While this game was close, I'd like to think that Reece got a little lucky by winning the roll to go 2nd. If I had been able to go 2nd, I think my chances of winning would have been much, much better. Alas, by me going 1st, it actually made the game a more even matchup.

I made a number of mistakes in this game. Fortunately for me, so did Reece. So what were my mistakes?

1. I poked my ghost ark a little too far out. Reece's IK was then able to see it and thus, charge it.

2. Instead of focusing on his IK on Turn 4 with 1 flyer and 2 AB's, I should have focused on his vendetta instead. I swear, his vendetta got so lucky. I believe he made every single jink save for it.

3. After assaulting and breaking his veteran squad with my bargelord, I then consolidated away from his IK. I should have consolidated towards it instead. Why? Because there was another bargelord there already. This way, his IK charges and kills 1. Next turn, I do my sweeping attack against it. Instead, I consolidated away, his IK charged my bargelord and then my other bargelord was out of range to do his sweep attack.

4. I ran prematurely with my disembarked immortals on Turn 5. I actually did my Movement and Run at the same time (at the recommendation by Reece). I then did my sweep attack with my bargelord against his veterans and they broke! Had I waited to do my Run move with my immortals in the Shooting phase as opposed to in the Movement phase, I could have blocked off the wall, thus denying his IK from charging my immortals and contesting the objective at the bottom of 5.

So what was Reece's mistakes?

1. I assaulted his IK with 2 bargelords. Reece then split his attacks against my 2 bargelords because he got the Destroyer rules wrong (he was still thinking about 6E Destroyer rules). Thus, both Overlords end up surviving and then I killed his knight. Had he reviewed the rules, he would have focused his attacks against 1 bargelord and most likely killed him. Then perhaps I wouldn't have been able to kill his IK with just 1 bargelord.

2. His IK should have made a play for my Emperor's Will objective much sooner. Instead, I was able to draw away his IK by moving my AB's away from it and he took the bait. Then I was able to screen out his IK with my troops to ensure that he couldn't make it to my objective.

3. Twice he forgot to activate his Psyker's force weapons. He could have potentially killed 2 Overlords with it as I failed saves on my Overlords on 2 separate occasions due to his psyker's force axe.

4. He deployed his blob squad + Warlord a little too far from the protection of his knights. Of course it helped that he rolled low to move through difficult terrain and on their Run move while trying to get away from my Overlords, but had they been closer to his IK's, I would have been much less inclined to assault them.

So overall, we both made some mistakes and that in turn made the game much bloodier. But still, I was actually quite surprised at how well his knights worked together. Deciding to deploy in a flank was actually a good strategy on Reece's part, and those knights were just vicious. I really couldn't do much to them and so I didn't even really try (well, except for that 1 assault with my 2 bargelords ). Then again, going into the game, my strategy never really was to kill off his knights. Rather, my strategy was to kill off the rest of his army and other than the vendetta, I basically achieved that.