless against 3 knights. Alright, not completely useless, that was partly down to poor dice rolls and poor play by me, but it was always going to be an upwards fight.
I brought a combined arms list featuring a Vostroyan batallion detachment with a company commander with the Laura's of Command, two primaris psyker's, 2 platoon commanders, 4 infantry squads, two with autocannons and two with grenade launchers, and a heavy weapons squad with 2 autocannons and a heavy bolter. I also had a Valhallan spearhead detachment with a battle rank command tank, a punisher bolter boat and loaded executioner. Lastly I brought a patrol detachment of scions, with prime, plasma command squad and volley gun Scion squad. I then used a command point to equip the prime with the MT relic.
My opponent brought 3 renegade knights, a paladin knight, a knight lancer and i think the other was either a crusader with two Gatling cannons or a castigator.
We decided to play from the open war cards, something i haven't done before but have seen being played down the club and i do like the idea. I won the roll off and pulled out the required cards, deployment, objective and twist. For deployment we got the 50\50 split, which was possibly the worst option for me. Objective was effectively kill points, just based on power points, which were doubled for killing the warlord. The twist card was orbital debris, so 3 dice, any 6's cause mortal wounds. The twist card was then drawn by my enemy and promptly discarded, as it allowed him to hold up to 3 units back for deployment after i had deployed. Seeing as he only had 3 units and it would have been more restrictive to hold units back, he just deployed normally. We had no sudden death option as we were actually fairly evenly matched on power points, about 85 to 80, or there abouts.
The cards
Turn 1 and my opponent won the roll of to go first, using the new CA17 rules. As a result, i was on the back foot from the off. I had tried to spread out, so that the knights would either split up and head in different directions, or would stick together and give my units time to shoot. They did the latter and I didn't get time to shoot. I set up wrong, in pretty much every way I think. I should have stayed back, as far as I could, to give time to shoot, and I should have position my units better, as the tank commander was out of orders range from the executioner, with disastrous results.
Turn one, and the knights advance.
Just before the charge and my Russ on the right is wiped out.
Turn 2
This turn I tried some delaying tactics, it didn't really work. I moved a unit of infantry up to block the charge of the knight on my second Russ in the centre, my executioner, but all that happened was that my guard were slaughtered by the knight in the centre and its Gatling cannons.
Command tank in the bottom corner is about 6.5 inches from the Executioner in the centre!
One Russ gone and Wyverns are next in line.
This was probably the worse turn for me. My Executioner, with plasma sponsons, rolled up pretty well for shots, getting 4 on the main gun and 2 on each sponson, but I decided to overcharge then, even though I was out of orders range. A bit silly but I really needed to do some damage to the knight in front of me, as I knew he would be charging in his turn. I managed to roll 5 1's to hit out of the 8 shots, and then failed to wound with 2 of the others, but I did do damage with the last, putting 2 wounds on the knight, but not nearly enough.
Turn 3
By this point it was pretty much all over. I had lost most of my infantry. There should be two squads at the top of the picture below and also a squad at the bottom, the 4th squad should be across on the right of the picture, but as you can see, there is very little left at all. My executioner is wounded, my company commander has no troops left to command and my hellhound is completely ineffective against knights. About all i have left that is of any use is my tank commander battle tank. I fought on though and managed to do a bit of damage to the knight before my tank went pop.
Staring death in the face...
And death strikes.....
Yep, that's everything that's left on the table. Only the 11 scions in reserve.
Turn 3
By now, i was aiming for just one thing, take down a knight. I wasn't hopeful but i had done a bit of damage to one of them, the yellow one. As such i dropped in my scions behind the beast and took aim. After everything had shot at it, it was still standing, that was the hellhound, LRBT, 4 overcharged plasma, 2 hotshot volley guns and two hotshot lasguns. Just one wound remained, just one. Then i had a thought, at the beginning of the game i had taken a second relic, the reliquary of XXX and put it on my Tempestus prime, instead of taking a command rod, so my prime had a bolt pistol. It was only 1 shot, but it was worth a try.
Something big and yellow's missing?
Much to my surprise and to my opponents astonishment, we witnessed the (almost) impossible, as the prime hit, wounded and the knight failed his save, stripping the last wound of the knight. It was a truly awesome scene, mighty leman Russ battle tanks, death spitting hellhounds and miniature suns had been thrown at this thing, with little success and in the end it took the iron nerve of a Tempestus prime and a measly bolt pistol to fell the mighty beast. I can see it now, the prime looking on as his men shot and fail to being the knight down, "what the bloody he'll was that?! Fine, I'll i do it myself!" Lifts bolt pistol, BANG, CRASH! Holsters bolt pistol. In return though, the other two wiped out a wyvern and killed off the last of my troop choices.
Turn 4
What now? Well, nothing really, i took a few more pot shots and waited for the inevitable to happen, as i didn't have nearly enough firepower to bring down a knight in one turn, let alone two. I played on and tried to see what i could do, which wasn't much. It was even less once the right hand knight charged in and squished my warlord and psyker beneath his big feet.
We did play a turn 5 but i didn't bother with pictures. The hellhound in the middle got hosed by the Gatling cannon and while it survived, it was in poor shape, the rest of the scions apart from the prime also got some attention and were also removed. At that point we called it and didn't bother rolling for turn 6. I had a crippled hellhound and a LRBT, he had two knight both on top tier, one not even injured at all. Oh and the prime, but i think that even his skill with a bolt gun wasn't going to help much now.
So my first big loss of 8th and only my second overall i think. Not to bad i think. There is no doubt that i had the wrong list for this game, i had anti-armour for.once, just not nearly enough for what i was facing and even though every weapon is capable of doing damage, as shown by the bolt pistol, even massed lasguns are not much use against a trip of knights. Overall it was a good fun game and i learnt a lot from it but i hope my next game is not nearly as one sided!
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