Adepticon 2014: The Friendly Part 2

Sexy Beasts waiting for war

Battle Report: 1500pts. Chaos vs Inbred Dogs

 By: Chambers

Hello my name is Chambers, long time reader first time poster...

Chosen1 (not chaos) decided that his blog, other than being horfically slow to update, needed to be a little bit classier.  Yea about that, not sure why he let me in.  Maybe his plan is to make every else look better by comparison.

At any rate ‘ere we go…

10,000 years of "keeping the blood pure" has not been kind to the Imperial side of the family

The local league is currently running at 1500 points, which works out great for me as it gives me a chance to play and get used to my Adepticon Friendly list, now if work would just cooperate as well.  After missing the first two weeks of the League I was finally able to get my toy men on the table top last Thursday night.  My opponent was SeeJay87 from The Lonely Havocs.  A great guy despite his unnatural obsession with a dead body rotting in a chair, kind of creepy really.  

At rate below are the lists:

I took CSM with no allies

Terminator Lord with Mark of Slaanesh, Burning Brand, Power axe, Melta bombs and a signal of corruption. (War Lord)

5 CSM terminators with MoS, Icon of Excess, 4 melta guns and an assortment of close combat weapons.

2 – 6 man noise marine squads with 1 blastmaster and 2 sonic blasters

1 – 12 man noise marine squad with 2 blastmasters, 7 sonic blasters and an Icon of Excess on the champ.

1 –  hell drake with the hades autocannon

2 – Single obliterators without upgrades

1 –  “imperial” bastion complete with quad-gun

His List (from Memory) was also straight codex, Space Wolves to be exact

Rune Priest with runic armor and a chooser of the slain (War Lord)

4– 10 man grey hunter squads in drop pods with a single melta gun in each unit

1 – 10 man sky claw unit

1 – Max long fang unit all with missile launchers and a lascanon razorback

1 – Fire Raptor Gunship

PREGAME:

The deployment was short table edges with Kill points as the mission.

My warlord trait was Black Crusader, which would be pretty clutch this game.  While SeeJay87 rolled something that never came into play so we will just pretend that it never happened. 

I won the roll for placement and promptly took the side that would not have me rubbing asses with the next table, luckily for me the terrain was pretty even, not that it would have mattered if it had not been.  SeeJay87 won the roll for first turn.  There was no night fighting on the first turn.

Yea I get it "Road to Nowhere" what can say they are glued down

 

SeeJay87 deployed along his deployment edge as far forward as he could.  The razorback tucked away on the other side of the chapel.  I responded by counter deploying in north west corner of my zone so that when his grey hunters fell out of the skyin their stolen technology my units would be able to support one another.    As a note the two models laying down represent which units are in which buildings.   At this time the large squad has pretty good line of sight to the Long fangs which is not clear from the pictures so I attempt to seize hopefully knocking the missile launchers out for a turn.  I failed to seize and SeeJay87 proceeds to his first turn.

TURN ONE:

Two of his grey hunters squads come down on target and his sky claws move forward to secure a second turn counter to my response.  While he pours most of his firepower into my front noise marine squad I make a ridiculous amount of saves and loose only four marines to the combined weight of fire from his army.  The one shot that wasn’t put into the front noise marines came from the lascanon razorback, which he then manages to one shot my obliterator on the top of my bastion, Lady Luck is a fickle lover indeed.

 

Luck be a lady tonight...

 

My first turn is also pretty quick my only movement is to bring the final two noise marines from the first squad into coherency.  I decided to leave my terminators in the building for now, I wanted to wait until SeeJay87 was fully committed with his podding troops or at least until he was closer.  In the shooting phase my large squad did what it does best, deleting a unit of troops from the board.  The rest of my shooting knocked out a couple of long fangs but that was about it.  At 1500 points I feel that I am overspending on my terminators and on the large squad to the detriment of the rest of my army.  I should slim them down and drop some of the extras, but I probably won’t, I like sacred numbers and besides the models are painted. 

Luck if you've been a lady to begin with...

TURN TWO:

All of SeeJay87’s reserves come in and his pods scatter into better position than positioned and his flying gunboat screams up the side in order to lay waste to my large noise marine squad.  His sky claws move in and his remaining grey hunter squad from the first turn shuffles around in order to do some cleanup work on the 2man noise marine squad.  Remember what I said about Lady Luck? This was my roll to glance/ pen after SeeJay87 elected not to jinx.  I knocked out his turret heavy bolter closest to me, locked its velocity and shake it.  While the rest of his shooting is only average at best, manages to clean out the 2 man squad and half of the 12 man squad, the razorback again manages to one shot the remaining obliterator even after he went to ground. 

Luck be a lady tonight!

The Raptor is not dead yet, just with all the traffic coupled with
an unstable table it seemed prudent not to tempt fate.

At the bottom of two my drake decides to stay off the board so I disembark the terminators from the building that they were bravely holding.  I use the burning brand coupled with black crusader to good effect and drop the grey hunter squad behind the short wall down to a single model.  My large squad manages to reduce and pin the other fresh hunter squad that had been targeting them.  While the squad inside the bastion decides they would rather debase themselves than contribute to the fight. 

 

Bravely bold Sir Robin
rode forth from Camelot.

TURN THREE:

On SeeJay87’s turn he shifts his gunboat and homes in on the terminators killing two while the remaining heavy bolter knocks out another noise marine.  Bolter fire accounts for a third terminator but in another stellar display of rolling SeeJay87 comes up short on his charge.  Meanwhile the large noise marine squad, or what is left of it, does their best impression of a John Woo film dodging almost every missile, mind-bullet, and wrench throw at them, two drop to SeeJays87’s firepower but both heavy guns are still up and active as is the Icon of Bad Touch. 

At the bottom of three the drake phones in to let us know that he is still running a bit late and won’t show up this round either.  Other than that, the dice rolls went my way more than not.  The large squad of noise marines shuffle to get out of sight from the remaining long fangs while still gunning down several of the remaining grey hunters surrounding them.  The terminators manage to multi-charge the sky claws and a pack of grey hunters killing all but one sky claw who then decides to stick around despite needing snake eyes on his leadership test.  To top it all off the quad gun fires on the Fire Raptor on automated fire and still manages to remove the last hull point sending it crashing down.  In fact the only thing that I can’t seem to hurt is the razorback, all my shots directed at it wildly miss. 

