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RTT 01/12/07 Game Empire Pasadena 2000pts

Hey all,

Back again with another batrep for your enjoyment. Sadly, I’ve finished painting up my Imperial Guard, so now you’ll have to suffer through my misadventures with them instead of my Tau.

Side Note: It’s a weird feeling, being a noob with an army again. I like to think that I’m a decent Tau player, but my last few months of gaming w/ the Guard have had me kicked up and down the table. Oh well, what better way to learn then getting tossed into the fray.

Sneak Peek: I don’t win the tournament. L


Imperial Guard 2000 pts

Doctrines – Iron Discipline, Drop Troops, Close Order Drill, Veterans, Grenadiers

HQ1 – Command Platoon w/ Heroic Senior Officer and Company Standard
HQ2 – Malleus Inquisitor Lord w/ Tarot, Psychic Hood, 3 Mystics and an Acolyte.

EL1 – 5 Veterans w/ 3 Plasma Guns
EL2 – 5 Veterans w/ 3 Meltaguns
EL3 – Eversor Assassin

TR1 – 5 squads w/ Lascannon, Plasma Gun and Platoon Command
TR2 – 5 Grenadiers w/ 2 Plasma Guns in a Chimera
TR3 – 5 Grenadiers w/ 2 Plasma Guns in a Chimera

FA1 – Hellhound
FA2 – Hellhound

HS1 – Leman Russ Battletank
HS2 – Leman Russ Demolisher
HS3 – Basilisk


Game One (Archaeotech Excavation) vs. Travis playing Godzilla Tyranids

Oh goodie, I get to face a Godzilla list straight off the bat. In testing, I lost 4 out of 5 games against my friend’s Godzilla, so naturally my hopes aren’t too high. Travis is a Dakka poster, so he’ll get to laugh while he remembers the game.

Flyrant w/ TL Devourers
Hive Tyrant w/ Venom Cannon, Strangler and 2 Guards
3 Dakkafexes
3 packs of Carapaced Genestealers
2 Raveners
2 Gunfexes
3 Zoanthropes w/ Scream and Warp Blast

I win choice of corner, but Travis wins first turn despite the Tarot and takes it.



Guard Deployment



Tyranid Deployment


Turn One – Tyranids

Travis has a strong center castle set up, and as luck has it, finds the objective on it with the first roll. Long range fire wrecks a Chimera and pins an infantry squad while the smaller bugs advance up the sides.



The blue marker on the right is the Mission Objective.

Turn One – Imperial Guard

In a complete change from playing Tau, I don’t move much at all, with my armour sliding out to draw LOS on the objective while the Chimeras and Hellhounds advance. Lascannon fire blazes forth, but fails to inflict a single unsaved wound on a Gunfex, as does the Earthshaker and Battlecannon.




My gunline looks a lot more impressive then the damage it was dealing out.

Turn Two – Tyranids

Obviously intimidated by my display of laser lights, the Tyranid army advances their large creatures slowly forward. A few volleys of worms don’t do much, but I’ve completely forgotten about a Ravener on the right side which blows right through cover and charges one of my forward infantry squads. The Ravener doesn’t do any damage, but my Guardsmen just can’t seem to stab it enough times and combat ends in a push.




Turn Two – Imperial Guard

Okay, so I’ve committed a rather large foul by getting locked in second turn, but nothing to do about that now but keep fighting. Sadly, for the second turn in a row, my weapons bounce off Carnifex cover saves and I’m left with only a single wound on a Carnifex and a few dead Stealers from a scattering Earthshaker round. The Plasma Veterans show up, but neatly scatter straight into the bugs. In assault, the Guardsmen continue to whack the Ravener over the head, but to no avail. At least they don’t run, which is small consolation.




Turn Three – Tyranids

If there’s anything that’s going okay for me, is that the Tyranids are having an absolutely horrible time of injuring my armour. Venom Cannons miss or bounce off, while Warp Blasts run an amazing streak of airballs and Psychic Hood counters. The Flyrant decides to take matters into its own claws and bonks the Demolisher around a bit to compensate. In assault, the Genestealers catch up to their Ravener lead and join the fight. The Guardsmen continue to roll well and actually bring down a few Stealers while still passing morale. Maybe I should be fighting in CC more?




