Friday 29 December 2023

2023 review


As we move from 2023 to 2024 Its time to look back on the year and the hobby resolutions I made almost a year ago. My track record with these things has been average at best and I suspect that this year will continue along similar lines, however, I do find that it is good at keeping things moving in generally the right direction. So what resolutions did I manage to achieve and which did I fail miserably?


So here is the list I wrote for 2023;

1) update Dagr Ormr scions.
Done. All models updated and fully legal, twice! After updating to the new 9th edition guard book the force was tweaked to 10th a d I now actually have too many scions!

2) New guard models
I'll count this one as a yes. I picked up some of the new models, getting gifted some rough riders and field ordnance battery for my birthday and picking up some Wargames Atlantic Bulldogs to proxie as Kasrkins. The FOB and Bulldogs are completed and the rough riders are waiting for a coat of primer.

3) Eagle Knights first born
Yes and no. All the original models I had for the Knights first born have been painted but after acquiring some additional models mind year, I have not finished painting these up. I still have an assault squad and command squad (I think?) plus land raider and drop pod to finish.

4) Dark Guardians first born
This is a definite no. I have t even started to look at these guys yet. They are ready waiting but I have not even touched one model 

5) No new models
Sort of? I didn't actually purchase any new models, just a bunch of second hand ones. So I guess that it will fall in to the failed category? In my defense, it was a bargain I couldn't refuse and I gained some good models.

6) lore update
Unfortunately this is a no. This was one I was really hoping to get done this year but for various reasons I just haven't managed to get this sorted. The lore for all my armies and the general narrative for my forces does need a good reworking and general tidy up. I'll put this on the list for next year and see if I can actually achieve it.

7) play some games
Again, yes and no. I initially thought that this was going to be a straight no, as I didn't think I would have played 12 games this year. It turns out I have played 13 games! So yes, I have played at least 12 games, unfortunately only 9 of them were at the 2000 point mark, the other 4 being at or around 1000 points. Most of these games (8 of them) were thanks to the two tournaments I played in this year! Either way, I'm going to count this as a yes!

So, overall I have actually achieve 3 of these completely, 2 of them sort of and I failed at 2 of them. I don't think that this is two bad really, better than some years, maybe even my best year yet (haven't actually checked!) There's a couple that will be carried forward to next year, hopefully to completion this time!

Friday 8 December 2023

Imperial Guard Vs Tau - game 2

 This was the last and final game I played in the run up to the Northern Invasion tournament. It was the second match I played against my son. This time around we decided to play a mirror match of sorts. My son took a Longstrike Hammerhead, Devilfish, Piranha, Broadside, two strike squads and a breacher squad, plus pathfinders. I took a Leman Russ Vanquisher, Chimera, a Scout Sentinel, two Armoured Sentinels, three Cadian Squads and Kasrkins. 

While this isn’t an exact match, as Longstrike should have been mirrored by a Tank commander, but the cost of the tank commander meant this wasn’t possible. Another issue was the Piranha, as there is not comparable model in the guard, a Tauros might have been an option but I don’t have one, so a scout sentinel was the closest I could get. This is similar to the Broadside, the closest I could get in terms of firepower was two armoured sentinels. The last issue was the Strike and Breacher squads, as with the removal of shotgun vets, the only option was infantry squads. I could have chosen any of the battle line units, but went with Cadians in the end. So, while not an exact mirror, it was as close as we could get with the models we had to hand.

Guard Deployment

Tau Deployment

We were both quite cautious first turn, neither wanted to expose their big hitter, the Hammerhead and Vanquisher, to the others vehicle. This was sort of proved as the two vehicles that we did expose, my chimera and his devilfish, suffered, although only my chimera was destroyed, as opposed to his only being crippled down to just a couple of wounds. His piranha was taken out by the hunter killer missiles from the sentinels.

Turn 1

Having taken his devilfish down to just a couple of wounds I decided to try and wrap and trap the devilfish with my sentinels and infantry, however, I failed to take the last wound off amend the devilfish was able to retreat due to being able to fly.


Turn two was pretty much the same with the big guns trying to stay away from each other while the rest of the army started taking chucks out of the other. While i managed to get an early lead by grabbing some objectives early, it wasn’t enough to pull any sort of sizeable lead.

