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!