Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hey folks! This is my battle report for Round #4 of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Media PA.

You can find my battle report for round #1 here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/281869.page
You can find my battle report for round #2 here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/281910.page
You can find my battle report for round #3 here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/281981.page


Headed into Round #4, I've got two 22 point massacres and one 0 point massacred. I come up to the table and....it was somewhere around here that someone informed me that the table number you were on corresponded to how well you were doing in the tournament. Table 7! Since losing the day before, the pressure to win was gone, and I was just having fun. Walking up to the table, my opponent is Jesse, a really cool guy I had met the night before in Ruby Tuesdays and swapped day one stories with (including the burna boy MVP story). He made a note of asking where my burnas were, and that he wasn't going to fall for them!

My list:
Ghazghkull
KFF Mek

17 Boyz+Nob(Wagon with KFF)
12 boyz in trukk
12 boyz in trukk
10 gretchin/runtherder

15 burnas (Wagon with Ghaz)
15 Lootas
15 Lootas

1 Deffkopta, Rokkits and Buzzsaw
1 Deffkopta, Rokkits and Buzzsaw

2x Battlewagons, 'Eavy armor, boarding plank, grabbin klaw, big shoota




Jesse's list:

Chaos Lord, Mark of Khorne, Blood Feeder
Chaos Sorceror, Force Weapon, Lash

Troop: 10 Chaos Marines/Asp. Champion in a Rhino - 2x Melta Guns
Troop: 10 Chaos Marines/Asp. Champion in a Rhino - 2x Melta Guns
Troop: 10 Chaos Marines/Asp. Champion in a Rhino - 2x Melta Guns

Elite: 5x Chosen with 5x Meltaguns in a Rhino
Elite: 5x Chosen with 5x Meltaguns in a Rhino
Elite: 5x Chosen with 5x Meltaguns in a Rhino

Heavy: Possessed vindicator
Heavy: Possessed vindicator



Mission: The thin red line. Five objectives are deployed along the center line of the board, 12" away from each other, such that there is an objective every 12" across the length of the board.
Deployment: Pitched battle

Mike had changed this mission at the last minute, and though many were grateful for the change, I was disappointed to be losing the only mission out of all five that offered any nightfight, since I run a heavily assault oriented army.. The grimdark is apparently not very dark at all.

Jesse won the roll for sides (I've yet to win this one) and chose to deploy and go first. There are so many meltaguns in this army that I'm suppressing anxiety and a feeling that I'm going to bite it hard. He deploys dead center, slightly behind the 24" line. The rhino in the rear right has both of his HQs in it. He left two squad of chosen in reserve to outflank.


My deployment in response: My deffkoptas are in front to turbo-boost across the field, trukks hiding behind battlewagons, and my Lootas attempting to take elevated positions for lanes of fire, although the tall building in the center would cause some issues.


Here's a picture of the entire board as we're deployed:


I scout move my deffkoptas 24" up the field (next to the building where his demolishers are) and fail to seize the initiative. Jesse gets first turn.

Chaos Turn1: He moved up 6" or so with his tanks, and his two demolishers both drop a round on the KFF Wagon, which makes its cover saves. Phew!


Ork Turn1: All those melta weapons are *really* making me nervous. I'm afraid that if I charge forward I'll eat meltas followed by demolisher cannons and get assaulted so I actually mosey back a little bit to bide my time. My gretchin move 6" (then run 3" later) up the field trying to get to the center building where one of the objectives is.


My Deffkoptas made their cover saves from the bolter fire they got, so they make their 12" moves. This is actually a picture of after I turbo-boosted, and after chaos turn1 - one of the rhinos moved up to my deffkopta and attempted to melta it. For their move, the right one moved 12" towards the vindicator, and the left scooted around to get rear armor shots on the rhino next to it.


I declare shooting, and attempt to neutralize his chosen rhino with the HQs in it. I don't want to waste lootas on the vindicators because of the front armor. My left Loota squad is half and half for what can see the rhino with the chosen in it, but they roll 3 shots each, and its enough to explode it! His chosen and two HQs pile out, take some fire from big shootas on wagons, while the other Loota squad opens up into his HQ unit. 3 chosen go down.


Meanwhile, my Deffkopta out front shakes a vindicator (ignored by possession), assaults it and whiffs; the other deffkopta fares the same.

