1k game 2

 After game 1, game 2 was a bit of a relief. This was more of the type of games I had been hoping for, with a very quirky list! 

The guard list I was facing was one Basilisk and lots of troops! And I mean lots! There was at least 120 of them!

I was really worried that I was going to struggle to actually get through all the bodies and he was just going to rampage all over me and bog me down with sheer numbers and for a some parts of the battle field, that's exactly what did happen!

The long fight!

One area where this happened was in the centre where two of my dreadnought were. Both ended up in combat with a 20 man squad of guardsmen and while they did not take much damage, a couple of wounds a piece, it took a long time for them to get through the guard as well! With just 5 attacks hitting on 3's it took a long time to chew through 20 guardsmen. 

The rhino had a similar problem, as it got swamped on an objective and spent much of the game just trying to squash guardsmen, rather unsuccessfully!

The Rogue Trader and Voidsmen again did very little, just sitting on the back field objective chilling. They probably could have done something this game but holding my home objective was good enough. I had thought about splitting the squads and running the voidsmen up the table but decided to just let the Deathwatch get on with it. 

This was a really fun game, with both of us just having fun and not worrying about who was winning or scoring cards or more accurately stopping the opponent scoring. 

The game very much swung in my favour towards the end but to be honest, if I had lost I wouldn't have minded at all, this was probably the best game of the weekend and my opponent was really in the spirit of this tournament, silly list and zero shits given. 

1k game 1

 The first game of the 1k tournament was against a pretty strong marines list, imperial fists based with a redemptor and balistis dreadnought and lots of gravis armoured marines. 

I knew as soon as I saw this, that it was going to be a hard game. This was basically a cut down version of the main tournament list and I had very little that could take down the dreads and T5 bodies.

Deployment

I decided to just go all in and spit my forces, infantry on one flank, dreads on the other. All I was going for in this game was to have a bit of fun. 

Lots and lots of gravis

The clash on the right with the vets and gravis marines was only ever going to go one way but I threw them in and they actually did better than I thought, however, three wounds a piece is a lot to chew through. 

I set some targets during the game, mainly taking down the two fists dreadnoughts, as I thought that might actually be achievable. The fact that the first HK missile completely fluffed was not a good start!

I did manage to take down one and almost got the other down, it being on three wounds by the end of the game. 

I did end up loosing one of the dreads to the eradicators and their melta rifles but over all, I think they did well. 

The game itself ended on turn 4, and the gap in the score was only going to get bigger, so I wasn't to disappointed! My opponent was a nice fella although he did take a few smoke breaks!

As you can see from the score sheet, I was loosing in all areas and unless there was a great draw of card for my last round, that wasn't going to change. I was happy with how the game went and was looking forward to another game at this point. 

1k Sunday list

 So with the main Northern Invasion tournament over and done with, we moved on to the 1000 point fun tournament, and I decided to go something a little different. Enter the Deathwatch. 

This army had one simple core to it, Boxnoughts. Yep, I have three old skool Boxnoughts, and I wanted to run them. No they are not very good but I don't care, it's supposed to be a fun little tournament. So once I had the there Boxnoughts, I added some troops and transports and filled out the rest of the points some allies;

FACTION KEYWORD: Imperium - Adeptus Astartes - Deathwatch

DETACHMENT: Black Spear Task Force (Kill Teams)

TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 995pts

ALLIED UNITS: Agents of the Imperium

WARLORD: Watch Captain Artemis

CHARACTER

1x Watch Captain Artemis - 1x Hellfire Extremis, 1x Master-crafted power weapon, Warlord

BATTLELINE

5x Deathwatch Veterans - 2x Power weapon, 1x Black Shield blades, 2x Deathwatch thunder hammer, 2x Astartes shield

5x Deathwatch Veterans - 4x Close combat weapon, 2x Deathwatch shotgun, 1x Frag cannon, 1x Infernus heavy bolter, 1x Combi-weapon, 1x Xenophase blade

OTHER DATASHEETS

1x Dreadnought - 1x Dreadnought Combat Weapon, 1x Storm Bolter, 1x Multi-melta

1x Dreadnought - 1x Close combat weapon, 1x Missile Launcher, 1x Twin Lascannon

1x Dreadnought - 1x Dreadnought Combat Weapon, 1x Storm Bolter, 1x Assault Cannon

