Right,
very, very quick report here.
Game 3 was Dawn of War, with Capture & Control - (rolling on the board turn one, with two objectives).
When the other chap got his army out its case, I was stunned. Not because it was outrageously cheap as an army list - in fact, it was a pretty standard Vulkan based marine list - but because it was one of the most beautiful armies I have ever seen. I will put up some pictures of the real thing soonish, but suffice to say, it was like playing a game against the marines from the video below.
They were stunning - every marine painted to Demon winning standard. The chap playing them was lovely. We had a great game, very close, coming down to the last dice roll to determine whether it was a draw or a win for me.
I was the lucky one - not just because I won the dice roll (Killing Vulkan's at the end of the game, giving me one objective to none). I was lucky because this game reminded me what going to tournaments is all about - playing great games against people you'd otherwise never meet, and seeing other people's beautiful toy soldiers.
Game 4 - one the morning of day 2 - was Dawn of War (rolling on the board) with Seize Ground (lots of objectives).
I was playing against a slighty worrying looking guy - 6'6", muscular, covered in tattoos and piercings, with a mohawk. Being a slightly chubby stylish London media type, I wasn't intimidated (I've been in real wars and everything, you know) but I didn't really know what to expect.
His army was 25 Space Sharks Terminators - using the Deathwing list. Essentially, he teleported in (bing!) and I ruthelessly, ruthlessly gunned them down, outmanoeuvring him totally, killing every model he had while not losing a single man.
Twas a black day for the Space Sharks, obviously. Still, we had an awesome time. I;ve seen him posting on a couple of forums, saying that my game was the best game he had all day, because although I gave him a thorough pasting, we both had a laugh, thoroughly enjoyed it, and created a narrative to the game.
This game had some particular moments I'll always remember - from killing a Space Marine Chapter Master with a single Battlecannon round ("Load AP for this one, Jenkins") to being able to say "Now I'm going to destroy you in a staggering display of military professionalism" - then moving every unit in my army 12", disembarking every troop unit, contesting all five objectives, and issuing four successful orders to kill the entire opposing army, to which my opponent replied "Why aren't all Imperial Guard regiments like yours?"
Why indeed?:)
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Steel Legion Airborne List & work in progress...
Just to take a break from the reminiscences of last year's GT, and confirm that things are actually moving ahead with the Assault Corps army for this year's GT.
This is what I've got mostly stuck together thus far:
10 Veteran Guardsmen, who look exactly as I want them to (i.e. like science fiction bad-asses with rocket packs & shotguns)and 3 planes. Ahem. Those of you who are familiar with the world of the Imperial Guard will realise that I have lots to do. However, thus far, this army has been either in my head, or played with using either:
a.) Proxy models (usually epic models in my case!)
or
b.) Borrowing models from other people.
Both have their drawbacks. For example, it is more fun to run around the room with your plane going "Vrooooooom....Nyoowwwwww....zapzapzap" if it is bigger than your thumbnail. Equally, if I drop my models, I'm angry with myself, rather than having to construct some scenario where the cat broke the Valkyrie. No, really, it did.
My army list, following the year or so of proxy/borrowing experiments, is:
HQ
A command HQ with 4 meltaguns & an Astropath
A command HQ with 4 flamethrowers & a Powerfist
Troops
Veteran squad with 3 meltaguns & an Autocannon
Veteran squad with 3 flamers, demolitions & an Autocannon
Veterans squad with 3 meltaguns & an Autocannon
Veterans squad with 3 flamers, demolitions & an Autocannon
Fast Attack
2 Valkyries with Rocket Pods
2 Vendettas with heavy bolters
2 Vendettas with heavy bolters
Comments on the list are welcome, by the way.
The way I've played it thus far is as a finesse army; hitting where & when I choose. Of course, it has its drawbacks - in particular, I have lost the army to 3 autocannons in one test game - but I think it's lots of fun to use, and lots of fun to play against.
The particularly contentious things are:
The Autocannons - I find these useful for playing armies (especially assault armies) with lots of transports. Once you've demobilised them, then they are much easier to deal with, as you can isolate & destroy bits. It also gives a unit that's been left holding an objective, or has survived being shot down, something to do for the rest of the game.
The Heavy bolters on the Vendettas - It's points for flexibility again. In playtests, I found a meltagun heavy list struggled against hordes. I also found the Vendettas a little poor against armies with 150+ models. The cheap addition of the heavy bolters gives them a valid dual role.
The Astropath - He makes staying off board more viable, but
I'm totally open to suggestions - finding a way to fit marbo in would be nice.
In modelling & painting terms, this list means I have to:
Build 3 more planes.
Once I've done this, I can start playtesting the list at GW Kingston, as I have plenty of guard to segue in for as-yet unconverted veterans.
