Played a game today. Dropped the bolters and made one non-melta acolyte squad 5-man. Played against a Kupachi copy list that had dropped the wolfscouts. Njal, 4 rhino hunters, 2 lasplas hunters, 3 long fang squads. We played capture and control, speahead. We rolled, but this is a mission that can be autodrawn.
SW win roll off ( I rolled a 1
) and deploy aggressively. I reserve the ravens with coteaz in one and paladins in both and deploy the librarian with the 5-man acolyte squad behind the wall of razorbacks and dreads. I then seize the initiative with coteaz's reroll.
My razorbacks are out of range (I went into the very corner, where my objective also was) but the dreads wreck 3 rhinos (he had no cover as he had deployed so aggressively). His turn shrouding means that he gets no results. The lasst rhino pushes into midfield.
Coteaz enters the fray on t2 zooming up slightly to my right flank (the rest of my army was on my left flank). Forward razorback drives up and empties meltagunners infront of the last rhino. They are not within 6'' and the single penetrating hit is caught by the smoke launchers. My shooting shakes and immoblizes the last rhino. He destroys the raven, but only in
CC (the raven ate all his shooting and was only stunned). The meltagunners are killed by the grey hunters disembarking from the last rhino, but the razorback is safe, although the fist and
MotW try to destroy it.
The second raven doesn't come in. Coteaz and the palies charge a hunter squad since they don't have any other targets within charge range. The roll badly (coteaz doesn't hit the swordman doesn't wound and the hammer kills 1) but only take a couple of wounds (invul saved against the fist). I shoot the hunter squad that slaughtered my meltagunners down to the wolfguard, who flees.
The lone wolfguard is within 6'' of a razorback and continues falling back. The paladins are charged by a second
WG squad (sanctuary is kinda countered by the wolf banner) and they are killed. Shooting rips weapons off dreads and immobilises one dread. One razorback is destroyed.
The second raven comes on t4 and zooms into the middle of the battlefield exploding a razorback. My shooting kills long fangs (I had shot them a couple times before but now there were 2 weakened squads left, one forced to move to regain coherency as the leader was poorly placed). My opponent tries to down the raven but fails.
t5 The raven moves up but is immobilised because njal used tempest wrath. The palies disembark to charge fangs next to the wolf objective. And then time runs out.
The game was heading for a draw. I had the pallies possibly contesting, but his grey hunters should have killed them in the countercharges. My objective was firmly held by 4 henchmen squads and the razorbacks and dreads had advanced to pretty much midfield. Although I controlled much of the board he had over 50 power armour marines in his list, and after being nuked on t1 he made the conscious decision of going for a draw ( I know kinda boring) and I didn't have much to say to that. The pallies came in one at a time and the fists had a good chance of killing them off, and the rest of my army was designed to sit back.
The mission is probably not the best for this list, but the list functioned nicely. I didn't get to deploy first (and thus left the ravens in reserve to surely get that cover up before he shoots at them) but the list still could provide a punch at range. The paladins didn't have many good choices to assault and coteaz's unit was forced to try its luck at a hunter squad as its raven was downed outside of charge range to the long fangs.
All in all, a very promising start to this army.