2x Rhino - 2x Armoured Tracks, 2x Hunter-killer missile, 2x Storm Bolter

ALLIED UNITS

4x Rogue Trader Entourage - 1x Rogue Trader - 1x Household pistol, 1x Monomolecular cane-rapier, 1x Death Cult Assassin - 1x Dartmask, 1x Death Cult power blade, 1x Lectro-maester - 1x Close combat weapon, 1x Voltaic pistol, Lectro-maester, 1x Rejuvenant Adept - 1x Close combat weapon, 1x Laspistol, Healing Serum

6x Voidsmen-at-Arms - 1x Artificer shotgun, 5x Close combat weapon 4x Lasgun, 4x Laspistol, 1x Voidsman rotor cannon, 1x Canid

So, the plan is pretty simple, Boxnoughts trundle forward shooting and punching stuff, while the rhinos with the vets flank. The Rogue trader and voidsmen hold the home objective. I was not aiming for anything other than having fun and throwing the Boxnoughts in to as many scraps as I could. I could have taken a lot more powerful list, including a baneblade and guardsmen or knight and admech lists, but I haven't played with the Boxnoughts yet and I feel that their time (and the Deathwatch vets) is limited. 

As it happened, things went rather well!

Eagle Knights Vs Ultramarines 1000pts

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

We played Deadlock with Vanguard Strike Deployment. Now I decided to keep the death guard on the table again, although it was a bit of a gamble as I wanted to go first but we had an equal number of units and my opponent had started deploying first. In the end I managed to win the roll off and get first turn. With this I played Forlorn Fury and charged the Death Company forward ready for a first turn charge!

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.

1000pt Eagle Knights Vs Eldar

So this was my second game with the Eagle Knights, played last weekend. It was a 1000 point game against an Eldar army. It was looking like it was going to be a good game but things worked out badly in the end, mostly due to errors on my part. Ill go in to the errors later but first the army lists.

My list consisted of a supreme command detachment of a Captain with jump pack, Librarian with jump pack and Lieutenant with jump pack (spotting a theme here?). I also had a Vanguard Detachment with a Chaplain with jump pack, a 6 man Death Company with 3 plasma pistols and 3 power mauls and jump packs, a 5 man Death Company with 2 Thunder Hammers with jump packs, a 5 man Vanguard squad with 2 sets of power claws, a power fist and 2 power axes, all with jump packs and finally a 10 man Assault Squad also with jump packs.

My opponent had a Aultach on Skyrunner, a Farseer, 3 Dire Avengers, 2x 5 man squads and a 10 man squad, a 5 man Fire Dragons squad, a 10 man Striking Scorpions squad and a 10 man Dark Reapers squad.

Turn 1

Despite finishing setting up first, we decided to go with the Chapter Approved type roll off and I managed to secure first turn. I had decided to keep my Death Company squads, Librarian and Chaplain in to reserve and with first turn I decided to drop them in behind the main threat, the Dark Reapers. This was my first mistake and probably my biggest! Dark Reapers are a big threat, with the -2 ap missiles, long range and there always hit on a 3 rule. I wanted them gone quick and decided to throw the 6 man DC squad, Librarian and Chaplain at them. However, I got hit with Forewarned, a very powerful stratagem. This enabled the Dark Reapers to fire at the DC squad, wiping out 5 of the 6 members, leaving just one with a power maul. The Librarian and Chaplain remained, but the majority of the hitting power was gone. I still went for the charge but only the Chaplain got in. This was the only part of the plan that went right, as the Chaplain was wearing the Angles Wings jump pack, meaning no overwatch from the Dark Reapers and in the ensuing fight, he managed to put down 3 Reapers on his own. Unfortunately, the as the rest of the squad failed there charges, including the other DC squad going in on one of the Avenger squads, the first turn carnage turned out to be exactly that, just it was BA blood that was spilled and not Eldar.