 

Looks like there's dirty work afoot

TURN FOUR & END GAME:

At this point is just clean up, while SeeJay87 has more victory points than me at this point he doesn’t have much left on the board.  I start the process of by killing off a lone marine and dropping a pod with melta from the remaining terminators.  Brave Sir Robin my lord decides that bunker in the back without windows/ fire ports needs to be defended in case of a sneak attack.  The remaining two terminators shrug off missile fire and mind bullets to wreck the drop pods scattered about my deployment zone thus insuring that I will have more victory points at the end of the game.  The drake finally decides to show up and only accomplishes a couple of hull points against the drop pods.  Once again he fails to show up until the fourth turn and when he does fire off his gun he only hits with one shot of the four. 

On the northern hill there is a slap fight between three grey hunters and six noise marines that will go on for the rest of the game with not a single model dying in the process.  Maybe I should spend the points to upgrade the Aspiring Champion with a power weapon of some kind, but I already feel like the unit is bloated.  It takes two additional turns of combined fire from the unit in the bastion and the helldrake but I am finally able to strip off the last hull point from the razorback.  At this point SeeJay87 who has been keeping track of victory points declares that he can no longer win and calls the game. 

 

Brave Sir Robin ran away.  Bravely ran away away.
When danger reared it's ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.

POST GAME THOUGHTS:

MVP – the MVP for my side has to go to the terminators with the lord.  

While they hid for the first part of the game they ended up accounting for two squads of hunters, the sky claws and a couple of drop pods thus securing the game.  Recently I have stopped treated this unit as a shock unit and more like a group of school yard bullies.  While I was always happy with their performance before, they are now starting to win me games.  More and more I am becoming convinced that their roll is not to take on the enemy death star units hoping to buy a turn or two, but rather to go after the soft targets that can score. 

Goat – without a doubt the goat for this matchup has to be the hell drake

By the time he decided to show up the game was all but over and even then he failed to do more than strip a couple of hull points.  I have also continued with my streak of only hitting once with the hades autocannon every time I fire it, I have decided that all this means is that when I do get to Adepticon the Puff here will hit 3 or 4 times every round, maybe even five.  That is how maths works, right? 

On the whole no new revelations with my army.  It is a very static shooting army that is surprisingly resilient and wins in the long game.  Now that I can no longer take an escape hatch for my building I am at a loss for how to add mobility to this list at this point level.  Honestly unless I come up with something in fairly short order it will be too late as I am a very slow modeler and even slower to paint. 

Thoughts?  Comments?  

Tactically Hybridized: Local League game 5 of 5

Ever wonder how hard it is to find a suitable picture for these posts?

Well, last night was it.  The final game of the local league where I was featuring unique (to me) lists for each game.  Try something different, test some new (to me) theories, etc.  All in all, it was exactly what I needed. I had awesome opponents the whole time, and I played a pretty diverse set of opponents: Necrons (win), Eldar (draw), Space Marines (win), Tau (win), & Dark Eldar (win).

Go here for week 1s results (No Chapter for Old Men)
Go here for week 2s results (Tactically Maximized)
Go here for week 3s results (Two Headed Monster)
Go here for week 4s results (Netlist Extreme)
All lists can be found here
A better battle report than this one will be can be found here.

We had Capture & Control with Pitched Battle deployment.  He won the roll to go first, and I failed to seize the initiative.  Everything was laid out on the table, with no reserves.  It was going to be a game to see who could outshoot/outlast the other guy.  These games with only two total objectives are real easy to earn a draw on, so aggressive play was required.

He had two of the Dark Eldar flier things.  I recommend that you go the Grendal's blog Xenos for the Win to see what they actually were.  All that I know is that they had some dark lance weapons and a bunch of missiles.  He also had some of their blasphemous transports.  One held some angry assault ladies, while the other two held warrior squads in them.  Finally, he had a miniature transport thing with some close combat guys in it.  It had a poison weapon  on it, and they had power swords.

He deployed at the 12" line and then rushed everything forward.  That memo on aggression?  I appeared that he received it.


















My list was adapted from something that Chambers asked me to try out.  It had five tactical squads with a variety of heavy weapons and razorback transports.  This was supported with two Autocannon/Heavy Bolter Predator tanks, two Twin Linked Autocannon Dreadnoughts, and a Multi-melta/Heavy Flamer Speeder.

I tried to deploy in combat squads in cover, but didn't want to crowd that clump of trees since I new he had a bunch of large blast templates.  I would try to push forward as much as possible, but his shooting early on had something to add to that plan.

Here is the "filthy xenos' eye view"

End of round 1/start of round 2

At the end of his first turn, I had a "what just happened to me" look on my face.  He shot me with a lot of stuff.  Some of it was lance weaponry, some of it was poison, some of it were one shot missiles, he did a lot of moving about prior to that.  I'll readily admit that I was a bit confused by his tricksy xenos ways.  There's a reason the Emperor has no truck with these types.  It does us good to remember that.  Anyway, he beat up a few combat squads, and one even fled off the table.  The Heavy Bolter was blown off Vulkan's razorback.  I did a few things to him, but not much.

Start of turn 3

At the end of the second turn, he had busted up three of my five Razorbacks, the Land Speeder, and was about to lay into a few more of my combat squads with his scourges and warriors.  I had removed his two close combat units, basically solidifying my left flank allowing me to roll towards the right.  My Predators and  Dreadnoughts would spend the remainder of the game shooting at a 10 man warrior squad that was on his objective.  He went to ground for the next three turns, and it took me every bit of three turns to kill that squad.  Yes, (4) Twin Linked Autocannons, (2) Autocannons, and (4) Heavy Bolters took three turns to kill 10 guys with a 3+ cover save (they went to ground).  A razorback from my left would add its fire as well for the last two turns.  My combat squads visible in the picture above would win an assault with his scourges (only because his "sergeant" missed all of his attacks with his power weapon over several turns) and move up to take out the other raider and warrior squad.

At the end of turn 5, I had tabled him.  At turn three, I was asking myself "Why is he dying?  I thought that was my job."  He had a scary amount of firepower on turn one and two, but after that...not so much.  His squads were decent in close combat, but when fighting power armored marines, he relied on his squad leaders and their power weapons.  I'll admit he had terrible rolling when it came to those guys, and it made a difference.  I also credit the large volume of fire that came out of my Dakka Preds and Riflemen Dreadnoughts.  He tried to shoot them up early in the game, but to no effect.  Those four units shot down all of his large threats relatively early in the game which allowed me greater access to control his objective by the end of turn 5.

