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Hulksmash - the SW list is not bad at all. I playtested it a couple of evenings ago versus Fatecrusher spam using the 2nd mission. It fared very well. There are some really nice combos, unfortunately the drop pod scattering off the table early on was a very tough break.

G

Indeed. If I had a drop pod in my midst, I would have halted the charge for a turn and had Ghazghkull and either the nobs or a trukk boy mob jump out to death with Ragnar (depending on his stats). I still would have charged his terminators with a boyz squad; the difference would end up being this:

Turn1 I assault his terminators and Ragnar and his terminators.

Turn2 his Thunderwolf cavalry enter the fray and counter-charge the boyz who just wiped out his terminators.

Turn2b I have less to add to the fight against the thunderwolf cavalry. I lost combat, I still would have lost combat, the Waaaugh! would have protected me, and since everything else would have gone the same, I would have killed both longfang squads, but not had Ghazghkull to deal with the runepriest or his squad; the burnas would have pulled double duty and a multi-assault.

Sorry BBF. I'd never in my own life personally run a 40k army that was 40% HQ's in 2500. The reason simply being how few enemy targets you are able to engage when you do that. At 2500 there are to many units on the table and everyone can bring a ton of stuff. So only giving up 40% of your army to 4 characters just doesn't work. Especially when those characters are going to need to be in squads to increase their effectiveness.

I'm just pointing out that against an army that has a lot of units and can roll lots of dice right back your looking at what Dash did to it happening again.

Hulksmash wrote:Sorry BBF. I'd never in my own life personally run a 40k army that was 40% HQ's in 2500. The reason simply being how few enemy targets you are able to engage when you do that. At 2500 there are to many units on the table and everyone can bring a ton of stuff. So only giving up 40% of your army to 4 characters just doesn't work. Especially when those characters are going to need to be in squads to increase their effectiveness.

I'm just pointing out that against an army that has a lot of units and can roll lots of dice right back your looking at what Dash did to it happening again.

When the King of 40k speaks, the masses should listen. *hero worships Hulksmash*

Seriously though, about the time I assaulted into his terminators on turn1 and cleared them off and started assessing what priority I needed to give the rest of his army, I was quite shocked. 10 longfangs, 2 rhinos, 4 cavalry models and a drop pod with Logan. In 2500 points. I actually said to my opponent, "Do you have more stuff coming in?"

The only reason Logan did so well in our combats is because he dropped him in the opposite corner of everything for KP denial, since he was the only unit left on the board, and my Waaaugh! had already been used. My units were working their way over piecemeal and were reduced in strength from fighting elsewhere on the board...and tossing Ghazghkull into the combat with the burnas was a serious tactical mistake on my part. In hindsight, a better tactic would have been to move 1" next to those mulimeltas, block off Logan's access to Ghazghkull with a battlewagon, and then mince the multi-meltas until the following turn when I could bring help in for Ghazghkull. I was just anxious to try tabling my opponent before time ran out.

@ Hulksmash
I am only pointing out that the list performs better on the table than it appears on paper. I think it was specifically designed not to give up a lot of killpoints in the 3rd mission. There are lots of nice combos available you can pull with the uber characters & monster units. Sure it is a very small elite army, that is for sure. I would have liked to see the two small Grey Hunter squads bumped up and power fists on the Wolfguard leading them. I am used to playing very small elite armies so maybe I see something here others are missing. The low model count is not always a big problem... A lot of it depends on the matchups. If it were me I would have not taken Ragnar so as to boost the count for hte Thunderwolves & terminators. I don't think Ragnar is worth his points to be honest.

G

nkelsch wrote:I loved all 3 of your battle reports, but it is kinda sad not a single opponent was painted.

I absolutely agree - totally detracts from the whole thing! Still, well done, Dash. Another first place finish!

May I ask how you feel about lower points games? I notice almost everything you post here is 1750pts and upwards - myself, I play 750pts-1000pts.... being a family man it's difficult to get much more time in one block to play, y'know? Anyway, I often think the smaller points games can be even more tactical than the larger because you tend to have very little expendable units, plus the game is rarely dictated by powerful named characters.

Great reports man. I am going to go check out some of your others and see if my spikey lads can't learn a trick or two Very well done, and I really look forward to reading about your further exploits.

Thanks for taking the time to post 3 fantastic write ups with pics.

These reports have been an excellent read for me over the last day.

Keep them coming.

Tantras wrote:

nkelsch wrote:I loved all 3 of your battle reports, but it is kinda sad not a single opponent was painted.

I absolutely agree - totally detracts from the whole thing! Still, well done, Dash. Another first place finish!

May I ask how you feel about lower points games? I notice almost everything you post here is 1750pts and upwards - myself, I play 750pts-1000pts.... being a family man it's difficult to get much more time in one block to play, y'know? Anyway, I often think the smaller points games can be even more tactical than the larger because you tend to have very little expendable units, plus the game is rarely dictated by powerful named characters.