Convert 40 more Guardsmen.
Convert a cool looking astropath - levitating or with a rocket pack? Hmmmm...
Paint 6 planes - I'm going for a colour scheme like this:
Natural metal with yellow wings and black engines. My guess is, done well, it will look great. Done badly, not so much. I guess we'll see...
Paint 50 Guardsmen.
The plan is to do the rocket packs black with silver blades, to link in with the planes, and base them on mesh - fits in with the background, links them colour-wise with the planes, and I have always wanted an army on mesh bases ever since I saw Francis Ellyard's terminators for Space Hulk - about the time I had the idea for the all jump-pack army, in fact....
The basic guard will tie in with my normal Steel legion army - Black metal areas (e.g. helmets) green coats & brown detail. Hopefully, it will all look amazing, but I'll have to do a couple of test models first.
This all has to be done by the 10th of November. In short...there's a lot to do.
This is what I've got mostly stuck together thus far:
10 Veteran Guardsmen, who look exactly as I want them to (i.e. like science fiction bad-asses with rocket packs & shotguns)and 3 planes. Ahem. Those of you who are familiar with the world of the Imperial Guard will realise that I have lots to do. However, thus far, this army has been either in my head, or played with using either:
a.) Proxy models (usually epic models in my case!)
or
b.) Borrowing models from other people.
Both have their drawbacks. For example, it is more fun to run around the room with your plane going "Vrooooooom....Nyoowwwwww....zapzapzap" if it is bigger than your thumbnail. Equally, if I drop my models, I'm angry with myself, rather than having to construct some scenario where the cat broke the Valkyrie. No, really, it did.
My army list, following the year or so of proxy/borrowing experiments, is:
HQ
A command HQ with 4 meltaguns & an Astropath
A command HQ with 4 flamethrowers & a Powerfist
Troops
Veteran squad with 3 meltaguns & an Autocannon
Veteran squad with 3 flamers, demolitions & an Autocannon
Veterans squad with 3 meltaguns & an Autocannon
Veterans squad with 3 flamers, demolitions & an Autocannon
Fast Attack
2 Valkyries with Rocket Pods
2 Vendettas with heavy bolters
2 Vendettas with heavy bolters
Comments on the list are welcome, by the way.
The way I've played it thus far is as a finesse army; hitting where & when I choose. Of course, it has its drawbacks - in particular, I have lost the army to 3 autocannons in one test game - but I think it's lots of fun to use, and lots of fun to play against.
The particularly contentious things are:
The Autocannons - I find these useful for playing armies (especially assault armies) with lots of transports. Once you've demobilised them, then they are much easier to deal with, as you can isolate & destroy bits. It also gives a unit that's been left holding an objective, or has survived being shot down, something to do for the rest of the game.
The Heavy bolters on the Vendettas - It's points for flexibility again. In playtests, I found a meltagun heavy list struggled against hordes. I also found the Vendettas a little poor against armies with 150+ models. The cheap addition of the heavy bolters gives them a valid dual role.
The Astropath - He makes staying off board more viable, but
I'm totally open to suggestions - finding a way to fit marbo in would be nice.
In modelling & painting terms, this list means I have to:
Build 3 more planes.
Once I've done this, I can start playtesting the list at GW Kingston, as I have plenty of guard to segue in for as-yet unconverted veterans.
Convert 40 more Guardsmen.
Convert a cool looking astropath - levitating or with a rocket pack? Hmmmm...
Paint 6 planes - I'm going for a colour scheme like this:
Natural metal with yellow wings and black engines. My guess is, done well, it will look great. Done badly, not so much. I guess we'll see...
Paint 50 Guardsmen.
The plan is to do the rocket packs black with silver blades, to link in with the planes, and base them on mesh - fits in with the background, links them colour-wise with the planes, and I have always wanted an army on mesh bases ever since I saw Francis Ellyard's terminators for Space Hulk - about the time I had the idea for the all jump-pack army, in fact....
The basic guard will tie in with my normal Steel legion army - Black metal areas (e.g. helmets) green coats & brown detail. Hopefully, it will all look amazing, but I'll have to do a couple of test models first.
This all has to be done by the 10th of November. In short...there's a lot to do.
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
UKGT 2010 final - Report from the Steel Legion perspective - Part Three - The horror of the Netlist
Hi all,
so...where were we. Ah yes, I'd just been destroyed in the most comprehensive way it is possible to be destroyed in a game of 40k. The only way I could have lost more badly would have been for my opponent to actually steal my girlfriend during turn 5.
So, the tournament being tabbed, I dropped waaaay down to the bottom table. Down there, swimming around in the juice at the bottom of the bin, I expected to find someone fairly rubbish - hopefully someone with no intent to win - a "fluff gamer", or someone who had qualified by painting alone, who didn't actually know the rules. But sadly, this being the UKGT final, I encountered an army made entirely of cheese.
