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500 points:
His list:
1 ten man space marine squad, with a chaplain. chaplain has a power fist, other goodies in the squad.
1 5 man squad.
1 dreadnought. storm bolter and melta.

My list:
Canonness with power weapon, 2+ save.
2 squads of sisters, meltagun, heavy flamer.
Rhino.

Dawn of war deployment. Turn 1 he rushes in, runs, no shooting.
I rush forward, drop my sisters, and shoot at his 10 man squad, all bolters in rapid fire range.
kills 2 marines.
Tried to use Divine Guidance, failed. (with a 10 girl squad)
Canonness assaults 5 man squad.

His dread arrives from reserves, as does my rhino full of sisters.

Turn 2, he shoots at me with no effect, his dread wrecks my empty rhino.
I fail Divine Guidance AGAIN, (with a 10 girl squad, still) and rapid fire him, killing 3 marines.

Canonness kills 1 marine. No wounds on her.

Turn 3, he assaults me with his marines. We both take like 2 casualties. By now my other sisters have arrived, about 12" from the dread.
Canonness kills the rest of his marines and hides behind some cover.

Turn 4, we both take a few more casualties in the assault, his dreadnought assaults my sisters, kills them, they fail Ld (ld 9, book of St. Lucius), I roll a 4, he rolls a 5. Fantastic.

Turn 5, I kill off the rest of his tac marines, his chaplain kills the rest of my sisters.
Turn 5, my canonness assaults his chaplain.
5 attacks.
1 hit.
1 on the to wound roll.
2 attacks back.
6 to hit
6 to wound
instant death.

game over.
He then proceeds to rub it in my face saying YEAH! THE BIATCH IS DEAD! (he had been calling my Canonness Biatch for the entire match.)
Oh, and this was his first win.

Sorry for no pictures.

Sounds to me like you did everything right tactically, but the dice hate you.

Dice man, they can screw you over.

Still though, I play with dudes like that (rarely) just suck it up and move on.

Or take filthy utter cheese and force him to think twice.

What would you like us to say? Luck was the reason why you lost?

What does not help you is that you are only playing 500 points. At such a low point level, any bad roll can be devastating. Fail a leadership roll, or have a bad round of shooting and you are in a hole that you may not be able to dig yourself out of.

Play at more points so that the number of units and dice rolls will average out more and luck will not be much of a factor.

Oh, and the fact that you only have 2 melta guns to kill his dread. That is going to lead to be an issue since you will have trouble killing it even if you do get a shot off, and even then if you do shoot at it, you are going to waste the whole squads shooting.

Also once that Chaplain gets into assault with you, the game is over because he will destroy SoB.

the dice gods are fickle to say the least.
however, it wouldn't have hurt to go in and assualt the dreadnought earlier on to lock yourself in combat (did you have krak grenades?) note though that once I almost lost 2 squads assaulting an ork deffdredd so it can also be a gambit. Considering the luck you had it probably wouldn't of been the best choice.
Next time you win really rub him on it.

Does your canonness have T2, or does his chaplain have S6 or more? How else can it be instant death? Just wondering....

The Chappy had a powerfist.

It was mostly bad luck. But I have learned to never arm my Canoness with a power weapon. Sure, you have 4 attacks, but they will rarely hit and never wound T4. An Eviscerator is golden.

Also, a Dread at that point level is really hard to deal with. Heck, pure SoB are truly hamstringed at 500 pts. You will spent over half your points just to have a legal army.

Yeah, I never play games with less than 750 points because that way neither me or my opponent win or lose chiefly on luck.

I feel your frustration. As does my friend who failed unmodified Ld9 twice and was pursued & destroyed twice in a game. Then the exorcist was nailed by 1 lascannon and unable to shoot. Then he got assaulted by a dreadnaught and lost again. Some days things just don't work out.

Chaplain's can still take a PF as an option?! Awesome!

Grunt_For_Christ wrote:I feel your frustration. As does my friend who failed unmodified Ld9 twice and was pursued & destroyed twice in a game. Then the exorcist was nailed by 1 lascannon and unable to shoot. Then he got assaulted by a dreadnaught and lost again. Some days things just don't work out.

Thanks.
*hugs*

I know you're not looking for sympathy or just being a whiny little bitch. Sometimes the odds just seem to be stacked against you and it's incredibly frustrating. You play your best and absolutely NOTHING works. Like for me when I played my girlfriend a few weeks ago. I lost all my striking scorpions and banshees before they even got to combat range and could pass a Ld. test to save my life, or the lives of my remaining 8 guardians. It was frustrating and she knew that... She didn't take it easy on me, just played her game and tried to be encouraging like she always is. That was great, but still didn't make seeing all my plans fall apart any more fun.

You need the "40k in 40 minutes" rules to be in affect at this low of a point level, if you want things to be more evenly matched. A dred being used at this low of a point level is just unfair to most opponents, as the opponent cannot usually get enough collective firepower to take it out. IIRC, you cannot bring vehicles that their combined armor value of all facings (only count the sides once) is over 32, or something like that. This makes it so that anything with better armor than a rhino or similar transport is disallowed. That way you have a chance of taking out the armor in low point games, instead of having one large armored unit rampaging about and killing everything.

I agree with the previous post about using '40k in 40min' restrictions for low points levels.

My local group played a campaign game where we started each army at 500pts. (We did finally use rules similar to the '40k in 40min' setup) before the campaign began several of the players wanted to try out some 500pt lists and get a feel for the game at that level, not having played less than 1500pts previously.

With a standard force org. chart build of my Tyranid army list at 500 points... it was absolutely murder using more than one monstrous creature at that points level. The drednaught is a similar issue but at least it is a vehicle which can be diminished or destroyed shot for shot.

Scaling down below 1000pts really 'breaks' the balance of some army list choices, try this battle again at a higher points level or with some restrictions.

Well, look on the bright side, at least you had the basic tools for killing his list. If you had been up against a 500 pt Dark Eldar army, they would have shot you off the board on turn 2.

sourclams wrote:Well, look on the bright side, at least you had the basic tools for killing his list. If you had been up against a 500 pt Dark Eldar army, they would have shot you off the board on turn 2.

Unless they rolled like I did.

Its to small of a game to rely on tactics to win. At that point value, its the dice almost all the time, and you got into CC with a Chaplain, not a good idea with sisters.

Did both your squads have rhinos? If so, rhino rush is amazing. Rush the rhinos up to him like a V and murder one of his marine squads with rending bolters (get an imagnifier to make sure that this happens for 1 squad and the Canoness can get the other squad rending) and there goes one 10 man squad. Reload the sisters and pop a sister out the top hatch to melta his dread twice. Once this is done, retreat and you win.

You lost because he got into assault.

- You should have been able to run 2x 10 sister squads with 2x meltas and a BosL and a Canoness with a blessed weapon and CosA with both squads in rhinos.

Canonness Rory wrote:
Turn 5, my canonness assaults his chaplain.
5 attacks.
1 hit.
1 on the to wound roll.
2 attacks back.
6 to hit
6 to wound
instant death.

game over.

I know I necron'd this thread a bit, but shouldn't his Chaplain only have had a single attack? From the way the report reads, his tac unit had been destroyed so he would be alone. I don't believe the PF grants extra CCW attack. Just another (belated) reason why you might have lost


ANNNNNNNNNNND I'm an IDIOT! Sorry (I know why he got 2 attacks;P)

Your enemies list was the exact one I had Today but, my chap only had storm bolter upgrade and dred had a assault cannon, and that list that you played was identical to the army that gave my friend no mercy.

Too lazy to link to the post about No Thread Necromancy.