In the Eldar turn I got hit with a second stratagem that pretty much finished me. Even though I had failed to eliminate the Dark Reapers, I though that I had at least stopped them shooting but no, my opponent playeea second stratagem, enabling the Reapers to fire, wiping out the Chaplain and last DC marine, with the newly arrived unit of Friends Dragons (who had been set-up in the Webway) turned the librarian in to dust. The second squad of DC marines also fell to the combined fire of the Avengers and newly arrived Striking Scorpions.

At the start of the bottom of turn 1

Just before the carnage started again.

My remaining forces at the end of turn 1

The Eldar forces at the end of turn 1

Turn 2

By this point the battle plan was in tatters. The DC should have pounded the Reapers to dust and now be starting on the squad of Avengers in the far building and the chaplain and Librarian should be chasing down the Farseer and Aultach. Instead I had nothing in range to threaten any Eldar models. So I decided to just throw caution to the wind and go for it, using my last command points to jump my vanguard vets forward, this time making sure that they were out of site of the Reapers. They managed to get in to combat, but due to some rather rubbish dice rolls, I managed not to wipe out the Reapers!

The end of the top of turn 2 and the Vanguard vets are looking a little isolated.

The view of my deployment area and there isn't much left.

You can see one of my assault marines combat squads moving up the table. They just failed to reach cover in the central building.

The Eldar didn't hold off on the punishment and while the Dark Reapers couldn't fire after falling back, they didn't need to, as the combined fire of the Aultach and Avengers took out the last two vanguard vets. The Fire Dragons moved to capture and hold an objective and the Avengers and Scorpions on my left flank took out the assault squad on that flank.

Bottom of turn 2 and it's looking dire.

Turn 3 and I was really in trouble. I had half and assault squad, a captain and a lieutenant. I moved up to see what I could do, which wasn't a lot. In reply the Eldar dropped there last unit in, a full unit of Dire Avengers. These dropped in to the centre and tried to kill off my last units. Fortunately they failed, everything else just moved up to prepare for the killing blow.

Turn 4

I knew that this was going to be the final turn and I decided that I really didn't have many options, so i did the proper thing and charged everything in tot he only unit I could, the newly arrived Dire Avengers. The assault marines went in first and managed to survive overwatch, taking just 1 wound, the captain followed suit. The lieutenant however, was just to far away and failed his 10 inch charge. The Angles did there stuff taking out the full unit with ease, the assault marines taking down half a dozen or so and the captain making short work of the rest. They were however now out in the open and exposed. So the scorpions and Farseer finished off the captain and a few of the marines whole the fire dragons toasted the lieutenant and the last remaining marines. And with this the game ended in a crushing defeat.

The final result. Lots of Eldar and no Blood Angles.

The final score at the end of turn 4. The red dice is mine.

In the end the Eldar lost just a Dire Avengers squad and 7 Dark Reapers, while I was tabled. Not really what I would call a good result under any circumstances. So what went wrong? Well, quite a lot really.

The big mistake was deep striking all the death company. I should have used the Forlorn Fury stratagem and placed the death company on the table. Of I had done this I could have moved one squad right up the table withing just a couple of inches of the Reapers and then used the Descent of Angles stratagem to get the Chaplain with angles wings in, denying the Reapers overwatch and also stopping the forwarded stratagem from destroying anything. I should also have moved everything else up in the first movement phase as well, rather than sitting back and waiting for the deep striking units to do there stuff.

The second big error was then throwing the vanguard vets forward unsupported, this was a desperate move really in an attempt to destroy the only unit with the capability to out range me, it didn't really work and while I learned from the first failed attempt by placing them out of line of sight before charging, i really should have known better than to just throw them in.

Other minor mistakes include not shooting in the fire shooting phase as I was so taken a back with the destruction of the death company squad that i forgot all about it. I also didn't really have any plans other than plan A, and I really should have. Always have a back up plan or at least don't put everything in to just one option.

I think the real lesson that I learnt from this game though is that the list doesn't really work. Yes you can make it work but it lacks a lot of options. It's a short range assault army and all it takes is to loose one unit and it all falls apart very quickly. I think that you could play this very differently and have some success, but as a standard list it doesn't work. If I was playing a 2000 point game, joing this up with a 1000 point guard list would be excellent, as the guard would provide the long range fire and the Angles the short ranged assault, plus you'd have CP's to spend. For my next game, I'm going with a very different list, back to a similar list To my first game and bringing back the tactical and devastator squads.