No, not actually made out of cheese (Sadly). But it might as well have been. I've written on my loathing of dual-lash armies before, at the GT heats:-
I was slightly horrified in this game. The other player put his army on the table, and it was...well, it was pretty ridiculous. He had two giant horrible Lovecraftian winged tentacle monsters with mind control powers, 30 or so immortal superhuman killing machines in powered armour, and several giant Terminator 2 style things that could turn into practically any gun they wanted, and a couple of tanks firing nuclear demolition shells.
This army, is to say the least, ridiculously badass. Also, it's totally lacking in any kind of coherent theme, just a collection of models that have one thing in common - they are really mean.
It was this army, again. Oh, it was slightly different - it was nicely painted, and he had Predators instead of Vindicators. But still the mainstays - 2 lash princes, 6 Obliterators, marines in rhinos to score.
But...the player using it had a lot of class. He'd bothered with linking it all together into a coherent theme, even painting all the Obliterators to match the general scheme. I didn't take pics of them (for fear of the techno virus destroying my camera), but they were nicely modelled - he'd unified the weapons on them, so for example, one was turning into 15 assault cannons, one was turning into all flamers...
It looked really nice. As we chatted, he explained to me that he really liked Chaos marines, and wanted to bring a competitive army of them - he felt you couldn't really do a competitive Slaanesh list without lash.
I do have a certain sympathy with him - by this point, for the first time ever, the bar grumbles were about Guard rather than anything else. Almost every game I played started with the question "Sigh. How many Vendettas?" - hardly a good sign for the ongoing popularity of Guard. In particular, one chap with an eight Valkyrie list was being excoriated for having "won" the first game by preventing his opponent from deploying on the board by blocking the table edge off with Valkyries.
The way this works is his opponent put everything in reserve, anticipating getting the first shots on the Valkyries. He countered this by deploying as far forward as he could, then scouting 24", then turning his flyers end on to block the entire board edge. Effective, but hardly sporting.
There were 20 or so guard lists there, and mine was the only one relying on a mix of Chimeras and Russes - which I felt was very odd indeed, as it's generally agreed to be one of the stronger builds going.
I didn't have a great feeling going into this game - it was pitched battle (the dullest setup type) with annilation (a perennial weakness of my 17 KP army) as the victory condition. I think he looked at my army and expected it to be a hideous death-fest for him. As it was, we both had a fun game, where my essential plan was to castle the tanks, AV14 hulls out front, and his essential plan was to melt everything I had with sound cannons firing pure hero metal, turned all the way up to 11.
It shook out to a draw; I killed his 5 tanks, and both of the demon princes, but his infantry stayed alive. Shooting from Obliterators in cover gradually wore down my tanks, and I lost a couple of Russes, a trio of chimeras, and a couple of squads who were mind controlled into running into the Demon's dribbling sticky maws.
Wait, they were very firmly Slaanesh demon princes. Correct that last sentence to "Orifices". Ewww.
I'm going to skip ahead now, to game 5. By this point, I was on a high, having totally stamped on my opponents in rounds 3 & 4 (Apologies to fans of suspense - I'll deal with them next week, before unveiling my mighty work on the new army). What did I come up against?
Well, it was an army entirely made out of cheese.
Well, not quite. It was another dual-lash chaos army, but this one was played by a man with a considerably lower reserve of class than the previous gentleman. The gentleman lurked in the centre of this awful ven diagram:
The army was hideous. Hideous. And not in the game. It was just ugly.
He had two demon princes - one painted Khorne, one painted nurgle. By two different people. He then added to this an iron warriors landraider (painted by a third person), six of the horrid old obliterators (the 3rd ed ones) and three squads of "Plague marines with meltaguns".
Well, AOBR marines sprayed/drybrushed/dipped in dulux masonry paint. Green masonry paint. Their meltaguns were crudely stuck on tau fusion guns. They were painted by a fourth individual - maybe our man himself.
He was the worst sort of tournament player. The sort you read about on the interweb as the typical attendee. In fact, he represents a tiny minority of players - tournaments are fun, and attempts to "fluff them up" (as represented by the current GT ruleset I dislike) aren't going to stop him.
Anyway, we played the game, and disaster struck early for him. He ran his plaguemarines out in the open to get close to an objective. He knew it was safe to move them out of cover because he was out of all of my guns 48" range.
It rolls round to my turn, and I fire two battlecannons at them. He points out, somewhat smugly, that his marines are out of range. I point out battlecannons have a 72" range. Rulebooks are consulted. I am correct. Ha.