Grendal is a great guy.  He may not remember, but he was one of the first people I played when I got to this store.  It was a 500 point game, that I spent a majority of running away from his Orks.  You may not realize this, but you can buy a crap ton of Orks for 500 points.  In any event, I'm glad he was my last opponent of the league.  I had fun with my list tryouts, and I somehow managed to go 4-0-1 on the league.  We don't know final results yet, but I may actually have won this thing!  Which is to say, I get pseudo bragging rights for about three weeks until the next league starts up.

Netlist Extreme: Local League game 4 of 5

Extreme?

Last night we played out the 4th game of our 5 week league.  As you know by now, I vowed to play a different list each week (within the same codex was our only limitation) that departed fairly significantly from my normal play style.  My goals were to mix it up a bit, have a lot of fun, and practice using my tactical squads in a way that doesn't suck.

Breakdown of all lists can be found here.
Week 1 results: "No Chapter For Old Men" found here.
Week 2 results: "Tactically Maximized" found here.
Week 3 results: "2-Headed Monster" found here.

This week we had Spearhead deployment with Seize Ground (5 objectives).  I won the roll to place the first objective and kept up a trend of keeping all the objectives fairly close to one another.  I also won the roll to go first, but I deferred, allowing my opponent to chose his deployment zone and go first.

My "netlist" was unabashedly stolen from Danny Internets and his blog Bald and Screaming a long time ago when I first started playing Space Marines.  I knew I would be playing Salamanders, and it was a Vulkan list, so I thought I would copy it into my spreadsheet of lists I like and I'd eventually get around to building it.  It required 5 Land Speeders, 2 Vindicators, and 3 Drop Pods.  At the time I swiped the list, I only had 1 vindicator.  It would take me years to get the remaining models before I could play the list.  In fact, my last two drop pods were given over to me last night after being mostly assembled.  Since they were "in the shop" I was using some loaner drop pods from the Crimson Fist dealership on the corner.  If anyone knows or ever sees Danny thank him for posting the list, and apologize for me that I can't link back to the original source (if you can't find a list on the net anymore...is it still a netlist?)  Essentially I had:

Vulkan
Librarian
6 TH/SS Terminators
2 MM/HF Land Speeders
2 MM/HF Land Speeders
1 MM/HF Land Speeder
2 x Vindicators
3 x Tactical Squads w/meltaguns, multi-meltas, combi-meltas, etc. in Drop Pods

My opponent was a filthy Xenos lover who played a suit heavy Tau list.  His list to the best of my knowledge was:

Commander Farsight with a crew of suits w/missile launchers
3 x 3 suits with missile launchers
3 Broadsides
3 x 10 Fire Warriors
4 Pathfinders with transport
Railhead

Tau deployment + 1st turn & my 1st turn arrival of 2 pods

With Spearhead deployment, the Tau player was pretty bunched up.  He made some push towards my board edge (empty devilfish, fire warrior squad, & Farsight with crew) as well as pushing a squad of fire warriors and the railhead to his left to capture the farthest objective.  The rest of his lads were right there for me to drop on.  I dropped Vulkan with a squad as well as my librarian with a squad.  Each tactical squad broke up into combat squads upon arrival.  My hope was to give the Tau a lot of different targets to shoot and hope he didn't focus fire.  My librarian failed his test, and avenger didn't go off.  I didn't even get mad this time.  That's how common this had become.  One combat squad targeted the fire warriors on the objective in the trees.  The other targeted the suits closest to the blue pod.  Both of the squads out of the green pod targeted the broadsides.  Blue pod inflicted light casualties, but enough for leadership tests, which were all passed.  I did enough wounds on the broadsides to force a test there as well, and they failed!  So I had that going for me moving forward.

aftermath of my turn 2

His turn 2 gave him the opportunity to take revenge on my Salamanders for their rude arrival.  He contintued moving towards my board edge with a few of his units, but otherwise stayed put.  His shooting killed all but the Sgt. in one combat squad and all but the meltagunner in the other.  He also put a wound on my librarian.  He didn't shoot at either of the green pod combat squads, instead opting to target their drop pod.  My reserves were very kind to me this turn with a vindicator, squadron of speeders, and the terminators coming in.  Terminators used the blue pod's teleport homer and ran towards a group of suits.  Vindicator and speeders drove on right next to the fire warriors and suits that were creeping up on my edge.  Between shooting and assaults, I cleared the Tau from the objectives they were near (except the one outside the frame to the right, they would own that all game), and eliminated a set of suits with the vindicator.  This turn was devastating for the Tau.  His game plan was disrupted by my arrival within his lines, and a got very lucky with my reserves.  He lost a lot of his capability, while I lost the majority of two combat squads.

turn 3-ish

 At this point, he has his HQ & retinue with another set of suits on that side of the table.  On the other, he has a fire warrior squad on an objective with a railhead & squad of suits in support.  He runs his suits away from my terminators (who would fight nothing all game, a first for me) and shoots my speeders out of the sky in retaliation from using their heavy flamers on the squad of fire warriors previously occupying those trees.  He kills the sole surviving member of a combat squad by the blue pod and kills both my librarian and meltagunner with shooting as well.

end game

Turn 3 saw all but a single speeder come in from reserve.  The vindicators each killed a squad of suits (one with Farsight in it).  The remaining tactical squad dropped on an objective and split into combat squads.  One held the objective they landed on while the other made its way to the objective on the hill.  At this point he had enough firepower to deny me the objective by the blue pod but he couldn't ever take any more than the one his only scoring unit was currently holding.  To prevent him from shooting at my combat squads, however, I threw a bunch of delicious looking units at him so he would shoot at them instead of my scoring units.  Vulkan met his fate to a missile in this manner.  At the end of turn 5, we rolled for a 6th turn and got it.  We decided to call it there, however, since the game was clearly in hand at this point.

