Well, I went, I played, I had a blast. The
IG did well, even with the last minute changes that
GW threw at us with the changes in scenarios from what was posted. As usual, my painting sucked and this year I wasn't able to make up the difference in Battle Points/Sports, so I finished in the middle of the pack at 66th, altho I finished in the top 30 by straight up Battle Points. The scenarios each had three objectives, Primary worth 12 points, secondary 5 points and tertius 3 points.
Round 1 vs Space Marines, Chris
deploy 12" long edge
Primary: Field of Battle, most scoring units in the middle
Secondary: Table Quarters (In case of a tie, both get the points)
Tertiary: Terrain features: Control most terrain features (In case of a tie, both get the points)
Infiltrate, Deep Strike, Dawn-first turn night fight
He had three landspeeder squadrons (2 each) with Hvy bolter/assault cannon, three
tac squads with lascannons, Librarian with retinue,
INQ Lord with three Hvy Bolter servitors, and a Callidus. So eight scoring units, whereas I had about 20....... Key piece of terrain was a large hill right in the middle.
I went first and and managed to spotlight the sentinel squadron my Callidus (yep, I had one too) had moved out from behind cover, and down theyb went. Not much else accomplished on turn 1, his shooting back focused on two sentinels and two fire support squads I had infiltrated forward.
Turn 2, I went after his remaining landspeeders, destroyed one squadron and destroyed one from the last squadron while immobilizing the other. His two he pushed the librarian and retinue onto the hill and Fear of Darkness. No one ran. My turn 3, shot down the Librarian and retinue, started picking on a
tac squad while he started trying to hide units behind that big hill. On turn 5 I just started pushing seven or eight units towards the middle for the win and finished moving them in on turn 6. He finished with two scoring units left, each on terrain (I actually pointed out how he could get two by forgoing shooting and moving both units). I almost screwed up, thinking it was within 6" of terrain but fortunately still had two in terrain due to poor difficult terrain rolls. Oh yeah, both Callidus' pretty much whiffed and died. Final, I win, 20-3.
Round 2 vs Chaos, Mark Whitaker
deploy 15" long edge, 24" push back
Primary: Loot Counters
Secondary: Enemy Lines (winner determined by total
VPs)
Tertiary: Table Quarters
Infiltrate, Deep Strike, Preliminary Bombardment
I remember a Defiler and Demon Prince on the right flank, rhino with berzerkers, raptors, and squad of chaos marines on the far left flank trying to hide behind a hill, and the same setup in the middle trying to hide behind woods. Eight man squad of termies and one squad of daemons in reserve. Prelim Bombardment went well, killing 5 of 6 raptors in the squad on the left flank. I lost a few
IG but nothing major.
I go first, pop both rhinos, finish the one raptor and I think I blew the battle cannon off the defiler. He moves the middle raptors up, along with the
DP and Defiler. Turn 2 the Callidus shows up and goes to town. Over the next couple of turns she wipes out his three units in the middle, then hides behind the dead rhino. Over turn 2 and 3, I kill off the
DP and Defiler as well, he summons daemons to the units hiding on the left flank and hides them as well. On turn 4 I try to keep my last reserve unit in reserve with my Improved Comm reroll, no luck. On his turn 4 the termies finally show up. He places them on top of the loot counter right in front of my lines and I'm practically drooling!! So of course they scatter 11" to the side and angled so that they're behind some woods and I only have one unit that can see them. I manbaged to take out a couple and then they play pacman up my flank to the loot counter, while my one round of shooting at the daemons as they move forward towards the other loot counter does nothing. His win on the primary objective, two counters to one. I took the secondary, Enemy lines, as I had him beat on battle points, even with him getting bonus points for a unit in my deployment zone. And he got the tertiary, two quarters to one as he cleared me out of the bottom right quarter while playing pacman. Final, loss, 5-15. Great game, nail-biter all the way to the end.
Round 3:
IG, Lou D
deploy 18" L
Primary: Annihilation, yep,
VPs
Secondary: Field of Battle, most scoring units in the middle
Tertiary: Suicide Squad-secretly write down a unit, if it dies, you get the points
Infiltrate, Deep Strike
Guard on Guard, always a brutal game. And he had a good force to face me. Two hellhounds, two Basilisks, Armored Fist squad, standard platoon of 25 men (lots of flamers!), hardened vet squad (more flamers),
HQ platoon (more flamers), special weapon squad, and a lascannon anti-tank squad. He used Drop Troops and Carapace, not sure about any other doctrines. He kept the platoon, vets, and
HQ command squad in reserve to deep strike.
And of course, he goes first. My fire support squads each get visited by a hellhound. A scattering Basilisk shell just barely clips my
DH Inquisitor unit and I lose one of my two mystics, so now I have no anti-deep strike shooting either. My go, I've got three squads with lascannons infiltrated with clear shots at the Bassies. They did nothing all game!! My main lines did kill one hellhound, stunned the other, and took out the chimera. Anyways, a bloody dogfight with
IG dropping in all over the place, lots of
IG on
IG HtH, my benefit was Close order Drill vs his 4+ save. Callidus kills his commander and dies to the retinue.My deep striking meltas and plasmas finally damage the bassies, killing one and blowing the gun off the other. Scrum in the middle still ongoing when the game ends but I have the only scoring unit in the middle. Adding it up and I squeak out the
VPs as well, and my plasma gun suicide squad got gunned down right after they lande. Win 20-3,
IIRC his suicide squad was his special weapon squad, which scattered onto one of my units.