The plaguemarines go up in a burst of filthy masonry paint, leaving one alive. He begins to loudly complain about my "cheesy army". Brilliant. The game - Spearhead (quarters) with capture & control (2 objectives) is often thought of as the "draw" mission. It worked out that way for us, with his immobilised Land Raider cover his objective, with one plaguemarine inside it.
He wasn't even that good a player; frequently making tactical mistakes and so on. The only reason I didn't win was because a couple of my chimeras immobilised themselves on the way to his objective. Ah well, it happens.
That's the real problem with netlists like nobz bikers or dual lash - they provide a crutch for WAAC types to think they're good at the game. Of course, it all comes crumbling down when you play against someone who know's what he's doing. The other problem is that 3 out of my 12 GT games in this season were against slightly dull samey armies - armies I probably wouldn't have chosen to play 3 times, if I'm honest.
Anyway - what did I learn?
1.) Don't judge a book by its cover. A guy with a netlist that looks awesome can be a great player and a great hobbyist. Equally, he can be a tool.
2.) Battlecannons having a 72" range is still awesome.
3.) Guard are a "totally broken army" according to some netlist players...
so...where were we. Ah yes, I'd just been destroyed in the most comprehensive way it is possible to be destroyed in a game of 40k. The only way I could have lost more badly would have been for my opponent to actually steal my girlfriend during turn 5.
So, the tournament being tabbed, I dropped waaaay down to the bottom table. Down there, swimming around in the juice at the bottom of the bin, I expected to find someone fairly rubbish - hopefully someone with no intent to win - a "fluff gamer", or someone who had qualified by painting alone, who didn't actually know the rules. But sadly, this being the UKGT final, I encountered an army made entirely of cheese.
No, not actually made out of cheese (Sadly). But it might as well have been. I've written on my loathing of dual-lash armies before, at the GT heats:-
I was slightly horrified in this game. The other player put his army on the table, and it was...well, it was pretty ridiculous. He had two giant horrible Lovecraftian winged tentacle monsters with mind control powers, 30 or so immortal superhuman killing machines in powered armour, and several giant Terminator 2 style things that could turn into practically any gun they wanted, and a couple of tanks firing nuclear demolition shells.
This army, is to say the least, ridiculously badass. Also, it's totally lacking in any kind of coherent theme, just a collection of models that have one thing in common - they are really mean.
It was this army, again. Oh, it was slightly different - it was nicely painted, and he had Predators instead of Vindicators. But still the mainstays - 2 lash princes, 6 Obliterators, marines in rhinos to score.
But...the player using it had a lot of class. He'd bothered with linking it all together into a coherent theme, even painting all the Obliterators to match the general scheme. I didn't take pics of them (for fear of the techno virus destroying my camera), but they were nicely modelled - he'd unified the weapons on them, so for example, one was turning into 15 assault cannons, one was turning into all flamers...
It looked really nice. As we chatted, he explained to me that he really liked Chaos marines, and wanted to bring a competitive army of them - he felt you couldn't really do a competitive Slaanesh list without lash.
I do have a certain sympathy with him - by this point, for the first time ever, the bar grumbles were about Guard rather than anything else. Almost every game I played started with the question "Sigh. How many Vendettas?" - hardly a good sign for the ongoing popularity of Guard. In particular, one chap with an eight Valkyrie list was being excoriated for having "won" the first game by preventing his opponent from deploying on the board by blocking the table edge off with Valkyries.
The way this works is his opponent put everything in reserve, anticipating getting the first shots on the Valkyries. He countered this by deploying as far forward as he could, then scouting 24", then turning his flyers end on to block the entire board edge. Effective, but hardly sporting.
There were 20 or so guard lists there, and mine was the only one relying on a mix of Chimeras and Russes - which I felt was very odd indeed, as it's generally agreed to be one of the stronger builds going.
I didn't have a great feeling going into this game - it was pitched battle (the dullest setup type) with annilation (a perennial weakness of my 17 KP army) as the victory condition. I think he looked at my army and expected it to be a hideous death-fest for him. As it was, we both had a fun game, where my essential plan was to castle the tanks, AV14 hulls out front, and his essential plan was to melt everything I had with sound cannons firing pure hero metal, turned all the way up to 11.
It shook out to a draw; I killed his 5 tanks, and both of the demon princes, but his infantry stayed alive. Shooting from Obliterators in cover gradually wore down my tanks, and I lost a couple of Russes, a trio of chimeras, and a couple of squads who were mind controlled into running into the Demon's dribbling sticky maws.
Wait, they were very firmly Slaanesh demon princes. Correct that last sentence to "Orifices". Ewww.
I'm going to skip ahead now, to game 5. By this point, I was on a high, having totally stamped on my opponents in rounds 3 & 4 (Apologies to fans of suspense - I'll deal with them next week, before unveiling my mighty work on the new army). What did I come up against?