Fair question actually about the lower point games. With few exceptions, I don't think that many armies can fairly represent their capabilities at the 750 to 1000 point range. When I *do* play at those levels, I tend to be participating in a 2v2 where the table is still 2k vs 2k, but there's 4 players instead.

You can't cram effective battlewagon spam into 750 or 1000, so for Orks I would attempt a kan-wall, or more likely put away the Orks and play Tau or Dark Eldar. Both are evil at 750-1k.

I don't really have much interest in combat patrols, battle missions, or tiny encounters - I like general vs. general with the full power of their army against my own.

Also worth noting: THe only reason you see battle reports from me that are 1500-2500 is because that's the point levels that tournaments are held at. *shrugs* I can only report what I play in.

My arch enemy (best mate) plays Orks at 750pts and runs a battlewagon and two trukks full of boyz in KFF formation - they're very powerful at that level, I'm still struggling to find something to counter it.

I love doubles games, too. 1500pt doubles is my favourite format up to now, it allows for a tiny bit more variation and some really interesting combinations.

Not sure I understand the SW list...

To me it looks like he had 4-5 HQ units. How is that even legal?

helgrenze wrote:Not sure I understand the SW list...

To me it looks like he had 4-5 HQ units. How is that even legal?

It's a quirk of the SW codex - one HQ FOC slot can house two actual HQ units... To show how heroic and determined they are relative to normal marines alledgedly.

I have not been on Dakka a lot over the last few years as honestly I am not interested in a lot of the drama that gets caused on some of these forums. There is a lot of good info here and there and some good bat reps and the rumors are cool, but a lot of the RAW arguments and the BOLS vs YTTH stuff and mudslinging is kinda off putting to me.

So to introduce myself my name is Mike Walsh. I play Space Wolves and was Dash's opponent for the 3rd battle.

Dash won the game. GG. We all make mistakes, we all win, we all lose, and we all see things in hindsight 20/20. Some of the comments in this thread are pretty decent, some are cool, and some are kinda ignorant.

ex. Helgrenze: "how is 4 HQ legal in SW?" . - Because they can have 4.

ex. JourneyPsycheOut: "Logan should have been declared he was in reserve." and "Pods are predictable." - I deployed first so he knew Logan was in reserve with the MM squad. o.O and Justin himself didn't plan on me doing what I did with my pods. But, hey that was predictable.

ex. Hulksmash: "900 points of characters doesn't work in ardboys." - Generally I don't run Ragnar. In fact at the last moment I threw all of my play testing out the window and threw him in there because I thought it would be cool. In hindsight changing my army the night before the tournament was dumb and I did in fact beat myself up pretty bad about it. But, there are lots of armies that are successful with this many points of characters in it. Some examples: 1. Goatboy winning Adepticon Championship with 3 250+ points Wolf Lords at 1850 that is over 40% of his army. 2. 2 of my friends won all 3 games in the preliminaries won with 3 massacres with using the 3-4 Wolf Lord armies. That was just a couple of examples. Like I said using Ragnar was dumb for the first time in Ardboys, but we all do dumb things every once in a while. I should have used the list I was going to use or my Gladiator list (where I placed 5th) with another Wolf Lord thrown in. I don't think my points use in characters was the deal breaker in this fight. But it was the way I used them. Would rather have had a Warrior Born Wolf Lord on TW than Ragnar or another RP with more guns or TWC elsewhere. Ragnar was pretty dumb to use though haha.

ex. Dash: "Bringing in Logan far in the corner for KP denial." I didn't bring him in for KP denial. He came in 2 turns late and at that point I dropped him where I knew I could kill 2 things based on Mec Boy location. Seemed like the best place to drop him to me. Could have been wrong as it was not my best day.

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The battle was one sided by my admission. This was the first time I was tabled in probably 3 years. So grats to Justin on doing it as it doesn't happen often. My first mistake was changing my army list. My second was in deployment. Should have done it a little differently, but in all honesty forgot that Defrollas let the Battle Wagons reroll DT tests. sigh. My third was in Ragnar's squad's pod placement. I didn't need to have it that close, but figured with the angle it would have to scatter to go off the board and the distance required that it was a very small % chance it would have gone that far and misshaped. In the 5 or more years I have used pods that was the first time I have ever lost one. So it wasn't really a possibility in my mind. If the pod had landed the squad was in very good position to eat 3 squads and then be close enough to the table to support the combat in the middle. Arjac's pod scattered towards his line which I didn't want so I could have placed it a little further back and prevented a charge that early, but I think I was still in awe of losing my pod. Had he sent a Battle Wagon to deal with them. That was fine with me as it was one less Battle Wagon to fight the rest of my army with. (Though with Arjac's squad getting ganked due to a bad scatter and run roll it didn't much matter at that point. Knew I was F'd with 900+ points going away in one turn, but I am stubborn so played it to the end.)

Like I said we all make mistakes. We all win some and we all lose some. I would like the chance to play Justin again some time in a friendly game or in a tournament as I'm sure he will get a better version of me than he got the other day.

