I played in a 3 round tournament at Fat Cats on Saturday. I took the pod list I've been practicing with lately.

Tigurius+command squad in pod

Epistolary+terminator command squad in pod

Venerable dread in pod

2 squads of teleporting terminators

2 5 man tac squads with meltaguns in pods

2 tornados

Game 1: Jack, Lost and the Damned, Gamma Cleanse.

Jack had:

3X25 mutants with aspiring champs.

3X12 traitors

7 daemonettes

7 furies

2 oblits

russ

defiler

4 spawn

Fat Cats lets the players set terrain for each game, which causes all sorts of ridiculous boards to be used. When Jack went first, walked over to the shelf and grabbed  a building that was about 24"X18" and set it down in the middle of the table, I knew to place all my terrain at the edges. Jack's next piece of terrain was a 18"X12" woods he stuck right next to the building. It seemed these guys were used to building a wall of terrain that completely cut the board in half (so they their assaulty armies wouldn't get shot. Of course since I was using pods, this made no difference to me. But I did see many of the locals doing this throughout the day.

So Jack set up in the middle, putting his shooty traitors in the building, and moving all around it.  He made sure I couldn't drop behind any of the vehicles, and wherever I dropped would be in LOS of a battle cannon and near some mutants frothing at the mouth. He sent mutant squad 1 with the spawn and a russ to my right, mutant squad 2 with a defiler to my left, and kept mutant squad 3 with oblits in his deployment zone. All were huddled near the center of the board. So far he was playing it correctly.

So I came in on bottom of 2, but got only tigurius and a tac squad. So I dropped in my own deployment zone, blocking off shots from both battle cannons with my pods, shot traitor squad one down to 5, and feared it and traitor squad 2 away.

Turn 3 Jack summoned his furies, then said "I'll wait on the daemonettes". Seems in addition to their odd terrain rules, they'd been playing that reserves were optional. I politely but insistantly corrected him. The daemonettes came in as well. Traitor squad 2 rallied. So Jack continued to close the pincer, but nothing had a shot at anything. The furies assaulted tiggy's squad, but wiffed and popped. Tiggy consolidated toward mutant squad 1.

Bottom of 3 I get a dread, a speeder, the command terminators, and both units of terminators. Tiggy has my right flank, so I just give him one terminator squad for support. The other side gets everything else. My shooting thins out mutant squad 1 and 2, pops the daemonettes, kills more traitors, and the russ. I assault with tiggy and get mutant squad 1 down well below half, but I drop almost below half because of his powerfists. But he holds.

Top of 4 has him finally getting a battle cannon shot off and killing a tac squad. Then he sends mutant squad 2 (now under half) into the dread, but they only immobilize him. His oblits kill two terminators on my left. He moves mutant squad 3 toward the middle, to support mutant squad 2. He tries to send the spawn in to deal with tiggy, but doesn't get a good enough difficult terrain roll.

Bottom of 4 has my last tac squad and speeder coming in. I drop them in his deployment zone, hoping he'll shoot them with his oblits instead of the terminators he just shot. I shoot the spawn down to a single model. My terminator command squad fears/shoots/chops the traitors. They just fall back the rest of the game. But now my command squad is too close to mutant squad 3.

....which gets to me on turn 5. Beats me in hth, and makes me run. He tries to kill a speeder with his remaining spawn. The oblits ignore my bait and shoot the terminators on my right down to 2 (so I now have nothing holding that quarter). He finally explodes my dread.

Bottom of 5 has me zapping an oblit, removing the spawn, but my terminators can't rally and fall back 4 more inches. I finally get lucky and kill the defiler.

Turn 6 has him catching and killing my terminators, putting a scoring unit in my deployment zone. He consolidates so my own pods prevent me from shooting him. He's got two mutants left from squad 2, so he sends them into a pod to get the 15 VPs, gets a pen 6, blows it up and they both fail their saves. Thank you!

So I have to zip a speeder into my deployment zone and the quarter to my left. I don't manage to plink a wound off the oblit. He's left with a single oblit and a mutant squad. He contests his and my quarters, I have both of the sides. Something like 2300 to 900 vps.

Win for me.