Well, it was an army entirely made out of cheese.
Well, not quite. It was another dual-lash chaos army, but this one was played by a man with a considerably lower reserve of class than the previous gentleman. The gentleman lurked in the centre of this awful ven diagram:
The army was hideous. Hideous. And not in the game. It was just ugly.
He had two demon princes - one painted Khorne, one painted nurgle. By two different people. He then added to this an iron warriors landraider (painted by a third person), six of the horrid old obliterators (the 3rd ed ones) and three squads of "Plague marines with meltaguns".
Well, AOBR marines sprayed/drybrushed/dipped in dulux masonry paint. Green masonry paint. Their meltaguns were crudely stuck on tau fusion guns. They were painted by a fourth individual - maybe our man himself.
He was the worst sort of tournament player. The sort you read about on the interweb as the typical attendee. In fact, he represents a tiny minority of players - tournaments are fun, and attempts to "fluff them up" (as represented by the current GT ruleset I dislike) aren't going to stop him.
Anyway, we played the game, and disaster struck early for him. He ran his plaguemarines out in the open to get close to an objective. He knew it was safe to move them out of cover because he was out of all of my guns 48" range.
It rolls round to my turn, and I fire two battlecannons at them. He points out, somewhat smugly, that his marines are out of range. I point out battlecannons have a 72" range. Rulebooks are consulted. I am correct. Ha.
The plaguemarines go up in a burst of filthy masonry paint, leaving one alive. He begins to loudly complain about my "cheesy army". Brilliant. The game - Spearhead (quarters) with capture & control (2 objectives) is often thought of as the "draw" mission. It worked out that way for us, with his immobilised Land Raider cover his objective, with one plaguemarine inside it.
He wasn't even that good a player; frequently making tactical mistakes and so on. The only reason I didn't win was because a couple of my chimeras immobilised themselves on the way to his objective. Ah well, it happens.
That's the real problem with netlists like nobz bikers or dual lash - they provide a crutch for WAAC types to think they're good at the game. Of course, it all comes crumbling down when you play against someone who know's what he's doing. The other problem is that 3 out of my 12 GT games in this season were against slightly dull samey armies - armies I probably wouldn't have chosen to play 3 times, if I'm honest.
Anyway - what did I learn?
1.) Don't judge a book by its cover. A guy with a netlist that looks awesome can be a great player and a great hobbyist. Equally, he can be a tool.
2.) Battlecannons having a 72" range is still awesome.
3.) Guard are a "totally broken army" according to some netlist players...
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
UKGT 2010 final - Report from the Steel Legion perspective - Part Two
So, there I was, just wandering around the hall on March the 13th 2010, wondering to myself why very few people were playing Tyranids. I was full to the brim with free coffee and doughnuts, and ready for my first game.
Game One - Where are the Demonhunters when you need them?
First game, I pulled a game against a Demons of Chaos army. In background terms this is a pretty bad matchup for my army; generally, even if Guardsmen win against Demons, they are executed afterwards to prevent word of the horrors of the warp getting out. Instead, it's usually left to specialist psychically shielded Demonhunters to do the business...but I suppose they were off polishing their Golden Armour or something.
Above: Andrew Taylor's beautiful Demonhunters army. Possibly so beautiful because they leave the hard work of hunting Demons to the Guard?:)
In actuality, looking at our comparative lists, I was pretty confident of winning (...and thus being executed afterwards). He had a Lord of Change, a Demon Prince, a (very pretty) Herald on a chariot, 2 units of 6 fiends, 2 units of 5 plaguebearers & one unit of 6 Bloodcrushers.
Above: The Herald, my pretties...
Compared to my ten tanks and sixty-five guard, I wasn't worried at all. Being all too aware of the damage 60-odd 36" range shots from multilasers, heavy bolters and heavy stubbers can do to any army, I wasn't too worried about one made of 41 relatively squishy wounds behind invulnerable saves, which comes at you piecemeal and can only really do damage in combat.
The mission type was Capture and Control (multiple objectives), on a Spearhead (Quarters) deployment. Now, at this point, in my test games, I hadn't lost a game with multiple objectives in months - it's one of the real strengths of a list with 6 scoring units in transports.
He picked the half of his army with the two units of fiends, the herald, the Lord of Change, and the Bloodcrushers. In what was soon to be a trend, he got the half he wanted on the random demon half-army roll. He also won the setup roll, meaning I had to set up first, thus effectively losing a turn, as demons somewhat rudely will always turn up late:)
I put the battletanks quite far forward, moving them at full speed - I was thinking the weren't going to be much help in this game (can't autokill anything, everything has invun saves), so was driving them forwards on a tangent from the rest of the army. I was hoping things would bunch to assault them, drawing them a.) into better positions to flame/battlecannon and b.) further from objectives. Everything else hung back, sticking to hull down positions - largely provided by the advancing Leman Russes.
