Vulkan Sighted at Forge World's Heresy Weekender

Vulkan!  BoLS Lounge member DrLove42 posted up some photos of this weekend's Heresy event across the pond.  Lots of juicy Salamander Legion stuff I can't afford such as sweet new terminators, upgrade kits, a Salamander Contemptor Dreadnought, & of course Vulkan himself.  Additionally, there was quite a bit of stuff about the Mechanicum (a Dark Mechanicum list is in the works Chambers!), Knights, and some of the other lesser legions.  Head over to the thread and check it out.

Not the pose I expected, but still very cool.

A bit of paint, and a few of his lads...

EDIT:  Recalcitrant Daze has some sweet pics of Salamandary goodness over on their site:

...such as this beauty right here.  Aerion, the forge is calling.

Adepticon 2014: Friendly Tournament Re-Cap

So this year's theme for the Friendly Tournament was "The Dirty Dozen".  There were three rounds, roughly equating to the major plot points of the film.  Round 1 your lads didn't quite get along, Round 2 they were participating in the war game, and Round 3 was the final suicide mission.

I brought, what I thought was, a fairly "friendly" list.  I was a little hesitant to bring my three Centurion Devastators with Grav Cannons, they performed very well for me, but I don't think they ended up being over the top.  My list can be seen here.

My Storm Talon was only shot down once on the day...about three seconds after this picture was taken.
Rathnor used orders, and some timely "6's" to down the aircraft.  Who needs skyfire?

In the first round, I played a list that seemed eerily appropriate.  Rathnor's IG list with Space Wolf allies was my first opponent.  He brought a Creed, Kell, a command squad in a Chimera; a big blob of a platoon with a handful of dismounted regular squads, heavy weapons with lascannons, and 50 conscripts; a squad of vets in a chimera with melta guns and demo charge; Logan Grimnar, and three wolf guard in power armor.  It was an unusual list (for me with my limited exposure to games outside my own shop) with a lot of optimized quirks (Logan's abilities adding to the conscripts, Creed's boatload of orders, etc.) but it was well played and likely not overly optimized (more on that later).

This was "the end".  He had marched across the board, shooting up everything in sight.  The next round would
see a charge that left me with a combat squad and an immobilized Razorback.  The Gods would take pity on me
and end the game (and my misery) shortly after that. 

For this mission, players had to split their army in half, with each half counting as desperate allies.  This did almost nothing to my opponent, but was disastrous to me, as my play style involves castling up my entire army to support one another with short range firepower.  That, plus dice rolls so bad that Rathnor offered up his own dice for me to use in an effort to stop the painful torturing of probability that was my dice for that round.  In the end, I was trounced.  I "earned" a crushing defeat and garnered no points for my team.  Rathnor did have an entire 50 man squad of Rogue Trader era human bombs.  Some with the neck collar, and the rest with the backpack bombs.  Nifty stuff if you're into that sort of thing.  He says it only took him two years to get them all...

For my second round, I played The Bloody Chaos, who happened to be Chambers' opponent from round 1.  He normally plays chaos, but decided to do something different for Adepticon.  He brought a Carcharodons (space sharks) army that was awesome.  As none of you know, I harbor a secret desire to own a Carcharodon army, so this was a special treat for me where I got to live vicariously through TBC's army.

My crap pictures don't do it justice, but he had a Chapterhouse Studios "true scale"
marine with a gigantic chainsword (can't remember the company he got that from)
that was simply amazing.

TBC's list was as follows: Tyberos the Red Wake; a squad of assault terminators as elites, and another as troops; a scout squad in a Land Speeder Storm; 2 Tactical Squads; a Storm Talon; an assault squad; and finally, a devastator squad.  This round's special rule was that ambulances were placed on random tables and they scattered 4d6" every turn with the possibility of moving onto neighboring tables if they had the movement for it.  Any unit hit was either tank shocked or rammed.  We had an ambulance show up at our table during the game, but it promptly drove off with no effect.

This was my deployment.  Notice the gigantic hole for deep strikers.

TBC was easily my most fun opponent on the day.  Beer was exchanged & fun was had.  This was the epitome of what the "friendly" tournament should be.  TBC's army is obviously an assault army with some long gun & air support.  That's probably the type of opponent my list is best against.  He faced an uphill battle all game, but this...

