This was the last in a run off games that I have had recently. I played this a couple of weeks ago now but due to the new job and all, I have not had time to write it up.
The game was between the Eagle Knights and a force of Ultramarines, consisting of 2 scout squads, one with sniper rifles and one with bolt pistols and chain swords, 2 bike squads with 4 bikes and an attack bike, a rhine and a whirlwind, all lead by a captain on a bike. The game itself was a bit of a white wash, with the Knights getting firmly beaten yet again. Granted this was due to me making a number of mistakes and forgetting a couple of rules.
The table and terrain
The Ultramarines deployment
The Eagle Knights Deployment
My cards turn 1 and they were not a good set of cards to pull. I had hopes that I could achieve a few cards first turn but that was not to be.
Turn 1
While I was quite confident of success on turn one, targeting the scouts in the centre and claiming the objective they were sitting on, I failed miserably. Even though the scouts did not have camo cloaks, 4 heavy bolters failed to do any damage to the squad! My opponent passed over 6 4+ saves to keep all of them alive and deny me the option to charge with my death company, as there was no space to place any of my models on the roof of the building. In stead I charged his bikes and Rhino, unfortunately through bad placement I had a thunder hammer on the wrong side of the combat and only had one of the two available to attack the rhino. This one hammer managed to take over half the wounds off the rhino and if I had both of them there then I would have been able to destroy it. As it was I didn't manage to do enough damage to either the bikes or the rhino to destroy either. This meant that in my opponents turn he was able, using the Ultramarine chapter tactic, fall back and fire at the Death Company, wiping them from the board. Although the unit was destroyed, my opponent made a mistake by wiping the unit out with shooting when he had Blood and Guts in his hand!
First turn.
Turn 2
With the failure of the Death Company in turn 1, I tried again to take out the scouts with my assault marines, which had been waiting in reserve. This went a little better, as the heavy bolter were actually able to take out enough to get a couple of assault marines on the roof, although not really enough to do what needed to be done and the unit was not wiped out and instead manage to inflict a number of wounds on the assault marines. This failure to kill of the scouts in one go would come back to bite me some more in the next turn or two. In addition the bikes started to move up the field. I was still struggling for points at this stage, although the only consolation was that my opponent was too.
Turn 2, The melee in the middle continues.
A close up of the melee
Turn 3
The game continued in pretty much the same fashion as previously. The Melee in the middle continued and through attrition the assault marines finally managed to wipe out the scots, but only one assault marine remained. The bikes and Captain had helped by wiping out a couple of marines that were left at the bottom of the building and it was advantageous that bikes can no longer climb ruins as otherwise they would just have wiped out the unit. At this point the game was really up and I was just trying to cause as much damage as I possibly could and try and score some points for the 40k ladder that the club was running.
Turn 4
Turn 4 and the game was all but finished. The bikes had moved on from the centre of the board and had converged on the last stand of the Knights. By this point I had a 5 man tactical squad, a 5 man devastator squad, Captain, Lieutenant, Chaplain, a single assault marine and a tactical squad with 1 man in. While my opponent had a rhino, whirlwind, two bike squads, one with 2 bikes and an assault bike and one with 4 bikes and an assault bike, plus the Captain on his bike. Oh and a scout snipe squad, who had taken out the last remnants of a tactical squad in combat. One of the bike squads charged in on the tactical squad to try and take out the squad to get the objective. Some how they manage to survive and kept hold of the objective, denying my opponent a point.
Turn 5
I was surprised that the game had gone this far. At this point I really just was fighting for survival and decided to throw every thing in to combat to stop the Ultramarines claiming the objective and so the devastators, captain and lieutenant charged in to combat. The assault marine and chaplain just stayed in the centre and just hung out to stop me getting tabled! The ultramarine decided to withdraw from combat and unload into all the remaining Knights. At this point the bikes had taken a bit of a pounding, and only 4 bikes and an attack bike remained, although with twin bolter in rapid fire range, they did take quite a few casualties.
After the movement phase of the Ultramarines turn 5
End Game
Well at the end of turn 5 we didn't bother rolling to see if the game continued. There was no doubt that the Knights had suffered another crushing defeat, although I cant remember of the top of my head what the final score was but I think it was something like 6 or 7 to 1 in favour of the boys in blue. I think that there was a few lessons learned, the primary one being that I should not split the attacks of the Death Company, either that or I should make sure that the right weapons are in the right place! The cards were not in my favour either this match and I could not achieve enough cards to draw new cards as I was forced to discard a card at the end of every turn and as I could not achieve any cards, I was forced to stick with the ones that I had draw originally, which I really struggled to achieve.
More lessons learned this game, although with starting work, I don't know when I will get another game in to put some of these lessons in to practice.
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