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.