Christmas Tournament

The clubs Christmas Tournament was held last weekend, and we managed to get two games in, although only to turn 3. There are a lot of people saying that 8th games are supposed to be shorter but so far I haven't seen that so much. I think that maybe because I'm not as familiar with the rules for 8th as I was for 7th, as was proved during the tournament, when a few rules queries came up and I was wrong on one or two of them. I have to confess that I did not take any pictures at all that day, I completely forgot until the end of the first game and then forgot again until halfway through the second game. As such this will not be a full battle report but just a quick talk through about the games and the tournament overall.

We played 1000 point games on a 4x4 table, as we have found that 6x4 really is to big for games of that size. The games were also custom missions, i would imagine there was a fair bit of influence from AoS but can't be sure. There were four objectives, placed with one in front of each deployment zone, in the centre of the board and them one on each side, halfway between each deployment zones. Make sense? Points were scored for each objective held at the end of your turn and also for the standard 3, first blood, line breaker and slay the warlord. In addition, all troops were granted objective secured and we were using pre-chapter approved points values. A simple game of grab the objectives, what could go wrong?

Well, to ensure nothing did go wrong, i took a lot of troops, 6 to be precise, all as part of a brigade detachment. This may have been a little mean, as it basically meant i had a lot more models than most, about 82, compared so some armies, like my Grey Knights opponent who had 16. It also meant i had significantly more troop choices than any other players and also, more criticality​, more command points, a total of 14. This was compared to just 6 and 4 from my opponents.

I have to say, i did feel a bit like "That Guy" when we first turned up, as there was talk of how many command points people were able to get and when i mention i had 14, they all stared, slightly disbelieving. It is one of the few benefits of a guard army, that you can pack in a lot in to such few points. Granted, i was compromised in many departments, with limited anti-armour and limited mobility for a lot of the army. He is my list, then I'll talk about the plan.

Cadains Brigade detachment

Creed
Company commander with bolt pistol and power sword
Psycher
3 platoon commanders, 2 with bolt guns and chain swords and 1 with a bolt pistol and chain sword
Ratlings squad with 8 ratlings
5 infantry squads, 2 with vox and autocannons, 1 with autocannons, 2 with grenade launchers
MT scion squad with 5 men including 2 hotshot volley guns
3 Scout Sentinels with multilasers
3 HWT's, 2 with mortars and one with lascannons
Valkyrie with MRP's and multilasers.

So that was the list, made for two reasons. One, maximise the number of command points I could get. With this list that mean 14. 3 for being battle forged, 9 for the Brigade and 2 for Creed! The second point was to maximise the number of troop choices, as the mission revolved around capturing objectives and all troops got objective secured. I figured that most people would be looking at best a Battalion detachment, but more likely either the Vanguard, Spearhead or Outrider detachments, which would give most people between 4 and 6 command points. As it turned out, one player had 6 points with a Battalion and two had 4 points, both with Vanguard detachments. Only one player was playing from an index and so the extra command points really did show themselves to be extremely useful during the games, really proving the point about how valuable command points are.

The games:

Game 1
vs Death Guard (Battalion - 6cp)

My first opponent brought a Death Guard list, consisting of;

a Lord (warlord)
a Sorcerer
Three Plague marine squads, all with 10 men, two had plasma guns in and one had a flamer
and the special DG Terminators in a 7 man squad, one with heavy flamer.