Turn 2


While I didn’t take any more pictures of the game, mostly as I was trying to move the game along to get the young man in to bed at a reasonable time, the game stayed pretty level throughout. When we did decided to engage each others heavy hitters, the Vanquisher went first and proved to be the lesser of the two by failing to knock out the hammerhead in one turn, unlike the hammerhead knocked out the Vanquisher with one shot. However, the hammerhead was taken out next turn, so there was no real advantage. 
When we ended the game, the guard were in ascendancy but it was a close run thing. I had more models on the table and greater board control, however my son still had a broadside on the table with full wounds and I had little that could take it out with. So if we had gone on further, the guard would have increased their lead but the broadside will be able to wonder around at will smashing three guardsmen a turn. 

Guard End game

 Tau End Game

This game was really good fun but did prove that most of the guard stuff was actually out gunned by the equivalent Tau units. I really think guard are not in a good place at the moment, yes they can compete but i still think several units are over priced and the rules underwhelming.


Anyway, the game ended in a draw, which is how it should have finished. I think there was little that I could have done to change the outcome apart from using the reinforcements stratagem to recycle a unit of guard. We’ll have to get the last tournament game played soon and see if I can actually beat him, which would give us a W/D/L of 1/1/1!





Tuesday 5 December 2023

Imperial Guard Vs Tau - game 1

 During the run up to the tournament my son and I played a few games of 40k to get him use to the basic rule for 10th, as although he’s played a few games of 10th with mates, he has always had some one to coach him through the turns, usually myself but sometimes other adults. So for these games, we were going to play and I wasn’t going to tell him anything, just let him play and then talk through stuff after, as it turns out, this might have been a bad idea! 

This game was just a 1000 point game, both to keep things simple for my son to learn the game and also for time constraints, to get the game done before bed time!

The Tau list consisted of devil fish, hammer head, piranha, a couple of strike squads and a breacher squad, with a cadre fire blade. My ;list consisted of infantry and the flyer.


Deployment

Deployment was pretty standard and I put my flyer in hover mode again, just to have it on the table turn 1.


Turn 1

By the end of turn 1, I’d lost a full squad and my flyer, which was destroyed by the rail rifle fire of the Tau. 


Turn 2

Going up against the tau armour with little in the way of anti-armour fire power was a mistake, as they just started gunning down my infantry at will.

Turn 3

By the end of turn 3 I was completely on the back foot with nothing I could do. The hammer head and devil fish were just gunning down my guardsmen in droves. 

Turn 5

By the end of turn 5 I was all but tabled with just a few models left on the table.


At the end of the match it was evident that the tau had secured a resounding victory. When you put a shooting army up against a very good shooting army, expect the shooting army to loose and so the guard lost. It wasn’t quite the learning lesson that I was inviting and it was more of a slaughter but he used his units well and showed a good grasp of the rule, which ultimately was the aim of the game. We decided to see if we could have another game, but this time we would try a more evenly matched game, as much of a mirror match as possible and that turned in to a very different game.



Friday 1 December 2023

Imperial Guard Vs World Eaters - Tournament warmup game 2

This was actually the third game that I played, the second game was against my son and his Tau but they were played as eternal war type games rather than leviathan games and so the scoring system was different and they were not really tournament warm up games and more learning games for my son. This game was against World Eaters, the same player i played against in the tournament and who went on to win. This list was very similar to his winning list, with Eightbound, hellbrutes, rhinos and jakhals. 

For this game, I ran a Valkyrie in hover mode, two chimeras with cadians, a Leman Russ with demolisher cannon and a big squad of guard on my home objective. 


Guard deployment


World Eaters deployment

Turn 1

The game started very slowly, with both of us being very reserved in our deployment and turn 1 movement. I held back, trying to keep away from the WE’s and their combat potential and my opponent wanted to keep out of line of sight. This hindered me far more as it meant that i really struggled to get any momentum from my side. 

Turn 2

It didn’t take long for the WE to get in to my lines and that’s where my problems really started. So Eightbound got a long charge off and started combat in the centre of the board. Through some lucky rolls and also some command point re-rolls he managed to keep some Eightbound alive for several turns, holding me up and allowing his berserkers to come sweeping across the board.