Turn Three – Imperial Guard

The Shaken Demolisher drives out of the way, which lets a Grenadier squad pour short range plasma into the Flyrant for a single wound. The firebase lascannons and plasma guns bounce off the trees protecting the flying monster and the Eversor fails its difficult terrain charge on it. The Meltagun Veterans drop in and scatter perfectly into the Tyrant for good measure, but their impacting bodies prove much less destructive then their weaponry. On the right, I charge the Genestealers with a infantry squad and both command squads for actually a good amount of kills, taking the Ravener down and reducing the Stealers below half. Can’t win the combat though, and the originally charged squad (down to 2 men) breaks and runs from the fight.




Turn Four – Tyranids

The Tyranids continue to try blasting armour, to little avail, but the Carnifexes are virtually undamaged in return. The Flyrant shoots and charges a firebase squad, locking in while the remaining Ravener charges and destroys a Hellhound. In close combat, the Guard gives as good as it takes and more Genestealers and Guardsmen bite the dust.




Turn Four – Imperial Guard

My last volleys of the game again bounce off various Carnifex sized walls, but the Eversor charges in and takes out the Flyrant with a flurry of NeuroGauntlet attacks. On the right, the mass of bodies finally prevail and the last of the Genestealers collapse under Imperial boots and bayonets. Time’s up and having not killed a single Carnifex plus the loss of the objective means the Tyranids take this round rather decisively.

It was rather frustrating not being able to put wounds on the Carnifexes and it definitely made me wish for my Markerlights. Getting caught out with a 2nd turn charge was really bad also, but at least it ended well. Off to Round Two.

Game Two – Cleanse II vs. Andy playing Space Wolves

Andy’s playing Drop Wolves, and in a minor lapse of sanity, I decide to match him in the Deep Strike department. The entire infantry platoon takes to the skies, and although it might have been smarter to castle up on the Inquisitor, the entertainment made the game worthwhile.

3 Wolf Guard Battle Leaders on Bikes w/ Frost Blades
4 Wolf Scouts armed w/ Meltabombs
4 10 man Grey Hunter Packs w/ 3 Powerfists, 2 Plasma Pistols per squad, two Meltaguns and two Plasmagun units. All in Drop Pods
3 2 unit Land Speeder squadrons w/ Multimelta and Heavy Flamer

I deploy in a short triangle and wait for the Pods to come rolling in. I win first turn and give it to Andy. Pictures in this match are a little weird because we were both running back and forth across the entire board to move units, so I really didn’t get any shots showing the entire field.

Turn One – Space Wolves

All 3 Bikers and the Land Speeder squadrons rocket towards my line, figuring that they can draw fire preventing the vehicles from popping smoke. No real fire from Andy.




Turn One – Imperial Guard

Not wanting to just allow the Land Speeders to live any longer then they have to, especially in a Cleanse Mission, I forgo smoke on my battletanks and shake the closest one w/ Heavy Bolter fire. The Basilisk drops a shell on the backfield speeders and wrecks another one. Both Hellhounds deploy smoke, as they can’t see any targets and the Eversor charges a Biker, wipes it out and consolidates into another.




Turn Two – Space Wolves

Two pods (1 plasma, 1 melta) show up from Reserves along w/ the Scouts. The Inquisitor fails both interception rolls and the plasma troopers take out the Basilisk while the meltagun blows up the Russ. Landspeeders zoom in and shake a Hellhound while in assault, the Wolf Scouts declare a three way charge, meltabombing to death a fast moving Chimera with a single Scout (!!!), blowing off the Demolisher’s cannon and locking in with the Inquisitorial retinue. Oof. The Eversor gets killed by the 3rd Battle Leader charging in and both consolidate forward.




Turn Two – Imperial Guard

The entire Guard Platoon shows up from Reserve and promptly touches down with 2 squads going after each Landspeeder squadron, leaving only a single one alive. The Demolisher Tank Shocks the two Battle Leaders, breaking one off the table and the other falls victim to a Storm Trooper driveby. The Inquisitor’s retinue dies and he settles down for what’s going to be a long fight.




Turn Three – Space Wolves

Another Drop Pod falls out of the sky and sets up to contest the center of the board. The remaining Land Speeder torches a Guard squad to death and the Grey Hunters wreck a Hellhound. The Inquisitor/Wolf Scout fight goes nowhere.