I was initially worried about this game, mostly due to the Terminators. However, I had a plan, one that I was pretty confident in. After deployment, which surprisingly my opponent finished deploying first!, I placed my Ratlings forward of my line in cover and then scouted my sentinels forward, pushing them up as far as I could. This extended the range at which the Termies could deep strike significantly, although I made a small mistake which cam back to haunt me. I had pushed up one sentinel on the left and two on the right, going for the two objectives in the middle of the board and planning on swinging the last one around to take the rear objective, which worked out very well in the end. This however left the Ratling exposed in the middle and the Termies dropped in, shot and then charged the Ratling, killing them all off, before finally consolidating on to a infantry squad in my lines. That was first blood to my opponent and no chance to get any shots in on the Termies. However, with some careful use of orders, I managed to fall back and take down 4 of them in the next turn, seriously denting there combat effectiveness, so much so that that did little in the next two turn, being tied up by a couple of infantry squads, while the rest of my army went about removing the rest of his army. One squad of Plague Marines managed to survive intact, by hiding in some ruins, but they were unable to take many points, just 1 point over three turns. My opponents other points came from the Termies on turn 1 and claiming the left hand objective for two turns, although both times I managed to re-claim them in my turn.

While the Termies did little after turn 1 and the right hand squad did little hiding in cover, the left objective was hotly contested, with two squads of Plague Marines going for it. Unfortunately for my opponent, he was directly in line of my Lascannon Squad, which after removing a number of termies first turn, set to work destroying one of the Marine squads over the next two. The Vengeance for Cadia stratagem came in priceless this game, giving my lascannons, much needed re-rolls, meaning that I was removing at least 2 models a turn, every turn.

At the end of turn 3, I still had 4 troop squads on the board, along with a significant portion of the rest of my army. My opponent only had 3 Termies, a Squad of 1 marine, a squad of 2 marines and a full squad of marines, along with his Lord and Sorcerer. If we had gone on to a further turn or two, I would have been looking at increasing my lead and gaining more points, as although he probably would have finished off the squad on the left objective to claim that, my Scions had dropped in to the back line to claim line breaker, but I would have dropped them further forward and gone for his warlord. I would have ignored the right hand marine squad, probably giving away 2 points, but would have put everything in to the 3 marines and warlord on the left. Hopefully giving me 3 points, two for the objective and slay the warlord, along with hopefully being able to claim line breaker. I think that this would have resulted in a 9 to 15 victory. As it was we ended at turn 3 and the result was a 10 (including line breaker) to 6 (including line breaker and first blood) victory.

Game 2
vs Grey knights (Vanguard - 4cp)

My next opponent was playing Grey Knights, bringing a very tough but small army consisting of;

a Dreadknight lord, of whatever its called, with a 12 shot cannon and a 20 shot cannon thing,
a strike squad with 5 men, all with storm bolters and power swords
three Paladin squads, all with 3 men, all with storm bolters and halberds
and a razorback with twin lascannons

For some reason I was less worried about this game, probably due to the low model count and being on a high from winning the last battle. As it turned out, it was a lot more tactical and hard fought then the last battle. I started with the same tactic and pushed my Sentinels up, but this time I pushed them up in a line across the board, protecting my Ratlings who were sheltering in a building in the centre of the board. Although my opponent managed to finish setting up first, well with just 6 units that's not surprising really!, but I stole the initiative, pushing up even further and claiming all the objectives the first turn. This was a great start but when the Paladins and Dreadknight came in things got a little more difficult. He moved one squad on to his objective and they remained there all game, claiming 3 points over the game with no contest. The other two squads dropped in each side, with the Dreadknight dropping in on my left. Not everything went his way as he failed his charge with the right squad, but the left one demolished the Sentinel there. I had forgotten that GK can spam smite all over the place, but at least it only does one damage. What did hurt was the twin lascannons, which went to work on the Valkyrie, removing it in turn two, after having crippled it in turn 1.

During the game, I decided to go for point and sacrificed a number of units in order to do so, while still chipping away at the paladin squads. By the end of turn three, I had been able to remove the squad on the right objective, mostly thanks to the Ratling and their sniper rifles, but had only removed one model and one wound on the left squad, while the DreadKnight had only taken a couple of wounds. The rear Paladin squad was completely unharmed. The Strike squad on the other hand, had decided to use Gate of Infinity on turn two and had subsequently failed there charge, even loosing a man to overwatch from the Mortar squad. The remaining four members were removed during the next turn, although the Dreadknight did remove a mortar squad in return! At the end of turn 3, there was still a significant portion of the GK's on the board, with a full squad of Paladins and one squad with 2 remaining, the Dreadknight and the Razorback. I on the other had was down to just 3 infantry squads, only one of which were complete and the Scions, a mortar squad, a lascannon squad, the ratlings and 3 platoon commanders, 2 company commander and my psyker. So I had lost significantly more of my army. At this point in the game I had two objectives covered and my scions were claiming line breaker again, giving me a slight win at 10 points, including Line breaker, to my opponents 9, including line breaker and first blood.

