I know this is from a while back, but I've only just got round to writing this up. So last Sunday we went to a 2000 pt single FOC tournament. Wanting to do something fresh and take a break from guard I took these guys (click here for army list):
Note: this is going to be less indepth than I usually do mostly because I'm lazy and also because can't remember all the detail. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much and wanted to find out what worked and what didn't in 6th considering I've only played one game with the smurfs in this edition, and the one before that was sometime in the first half of 5th. Here's some of the other armies.
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| Paul, persuaded by me, took a break from daemons and took Blood Angels (well and also he wanted to try out new Tau and couldn't be bothered to finish a soul grinder and another squad of pink horrors he'd bought) |
Game 1 - vs Ravenwing
He had a whole load of bikes, meltas, plasmas, lots of multi-melta attack bikes (like 12-15 in total) a darkshroud (I think that's what it's called), sammael, librarian on bike and captain on bike (yes i just realised that's illegal and has 3 hqs but oh well). I think he won the roll off to choose sides and I won the roll off to deploy and took turn 1. Deployed most of my guys centrally and infiltrated the scouts up (probably a bad idea). Predator was on the left. Opponent didn't seize and I don't think we had night. My warlord trait was -1 to opponent's reserves and his was like furious charge in my deployment zone or something. His army was basically spread out across the table. Oh and the mission was Purge the alien.
Turn 1 started off well with most stuff driving up. Dreadnought drop pod scattered away but the tactical squad hit the target. Kill off the 2 bike squads (1 was with his captain who is the warlord) and leave the warlord with one wound. First blood and two kill points and I'm off to what seems like a good start.
His turn and the whole army repositions, with lots of turbo-boosting on my left flank. Right flank stays still so it can shoot. Land raider is exploded, termies spill out. Lose a termie to shooting and lose most of my tacticals, who are then assaulted but hold.
Turn 2, the empty pod comes in but the talons do not. Come to rescue the tacticals with the termies but am a bit greedy and multi-charge not really killing enough and leaving the bike captain and two squads with 1 guy left in each. Another bike squad hit and runs away. Dreadnought does some shooting as does the vindicator and we clear out one or two more squads. Lead at this point is something like a solid 6-2 in my favour.
The ravenwing kill some scouts, explode the rhino and charge the tacticals and libby inside. Casualties are suffered on both sides.Termies continue a grinding combat and dreadnought is blown up by multi-meltas.
Eventually the talons come on and try to do some stuff but are soon shot down by twin-linked, cover ignoring plasmaguns (due to some psychic powers or smthg).
In the end turns, the opponent is able to wear me down and manages to hide killpoints of mostly attack bikes left on one wound. In the end I only had half a tactical squad left in the ruin where the thunderfire was. Opponent has 16 kps, linebreaker and warlord. I have about 11 and first blood. Loss in terms of points of stuff killed by a margin of about 400 and the end score is 16-4 to him.
Result was a bit meh, but the bikes are very fast and I did make a few mistakes, especially about what termies can do. Least valuable unit here? The predator. Spent the whole game trying to kill a bike or two and like put a wound on an attack bike for all it's efforts.
Both gave each other sportsmanship scores of 5/5 as they weren't limited to 1 time only unlike at the last tournament.
Game 2 against IG
He had:
CCS with master of the ordinance and I think plasmaguns and a regimental standard, chimera
Lots of infantry squads with flamers and autocannons
2 platoon command squads in chimeras with 4 flamers and one had a standard
2x Vendetta
Manticore
2x Leman Russ executioner with plasma sponsons
Aegis, quad gun
Quite a nasty list, but very static which could play to my advantage. For this match I decided to roll on telepathy with my librarian and got puppet master and psychic shriek, although maybe biomancy would have been better but this was still good.
Mission was the scouring. I set up 2 objectives in my deployment zone in ruins and took a gamble on one of them being a 2 or a 3 and putting my TFA with half a tactical squad there. The other objective I put up in the midfield so my scouts could infiltrate there/a tactical squad could come back to hold it and still be in the fight. His objectives were in or around his defence line. Most of my army remained central as I didn't know where he'd deploy.
Uncover the objectives and the one in my left ruin is a 1, the central one is a 3 and the one in my left is 1. My opponent from left to right has 4, 2, 3...
Night was on turn 1 and he didn't seize. First two drop pods come in and I blow up one executioner. I also take control of the manticore with puppet master and bomb the left flank putting damage on the other executioner, a chimera and kill 4 guys from an infantry squad (all of these were separate) who run away but not quite off the board. Dreadnought kills a few moer guys. Unfortunately in the excitement of this drop pod assault I forget to move all my other tanks and despite my opponent offering very kindly to let me do so, I feel the need to punish myself for this silly mistake and just flat out them instead.
Payback time and all the marines are killed off one way or another as is the librarian.
No reserves come in for a while and I proceed to move up, methodically removing transports/squads and making people flee. Guard ranks thin out a lot.
Eventually return shooting kills my dread and the first pod but we manage to reach enemy lines.
The termies assault the remaining executioner and a ccs and kill them to contest an objective. The Vendettas first ineffectually shoot at the land raider before turning their guns on the talons.