Game 2, Andy, Biel Tan Eldar, Gamma Recon

Andy had:

Farseer with fortune

Avatar

scorpions in serpent

banshees in serpent

wraithguard in serpent

spiders

6 rangers

2 wraithlords

So only 2 starcannons, but extremely mobile.

This time terrain was much more "normal" with a forrest and a building of normal size in the middle. Andy won first turn and decided to go first (oops). He had two turns to move his entire army into my deployment zone. His wraithlords stayed to defend his deployment zone and sat in 4+ cover.

Bottom of 2 I come in. I get a tac squad, a terminator squad, the terminator command squad, and a speeder. The teleporting terminator squad deviates right into hth range of the avatar, so I'm forced to drop the terminator command squad and speeder in position to shoot him. The just manage to get him, as he's fortuned. The tac squad rapid fires the ranges and kills half.

Top of 3 his wraithguard move up and get out to zapp my command squad. His whole army opens up on them and they disappear. He made a crucial mistake though. He was close enough that he likely could have let his banshees out to move, fleet and charge my other terminator squad (the one with the bad scatter). But he did not, why I do not know. My tac squad assaults and kills the rangers.

Bottom of 3 tigurius comes in, along with the second tac squad, the dread, and the speeder. The tac squad drops so that I can deploy behind the scorpion serpent, which they drop. Tiggy goes in the center to shoot up the wraithguard, which loses all but 1 and the warlock. The dread drops to flame and shoot the spiders and kills all but 2. The terminator squad that he let live last turn drops the banshee serpent, killing 6. The speeder does nothing.

Top of 4 he's in some trouble, and decides to move the wraitlords up, but I've blocked most of their LOS. The starcannons do manage to take down a speeder (the one that dropped, which drifted just enough for him to see it). The wraithguard's serpent drops my other one. The dread goes bang from the wraithguard that's left. He then deepstrikes his swooping hawks. (WHAT SWOOPING HAWKS?) Seems he also thought reserves were optional. They come in and do nothing though.

Bottom of 4 I shoot and assault the scorpions off the board, and kill all but one banshee. The last of the spiders die. My last squad of terminators come in, which uses the telelport homer to stay on course and shoot the hawks down to 2 models.

Top of 5 his remaining serpent kills my last speeder, and he charges in with the last banshee, she kills one, knocking that terminator squad to 2 and then dying. The farseer and hawks charge my other terminator squad, but fail their difficult terrain roll. Farseer meet powerfist. The wraithguard charges my tac squad.

Bottom of 5 I drop his last serpent and shoot the hawks off the board.

Top of 6 he's got nothing to do. lone wraithguard does not die.

Bottom of 6 I kill one wraithlord, and knock 2 wounds off the other.

In the end he had a wraithlord with 1 wound and a wraithguard. But I had no bonus points. I lost my terminator command squad, both speeders, half a terminator squad, and the dread died again. Not sure how I could have played this better, but perhaps I should have dropped closer to his deployment zone to get some bonus points.

Posted By Mannahnin on 03/13/2006 7:37 AM
Scary list.  Tigurius is just sick.  I played a couple of games yesterday with the utterly non-maximized drop variant of my DA army and got two solid wins over Speed Freaks and Biel-tan.  I'll post the list in army lists.  Nice to read your reports though, just for tactical notes, even if my lists won't do the same things yours do.  I will probably pick up at least one more squad of termies, however, so I can have the option of a command squad or just two squads of Termies.

I really want to play this army with mechanized and semi-mech sisters.

Good job so far.   

Ragnar: Because I haven't painted more terminators.

Carmen: The test game is on wednesday. I'll post a report on that as well. Let's start a thread on sisters vs. podders in the tactics section. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

Game 3, Joe, Necrons, Gamma Take and Hold

I regularly play near Joe in fantasy, which is much more "his game" than 40k. Funny that the first time we actually play it's 40k then.

He had:

Lord with orb, veil

8 immortals

30 warriors

10 scarabs

2X4 destroyers

2 spiders

monolith

The terrain was "normal" again. With a woods dead center. He had two building in his deployment zone. One on my far left, another on the right, near the center. He deployed a squad and a spider in the left building, which I ignored all game (his only big mistake) a squad of warriors, spider, immortals and lord in the one on the right, near the center, and a squad of warriors in the center, which walked into those woods. He deepstruck the monolith. The destroyers hovered near the lord, but toward the middle. The scarabs also were on the right, jetbiked for the inv save.