We played another turn for fun as we had the time, things did not go well for my opponent however. He had moved his Dreadknight right up to my lines going for my warlord, however, I got in first and in a stroke of luck, cast smite on an 11 which was not denied, causing 5 mortal wounds on the Dreadknight, which was then targeted by the Lascannons and finished off quite convincingly. In reply he did finished off my Scions, however, if we had been playing for 5 turns, I think things would have been a bit different. My opponent would still have been going for my Warlord, as he said as much, however, I would have dropped my Scions in on the left, aiming to take out the two remaining Paladins on the left. I believe I could have achieved this, maybe not in turn 3, but definitely in turn 4. This along with slay the warlord, as I would still have thrown everything I needed to at it, would have left me with control of 3 objectives, for at least a turn, if not two. I think that if we had of played out 5 turns, I would have ended the game winning about 15 or 16 to 10 or 11. As it was, the game ended with a 10, including line breaker, to 9, including first blood and line breaker.

So with two games played we totalled up the scores for the day. I had two victories, giving me 20 points, the Death Guard player had a victory and a defeat, giving him 16 points, third was the Grey Knights player with two Defeats, but claiming 14 points, while the only non-codex army in the group, the Tau player, came in with a victory and a defeat but with only 9 or 10 points.

At the end of the tournament we were talking about the games and it came up that the DG player probably would have tabled the Tau player if there game had lasted until the final round, meaning that he would have been able to pick up at least an additional 8 points but probably 10, for slay the warlord and line breaker. I wonder what this would have done to the scores, as I reckoned that that would have put him on 18 to 20 points for the last game, where I reckon I would have ended up with about 15 or 16 points in my second game. Seeing as in the first game we played each other, ending up as a 10 to 6 victory to me, this would have put the scores at around 25/26 to me and 24/26 to the DG player. This only takes the first game to turn 3 though, so what would have happened if we had gone to turn 5? Well, I would definitely have held on to one objective for two turns, and should have been able to hold on to a second as well, giving me 4 points, where as my opponent would have only been guaranteed one objective for 2 turns and there for 2 points. With luck I could have got slay the warlord, but would probably have to have given up line breaker, as I would have had to use my scions to achieve this. Overall I think that the first game would have ended up something around a 15 to 9 victory, meaning that the overall result would have been along the lines of 30 points to me and 28 points to the DG player. While this would have put us quite a long way in front of the other two players, it means that it would have been close between us and that a point of two either way for us could have completely changed the overall result. It is a shame that we didn't get to play both games all the way through, or even all three games part way through, but I guess were all still learning the rules and so it take us a little bit longer to play still. Maybe next year we'll have it nailed down a bit more!

The tournament was a fun little event, with only 4 players, which is about half the number of 40k players at the club, so not really a bad turn out. I am hoping to get a game with the other player in the new year and complete all three matches, mostly just out of curiosity. Anyway, its almost Christmas, and so I don't think that I will be posting for a week or so, while the festivities occur, so I'll see you all in the NEW YEAR.

Friday night game

Last weekend I took a trip up north to play a friend over at his house and to give his tournament list a run out. It also happened to be his first game of 8th. The tournament, Northern Invasion 5, is a 1000 point no lords of war tournament and I had decided to play the 14 command point list that I wrote about in a previous post. My opponent was playing a monster heavy tyranids list.

For a quick recap, my list included Creed, 2 company commanders and a MT prime, a MT command squad, 2 commissars, 5 infantry squad, a MT squad, 3 sentinels, 2 lascannon heavy weapons squads and finally a wyvern.

My opponents list consisted of a Brood Lord, Old One Eye, a Malanthrope, 15 genesteelers, 2 ripper swarms, 2 carnifex's and a trygon. Quite a small and compact army, but a hard one to take down, with lots of big tough multi-wound models.