Chaos Turn2: Jesse rolls for reserves and gets a single rhino, and it comes in from my right side (far from the fighting). He jets it across the field 12" and pops smoke. Lord and Sorceror (with remaining chosen) 2d6 into the center terrain and lash my Lootas out! They make a fat and juicy target for his demolishers, who dump two templates on them; one scatters off 8" into nothing, and the other scatters and only actually kills four.


Meanwhile, my closest deffkopta is ignored, while the deffkopta in the rear eats melta in the face and retires to the sideline to mutter about Gork's own luck.

Ork Turn2: I realize that I'm going to get mutilated if I sit back the whole game, so I push forward. The gap between the buildings is narrow, and even if we're supposed to be playing it like area terrain, putting a battlewagon where a hard plastic building is doesn't work so well, so I squeeze one battlewagon into the gap while the other vehicles huddle in behind.


Everything opens up on the lord/sorceror combination, and they each take two wounds, while the remaining chosen survives.


Chaos Turn3: Jesse's other chosen squad comes in, and from my left - he decides to make his play here. The left chosen squad moves up 12", then disembarks within melta range of battlewagon side armor:


His other outflanking chosen squad boils forward 12" and pops out while his nearest troop rhino boils forward 12" and dumps out as well.


His intent here is quite clear: He is attempting to pop a battlewagon and lash its contents into charge range of his blood feeder, thereby gimping me.


Fortunately, a combination of misses, KFF saves, failed armor penetrations leaves me unscathed, even from the nasties shooting at my side armor:


In the backfield, his rhino that killed my deffkopta moved out into the open headed towards my gretchin. After failing to crack a battlewagon, he lashes my remaining deffkopta over to him and eats it, metal and all.

Ork Turn3: Time for me to make my own big play. I declare a Waaaugh! and set things in action. The KFF wagon churns 12" up the battlefield and dumps my big boy squad out in front of his demolishers. They both moved 1", so I'll need 4+ to hit, but if I can silence those guns, I'm going to try. This picture is them after moving, then fleeting. In the background, you can see Ghazghkull - his wagon moved up 6" (yeah, you know what's coming next) and disgorged the big guy. In the backfield, my left loota squad opened up on his rear rhino and wrecked it, putting his troops on foot.


Meanwhile my trukks break right and left to deal with the chosen units on each of my flanks. I'm expecting 12 boyz on the charge (during Ghazghkull's Waaaugh!) to be able to handle 5 chosen.




The shiny battlewagon full of burnas looks over at his chaos marines and Jesse says, *facepalm*. He removes his squad without having me roll for it - statistically 135 hits turns into 67 wounds, and he'll fail 22 of them on a 10 man squad.



I assault! The big mob piles into the demolishers, with a nob/pk in dual base with a rhino and a demolisher so I have options at Initiative 1. I end up weapon destroying one, wrecking a second, and weapon destroying his rhino.


Elsewhere on the board my boyz are piling into chosen and eating them.


I win the assault on my left flank and consolidate:


On the right flank, I win, but one chosen survives and piles in:


In the center, we tried posing for the camera!


The Blood Feeder fails to draw blood from Ghazghkull, and despite Ghazghkull needing to only do two wounds total to end his HQs, he only deals one to the Lord who makes his invul save, and kills the sorceror.
--------------------------------------------------
Turn3 ends, and Jesse requests to concede the game. I'd lost 4 Lootas and two deffkoptas, and he had a 10 man troop squad in the backfield, a 10 man troop squad in a rhino, an empty rhino on my left flank, and his Lord still in combat with Ghazghkull, who has one more turn of 2+ invul saves. My gretchin are stretched between two objectives, and my boys are all midfield ready to the take the rest, while his survivors would have to advance through Loota fire and boyz assaults to try getting on an objective.

I pick up a 22 point massacre and discover that despite a 22 point loss, I'm miraculously headed up to table four to play with the big dogs!

Battle report #5 incoming later...

Congrats on the win Dash!

Though, why champs on the chaos marines they're serving no purpose.

mercer wrote:Congrats on the win Dash!

Though, why champs on the chaos marines they're serving no purpose.

Thanks.

I've strangely noticed that chaos players can suffer a huge swing in fortune in dice rolling...they either do very well, or fluff everything....must come with serving the chaos gods...

KFF wins again. Seriously, you must be getting like 90% saves on that thing.

freddieyu1 wrote:I've strangely noticed that chaos players can suffer a huge swing in fortune in dice rolling...they either do very well, or fluff everything....must come with serving the chaos gods...