On the first turn, he deepstriked in - putting the tanks forward meant he was quite far (20" or so) from my Chimeras - what were going to win me the game. This is what things looked like on turn one:
Things didn't look like this for long, as he fired two bolts of change (ST 8 AP1 shots)... and destroyed both of my Leman Russes. One on the side armour, hull down, one on the front armour, hull down. I was a little taken aback, it's fair to say. Still, I wasn't really expecting the Russes to do much in this game (I was basically going to sacrifice them), but losing 300 odd points like that is always a bit jarring.
Subsequently, on my turn, I returned fire with the Chimeras & Guardsmen, while moving forwards at full speed with the demolisher, tank shocking the bloodcrushers. I also moved command sections into positions where they could flame fiends/bloodcrushers who assaulted the demolisher. I fired 7 Multilasers, 4 heavy bolters, 7 Heavy Stubbers, 4 Lascannons and 4 Plasma guns at the Bloodcrushers.
I figured, 10 wounds, a 3+ save... how bad can it be? I regularly kill fully formed units of marines with full volleys of fire from my army.
I did a wound. Just one.
The odds against that are literally thousands to one, but I was genuinely surprised that the Bloodcrushers could pull the Nobz bikers wound allocation trick; even without my appalling rolls, and the "barred from Vegas"-esque saves my opponent rolled, it would have been a mistake to fire at them in the first place. I should really have destroyed the fiends.
On his second turn, he rolled amazingly well on reserves (at 5+ because of the fleetmaster) and deepstriked in all the rest of the army. Wow, so now the navy AND the Demon hunters had let us down. Bad. He then proceeded to fire his three bolts of change... destroying three hull down Chimeras. In one of the blasts I lost nine guardsmen to the Chimera explosion. By this point, the lovely chap playing the demons was almost apologetic for how well he was rolling. On my third turn, I fired seven Chimeras at the fiends...and did a wound. Again, terrible, terrible rolls.
He assaulted the Demolisher with the Bloodcrushers (Hitting on 6s, Penetrating on 6s) and destroyed it. Things were not going well, it's fair to say. I was starting to see what those "Perils of the warp" the inquisitors were always going on about were all about.
I hit on a plan. All I had to do was to wipe out his scoring units (10 Plaguebearers) and then the worst I could do was a draw. After a few scrappy turns, where my luck and his luck returned to average, I tried to gun down all the plaguebearers, as fiends and bloodcrushers ran rampant though my army. I was basically able to slow them down by "feeding" them a unit a turn, and spreading out with the units that still had transports.
I managed to kill 4 plaguebearers with shooting. Hardly impressive. I was left in a position on tun 6 where I could get a draw; all I had to do was kill the 5 wound, WS2, T3, 5+ save Herald who was contesting an objective, then use a massacre move to mean the Bloodcrushers could only kill one unit, and I'd be fine. I could even win if a command section with two meltaguns and two flamers could kill 5 plaguebearers in cover.
So, I moved in the Chimera with the command section, leaving the command section inside so they would have more chance of contesting the objective if they didn't kill the plaguebearers (as the local fiends would be less likely to kill them AND their Chimera) and positioned my remaining 20 guardsmen to assault the herald. I decided to assault him rather than shoot him because I felt while 40 Lasgun shots were unlikely to do the 5 wounds required, the extra wounds from the combat result would probably do it.
I started my shooting phase by saying "I'll fire this command section at the plaguebearers". My opponent replied,
"You can't - you just moved that Chimera 12". He was absolutely right. Here I was at the GT, and I'd just made a really, really, really stupid error. It is probably the stupidest mistake I've made in like eight years of tournament gaming. Still, it was going to be fine. He was unlikely to kill the Chimera AND the command section, so all I had to do was kill one herald and I'd be fine.
20 Guardsmen charge, going first. 42 attacks, hitting on 3s, wounding on 4s, saving on either 4s or 5s (I forget which). Even assuming it's saving on 4s, on average I'd do 6 or 7 wounds. I hit with about 15 attacks, wounded with about 5, and he made all his saves. He fought back, killed one guardsman - both squads broke and ran, and the herald ran them both down.
Free from combat, he bolt of changes the Chimera, which explodes. My Colonel dies a messy death to fiends. Even in this game, I was speechless. I had done 5 wounds in the game, and lost literally everything I had in six turns. It's the worst defeat I have ever had in warhammer 40,000; I think it's one of maybe three times I've been tabled in a game.
As for the result of the game, I suppose I basically saved the Inquisition some bullets in shooting my Guardsmen. In fact, it's possible the beautifully painted Traitor Guard below (one of the best army nominees) had the right idea when it comes to Chaos...