Turn Three – Imperial Guard

The Demolisher returns to the fray, with its heavy bolters inflicting mass casualties on the newly dropped Wolves. A pair of infantry squads contributes long range firepower and the squad breaks and runs off the board. The Guard Command squad shows up to the fray and drops to support the center of the board while the Melta Veterans scatter off target, but destroy a Drop Pod for their troubles. The Inquisitor takes a wound, but really doesn’t care too much.




Turn Four – Space Wolves

The last Wolf Drop Pod lands next to my remaining Chimera, wrecking it. With a majority of my Plasma Guns dead to overheat/heavy flamer burnination, the Land Speeder zips unopposed from cover to cover, picking off random Guardsmen while evading their stationary lascannon fire arcs. The two Wolf packs in my starting corner finally decide to break cover and begin to advance on my center. The Inquisitor takes another wound, but refuses to go down.




Turn Four – Imperial Guard

As the Wolves pour forth, my Guardsmen begin volleying close-range fire into their ranks. I’m killing Marines, but I’m definitely not going to be able to stop them all. The Inquisitor finally succumbs to the Wolf Scouts and they head off to hide in the corner.




Turn Five – Space Wolves

Grey Hunters charge into the first Guard squad, inflicting mass casualties, but the troopers hold. The last Hellhound takes a volley of plasma fire, but comes through with only a Shaken result. The Land Speeder continues to annihilate infantrymen while dancing around out of LOS. If only I had S4 guns!




Turn Five – Imperial Guard

The Hellhound Tank Shocks into the 2nd Grey Hunter pack, breaking them and driving them backwards. More Marines fall to the Demolisher’s secondary batteries, but I’m losing Guardsmen squads faster then Andy loses Marine squads. I charge into the fray w/ another infantry squad, but lose them all to the Wolves’ vicious counterattack.



Turn Six – Space Wolves

The victorious Grey Hunters continue to charge forward, catching my Platoon Command squad and making short work of them. In my home corner, the Scouts run through the building, clamp another meltabomb on the Hellhound and destroy it, claiming the corner. The Land Speeder decides that it’s just about out of promethium, and finds itself a nice corner to hide in.




Turn Six – Imperial Guard

That’s pretty much it. My Demolisher mows down a few more Marines, but it’s my only scoring unit w/ the demise of the Hellhound and all my remaining Infantry squads are below half. The Scouts and Land Speeder both own a corner and I can only contest one w/ the Demolisher.

The smarter play would IMO have been to castle in my corner, with all infantry deployed to push Drop Pods away from the armour. Chalk this one up to, “I’ve never tried this before!” syndrome, and it was rather fun to drop in and zap Land Speeders left and right.

Gosh, I hope I’m not going to lose all 3 games. Wouldn’t surprise me though.

Game Three – This is Heavy, Doc vs. Scott playing Tau

Well, for Game Three, I draw every shooty army’s happy scenario, where there really isn’t any movement for the first couple of turns. Of course, that’s much less useful against another shooty army, but at least I can pen his skimmers on the opening.

Commander Farsight
1 3 man Fireknife (Plasma, Missile) Crisis Suit team
1 3 man Deathrain (TL Missile) Crisis Suit team
4 10 man Fire Warrior teams w/ Markerlight and Devilfish
1 8 man Pathfinder team w/ Devilfish
1 3 man Broadside team w/ Stabilizers
1 Skyray


We both set up long board against each other. I figure I can rain enough concentrated fire down to keep his skimmers in check, but the mass Firewarrior line can definitely put a hurting on my infantry, especially w/ Markerlight support. I win board edge, but lose first turn.




Army deployments

Turn One – Tau

We roll normal movement, but the Tau don’t advance anywhere. Railgun fire explodes a Hellhound, the Basilisk falls victim to a side shot from the Fireknives and a Chimera becomes immobilized. The Firewarrior gun line is barely out of effective range, and my infantry escapes unscathed.




Turn One – Imperial Guard

My armour advances on either side, while the infantry volleys lascannon fire into the skimmer wall protecting the Fire Warriors. I burn two Devilfish down and Stun another one, while a scattering Battlecannon round wipes out most of a squad of Fire Warriors. I really want to get my remaining Hellhound into the Fire Warrior line, but that’ll be awfully difficult to do against the Tau weaponry.




Turn Two – Tau

Normal movement again. The Fire Warriors redeploy forward, as their Devilfish screens move with them. I lose my other Chimera and the Stormtroopers fall out. Railgun fire clangs off the Demolisher, but the remaining Hellhound ends up with its Inferno Cannon wrecked.




