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...