Tacticals reach the manticore to assault it with meltabombs and explode it killing lots of guardsmen in the process. At the end of my turn 4 we are told that we are running out of time, but I'm quite confident that I have it in the bag.
However, a sneaky move and 'emergency disembark' and a few flamers later and my scouts are killed in the middle and a pcs steals the objective... Still not sure how that worked but was told it was part of the rules. In any case that meant that I had first blood, linebreaker and a 2 point objective. He had a three pointer, a 2 pointer and slay the warlord. Making it 6-4 in his favour. I killed more points of his stuff but not enough to give me any points so 15-5 in his favour.
Quite disappointing but what can you do? I've stolen the win from people last turn before at tournaments so it's not like I can complain. It was a good game, but to be honest, even my opponnent admitted that had there been another turn I would have effectively swept his whole backfield. Just needed to not forget to move at the beginning of the game or had we played a bit faster this would have been an easy win.
Game 3 - Against Space Marines with Blood Angel allies.
He had:
Vulkan Hestan
10 sternguard with lots of combi-weapons in rhino
2x 10 tactical marines with meltas in rhinos
10 devastators, with 3 plasma cannons and a heavy bolter
5 sniper scouts with a missile launcher
10 man assault squad with meltas
Jump pack librarian
2 sanguinary priests
Aegis, quad gun
It was the Emperor's will and he got to pick sides and places his objective behind the aegis. Deployment was diagonal and I placed my objective in a ruin on the far left close to his objective thinking that for once everyone would be able to contribute to the fight. I fortified it and infiltrated my scouts there. I won the roll off for deployment and chose to go second. This would let me get last turn objective grabs and because of turn 1 night I would be able to easily weather his turn 1 firepower and still be able to get first blood with the pods coming down. Everything deployed centrally, which forced them into difficult terrain... and you know what happens with my tanks and difficult terrain... Predator was on the right flank, hoping to use it's superior range to fight from a distance.
For some reason I decided that it was a good idea to put the missile launcher scout and another plain dude up top... they quickly die but luckily the squad pass their morale.
My drop pods don't work so well this time scattering off target so I'm not able to use my flamers to max effect. I do however pop a rhino for first blood. Everyone tries to get into better shooting positions and in doing so, as expected my rhino and land raider BOTH immobilise themselves. Termies therefore get out and footslog. More shooting takes out a few assault maries and a few guys from the squad that was in the rhino.
Everyone gets out of their transports and pounds my marines. The termies eat lots of shots for minimal casaulties. Vindicator is exploded by assault squad meltaguns.
My librarian is assaulted but only wounded by clever challenging. However he is killed next turn as I charge in to save him with my termies. Talons come in and do a bit of shooting.
Eventually the asm assault the dreadnought and start losing a guy a turn in combat somehow even though they have fnp.
The full force of the enemy army shoots the assault termies and whittles them down. The thunderfire cannon is plasma cannoned to death.
On turn 4 my scouts are under threat of vulcan and approaching marines and although there are no scouts left of my opponent's he has the remains of a tactical squad nearby. In comes a cunning plan. I get my tacticals out of their rhino and run forwards. On the same turn my rhino manages to repair itself...
My opponent is really confused by this and proceeds to kill one of the combat squads with plasma cannons (I accidentally got too close). He also finishes off my scouts but is still an inch or two away from the objective. My tacticals run but don't quite make it (they'll be in position to contest/score next turn). A drop pod, the remaining storm talon in hover mode, the land raider, the rhino and the predator all shoot at the remaining three marines on the enemy objective, and manage to kill them! Suddenly it's looking like it's going to be a draw. We roll a die to continue and it's a one. Game ends. Neither of us hold an objective, and I have first blood, opponent has warlord and is just outside of linebreaker. He's killed more of my guys but not enough to give him extra points so it's a 10-10 draw.
He gives me 5 sportsmanship, making end with the max amount once again. Got a nice painting score as well to let me finish 9th out of 14 despite not winning a game... If I'd won against the guard I'd have been 5th (although I'd have probably versed a harder opponent in the last game so whatever).
Thoughts to take away:
- Land raiders are too costly but good, probably need to swap out my redeemer though, probably for a crusader
- Assault termies are good but I guess regular termies are just as good
- Need some sniper scouts. Tacticals get the job done, scouts do it for half the price
- Need to replace the melta drop tacticals with sternguard
- Predators are crap
- The twin-ac dread was actually very good!
- I like drop pods, it's a lot more fun playing a fast moving army - I mean you actually get to assault stuff! Definitely not going back to pure guneline armies
So up next it'll probably be Space Marines allied with Guard from now on, basically my usual guard but use drop pods for the mobile special weapons. Might fiddle with Tau for a bit but if I can get my Dark Eldar in decent shape then I'll definitely be using them.
In any case it was a lot of fun and I'm back to liking my Ultramarines again! Btw Paul came 12th and Ilya came 11th both having won one and lost the others with Ilya running some random craziness of orks proxying as grey knights and borrowing some of my guard too. So Ilya will probably be starting a new army soon.
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