Setup

Setup was simple, with the board being only 4x4. This did give me a bit of a problem, as it bunched up my troops more than I would have liked, but ultimately it didn't make much of a difference to the game. We also used the mission setup from last year, with 3 objectives across the centre of the board (with one dead centre) and one objective each to place anywhere on the board. The centre ones would be worth 2 points with the other worth either 1 or 3 points, 1 point for holding yours and 3 for holding the enemies. This worked alongside kill points (one for each unit) and the standard first blood, line breaker and slay the warlord.

The board. A 4x4 3d affair.

The tryanids deployment, 5 monsters.

The guard deployment and a few more than 5 models!

Turn 1

The game started well for me, as despite having about twice as many drops during setup, I managed to steal the initiative. Its abouthere that my luck changed. I moved up the sentinels to take the objectives early, trying to force my opponent in to focusing on them early in the game. With very little in shooting range first turn and some of what was in range not in line of sight, my choices were limited. However, my lascannons were all in range and could draw line of sight on to old one eye, however, they failed to do the job, only managing to take 7 wounds between 6 lascannons! There shooting didn't improve through the rest of the game.

Minimal damage

After a bit of a disastrous start, things didn't get much better. The trygon popped up with the genestealers, who promptly charged the sentinel sitting on one of the objectives, although the trygon failed his charge on the other sentinel on the center objective. The Steelers did there work on the sentinel but left it alive on one wound. Everything else moved forward.

Genestealers charge.

Turn 2

This turn started with a tactical withdrawal, namely the sentinel in combat with the stealers. This left them open to fire from the wyvern, who really should have done better. With 4d6 shots, I should have been shooting at least 12 a turn, as it was I didn't get double figures on 2 turns and was only above average on one turn.

Stealers feel the pain.

In other shooting, the lascannons failed again. Shooting at the trygon and failing to put it down. With 12 wounds, 6 lascannons with a possible output of 36 damage should of been enough, but no, whilst it did damage, it want enough.

bottom the bottom of turn two.

In response to my attempt to wipe out the Stealers, they moved forward and assaulted one of my infantry squads, along with the Broodlord(?)

The Guardsmen stand and receive the charge......

And promptly die.

The only bonus was that the stealers removed so many guardsmen that the Broodlord ended up 5 inches from the closest guardsmen and so was unable to strike when his turn came. As a result, the squad was not wiped out in combat. On the other side of the table, things were not going quite so well. The central Sentinel was destroyed by the combined attacks of the Malanthrope and the Trygon, while the far Sentinel was reduced down to a couple of wounds.

The sentinel pilot bravely stands his ground

But dies to a flurry of claws

Also forgot to mention, at the end of the movement pahse a squad of Rippers decided to pop up on the objective that the stealers had just vacated and another squad had appeared on the central objective. This central squad in particular were to become a thorn in my side for the next couple of turns. 

Turn 3

At this point in the game, i'm starting to get nervous. The big monsters were steadily advancing with little I could do about it and I was loosing control of all the objectives across the centre of the board.
I decided it was time to throw caution to the wind a little and push up. I pushed up on the right to move towards the centre objective and take out the rippers. I also decided to push forward to try and take on the centre monsters. Again, my lascannons massively underperformed, but they did manage to finally manage to kill of the trygon. It had only taken about 15 lascannon shots to strip 12 wounds or so, Crack shooting by the guard as always. At this point in the game my memory gets a little fuzzy. I know that the stealers were removed this turn, but I cant remember if it was because I fell back from combat or if my unit was destroyed and the stealers were removed in the next assault phase. I have a feeling that they were destroyed by shooting, which would mean that my guys fell back, but I really don't remember. Oh, and those rippers, yeah, two squads shooting with orders removed 1 base from the centre squad and I did a couple of wounds to the bottom squad. Not great.

Some time at the top of turn 3

I do know that in reply the right hand sentinel was finally destroyed after lasting a lot longer than it had any right to. Apart from that I cant remember what happened.