...is where his fate was sealed.  He was only able to get one of his terminator squads in from reserve on round 2.  That meant my entire army, but mainly my Centurions, could focus on that close threat.  And believe me, getting a squad of Carcharodons in close combat was not a goal of mine.  He lost one to quad gun fire on the way in, and the rest were taken care of after that.  The next round Tyberos and his squad showed up, but again, I had no other obvious targets.  Even after all that fire, I still needed to assault him with my own terminators and Vulkan to keep the upper hand.  Some poor rolls in TBC's part sealed the deal.  After that combat, I ran my lads towards the relic and table quarters for the crushing victory.

Round three is where I lost all credibility as a blogger since I didn't take any pictures of my game with Cee Kay and his Tau-Dar list.  I'm not going to lie, this was the weirdest list I've ever played against.  At first glance it seems too optimized for the friendly, but when you look close, he made conscious decisions to weaken his list.

As penance for not taking pics of the game, here's a real life fire warrior that I saw.

He was pale, yet quick.

He brought Farsight with 4 crisis bodyguards with flamers, stim injectors, & vectored thrusters; a crisis suit commander with every piece of wargear available to him (354 points!), a 6 man stealth team; a single crisis suit with flamer; a three man crisis suit with bonding knife (no weapons?), Karandras the Shadow Hunter; & 6 guardian jetbikes.

His plan was to camp weaponless crisis suits & jetbikes on objectives, infiltrate Karandras with the stealth team, and deepstrike everyone else with Farsight et al.  I'll admit, I was pretty nervous.  I shot up the crisis suits as much as I could, but with nightfight, those guys are tough to shift.  He deepstruck right next to my castle (which I deployed with no room for deepstrikers behind my aegis) and proceeded to use flamers against me.  He was unaware of the Salamander's chapter tactic known as "lol flamers" and was disappointed to cause no wounds.  Everything in my army, minus the 145 point Storm Talon, then shot at that squad.  At the end of my shooting phase, he had one Stealth Suit left on that corner of the board.  I spent the remaining rounds getting line breaker, grabbing objectives, and killing his bikes and backfield crisis suits.  I have no doubts that had Karandras and/or Farsight got into assault that it would have been a different game.  This round's special rule was to have vortex missiles moving about just like the ambulances previously.  A vortex missile made it to our table about 5 minutes after the game was over, having no impact on our game.

All in all, I think this year's friendly was an improvement over last years.  Yes, I went 2-1 this year, while going a disastrous 0-3 (finishing dead-ass-last overall), but the lists I saw were more friendly.  My worry was that this was going to become just another 1500 point tournament, but it didn't happen.  That's not to say that it's out of the woods.  Many of the guys who showed up with quirky or overly friendly lists were saying that they wouldn't make that mistake next year.  The friendly walks a fine line, and I think they need to review lists as advertised.  Early list submissions would go a long way towards maintaining the trust of the community that rock hard lists won't be seen at this tournament next year.

Adepticon 2014 - There and Back Again, a Burnout's Tale

Just...try to relax...

As some of you might be aware, a handful of members have had associations of some sort or another with Adepticon since about 2006.  It started with the Team Tournament, sprinkled in a few rounds of Combat Patrol, and the last two years have been dedicated to the 40k Friendly Tournament.

Discussions about the Team Tournament could take several blog posts to cover.  I'll spare you that, or you could just look back through the archives.  Suffice it to say that it takes luck to even get in to this very popular event, and a great deal of money and time to not embarrass yourself when you see the titans of industry who will inevitably win.  These are the teams who have spent thousands of dollars and man hours to put together truly masterful works of art.  Average participants?  Don't hold your breath.  This event truly rewards those who go above and beyond.  It's actually worth coming to the event, just to see the display bases the teams put together.

Combat patrol has never really been my thing, but others have enjoyed it.  I have trouble making a 1000 point 40k army, so 400 points really is an exercise in futility for me.  To each his own, I'm glad some of the other members have had fun with it.

This will be the third year for the 40k Friendly Tournament.  I had some friends participate in '12, and they gushed about how awesome it was.  Laid back, thematic lists, a complete lack of douchebaggery, it received rave reviews.  I did not bring Team Snake Eyes to the Team Tournament in '13 because I was a little burned out from that hectic experience and wanted something a little more relaxed.  The Friendly was my choice. Three of us came up last year (myself, Chambers, & Grenn Dal) and although I came in dead-ass-last place (it's a real thing, look it up) it was a good time.  After hearing the staff repeatedly say they would disallow hard lists, I was a little shocked at some of the things we saw last year "What do you mean my drop Wolves list with four Rune Priests with Jaws isn't friendly?" Chambers and I are a little worried about what we'll see this year.