This list was quirky, and certainly something I've never played around with.  I'm very timid with my tactical squads, especially when they're in combat squads.  When given a choice (and a transport) I often baby them.  Dropping them down in drop pods, however, forces the issue.  I was impressed with their performance even though they died in droves.  Chambers is always singing the praises of them, but he always rolls well, so I hadn't seen their use until last night.  My vindicators also cleaned house by clearing out 3 squads of suits and Farsight.  I readily admit that I was lucky with my reserves, and I had already removed the broadsides by the time they showed up.  Although 240 points of terminators never saw the angry side of assault, it was clear that they made him nervous (as they should have).  I think they did a fine job of contributing to the chaos that this list brought to my opponent's game plan.

It was a fun game, my opponent was fantastic.  He's a new player trying to learn as much as he can about the game and his army, during a time of known transition for us.  I wish I had a fraction of the good grace and demeanor that he showed during what was a pretty solid beat down for him.  I learned a little about my new list, but I was truly humbled by his classiness.  It would be an honor to play him again.

Two-Headed Monster: Local League game 3 of 5

I'm really scary.  You're just going to have to trust me on this one.

The third week of five is now in the bag for our 1850 40k league at my FLGS.  A brief recap: Make five separate lists to use that are all departures from what I normally play.  This was to break me out of my post Adepticon funk, give my opponents something other than what they've seen before, and to bring fun back into focus for me as a gamer.

Breakdown of all lists can be found here.  Week 1's "No Chapter for Old Men" results can be found here.  Week 2's "Tactically Maximised" results can be found here.

As with all weeks, excepting the very last of course, the lists were chosen randomly by a third party prior to me learning who my opponent will be or what mission we will be given.  This week, we were assigned Dawn of War deployment with Annihilation as our mission.  My good man Stuey finally showed back up at the game store with his White Scars after he finished his semester at school and we were paired up on a table with a moderate amount of low terrain (desert village table).

My list:
Vulkan
Terminator Librarian w/null zone & avenger
2 X (5) TH/SS Terminators w/Land Raider Crusader & Multi-meltas
3 X (5) Tactical Marines w/combi-melta & TLHB Razorbacks w/HK missiles
2 X Land Speeders w/Heavy Flamer & Multimeltas

The purpose of this list is simple.  Smash face.

Stuey normally plays bikes, but he too mixed it up for the evening by bringing a Pedro build.  He brought:

Pedro
(10) Sternguard with a variety of stuff (combi-meltas & a Heavy Flamer I think)
(10) Tactical Marines with meltagun, lascannon, power fist & Rhino
(10) Tactical Marines with flamer, lascannon, power weapon, & Rhino
(10) Tactical Marines with meltagun, lascannon, power fist, & Drop Pod
2 X Vindicators
Predator w/ Autocannon & (2) Lascannons
(2) Land Speeders w/ (2) Heavy Bolters each
(2) Land Speeders w/Heavy Bolters and Missile Launchers

I had 14 kill points to his 16.

He won the roll to go first, and accepted it.  I did not attempt to steal the initiative.  Not only would I have failed, naturally, but I actually wanted to go second so that I could position myself better based upon his position after he drove all his guys on turn one.  Neither one of us deployed anything, so he moved all his stuff on 12".  He put his Drop Pod in the approximate center of the board and combat squaded the guys inside.  That was good for me since there were really only two place to effectively drive my Land Raiders on, and they were both within striking distance.  My turn 1 actually saw me able to push forward with my LRC that had Vulkan in it and assault his combat squad nearest to me.  The power of the machine spirit in the LRC blew up the Drop Pod.

aftermath of the turn 1 assault

That looks kind of scary.  It certainly wasn't pleasant.  The squad on the left is the sternguad and Pedro who rushed up to shoot Vulkan's squad.  The other five guys are the remaining combat squad from the Drop Pod.  There is one Speeder in frame, two more just outside to the right, 2 Vindicators, and a lascannon from a tactical squad in a Rhino half in the frame at the top right.  All of that shooting, and three terminators would die, leaving Vulkan and just a single terminator.  All three of the dead terminators would fall to a single land speeder and its 6 heavy bolter shots.  Yeah, mathhammer is for the weak.  All in all, the remainder of the game would take place within spitting distance of that fancy yurt-like structure.  He would throw units at my terminators until they died.  They he would throw units at my LRCs until they died.  It was quite a bloody affair.

Vulkan's squad was dead at this point, the Librarian was going to break off from his squad to use avenger on the Sterguard who were bunched up in teardrop formation, and the terminators were going to push through the tactical marines towards the tanks.  That was the plan.  What actually happened?  The Librarian broke off from his protective squad, rolled two sixes for his perils of the warp test (I've tried using librarian power 4 times...I have failed twice), assaulted the sternguard, failed to wound a single one, and died to Pedro's power fist.  I love the model.  I love the words in the codex about what they are supposed to be able to do.  I have had only a single game where I have been able to see any performance whatsoever out of that unit.  The terminators assaulted the Tactical marines, drove off the survivors (but not far enough that a surviving meltagunner wouldn't be able to kill a LRC at the end of the game.

Final tally?  I had killed 10 KP of Pedro's Scars, and he had killed 9 KP of Salamanders.  It was a stressful game with a fantastic opponent.  I had opportunities to handily wrap this game up from turn one on.  I failed again and again to capitalize on the opportunities that presented themselves.  While the game was a victory for me in the end, my dice rolls were so bad that bystanders and neighboring tables were making fun of me.  I would miss with twin linked weapons, fail to penetrate armor with melta weaponry, only manage shaken or stunned results on vehicles.  It was pathetic.  Stuey was a class act, and made fun of me an appropriate amount without going too far.  But I am getting a bit sick of it.  How can I analyze me list performance when I can't even depend upon average dice results?  I'll stop complaining now.  It was a win, I should be happy right?

Tactically Maximised: Local League game 2 of 5

We Salamanders are LEGION!!!  (well technically not since that Istvaan/Codex  Astartes thing I suppose...and I HAVE killed quite a few of them off...)

This is the second week of our five week league at my FLGS.  My mission, after returning home from Adepticon in a bit of a funk, was to craft 5 separate lists, one for each week, that served as a departure from my normal play style, included elements that I have always wanted to try out, or that just seemed like damn good fun.

Breakdown of all lists can be found here.
Last weeks "No Chapter For Old Men" list results can be found here.


This week's list theme was simple.  It's almost like going to AA meetings:  "Hello, my name is Chosen1.  I am a Space Marine player, and I don't know how to use my Tactical Squads."  Seriously, its an embarrassment.  It's like Ricky Bobby's hands during that first TV interview, I just don't know what to do with them.