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As for my list. The one I had planned to bring was more shooty and would have allowed me to do a few things differently. But, if me and Justin play again, I'm sure he will like the other list. Eh, maybe not though, they aren't pink. JK

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For everything not being painted as I saw that a few times. Sorry. I have about 2,250-2,500 points of Wolves painted. If anyone is curious look up my army from the Baltimore 2007 GT as I had an army feature done on it. I'm in the process of repainting a brand new one. So as to avoid losing best painted to jerks like Brain Carlson by 1 point again. JK. Brian is #1!

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I had heard a number of things about my opponent before the game. So I was skeptical about what I would get from him personality wise. He seemed fair enough other than a couple of placements of boys coming from trucks moving in spaces less than 1" and an assault rules dispute that took 10 minutes or so. The judge at first ruled in his favor, but I knew it was wrong and finally convinced both of them I was right. Score one for the good guys. But, I would play Justin again. If it was a scored sportsmanship tournament I wouldn't have marked him low as I would like the chance to replay him. If for no other reason, than all the games you can get against Battle Wagons the better.

If you don't have the right stuff to deal with them 4 Battle Wagons driving at you with the KFF 4+ is pretty much hard to deal with. (Battle Wagons with lots of Boys or Battle Wagons with Green Tide was really the only army I was concerned with fighting. Just because I lacked the mobility to shoot the sides and the CC I had built in that version of my army was more at killing elite units not squads that can toss 80 attacks on the charge.) Had the battle wagons been filled with Nob squads or Nob bikers I would have been able to handle it better, but eh. Live and learn.)

Well played. Was 1 sided. But, one game is one game. We have all had our good days and our bad.

You two should definitely play again. Sure it was Ard Boyz but in the grand scheme of things 1 off game doesn't really prove who is a better player, in fact it could just come down to dumb luck.

I playtested Mikes list this past week versus Fatecrusher spam and it did very well except for a couple of dumb mistakes due to proxying some of the units. Multi character armies can do very well, especially in objective based missions when the objectives are clustered close together. You can get a force bubble effect going which is very advantageous for armies such as SW in general since units like Logan & Ragnar can enhance other units. I think the third game would have definitely been a lot closer if the pod had not mishapped. Being down 500 points right off the start made the game an uphill battle for Mike and would be very hard for anyone to overcome. And it's not like the pod was poorly placed either... Just bad luck for the Wolves.

G

Mike:

Good to see you on Dakka!

We did have a good game, and while you got tabled, doing so took an incredible toll on my units - I think I said that in my OP.

The assault rules issue was....interesting. For spectators, he had 4 thunderwolf cavalry models (one being an IC) in assault with my lone surviving ork boy who rolled double 1s to stay in combat. I assaulted his unit with two more units (trukk boyz + battlewagon mob of ork boyz).

The question was "Who can attack where?" Three of his models were in base with my one model. When I assaulted into him, I made it into base with three of his models.

Mike, if I remember right, you wanted all your models to go into my two new units. I said the ones in base with the first one had to attack him. Judge came over and said all had to attack him. We both disagreed with the judge. I think it turned out that the one engaged or in base only with the single boy had to attack him but the others couple split their attacks freely....

Amicable game. I tend to joke and try having light-hearted games....usually helped by generous application of alcohol as well. I didn't drink this time because I was my own DD, and you had a grim facade that I couldn't make smile with any kind of joke or self-depreciation.

When the 2 new squads charged in. I wanted to swing the TW who was in base with only the lone orc into him, the other TW into the 10 man squad that he was in base with, and the IC and the last TW into the 20 man squad.

Ended up working out like that. Don't think the judged grasped the concept at the start. But, it worked out.

Like I said before I found you to be a good opponent, and would have given you good sportsmanship scores.

I would like to play you again anytime. I don't feel I have anything to prove and am not looking for a steel cage barb wire grudge match or anything like that. But, I found you to a be a good opponent and most of the time if I want a game of that caliber I have to drive 45 minutes to an hour to get it with some of my friends in Fuquay or Fayettville. So if you want a game anytime feel free to PM me.

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Next time we'll bring some alcohol.

@Spoons

Like I tried to point out. It's the lack of # of units you had that I saw as a major reason you lost that fight. The characters were just the easiest place to see those points due to you spending so many there.

And at 1850 you can run those crazy characters easier than at 2500. At 1850 they are harder to kill than at 2500. Resulting in their efficiency going down.

I think if you'd used the right characters (wolf lords geared up) it would have made a difference since they can and would have broken off to hit different units.

And remember I can only judge the game on the list and on Dash's report. And based on that is where I found it lacking. But mistakes happen all the time. I'm pretty sure I've lost a game or two as well

Was still a mean list! Cost me a huge chunk of my army to beat him down, even with such a point handicap for losing Ragnar. Would have not been fun if he got Logan earlier and Ragnar didn't scatter off.