Turn 4

This turn I had to try and either hold up or kill off some of the monsters, with the lascannons again under performing and 6 of them didn't managed to finish off another of the monsters up on the top, I cant honestly remember which one they targeted, all the tyranid monsters look that same to me! Lots of shooting from the squads at the top tried to remove the rippers off the objective and failed. This was a problem for me, as I had hoped to drop in my scions on the objective, to enable me to bring both the melta guns and all the plasma guns to bare on the tyranids, in the end they dropped down further away and were unable to target what I wanted to. The infantry squads then went and charged the Malanthrope and Broodlord. Unfortunately they weren't very successful.

After the charge

After combat

The Tyranid turn was pretty short, mostly due to the fact that he had no shooing and most of the monsters were either in combat or charged into combat. It was nonetheless a bloody round, with a number of guardsmen slaughtered.

Post combat 

At the end of turn 4, the tyranids were right up in my lines, with 5 monsters still alive and 3 of them in pretty healthy condition. I was confident that I could claim objectives, but with the amount of units that I had lost, I was unsure if I could actually win the battle.

Turn 5

It was all or nothing now, and so I went all in. The remaining squad at the bottom of the table moved up and advanced, later they received an order to move again, and with a second good advance roll they moved up to capture the objective, after the wyvern and scions had removed the last remaining rippers. The last squads on the right flank charged in to the various monsters, or continued their assaults, all of which were reduced to nothing but mush. I cant remember who finished off the Broodlord, but I have a feeling it was the heavy bolter from the Wyvern.

Just before the squad advanced

The last ripper

The last ripper in the centre had become a problem and had cause me so many problems. In the end I had to resort to shooting it with overcharged plasma guns to remove it, after I had moved up to just within the 3" range with one of the Scions. Two obliterated the ripper in the centre and two shot at the rippers at the bottom before the squad there advanced. The centre scions just moved on to the centre objective, forgoing any shooting to capture the objective. 

3 central objectives claimed

Scions moving on to objectives

The last change of the Wyvern

The wyvern also charged in to one of the tyranid monsters, in an attempt to stop it moving to capture my objective. Which in some respect worked. Unfortunately, a different monster, the Malanthrope charged in to one of the Heavy Weapons Squads, after finishing off my infantry squad during my turn and then consolidated down on to the objective anyway. 

End game

So, at the end of the game I held 2 of the three 2 point objectives and also my opponents objective for 3 points. I did however loose my objective at the very end of the game, giving away 1 point and letting my opponent gain 3 points. The Tyranids also held one of the 2 point objectives, meaning that objectives wise, I won the primary objectives 7 to 5. I also claimed first blood and slay the warlord and well as line breaker, where as my opponent only manage to claim line breaker, meaning that I won on the tertiary objectives 3 to 1.

The centre of the board, bottom and centre objective held by me, the top objective held by the tyranids. The objective in the ruins held by the Scions, was actually my opponents objective and worth more points.

Unfortunately, the Malanthrope (the black base) holds my objective

Meaning that I was sitting on a 10 to 6 lead at this point. I was at this point however, that things went slightly wrong. The secondary objectives were based on kill points, I had wiped out 6 units but my opponent has wiped out a good chunk of my army. In total he managed to kill 11 units. This gave him 17 points, compared to my 16. So a Tyranid victory, 17 to 16. It was a lot closer than I though that it would be but in the end, if we had of played on further it would likely have ended up worse for me as I had nothing to really answer to the monstrous creatures. Luckily the tournament is fixed at 5 rounds and also it was gone 1am when we finished round 5 and past my bed time.

While I think that I played well, I would have changed a few things, namely that I would have dropped in my scions earlier, dealt with the rippers earlier and then been able to bring the plasma guns to bare on there intended targets, something I was unable to do, as I left it to long and the rippers got in the way. Also I think I should have used more command points, as I ended up with quite a few points left. In some respect I think that 14 points is too many for this game with the limited stratagems, but with the release of the new codex that will change.

I have also learnt since we played this game that the set up of the tournament will be changing, with just 4 fixed objectives and with Slay the Warlord, First Blood and Line Breaker, no kill points. So working on the new setup, chances are I would have won the game 7 to 5, but that's really a guess, as I think we probably would have played slightly differently, due to the differences in the mission setup.