Round 4, Eldar, Gabe Dobkin
deploy quarters, 9" from middle
Primary: table Quarters
Secondary: Destroy most expensive unit
Tertiary: Enemy Lines
Gotta admit, Gabe's army surprised me. His only skimmers were two Vypers. Rest of the army was 2 squads of six jetbikes, 2 squads of 10 Dire Avengers, squad of dark reapers, Maugan Ra, squad of fire dragons, Avatar, and a Wraithlord.
I went first and my infiltrated units paid off, destroying a jetbike squad and a vyper and breaking a Dire Avenger squad. In the midlle I went after the wraithlord and finished it on turn 2. He flew his surviving vyper over behind asome woods in the upper left quadrant, on turn 2 I got a 4-plasma gun platoon command landed near it and took it down while being hidden behind the woods from the rest of his army. On turn 3 another plasma
cmd showed up, along witht he Callidus. The plasma dropped into the woods right behind his Avatar but did nothing except kill two of themselves! The Callidus hit the fire dragons and started whittling them down. He pushed the avatar forward and on turn 4 or 5 got into my front units. I think he killed three units total, including my command squad. In the middle, that plasma
cmd got assaulted by his almost understrength Dire Avengers. And several combat turns later, the three
IG were still there and the Dire Avaengers were no longer scoring. The Callidus finished the Fire Dragons just in time (top of 6) to get revenge when the Avangers finally hacked down the plasma
cmd, and then consolidated into Maugan Ra. So all I have to do is jump away in his assault phase and I've got a solid victory, but no, I rolled a 1 and Maugan Ra hacked the Callidus down easily. I've still got the primary, 2 quarters to 1, but the 120 points for the Callidus give him the tertiary and secondary. His most expensive unit was the Dark Reapers, which came through untouched. So a minor victory, 12-8. Also, had my only real rules dispute in this game as he insisted that my sentinels (Walkers) had to take a dangerous terrain test every tiem they made a difficult terrain test. Judge disagreed with him. Odd thing here is that my opponent seemed to take it well but a guy at the next table decided to tell me what an ******* I was. Course, he was also complaining about the scenarios and everything else, so I kinda disregarded his comments.
Round 5, Eldar again, forgot to write down his name, but he won one of the painting awards
Primary:Annihiliation
Secondary: Destroy Units
Tertiary: Assassination, kill opponents most expensive
HQ
deploy 15" lng edge, 24" pushback
Infiltrate, Deep Strike, Preliminary Bombardment, Dusk-last turn nightfight (of course, we forgot all about this.....)
Avatar, Farseer, Falcon, Fire Prism, wraitlord, two squads guardians, one squad Dire Avangers, 6 Howling Banshees (in Falcon, of course), 6 warp spiders, and 3 jetbikes.
He pretty much bunkered down on his side, spiders behind a hill, everything behind cover. Between Infiltrators and Callidus Word in Your Ear, I had a good
LOS to the falcon, and as I went first, it was target #1. Immobilized, banshees disembarked behind it due to penetrating hit. A sentinel Hunter/Killer managed to shake the Fire Prism, and my infiltrated Fire support squads shot up some guardians. Shot at but failed to hurt the wraithlord. That's pretty much turn 2 as well, no damage to the
WL thanks to poor dice on my part and good dice on his (ain't Fortune great!). Only thing on note is that this is the only turn in which he gets to shoot with the Fire Prism. Finally on turn 3, my reserves all show up. Special weapon squad with demo charge, hit right next to the banshees, plasma command, hit right next to the spiders, melta hardened vets, hit right next to the
WL, 2nd plasma command, scatters and dies, Callidus onto the jetbikes. demo charge, boom, no mroe banshees, plasma guns, zap, zap, no more spiders, meltas, whiff, Callidus, kills two bikes between shredder and attacks. His 3, Avatar heads towards the Callidus,
WL flames the Vets, he dooms and guns down the special weapon squad. Callidus jumps but not far enough, Avatar plays bonk the assassin and she's gone. My turn 4 I finally put down the wraithlord, with heavy bolters and autocannons. He's been shrugging off lascannons but
HB and
AC take him out. GO figure.
Turn 4 he goes back to bunkering except for the Fire Prism, which he flies along my lines to tank shock. He was a bit surprised when I pointed out that he couldn't change facing at the end of the tank shock. Not that it mattered, still couldn't kill the blasted thing. He did start moving the dire avengers and Farseer towards me on 5 and 6 I pretty much finish off the Avangers, one of them and the farseer reach my lines for
HtH and the last Avaenger, the Exarch, dies assaulting into terrain as the
IG hack him down, got a couple shots at the Avatar as he shows himself for the first time in the game, but nothing. Fire Prism zooms up and down on both 5 and 6, but no one else breaks, and on the bottom of 6 I figure what the heck, the last squad is going to Death or Glory with a lascannon, won't take the unit below half so why not. Automatic hit, roll high enough but glancing due to speed, I pick up two dice and throw them out while yelling "BOXCARS!!". Sure enough, double 6s, dead Fire Prism on the last shot of the game. Adding it up, I only lost 4 units (one to scatter) while almost wiping him out. Did not get the tertiary as he hid the Avatar until the turn 5. Win: 17-0
Finished with 74 battle points, but below average on Sports with a 34. I knew I'd take a hit on painting (got a 20) but was hoping for a little bit better. All in all, a good showing for the
IG, 4-1, but not so good a showing for me (lower than average sports and painting).
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40K: Col Mondovi, 13th ARkiv'l
IG Regiment
Real World: SFC, US Army, Retired
http://www.ironfistleague.com