It was also at this point that I realised that no matter how bad aircraft flying around the board are, they are even worse when in hover mode, as my flyer got charged by the hellbrute and completely destroyed. 

Turn 3

By the end of turn 3 I had scored no primary point at all, I was really struggling to take and hold any of the objectives. I shouldn’t have split my forces so much at the beginning, instead pushing for just one objective in the centre and then moving out from there. I also think the cautious approach at the beginning really didn’t help either.


Turn 4

I didn’t manage to get a few bits and pieces killed but the World Eaters are a really strong army against guard. I just didn’t have a real answer to the combat abilities of the WE units. The blood surge for the Berserkers caught me out and the ability for the hellbrute to shoot or fight out of turn was also a real issue for me. 


Despite having tried something different for this game, I don’t think it worked at all. The vehicles were not as resilient as I had hoped. The fire power of the leman Russ was good and did do some good work on the table top but I just didn’t think it was so good to be an auto take in my tournament list. The Valkyrie in hover mode is just a bad idea all round and I wound be doing that anytime soon! Over all, this just cemented my ideas that an infantry heavy list would be the way to go and just swamp the enemy on the objectives and just ignore lots of the big threats. As you know this didn’t quite work out as I had intended, mostly as the heavy hitters I did have didn’t really pull their weight (looking at you Valkyries and Vindicare), as I mentioned in a previous post, I think there is some more work needed to refine my tournament list, to make it a bit more competitive that it was.


Tuesday 28 November 2023

Imperial Guard Vs Space Wolves - Tournament warmup game 1

 These are a bit out of time here but this is the first of four battle reports that I played before the Northern Invasion tournament. These were just small scale games of 1000 points to get my head around some of the rules changes for 10th before the tournament. This was the first game that I played, against Space Wolves, the same player I ended up playing against when I got to the tournament. The list i played against was pretty similar to the full tournament list, with some thunder wolf cavalry, blood claws, grey hunters and intercessions, with some eradicators, which didn’t make the final list. My list on the other hand consisted of the infantry, breachers in Valkyries and a Field Ordnance battery with heavy lascannons. 

We played a leviathan mission, Sweeping Engagement, Take and Hold with scrambler fields. The scrambler field had no effect on the game, due to neither of us having strategic reserves. Take and hold should have been easy for me, but I really failed to take advantage of the mission. 

Guard Deployment

Space wolf deployment 

Blood Claws and Ragnar pushing up the centre

Blood Claws

The blood claws and Ragnar went charging up the field turn one, engaged and destroyed a full 20 man guard squad with ease and then proceeded to just sweep through my battle lines almost completely unopposed. 

The empty battlefield.

The flyer trying to do something useful

The flyer and everything on the right is dead.

So in this game I found out that flyers are not quite as good as they use to be and when I say not as good, what I mean is useless. You can see the blood claws as the very bottom of the table having slaughtered their way through two 20 man catachan squads and the field ordnance battery. 

The guard almost tabled 

The lone assassin sitting on his perch 


The final result was a resounding victory for the space wolves. I was completely unable to move anywhere on the board, without getting absolutely slaughtered by the space wolves. This game was good though for a number of reasons. The first thing I learnt was that no matter how much I like the idea of 20 man guard squads, 10 man squads are the way to go I think. This means that there is less chance of all 20 guardsmen getting wiped out in a single turn of firing or combat. The second lesson learnt is that flyers are not very resilient, with no natural -1 to hit and even with the extra toughness and save, they are still quite easy to remove. The last thing i learnt was less about the game and more about the system as a whole, that guard are either really over priced or space marines are over powered, as there were as many space wolf units on the table as there were guard units! I’m use to outnumbering the enemy by several units, but this time around I was actually outnumbered!
As a result of this game, I decided to thin down the squad sizes and look at getting more movement options in the list. I wish I could have tried playing this list again with an updated list but there was just no time. I did change the list for my next game, adding in a couple of vehicle to see how that does.





Friday 24 November 2023

Tournament list review

So with the tournaments all done and dusted, its time to have a look at my list and see what sort of changes I might make to it. It’s not just about making it more competitive, it’s also about removing units that proved to be useless or over costed for what they managed to achieve, and unfortunately there were quite a few of these units. 