In short, all praise the Dark Gods! And their ludicrous dice rolls!
Lessons Learned: Chimeras, right? They can't move 12" and still fire from inside. That is so last edition.
You'd think I'd know that, and clearly, I do, but the truth is, in this game, I was grasping at straws so much after two turns I wasn't thinking clearly and just ended up playing on autopilot. That's what leads to mistakes. I had 45 minutes left on the clock, on turn 6, with 25 infantry and one tank left.
My opponent would not have minded me having a proper think. I had managed to claw my way back into the game after an appalling start. To be fair, even without the mistake, I probably would still have lost, but it was still galling. Even, maybe even especially at moments of high emotion, it's best to sit back, take a deep breath and think every move through.
After the game, I took my opponent to the bar, and bought him a pint. He was a great guy, and I had a superb game, even though I lost as badly as you can possibly lose. He was almost embarrassed at how lucky he'd been - but still, I do think another mistake I made was to underestimate him and his army.
I looked at it on paper, and I didn't really appreciate just how devastating things like fiends were against infantry (or how fragile they were); I had no idea how the wound allocation & bloodcrushers trick worked. I'd certainly have more respect for a demon army now - but more importantly, I've actually played against it.
To prep for a tournament, this year I'm going to try to get games against all (or most) of the competitive armies; I'd rather not be surprised and drubbed again...
Game One - Where are the Demonhunters when you need them?
First game, I pulled a game against a Demons of Chaos army. In background terms this is a pretty bad matchup for my army; generally, even if Guardsmen win against Demons, they are executed afterwards to prevent word of the horrors of the warp getting out. Instead, it's usually left to specialist psychically shielded Demonhunters to do the business...but I suppose they were off polishing their Golden Armour or something.
Above: Andrew Taylor's beautiful Demonhunters army. Possibly so beautiful because they leave the hard work of hunting Demons to the Guard?:)
In actuality, looking at our comparative lists, I was pretty confident of winning (...and thus being executed afterwards). He had a Lord of Change, a Demon Prince, a (very pretty) Herald on a chariot, 2 units of 6 fiends, 2 units of 5 plaguebearers & one unit of 6 Bloodcrushers.
Above: The Herald, my pretties...
Compared to my ten tanks and sixty-five guard, I wasn't worried at all. Being all too aware of the damage 60-odd 36" range shots from multilasers, heavy bolters and heavy stubbers can do to any army, I wasn't too worried about one made of 41 relatively squishy wounds behind invulnerable saves, which comes at you piecemeal and can only really do damage in combat.
The mission type was Capture and Control (multiple objectives), on a Spearhead (Quarters) deployment. Now, at this point, in my test games, I hadn't lost a game with multiple objectives in months - it's one of the real strengths of a list with 6 scoring units in transports.
He picked the half of his army with the two units of fiends, the herald, the Lord of Change, and the Bloodcrushers. In what was soon to be a trend, he got the half he wanted on the random demon half-army roll. He also won the setup roll, meaning I had to set up first, thus effectively losing a turn, as demons somewhat rudely will always turn up late:)
I put the battletanks quite far forward, moving them at full speed - I was thinking the weren't going to be much help in this game (can't autokill anything, everything has invun saves), so was driving them forwards on a tangent from the rest of the army. I was hoping things would bunch to assault them, drawing them a.) into better positions to flame/battlecannon and b.) further from objectives. Everything else hung back, sticking to hull down positions - largely provided by the advancing Leman Russes.
On the first turn, he deepstriked in - putting the tanks forward meant he was quite far (20" or so) from my Chimeras - what were going to win me the game. This is what things looked like on turn one:
Things didn't look like this for long, as he fired two bolts of change (ST 8 AP1 shots)... and destroyed both of my Leman Russes. One on the side armour, hull down, one on the front armour, hull down. I was a little taken aback, it's fair to say. Still, I wasn't really expecting the Russes to do much in this game (I was basically going to sacrifice them), but losing 300 odd points like that is always a bit jarring.
Subsequently, on my turn, I returned fire with the Chimeras & Guardsmen, while moving forwards at full speed with the demolisher, tank shocking the bloodcrushers. I also moved command sections into positions where they could flame fiends/bloodcrushers who assaulted the demolisher. I fired 7 Multilasers, 4 heavy bolters, 7 Heavy Stubbers, 4 Lascannons and 4 Plasma guns at the Bloodcrushers.
I figured, 10 wounds, a 3+ save... how bad can it be? I regularly kill fully formed units of marines with full volleys of fire from my army.
I did a wound. Just one.