If a squad of 5 chosen fire 5 melta shots into the side armor of my battlewagon 12" away...they should come off with 3 hits. Out of those three hits, they should come off with (rough average) one glance and one penetrate. On average, I should make a save against one of those and fail one of those.

If I recall correctly, he weapon destroyed my battlewagon; might have shaken or stunned it or the other (but I had extra armor), so statistically...his rolls were right where they should have been.

Your doing really good considering you said your list wasn't optimal. Table 4 is still quite high.

It would appear as if when you win, you win big (all of them massacres!)

Snikkyd wrote:Your doing really good considering you said your list wasn't optimal. Table 4 is still quite high.

It would appear as if when you win, you win big (all of them massacres!)

Well, I will say that I will never play for the tie - I play to win. So I either win, or I die trying; that's about 99% of all my 40k games.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Snikkyd wrote:Your doing really good considering you said your list wasn't optimal. Table 4 is still quite high.

It would appear as if when you win, you win big (all of them massacres!)

Well, I will say that I will never play for the tie - I play to win. So I either win, or I die trying; that's about 99% of all my 40k games.

Same here. I would rather lose trying something desperate to pull out a win than play conservatively for a draw. Draws are like kissing one's cousin.

we would have won to if it wasn't for you stupid teenage orks and your Dumb Gretchin....lol but serious orks and the waagh's are very very scary. If you don't know how to play against them

TheCadianParatrooper wrote:we would have won to if it wasn't for you stupid teenage orks and your Dumb Gretchin....lol but serious orks and the waagh's are very very scary. If you don't know how to play against them

Are you Jesse?

*EDIT* Also, those are orkettes, not teenage orks.

Yeah It's Jess nice battle reports so far.

TheCadianParatrooper wrote:Yeah It's Jess nice battle reports so far.

Thanks! I'd love to hang out with you again sometime.

Dash, congrats on how well you did. I think your a great example of how people should get out of the comfort zone or pond depending on how you look at it. Some of the guys around here don't play in the tournaments for fear that they would loose to people out of the area. They do great against the locals.

WvLopp wrote:Dash, congrats on how well you did. I think your a great example of how people should get out of the comfort zone or pond depending on how you look at it. Some of the guys around here don't play in the tournaments for fear that they would loose to people out of the area. They do great against the locals.

Thanks! I honestly believe that you have to lose to learn things.

If Tim or Matt were to play me again - same list against my same list, same scenarios...I think they'd both have a much tougher run for their money, simply because my knowledge of their codexes has increased.

Dashofpepper wrote:

WvLopp wrote:Dash, congrats on how well you did. I think your a great example of how people should get out of the comfort zone or pond depending on how you look at it. Some of the guys around here don't play in the tournaments for fear that they would loose to people out of the area. They do great against the locals.

Thanks! I honestly believe that you have to lose to learn things.

If Tim or Matt were to play me again - same list against my same list, same scenarios...I think they'd both have a much tougher run for their money, simply because my knowledge of their codexes has increased.

I felt that way at BSB. My two losses occurred for a number of reasons, but my ignorance of my opponents' codices didn't help at all either (DH and Eldar).

Well, I'm a big fan of vassal - lets me look around the globe for people who play armies I'm unfamiliar with.

Can't tell you the number of Tau players who want a game that I decline. =p

The moment he had some of his boys sitting that close to your Burna wagon hade me smiling in anticipation - you did not disappoint.

I'm really pleased to see how wisely you are taking the experience (and thus far was amazed you'd never faced a Vulkan list before - for shame!). I'm loving your BW tactics and am cribbing a few notes for my own wagon list (which will be painted any century now - clearly I need to apportion a wife and assign her painting duties like you wisely did).

Thor665 wrote:The moment he had some of his boys sitting that close to your Burna wagon hade me smiling in anticipation - you did not disappoint.

I'm really pleased to see how wisely you are taking the experience (and thus far was amazed you'd never faced a Vulkan list before - for shame!). I'm loving your BW tactics and am cribbing a few notes for my own wagon list (which will be painted any century now - clearly I need to apportion a wife and assign her painting duties like you wisely did).

Yes, my wife deserves hero worship.

1. We went to the SVDM ....during her birthday. She had bronchitis and two ear infections and spent most of the weekend int he hotel room sleeping and trying to rest. I wanted to leave her home, but she wanted to come.
2. Next month, we're both flying to California so that I can play in the SoCal Slaughter in Space. She's headed to Disneyland with Hulksmash's wife, while Hulksmash introduces me to the West Coast GT scene.

She's awesome.