What am I supposed to do with these?

What's one way to figure these things out quick, fast, and in a hurry?  Play with as many Tactical Marines as I can in an 1850 game.  I selected 6 Tactical Squads, gave them Vulkan, a Librarian, and then a bunch of razorbacks and heavy weapons.  Here's the list:

Vulkan
Epistolary Librarian w/Null Zone & Avenger
2 X Tactical Squad w/flamer, combi-melta, plasma cannon, power weapon & TLHB Razorback
2 X Tactical Squad w/flamer, combi-melta, missile launcher, powerfist, & LTHB Razorback
2 X Tactical Squad w/flamer, combi-melta, lascannon, & TLLC Razorback

Our mission was seize ground with spearhead deployment.  My opponent was a Tricksy Eldar player that I've played once before.  He's an outstanding guy, and I had a great time playing him, but we fought to a draw.  I told myself that win or lose, I would not get another draw...yeeeah, about those TPS reports...

My Deployment: All combat squads

His Deployment: a bunch of Xenos trickery

I would love to tell you what was in his army.  In fact, my friends are telling me all the time "Chosen1, you should really learn these other codexes so you know how to play against them."  Honestly?  That sounds like a lot of work.  It also opens me up to heretical thoughts, and the light of the Emperor's cleansing flames as I burn them down are all I need to understand about Xenos.  Here's what I can remember:  Avatar, Eldrad + Dire Avengers in one of those melta-ignoring transports, 3 War Walkers with scatter lasers, (7) Jet Bikers with warlock, (7-ish) Fire Hawks in melta-ignoring transport, (5) Rangers in the "venerable" transports that make me roll twice to kill them, and (5) Dire Avengers in the "venerable" transport.  I normally fear the Avatar like no other since I load up on flamers and meltas.  Don't judge me, I roll like ass.  I dont' NEED those re-rolls, I can quit anytime...really.  This time, however, I had plenty of other guns for him.  I was also glad I had a librarian.

I know I suck at battle reports, but honestly the game looked like this for most of the night.

We get five objectives, plus two more "story objectives" for the league's storyline that have no bearing on the game play.  I lost the roll to go first, failed to steal the initiative, and weathered the first turn fairly well.  I could tell he was intimidated by all of those transports and Tactical Marines.  I'm no seer, he actually said "I'm kind of intimidated by all that".  I tried not to strut around like a peacock.  I failed.  He maneuvered to get shots on Vulkan and the Librarian's transports, but didn't take either out.  I moved up across all fronts trying to engage him with my combat squads and shoot what I could.  The Avatar took out two combat squads before he was brought down by Vulkan.

The jet bikes were led by the warseer "brave, brave, sir Robin"

Those two transports (green/white & purple) at the bottom of the frame stayed there the whole game taking pot shots at me.  Their occupants would ultimately claim the objectives near each.  The tricksy bikers did their move-shoot-move dance.  I eventually flanked around the right side of the treacherous Xenos scum and shot them down.  It was glorious.

This is what I was doing instead of aggressively advancing towards him

I didn't realize I wasn't "doing it right" until the end.  Now you've all heard me complain about my horrible rolling.  My opponent was doing poorly this game as well.  In fact, I think we sort of averaged each other out.  I had some good turns, he had some good turns.  My librarian shut down about half of Eldrad's powers, which is a big deal to me, because that cat can use a lot of them.  I would almost bet that if Eldrad had been allowed to do his thing the final outcome would have been significantly different.  I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the "you must take a librarian to have a chance against the tricksy eldar" meme, especially since I took him randomly this week, but it is what it is.

This is essentially the end game.  I held the top/bottom left objectives.  He held the top/bottom right objectives.  Eldrad and a Dire Avenger exarch move onto the center red objective.  I shot the snot out of them and fail to move my guys close enough before the end of turn five.  Game ends in a draw.  Don't get me wrong I enjoy winning.  On the other hand I know when I don't "deserve" it.  I played sloppy.  Not just moving into position, but I made mistakes on some rules (they were corrected), but I am always nervous that folks will take my mistakes as cheating.  That's absolutely not who I am.  Both of us were glad this game ended in a draw because neither one of us performed any better than the other.  Back to those TPS reports I suppose.

What did I learn?  I (still) need to be more aggressive with my tactical squads.  I think that not only would I have forced him further out of his comfort zone, but that I would have been in a better position to contest or capture objectives during the late game.  Combat squads are fragile.  If someone starts spouting off about a statline in the 4's backed up by 3+ saves punch them in the face.  Marines are nothing special.  That deserves repeating, Marines are nothing special folks, they perform similar tasks as their Black Templar, Space Wolf, and Blood Angel brethren, but they're inferior in almost every way.  This doesn't mean they can't win, just that they need (insert something sage and wondrous) to do so.

All in all, a great game with a great guy.  I look forward to next week's match!

No Chapter For Old Men: Local League game 1 of 5

What's that you say?  You want the truth?  You can't handle the truth!
You may have wanted me on that wall, but due to your pathetic generalship, we're all dead!

So yesterday was our Thursday league night at the FLGS.  Not as big of a turnout as I would have liked to see, but we likely had 12-14 players show up for the first of five Thursday night games.  Some of the "newer" players could have shifted days since the store recently set aside Friday nights to help new players with practice games, painting & modeling advice, etc.  An excellent way to grow the hobby in my opinion, and I only wish I had more Fridays available to lend my assistance.