There is little I can do with certain elements of the list, such as the detachment or enhancements, as I’m still restricted by what’s available for me to use. 

So, what would will remain unchanged and what would be dropped?

Detachment: Combined Regiment

+ Character +

Cadian Castellan: Bolt Pistol, Grand Strategist, Power Weapon

Cadian Castellan: Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Commissar: Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Platoon Command Squad: Platoon Commander: Death Mask of Ollanius, Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon, Plasma Gun, Master Vox, Medi-pack, Regimental Standard

Primaris Psyker 

Primaris Psyker


The HQ section of the list worked pretty much as expected. The Castellans spread out across the board and the Platoon command squad anchored the centre, as planned. I think that some extra orders might have been worthwhile, as there were a few occasions that I would have liked to have one or two more orders to dish out but on the whole it wasn’t a problem. The psykers also proved their worth with their psychic powers, however, they would be something to drop if I needed a few extra points for the list change.


+ Battleline +

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troops (20): 2x Grenade Launcher, 2x Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troops (10): Drum-fed Autogun, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troop (10): Bolt Pistol, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Cadian Shock Troop (10): Bolt Pistol, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun

Death Korps of Krieg (10): Medi-pack, Grenade Launcher, Meltagun, Plasma Gun, Plasma Pistol, Power Weapon

Infantry Squad (10): 2x Grenade Launcher, 2x Grenade Launcher. 2x HWT Autocannon


The battle line units also worked as planned, although I would make a few changes. The main one is removing the 20 man Cadian squad, as this was a mistake in the first place. I would probably go for another unit of DKoK, as their medic ability was useful, when i actually got to use it! I would have liked more Cadian but I am at my max number of units. As for special weapons, i would keep the Plasma gun but I am tempted to drop the grenade launcher for possibly a melta gun, but it does reduce the utility of the units.


+ Infantry +

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Mortar

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Mortar

Heavy Weapons Squad: 3x Missile Launchers

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster

Tempestus Scions (5): Plasma Pistol, Power Fist, Hot-shot Volley Gun, Plasma Gun, Vox-caster


The other infantry units also proved themselves during my games. The mortars were not the greatest at taking out power armour but against lower save units they absolutely proved their worth. The missile launchers were equally as useful, although both suffered from the unpredictability of the dice. The scions also proved themselves and were useful both for scoring points, forcing my opponent to split their force and gave me a lot of movement options.


+ Vehicles+

Valkyrie: Hellstrike Missiles, Lascannon, Heavy Bolters

Valkyrie: Militarum Multi-laser, Heavy Bolters, Multiple Rocket Pods


This is where there is going to be a lot of changes. The planes, while useful and fun to play with, really didn’t do anything for me. The MRP equipped Valkyrie was more useful and did do some chip damage, but the other Valkyrie was pretty much useless. The single shot lascannon and hellstrike missile was basically useless, missing far more than they hit and wounding even less. I was not even able to remove a rhino in one turn of shooting even when both actually hit. The heavy bolters were the best weapons on both platforms. Even though I took these because just because I wanted to, both of these will be dropped from the next iteration of the list as they just don’t do anywhere near the damage or provide anything that justifies their points.   


+ Allied Units +

Imperial Navy Breachers: chainfist, demo charge, heavy shotgun, power weapon, Navis las-volleys, Bolt pistol and power weapon

Imperial Navy Breachers: Meltagun

Inquisitor: Bolt pistol, Inquisitorial melee weapon, Psychic gifts, Warlord

Vindicare Assassin 


The dropping of the Valkyries also means the dropping of the Navy Breachers, which isn’t a bad thing as they didn’t really do much in the game, the bleacher with demo charge was fun and did do some damage, it still didn’t justify the 105 point cost of the unit. Even if the Valkyries weren’t being dropped I would drop the navy breachers anyway. The Vindicare also failed to live up to expectations. I think this is mostly because it’s taken a real hit in this edition and is no longer the character slayer it once was. I would probably look at switching this out for the Eversor assassin for its combat abilities. The Inquisitor was the best choice out of this lot, even though it didn’t do masses, it did enough to justify itself in the list, plus its all part of my fluff to have an inquisitor in my lists. 