The odds against that are literally thousands to one, but I was genuinely surprised that the Bloodcrushers could pull the Nobz bikers wound allocation trick; even without my appalling rolls, and the "barred from Vegas"-esque saves my opponent rolled, it would have been a mistake to fire at them in the first place. I should really have destroyed the fiends.
On his second turn, he rolled amazingly well on reserves (at 5+ because of the fleetmaster) and deepstriked in all the rest of the army. Wow, so now the navy AND the Demon hunters had let us down. Bad. He then proceeded to fire his three bolts of change... destroying three hull down Chimeras. In one of the blasts I lost nine guardsmen to the Chimera explosion. By this point, the lovely chap playing the demons was almost apologetic for how well he was rolling. On my third turn, I fired seven Chimeras at the fiends...and did a wound. Again, terrible, terrible rolls.
He assaulted the Demolisher with the Bloodcrushers (Hitting on 6s, Penetrating on 6s) and destroyed it. Things were not going well, it's fair to say. I was starting to see what those "Perils of the warp" the inquisitors were always going on about were all about.
I hit on a plan. All I had to do was to wipe out his scoring units (10 Plaguebearers) and then the worst I could do was a draw. After a few scrappy turns, where my luck and his luck returned to average, I tried to gun down all the plaguebearers, as fiends and bloodcrushers ran rampant though my army. I was basically able to slow them down by "feeding" them a unit a turn, and spreading out with the units that still had transports.
I managed to kill 4 plaguebearers with shooting. Hardly impressive. I was left in a position on tun 6 where I could get a draw; all I had to do was kill the 5 wound, WS2, T3, 5+ save Herald who was contesting an objective, then use a massacre move to mean the Bloodcrushers could only kill one unit, and I'd be fine. I could even win if a command section with two meltaguns and two flamers could kill 5 plaguebearers in cover.
So, I moved in the Chimera with the command section, leaving the command section inside so they would have more chance of contesting the objective if they didn't kill the plaguebearers (as the local fiends would be less likely to kill them AND their Chimera) and positioned my remaining 20 guardsmen to assault the herald. I decided to assault him rather than shoot him because I felt while 40 Lasgun shots were unlikely to do the 5 wounds required, the extra wounds from the combat result would probably do it.
I started my shooting phase by saying "I'll fire this command section at the plaguebearers". My opponent replied,
"You can't - you just moved that Chimera 12". He was absolutely right. Here I was at the GT, and I'd just made a really, really, really stupid error. It is probably the stupidest mistake I've made in like eight years of tournament gaming. Still, it was going to be fine. He was unlikely to kill the Chimera AND the command section, so all I had to do was kill one herald and I'd be fine.
20 Guardsmen charge, going first. 42 attacks, hitting on 3s, wounding on 4s, saving on either 4s or 5s (I forget which). Even assuming it's saving on 4s, on average I'd do 6 or 7 wounds. I hit with about 15 attacks, wounded with about 5, and he made all his saves. He fought back, killed one guardsman - both squads broke and ran, and the herald ran them both down.
Free from combat, he bolt of changes the Chimera, which explodes. My Colonel dies a messy death to fiends. Even in this game, I was speechless. I had done 5 wounds in the game, and lost literally everything I had in six turns. It's the worst defeat I have ever had in warhammer 40,000; I think it's one of maybe three times I've been tabled in a game.
As for the result of the game, I suppose I basically saved the Inquisition some bullets in shooting my Guardsmen. In fact, it's possible the beautifully painted Traitor Guard below (one of the best army nominees) had the right idea when it comes to Chaos...
In short, all praise the Dark Gods! And their ludicrous dice rolls!
Lessons Learned: Chimeras, right? They can't move 12" and still fire from inside. That is so last edition.
You'd think I'd know that, and clearly, I do, but the truth is, in this game, I was grasping at straws so much after two turns I wasn't thinking clearly and just ended up playing on autopilot. That's what leads to mistakes. I had 45 minutes left on the clock, on turn 6, with 25 infantry and one tank left.
My opponent would not have minded me having a proper think. I had managed to claw my way back into the game after an appalling start. To be fair, even without the mistake, I probably would still have lost, but it was still galling. Even, maybe even especially at moments of high emotion, it's best to sit back, take a deep breath and think every move through.
After the game, I took my opponent to the bar, and bought him a pint. He was a great guy, and I had a superb game, even though I lost as badly as you can possibly lose. He was almost embarrassed at how lucky he'd been - but still, I do think another mistake I made was to underestimate him and his army.
I looked at it on paper, and I didn't really appreciate just how devastating things like fiends were against infantry (or how fragile they were); I had no idea how the wound allocation & bloodcrushers trick worked. I'd certainly have more respect for a demon army now - but more importantly, I've actually played against it.
To prep for a tournament, this year I'm going to try to get games against all (or most) of the competitive armies; I'd rather not be surprised and drubbed again...
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