To quickly recap, I have a five week league.  I have five army lists.  You see where this is going don't you?  In any event, I had a buddy of mine "pick a number between one and five" prior to tables or opponents being named.  He chose number 3.  The third list on my sheet was "No Chapter For Old Men".  The spirit of this list was that due to my poor skills as a commander of Marines, there were only a handful of scouts and tactical marines available for use, while maximizing dreadnoughts.  When I min/max here, it's not to extremes.  I set a few goals (lots of dreads, minimum scoring units) and then attempt to make a viable list within that framework.  Here's what I settled on:

Master of the Forge with Conversion Beamer on a Bike
(10) Assault Terminators with Thunder Hammers & Storm Shields
(10) Terminators with (2) Cyclone Missile Launchers
Dreadnought with Twin Linked Lascannon & Missile Launcher
(5) Sniper Scouts w/Cammo Cloaks
(5) Tactical Marines w/Powerfist, Combi-melta, & TLLC Razorback
Rifleman Dreadnought w/(2) Twin Linked Autocannons
Rifleman Dreadnought w/(2) Twin Linked Autocannons
Dreadnought w/Multi-melta, Heavy Flamer & Drop Pod

Deployment was Pitched Battle while mission was Annihilation.  I won the roll and elected to go first.  Here was my deployment zone:

I castled up in my left corner and hoped he would advance towards me.  This would serve to minimize my exposure to his guns (due to the terrain set up you'll see in the next pic) and limit the number of his units that got to me at any given time.  Please pardon my regular terminators as they are still "in progress" on the paint desk, and my feeble MotF model is still on the drawing board as far as conversions go.  Here is his deployment zone:

With a terrain set that my opponent casually termed "the battle for the port of Los Angeles" there were those cargo containers all over the battlefield in approximately that density covering almost the entire board.  There were a few clumps of trees here and there, and a ruined building that was out of frame to the right.  Our deployment zones were relatively free of terrain.  As I know nothing of his filthy xenos codex, I'll do my best to relate what was in his list:

(4) 5 man warrior squads
Gypsy Shyster Lord with nightfighing, turn stealing, and lightning powers
Squad of (3) Wraiths
Squad of (5) "assault" necrons with shields that reflect shots
Squad of (5) Immortals with assault guns
Squad of (3) scarab swarm bases
Squad of (3) Destroyers (or were they heavy destroyers...I have no idea)
Squad of (5) Snipers with assault weapons
Skimmer with guy in it (control barge?)
Skimmer with creepy arcing electrical gun on it

The early game did not go my opponent's way.  He brought night fighting to a table with a lot of guns, so he was spared a lot of early casualties, but as he advanced, he took up positions outside of cover...which made him vulnerable to return fire and allowed my terminators to advance rapidly.

This wasn't all bad for him.  I dropped my drop pod (with dread) next to his big gun barge and rolled a one to hit it with my multi-melta.  folks are often shocked at how poorly I truly roll.  That's when I bring Vulkan to the table.  Without those re-rolls, my opponents often consider my rolling on par with a humanitarian crisis or some other horror of history.  It is truly appalling.  That dread fired three more shots throughout the game. He would roll a 1 to hit every time.  He did, however, kill that gun barge, the scarab swarms (str 10 vs. swarm bases?  Yes please) and the Monolith, but he did all that in assault.

End of turn 2.  Monolith immobilized, gun barge dead, scarabs about to be dead
skimmers about to die because they exposed themselves on top of cargo containers...

I'm horrible at writing battle reports.  I get involved in the game, and I forget to take pictures.  I'm so bad that I kept putting my phone in my way so I could remember to use it, but I just moved it around without even thinking about it.  Pathetic.  I forgot a pencil so I couldn't even take notes.  But, it was a fairly one sided game in the end.  I had 5 victory points (gun barge, monolith, 2 skimmers, & sniper guys) and my opponent had none.  He killed a few models here and there, but no full units.  My assault terminators were down to 4 guys due to my chronic inability to roll anything but a one on their armor saves, but they held.

Rather than my awesomeness, which has been proven to be more myth than reality, I think my opponent lost the game rather than I won it.  The terrain hurt him.  His own night fighting hurt him.  I removed his big gun early, and he had not back up for it or back up plan in the event that it was destroyed.  His warriors did nothing.  I don't know how cheap they are, but he only shot one squad once (at my drop pod) and that did nothing to it.  The other three squads never even moved.  Those were points that I didn't have to contend with, making the game an imbalanced one as everything I had was shooting, assaulting, or getting into position to do so the next turn.  He's still learning the Necron codex, finding out what units fit his playstyle and which do not.  I expect these are just temporary shortcomings and that he will shortly become a more serious Xenos threat.

Most importantly, he was a fantastic guy, and I think we both had an enjoyable game.  No Chapter For Old Men was fun to play, and I think that had a lot to do with the fact that it just happened to be perfectly suited for the mission were were given.  While I'll likely come back to it in the future, it's on the shelf for now.  I wonder how my random list selection and opponent/mission assignment will go next week.  Stay tuned.

Lusty Loganwing vs. Salamanders Rematch!

"Logan" vs. Vulkan...the outcome of this assault determined the result of the entire game.

Some of you may remember Chambers from The Back40k's blog.  He resides in the St. Louis area and plays at my store when he has the time.  Our first game was a 1500 point game where he pitted his gorgeously converted (by Ron Saikowski of +From the Warp+) Lustwing army utilized as Space Wolves against my Salamanders.  Before you purists go crazy, he uses the Space Wolf list instead of the Chaos list because the terminator army can't be faithfully done using the Chaos Space Marine Codex.  Honestly?  An army that looks this good gets all sorts of allowances when it plays against me.  Paint your models kids, it's part of the hobby.  :-)

I had played Chambers only twice prior to this game.  Game #1 = Severe beat-down against his Lusty Loganwing.  Game #2 = Severe beat-down against his Lamenters during the final round of the Ard Boyz prelims.  While I love playing with Chambers, I don't exactly love getting my teeth kicked in.  I was a bit nervous about this game.  We stuck with 1500 points, got capture & control with 5 objectives, and spearhead deployment.

Deployment

While Chamber's limited number of models limited his selection, he had three squads.  Two six man squads with various weapon load outs including missile launchers, one giant squad with a truck load of guys, Logan Grimnar and a Rune Priest, and a Lone Wolf to wrap it up.  I hate to have guys play the same list of mine twice if we can help it, so I played with Vulkan, a Land Raider Crusader, Land Speeder, two Dakka Preds, two assault terminator squads, and two tactical squads with Rhinos, Multi-meltas and flamers.  Objectives were placed in the middle of the board as well as in the middle of each table quarter.

End of Round 1

Chambers won the initiative and proceeded to take "hail Mary" shots with his missile launchers.  Seriously, that's what he called them.  He averages about 4 Str 8, AP 3 shots a round and reaps a disproportionate bounty of wrecked vehicles and my tears.  My Land Speeder (behind cover) was wrecked, and one Pred was immobilized and stunned.  He also dropped a few of my dismounted terminators and moved his lone wolf forward while his other two squads controlled one of his objectives, and moved towards another on my side of the board.  I only managed to kill a single terminator out of the large squad.