Turn Two – Imperial Guard

My light armour has pretty much stalled out, and their cargo advances on foot forward, taking cover behind the tank wreckage. On the right side, though the heavy armour is unmolested and tank cannon + lascannon fire down the two forward Devilfish, blocking the Fire Warriors’ LOS to my Guardsmen.




Turn Three – Tau

Normal gravity (I sense a trend here). The Tau Broadsides take up position in a wrecked Devilfish and manage to Shake the Demolisher. Other then that, there’s no real effective fire from the Tau.




Turn Three – Imperial Guard

My formerly mechanized Stormtrooper contingent bring up their plasma guns and kill the last Devilfish. Firewarriors die to battlecannon fire, but the Broadsides pass their cover saves from the infantry lascannons.




Time is called and that’s all for that. While both our transports are all dead, Scott’s got a lot more dead vehicles and I take the win.




End game shot.



So, not too impressive a showing for my Guard their first time out. I definitely need more practice with the army, as going from a mobile army to a mostly static one is a big change. Hopefully, I’ll have better results the next time I write up a report. I do get pretty high soft scores, so I guess my painting is improving, there’s something I suppose. I also end up with Best Sportsman, which is always nice to know I’m not being a jerk out on the battlefield. Till next time.

Great report Erick! It was a blast seeing you and Johnston playing new armies. Thanks for doing a batrep. God knows I write terrible batreps.

Darrian

Beautiful batrep. My only critique is that you should have humiliated Scott even further, a simple win is not enough. I can tell you with much evidence that he deserves it.

Very nice reports, love the writing style and the pictures!

Yay, I'm immortalized on the intrawebz! I'm the Tyranid player. Thanks for the great game Erick..you definitely earned the best sportsman. That was what, my 3rd game ever with Nids and you're reminding me of stuff I could do. Hope to see you at the next one!

BTW, where do most of the Dakka players play at casually?

Thanks guys!

Lormax: I play at the Realm Games and Comics over in Brea w/ a few other Dakka guys. Darrian is the travelling salesman of SoCal 40k, but he's mostly at GE Pasadena. There's a lot of 40k players in the LA area, but there really isn't a centralized play area where they all show up for some strange reason. Maybe the Westminster Battle Bunker, but I always seem to run into awfully strange players when I go there. YMMV.

Casually? Is that like when you are play in shorts and a tshirt?




I think it depends on where you live. For us on the westside (where I live) it's Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica.

South Bay has 3rd Planet in Torrance.

SGV has Game Empire.

Aero Hobbies has gaming tables now? Every time I have walked into that store, it was a mess. Boxes everywhere, things just stacked on the floor, even to the point that it was hard to navigate around the store. Has the place been cleaned up?

Yes the place has been cleaned up and yes they do have 4 gaming tables at Aero.

@Spmusubi, I am the traveling salesman of SoCal 40K? Damn, I know that can't be a positive thing but it is damn near right.

Darrian

Yeah, I need to start hitting up Aero for some games. I finally bought a model to use as an Inquisitor Lord, time to finally have some psychic protection for the guard!


Oh, and nice Battle report, thanks for posting! Turn 4 in one game and Turn 3 in another. Man, I love 2,000 point tournaments [/sarcasm].

Thanks for the report, enjoyed the great pics the most. Your army looks very nice too, kudos on the FW hellhounds

- Salvage

I gotta agree with Boss_Slavage, I love the camo scheme. Very well done.

Darrian

frenrik wrote:I think it depends on where you live. For us on the westside (where I live) it's Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica.

South Bay has 3rd Planet in Torrance.

SGV has Game Empire.

Aero Hobies has game tables? Last time I played a game there was back in 1st edition when the store was down the street several blocks (1989 or so). Did they move again and get more space or did they just clean up the store to open up more space?

I used to go to 3rd Planet (its still probably the closest place to play for me) but its rare that I get time to play on a Sunday when they have 40k going on. That and they often lack enough table space for everyone.

Game Empire is a bit far out of my way, but I do go to the battle bunker sometimes. Easy to find a game there since there are lots of players and lots of table space. I also ocasionaly go down to the GW store at the Block of Orange. Scuddman works there and he talks me into comming to visit him sometimes.