So, if i remove the Valkyries, the Breachers, Vindicare and 10 cadians, I would currently have 730 points to play with. With these points I would look to add a Tank commander and additional Leman Russ, with an Enginseerer in support. I would add in an Eversor Assassin as well. I would then use some points to up the number of Scions in the units to 10, doubling the number of troops and special weapons. This means that I would be using 690 points of the 730, leaving me 40 points spare for the moment, to either adjust for points adjustments or to add extra units nearer the time. 

I’ll have to try this list out at some point to see just how it might fare but I suspect that there will be a number of changes points wise before next years tournament.  




Tuesday 21 November 2023

Tournament review

 The Northern Invasion Tournament has been and gone and despite the enforced hiatus due to Covid and some other logistical and technical hurdles that needed to be overcome, I would have to say that it was a huge success. There were 16 players there on the Saturday and a number returned for a more casual day of gaming on the Sunday. There was more than 40k going on as well, with magic featuring prominently on both the Saturday and Sunday, with a whole host of board games going on on the Sunday, including Hero Quest, which myself and my son played several games of. 

The 40k tournament itself was not an overly competitive tournament. There were a number of people there who were playing to a competitive level but there were also a number of people there to just play some games and have fun, after all, how many competitive players bring a 3 model army consisting of two Knight Desecrators and a Warhound Titan. 

Chaos Knight and Warhound


Overall there was a pretty even split between Imperial, with 2x Grey Knights, Space Marines, Space wolves, Imperial Guard, Custodies, Imperial Knights and Dark Angels, and Chaos, with 2x World Eaters, 2x Chaos Knights, Death Guard and Daemons, with just two Xenos players, both using Tau. The tournament was won by the World Eaters player i played in game 2, with Grey Knights taking second and third with Space Marines in 4th. At the other end of the table the wooden spoon was hotly contested between World Eaters and Chaos Knights (the 3 model list from above), with the Chaos Knights walking away with the “trophy”. These final games were played on the Sunday morning, so not all placing were finalised.  

Tau vs Dark Angels

I am hoping to return next year if possible, my son already has plans for what he want to do plus there is talk about some of the other youngsters coming down, so there might be some competition for best U18 player trophy that my son walked (uncontested) away with. 


The other thing to really mention about the weekend, is that my son has now set his sights on getting Hero Quest for Christmas, along with some of the character expansions, after we played a couple of games with some of the other guys down there. Also, I bought Space Hulk, the 2014 version, minus the models thought, which is not a problem as i have most of the models i need to play already, or at least ones that I can substitute in, as I have lots of Hormagaunts I can use as Genestealers. I plan on playing the game at some point but also using the tiles for dungeon crawls with the kids at some point or another. 
Next up will be a look through my list from the tournament, which in truth means there will be quite a few changes for future tournaments. 




Friday 17 November 2023

Northern Invasion game 3

So, on to game three and another hard game but one I though I might do better in. The game was against Space Wolves and I reasonably well rounded list at that. The list consisted of Logan Grimnar on his sleigh, Murderfang, Ragnar, an Iron Priest, lieutenant, a blood claws, 2x grey hunters, 2x intercessors, incursors, skyclaws, thunderwolf cavalry, fenrisian wolves, a redemptor, a vindicator and 2x wulfen dreadnoughts.

This game was going to be tough, but in a very different way to the last  the mission here was going to be problematic, as with purge the foe, victory points are gained for holding one and holding more plus kill one and kill more. Hold one and hold more were not going to be much of a problem, kill one was not going to be to much of a problem but kill more was going to be very difficult to do or deny.

Again with this game, I pushed right up to the line with the aim of moving forward to take some of the central ground. I also had to hang back a bit with the threat of the skyclaws.


My opponent mirrored my deployment, pushing up to the line, ready to charge forward and take the fight to me.


I got turn one, pushed up and only killing one unit, the fenrisian wolves for some easy points. 


We clashed in the in the centre and there were some obvious results, with a couple.of units wiped in the first turn,only to be recycled on the Reinforcements train! 


The wolves kept pushing forward and I took the opportunity to drop in behind, claiming my opponents home objective, forcing his skyclaws to drop in behind, only to fail a charge and then be annihilate by the scions that dropped in behind. A dreadnought tried to come back to reclaim the objective but with terrain and positioning he couldn't quite make it. 