End of Round 2

Round two saw Chambers holding two objectives on his left of the board, as well as the center.  I killed off his Lone Wolf (man I hate those guys) and he wiped out my unmounted terminators.  I was not please with myself at this point.  I was moving a combat squad towards an objective with terminators on it in a vain attempt to contest an objective while my other combat squads were hunkered down for late game shenanigans.  I had five terminators in their tank, and my Preds hadn't had a full turns worth of shooting due to "stun-locking" from the missile launchers.  I had no desire to charge my boys into that mess with a dozen or so terminators in the middle, but that's where they had to go.

Wonder of Wonders!

My third round saw me throw every bullet I had at his large terminator squad.  It wasn't as small as I wanted it to be (1 or 2 left would have been nice...) but I managed a favorable assault since his squad was so spread out.  His Rune Priest wasn't able to join the assault this round.

This is getting better and better, but there's no way I can pull this off...

The next round left us with the epic match up you see at the top of the blog post, so you see, I was quite surprised when I saw this:

Last man standing!

This was classic!  After I took out that squad, he only had two remaining, thus he could only ever hold two objectives.  I moved one Rhino mounted combat squad to the middle of the board, the other went to an open objective, and my final combat squad stayed home to claim that one.  Final tally:  Salamanders 3 objectives to Lusty Loganwing's two.  It was an awesome game, but I can't fault Chambers' gameplay or anyone's dice rolls.  While winning the assault in the middle of the board was clutch, only having three expensive scoring units to my four cheap ones backed up with a Land Raider, Dakka Preds, Assault Terminators, etc...you get the idea.  The extra boots on the ground were the difference for me in a game with 5 objectives.

End Game

Battle Report: Black Templars 1500 Point

And the killing was glorious.

Chaplain Aerion reporting for duty. I participated in a 1500 point tournament at Miniature Market in St. Louis today. They host an event every second Saturday and with finals and the Spring semester just finishing, and with the St. Louis Grand Tournament on the horizon, I thought I'd drag the Howard Crusade out and knock off some of the rust.

My List:

HQ: Emperor's Champion w/ Accept Any Challenge, No Matter the Odds

Elites:
Sword Brethren Assault Terminators- 3x Lightning Claws, 4x TH/SS w/Furious Charge
Transport: Land Raider Crusader w/ Extra Armor, Blessed Hull

Sword Brethren squad- CCW/Bolt Pistol x3, Power Weapon/Bolt Pistol, (Pair) Lighting Claws w/Furious Charge
Transport: Drop Pod

Troops:
Crusader Squad Damoclese- 8 CCW/BP, 1 Meltagun, 1 Power Fist/BP
Plus 9 Neophytes- CCW/BP

Crusader Squad Torrence- 8 CCW/BP, 1 Flamer, 1 Power Fist/BP

Heavy Support:
Vindicator w/ Dozer Blade, Extra Armor



Tournament was 3 rounds. Players would get 10 points for a win, 5 for a draw, and 2 for a loss (plus any bonus points awarded) for each round.




Round 1: "RUN AWAAAAY!!!!!!"

My opponent was none other than a fellow Team Snake Eyes conscript, Josh. Josh played with TSE Black at Adepticon. I had never had the opportunity to play against Josh so this was a nice surprise.

Josh brought Imperial Guard, consisting of a Valkire full of Veterans, 2 Leman Russ tanks, a Manticore launcher, one Chimera full of 8 psykers, and the some other Chimeras full of veterans (Meltas, flamers, and flashlights), and of course a Command Squad toting lots of plasma in a final Chimera. (Apologies if I missed anything. I did not get a copy of his list).

Mission 1 was Pitched Battle deployment, and the center of the table was the sole objective. The player with the most scoring units within 6" of the objective at game's end would get 5 points toward victory, plus 1 point for every enemy unit destroyed.

I deployed as far forward as possible after Josh spread out a nice mechanized gun line. He held his Valkire in reserve and my Drop Pod loaded with Sword Brethren would be waiting on the ship as well.

My famous luck failed me right off the bat and I managed to steal the initiative. Little did I know that this would be a major factor in the end results.

My games against Guard have been fairly limited, and against Guard toting psykers even more so. So I was completely unfamiliar with the power Weaken Resolve. Let me tell you, if you play Guard and fight Black Templars frequently, take this power!

I had moved everything up and managed a few hits but did no real damage on Turn 1. I ended up running both Crusader squads, with the 10 man squad covering 9 inches. On Josh's turn, he inflicted a handful of casualties on my troops. Before he finished his shooting, though, his psykers waggled their fingers and went "Boogity-BOO!". With my 8 Leadership thusly shaken down to a 1, I prayed for the spirit of Team Snake Eyes to save me. It wasn't happening. So Crusader squad Torrence proceeded to run 10 inches back toward my table edge. This is when the true impact of stealing initiative was revealed, because with this 36" power I would have lost one of my troops to a board edge right off.

The game played on, with my troops moving forward and Cha-Cha'ing back for the first 3 turns. Finally I manged to knock the Command Squad and the Psykers out of their cute little boxes and the Templars got to do some of what they do best (next to dying in droves, anyway).

Not to take anything away from Josh, though. The battle truly was back and forth, and I wasn't sure how it would play out. My Vindicator and my LR had been immobilized and my Termies were huddled in trees waiting for a chance to rush out and smash something.

Long story short, Josh never could get his Valkirie to come in from reserve, and the time ran out, giving me 2 additional kill points and the win. I kindly pointed out to Josh that his model had no pilots and that was obviously the cause of the delay.

Round 1 result: Me- Win with 14 points





Round 2: Templar on Templar Violence


As long as I've been playing I have never faced another Templar force. That changed today when I was paired with Kirk. While my Crusade is habitually stabby, Kirk was rolling with a mechanized list. He had the obligatory Emperor's Champion, but he had taken the vow that lowers everyone's Initative and raises their Strength by 1. The Champion was paired with some shooty Termies (Squad of 5 including 1 Assault Cannon, Missle Launcher, and 1 Chain Fist) riding in a Land Raider Crusader. In addition there was a 5 man Crusader squad in a Rhino, another 5 man squad in a Razorback (TL LC), two Predator Destructors, and an Assault Cannon/CCW Venerable Dread awaiting arrival in a Drop Pod.

Mission 2 was Spearhead deployment. The objectives would be table quarters, but there was a twist that was decidedly in my favor. In this mission all troop AND elite choices would count as scoring, and only troops and elites could contest table quarters.