Vulkan and the lads take the field once more

Sorry for the poor quality of the pics, but I've been having technical issues.  My list, which I feel is true to the "friendly" theme is as follows: Vulkan, (5) TH/SS Assault Terminators, (2) Tactical Squads with flamers, multi-meltas, combi-flamers, & TLLC Razorbacks, a Storm Talon w/typhoon ML, (3) Centurion Devastators w/Grav Cannons & Hurricane Bolters, a Thunderfire Cannon, and finally an Aegis Defense Line w/Quad Gun.  It's got a moderate amount of shooting with a counter assault/harassing unit in the terminators.

Chambers assured me his army was ready to go...

 Chambers army looks pretty cool too.  He's got a Dark Mechanicus army that has ties to Nurgle and Slaanesh using the Chaos Marine Codex: A Chaos Lord in Terminator Armor, (5) Chaos Terminators with combi-meltas, a squad of 12 Noise Marines with Icon of Excess, 7 sonic blasters and 2 blast masters, (2) squads of 6 Noise Marines with 2 sonic blasters and 1 blast master each, a Helldrake with Hades Autocannon (yes kids, Chambers can beat you without the bale flamer), 2 awesomely converted Obliterators, and finally a Bastion that has the Imperial iconography defaced and replaced with sacrifices and icons of the dark powers.  We'll add an army pic when he's ready for me to take it.  :)

Random Pics from the game room on Thursday:

This thing is about 5' high and is likely someone's display board.  These people do not mess around...

Iron Hands charity raffle army, there are better pics out there on the internet, and they are worth seeing.

Sisters of Battle display chapel/board.

This close-up of the floor detail proves once and for all that
you can never have too much awesome in your life.

Stay tuned, more tomorrow!

What's New Today?

Apparently we are.  Or, more specifically, Aerion & CVinton are.  This gorgeous tank that was converted by CVinton and painted by Aerion has a brief mention on Games Workshop's Blog.  While they may not be shameless self promoters, I am certainly the proud owner of their excellent collaboration.  Good show lads.  Good show.

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.

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?

Ignis Rex

I have written and deleted a half dozen witty blog posts about this Land Raider but, in retrospect, none of the them have been sufficient.  I'll stop stumbling through my futile attempts at prose, and let the pictures speak for themselves.  Before I go, however, there are three things you need to know about it:

1) This tank was built & converted by CVinton (look here and here) at Dark Future Games.
2) This tank was painted by Team Snake Eyes' very own Chaplain Aerion.
3) This tank is ridiculously awesome.  I am in awe of the artistic ability on display by the two individuals above. Enjoy.

Photoshop compilation of "before" photos.  This is how we received the tank from CVinton.

Photshop was used to make "color tests" before putting paint to model.

Photoshop "color test" of right side.

Crewman photo:  Forgeworld Salamander shoulder  pad and close up of CVinton's sculpting work.

Front Grill.  Yes, the eyes ARE  following you...Heretic!

Front Profile

Left Profile.  All hatches are fully magnetized.  Not pictured are the Flamestorm Cannons
that can turn this Crusader into the Redeemer variant. 

Left Side Sculpting

Right Profile.  If you don't love the dragon mouths on the Hurricane Bolters, you're
either not alive or not human.  True story.

Right Side Sculpting.  "Ignis Rex" is likely horrible latin for "King of Fire" or "Fire King".
We were also pleasantly surprised that CVinton sculpted a fire imp or some such
into the flames at the bottom of the tank behind the Smith figure.

As you might have deduced, there is more to come.  While we did manage to acquire CVinton's beautifully converted Ironcland Dreadnought (Seriously?  It's crushing a traitor guardsman in it's claw, how cool is that?) alas, we are not taking that to Adepticon this year, so it's not a priority right now.  I did manage to get my scaly claws on Bray'arth Ashmantle (that wasn't a shipping mistake CVinton, the Emperor was trying to tell you something...) and he will be serving as my personal HQ choice at Adepticon's 2012 Team Tournament.  Stop by our table this year in Chicago for a closer look.

Ol' Seth's Pre-Heresy Anti-Grav Rhino Conversion! (WIP)

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.  These pics just hit my inbox this morning, and I had to share.  This Iron Hands army that Ol' Seth is putting together is going to look amazing.  These will, likely, be mounted on flying bases, and count as regular Rhinos.  Flesh is most certainly weak!  Anyway, Ol' Seth is a little uncertain if he likes the design, so please feel free to chime in and tell him what you think!

 

Inspiration

Ol' Seth's previous Iron Hands Conversion can be found here.

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