By the end of the game, on turn 4, the wolves were in my deployment zone and could be a real threat and had good board control across the middle of the board. However, I still had a chance to clear out some of the centre and had option to recycle some more units that would inevitably get destroyed.
 


Overall the game was very close and I think turn 5 could have gone either way, however, there was no way that I could have actually won. As you can see in the score sheet the secondary scores were very close. I think a minor mistake was holding on to bring it down, I failed to score it in one round and took a gamble I could do it in the second round but failed. I think maybe I should have just binned it after not achieving in one round and drawn another. I don't know if that would have helped or not but either way 25 to 27 was a close score. The primaries however is a different story, I was 12 point down on the primary, all of which are due to the kill more. In total I was 16 points down due to kill more and if you took the kill more points out then the score.would have dropped to 67 to 65, a guard victory! Although if you take the hold more points out as well, then it's a 63 to 65 loss! Either way it was the kill more points that really hurt me.

Despite this, it was a very good game and I really enjoyed myself. So after 3 games on the Saturday, I found myself ready for game four to decided who came 7th and who came 8th. Oh, and I was to play my son. So all the way south, to play my own son!


Tuesday 14 November 2023

Northern Invasion game 2

 Game 2 and as soon as i heard the draw I was resigned to loosing this one. The game was against a World Eater list that I had faced part of during my warm up games (which I will write up at some point) and that game was a resounding defeat. This is probably one of the main hard counters to my list, a pure close combat army with the ability for turn 1 charges across the board. Unlike this my warm up game, where I went very conservative with the deployment, i went aggressive and pushed up as far as I could, hoping for first turn to be able to push further up and try and claim some board control from the off. This didn’t happen and turn 1 went to the World Eaters and it was down hill from there on.

The list itself was quite compact, thanks in part to Angron, alongside two Masters of Execution, Jakhals, two Berserkers, two Exalted Eightbound, two Rhinos, Two Hellbrutes and a Maulerfiend. 

I wasn't bothered by the Jakhals or the Rhinos, everything else however, I was. Not this was possibly the worse matchup I could have. I want to push forward for board control and he wants to just charge stuff. What made things worse was the fact that my opponent got first turn and with his blessings of Khorne got the advance and charge. It was at this point I knew that my game was definitely over and it was now a case of trying to minimise the loss. 

End of movement turn 1 just before Angron charged.

The view from the trenches.

Turn 1 was not as bad as I thought it might be, with only Angron charging and the majority of the army staying back on objectives. Now it's at this point hat I should point out we played the mission wrong, as we did not remove the central objective, as the mission says to. I'll come back to this later when I reviewed the final score but needless to say, it put me at a disadvantage for the game. 


Turn 2 onwards it was mostly a case of trying to keep Angron at bay and keep him away from my home on active, which I managed to do but I failed with the berserkers who disembarked from the central rhino. 

The berserkers who cased me the most problems

I was sensible in some respects, not shooting the hellbrutes unless they didn't have anything to shoot back at or I managed to destroy them, I forgot about the berserkers blood surge though and shot at them, only to have them surge forward and into combat with one of my units, a unit that was supposed to be move blocking them, that they then minced in combat, ready to charge forward their turn, which they did, in to my command squad.


The game carried on that way. The only thing I had going for me was I was recycling units at a rate of knots, at least a unit a turn, as had pulled his exalted eightbound back toward his deployment zone by deep striking and brining reserves in that end. However, I was still having a hard time removing them, thank mostly to some command re-rolls. In the end the result was pretty much a forgone conclusion from the get go but I think I did alrigh, as this was the only game on the first day my opponent didn't score 100 points and technically he shouldn't have scored 90.


 As you can see the game ended 32 to 90 but if we had played the game correctly, it would have ended up just 32 to 75, still a crushing defeat but  not quite as crushing! 

The main issue, apart from playing the mission wrong, was that I just couldn't get out of my deployment zone and even with deep striking units and the reinforcements stratagem I just couldn't claim any real board control, which is what I need to do. The other point to note about this game is that my opponent went on to win the tournament, so can't complain to much about getting beaten here!