After deployment I once again tried to steal the Initiative (in case you haven't noticed, I rarely win the roll to choose and stealing is customarily the only way I get to go first), but this time the roll failed.

Kirk did some shimmy-shimmy with his vehicles, moved the LR 12" toward the table center, shot the daylights out of me with Predators, and ended his turn spread across his side of the board quite nicely.

On my turn I pretty much did the exact same thing, so our LR Crusaders were mirror images facing off at table center. I moved a squad to the left, and the other to the right toward one of his Predators. I did some shooting myself, and Kirk and I both decided that we buy our Multi-meltas at the same forge world (many misses and failures to glance were rolled in this round).

Kirk's Champion and Termies assaulted my Land Raider on his turn, and succeded in immobilizing it. My troops continued to take Predator fire but they were getting close enough to use their melta and assault with the power fist. My squad on the left took fire and failed Righteous Zeal, so they ran backward.

I disembarked my termies (on the sides since my front end was crowded by his guys) and they assaulted his termies. After a couple of losses to the Black Sword (HEY! How many of these things ARE there, anyway?), my termies managed to eliminate his but left the Emperor's Champion with a wound.

On Kirks' turn his Drop Pod fell right behind my Land Raider (and smack dab in front of my unnerved Crusader squad remnant), and my termies sanctioned the doppelganger Champion after taking another loss. I consolidated them back toward the Dreadnaught.

My Vindicator took his LR out of commission and the Multi-melta on mine FINALLY managed to score a hit and immobilize the Dreadnaught. I moved my troops into cover to hold the left table quarter, and the squad on the right managed to immobilize his Predator. The termies finished off his Dread (again, taking losses), and my Drop Pod (which had arrived in his backfield on my right) took possession of a second table quarter.

His Rhino moved to table center on the right side to contest, and my guys managed to withstand his shooting. On my turn I moved my squad on the right behind his Predator and wrecked it, making him have to choose which table quarter he would contest with the Rhino.

At the end of the game I held 2 table Quarters and contested the other two, giving me the win. I got bonus points for keeping my HQ alive, and a couple more for killing his termies and Dread. Oh, my most embarassing moment in my 40K career: I assaulted an empty Drop Pod with assault terminators. Ugh!

That was great fun, and Kirk was a blast to play against. I really hope to repeat it sometime.

Round 2 Result: Win- me with 18 points (for a total of 32)

So far so good (and WAY better than I'm accustomed to).
I was in 3rd place going into round 3. As they say, all good things....

Round 3: Dey SHOOTIN!


Since the BatRep has been so long, I'll keep this one short. Trust me, it won't be hard.

I was paired with Jeff and his Eldar. Since I got a copy of his list, here it is:

Avatar
Eldrad Ulthran
5 Fire Dragons in a Wave Serpent w/ Spirit Stones, TL Shuriken Catapults, TL Bright Lance
9 Striking Scorpions w/ Exarch
9 Dire Avengers w/ Exarch in Wave Serpent w/Spirit Stones, TL Catapults, TL Bright Lance
12 Guardians w/Warlock and Scatter Laser platform
5 Pathfinders (Rangers) w/ Ranger Long Rifles
1 War Walker w/ Spirit Stones and 2 Scatter Lasers
1 War Walker w/ 2 Scatter Lasers


Mission 3 we deployed 12" from a line drawn diagonally across the center of the table (corner t0 corner). An objective marker would be placed at table center, and each player would place 2 additional markers in their deployment zone (not within 12" of another marker or 6" of a board edge). The player controlling the most objectives would win. I actually managed to win the roll to start, but I let Jeff choose since it was an objective based game and I wanted to see where he was going to be.

I failed once again to steal the Initiative, so Jeff started shooting. His dice were hot. I mean so hot that he never failed a psychic test, and with Fortune on constant replay he rarely missed his shooting. Oh, and with Doom also going he rarely failed to wound. I, on the other hand, had burned up every ounce of luck during the first 2 rounds and failed just about every save. By the bottom of turn 3 I had 5 Terminators huddled in the crater my Land Raider had left behind (cursed Fire Dragons) a lonely Power Fist weilding Crusader, and the wreck of my Vindicator. I phrase things this way because Jeff had managed to either kill or explode every other model in my army by then. He held 2 objectives, was a move away from the center objective, and I had one single troop model at least 2 turns away from any objectives (and facing 4 Scatter Lasers and his remaining Dire Avengers, plus his immobilised but facing the right way Bright Lance). I saw no point in dragging things out so I conceded. BUT, when tallying the points I realized there were bonus points for killing the opponent's most expensive unit. My Terminators beat out my Land Raider by 11 points, so I suggested Jeff take 2 rounds worth of shooting at them to see if he could kill them. I didn't want to screw him out of a tournament win because I had thrown in the towel. He accepted and killed 2 more termies but didn't eliminate the squad.

So, points tallied we shook hands and turned in our score sheets.

Turn 3 result: Loss- Me. Points- 2 (Total of 34 for the tourney)

Jeff ended up winning the tourney and great fun was had by at least everyone I talked to. There were about 12 of us there, so it was a nice, relaxed atmosphere. Scott, the guy who handles their monthly tourney at Miniature Market, is a great friend of TSE and it is always a pleasure to play in his events. If you want, head over to their website and check out their store. They do some great discounts and their service is top notch. If you're in the St. Louis area, swing by. You won't be disappointed.

Thoughts on the day: This is the second time I've run with a bare minimum HQ (Emperor's Champion) and for the second time I've won more games than I've lost. That being said, I also failed more Righteous Zeal rolls today than ever (and not only because of Weaken Resolve). I'm likely going to re-inlist my Lightning Claw Marshall for the Grand Tournament, both for the Leadership aspect and for the CC monster he'll be. The rest of the list seems to be working great except for me missing having any Fast Attack. It's an adjustment and it's growing on me. Time will tell.

I'll be heading to the Battle Bunker in Memphis in 2 weeks to play in a 1000 point event (the kickoff to their Summer escalation league), and to hang out with my God Son who I haven't seen in a few years (Air Force brat that he is). Then it's June and time for the big Grand Tournament at DieCon.
Again, if you're in the area, check this out. It's going to be HUGE! $300 first prize!

Until next time, The Emperor protects!