He won first turn, and decided to take it so I'd have one less chance to make him phase out. He moved into the middle and sadly for him, the monolith came in on turn 2. He put it near the woods.

Bottom of 2 I get my terminator command squad, a terminators quad, a dread and a speeder. I drop them all near the center, slightly right, but the terminator squad drifts toward my board edge (but still in los of the scarabs), to smoke the scarabs. All disappear. I made sure to use the pods to block LOS to most of his units.

Top of 3 he starts with the shooting, but only manages to tear the gun and arm off the dread (go venerable!). He then makes his second mistake and splits up the destroyers. Moving half closer to his lord, to shoot my terminator command squad (which makes every save). But the other half jumps to the other side of the monlith to shoot my termies that scattered. They kill one.

Bottom of 3 I get tiggy, my last speeder, and last terminator squad. Tiggy drops center left with the terminators and the speeder that just came in. They smoke all 4 destroyers that ventured on their own. I drop a couple of necrons in the center woods. My armless dread and terminator command squad move up and assault the destroyers near his lord, killing all but one (out of the kill zone).

Top of 4 he promptly sucks the destroyers out of hth, and kills the dread. He then does 11 wounds to the terminators, who fail not a one! He's in trouble now. But 3 destroyers do get up.

Bottom of 4 I assault the immortals and the warriors in his firebase but flub, leaving some immortals standing. I plink the center necrons some more.

Top of 5 he sucks the immortals and the warriors out of hth, huddling on his side of the board, keeping most of his army out of LOS. His shooting kills two of my command squad terminators.

Bottom of 5 my last tac squad finally comes in, and drops next to the tomb spider that's about to eat my termies in his firebase and puts a wound on them. I finally get lucky with a meltagun and drop the monolith. I move tiggy into the middle woods so I can assault anything that tries to stay near the center. I shoot down all but one destroyer.

Top of 6 he ports the remaining immorals away, since they were about to be assaulted, and shoots a coupld of tiggy's bodyguard. He decides to make a scarab swarm before his tomb spider assaults, and it dies to it's own birthing.

Bottom of 6 I shoot all of his immortals, and a warrior squad off the board, but fail my difficult terrain to assault the other.

So He's got a lord, half a squad of warriors, one destroyer, and the warriors/tomb spider that sat on the left doing nothing all game. I've lost half a tac squad, both speeders, and the dread. I've also lost half points on both librarians (tiggy to perils of the warp).

So 3-0, and I win overall.

How did you assault the rangers with your tactical squad during the Eldar player's turn? Were you using Black Templars? And did the Necrons phase out in that last game?

As for the choosing reserves thing- man would droppods be all the more better if you played by their rules. I'm also curious as to what you use as droppods, as it seems like they were always able to block LOS from anything. Do you go off the vehicle profile or did you base them and use the magic cylinder like the infamous Seattle GT crew did? I ask because I don't think a forgworld droppod is very good at blocking LOS, so it would be interesting to compare.

And this battle report makes me support the lack of player influence on terrain more and more.

- Oaka

I assaulted the rangers in my turn. Just a mistake in the report.

The necrons did not phase out. He had 16 left (12 was phaseout) and went first, so couldn't even if I had killed 4 more.

For pods I used 3" PVC pipe converted to look like pods. So they're smaller than an ordnance template. They didn't always block LOS, but two of them generally did a good job of it. The had no bases, but they're sides are perpendicular to the table, so there's no need. I've lined my pods up next to forgeworld ones and I block slightly less LOS (my intention).

One big thing is I think that the more people play against pods, the more they'll figure out how to deal with them. In 6 months they won't be such an effective list.

They look like this, but with Ultramarine symbols and squad numbers. I have no door on mine.

It's a little more than 3" across, so about 6" high.

No one castled, but with the armies they had and the missions we played, that would not have been wise.

Well, the necron player of course made a mistake leaving a squad and scorpion in left field, but other than that I think they played it mostly right.

Carmen: The test game is on wednesday. I'll post a report on that as well. Let's start a thread on sisters vs. podders in the tactics section. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.

Looking at that drop pod has given me the idea to go to the local hardware store and check out the plumbing section. I think some floats could be rigged up to make decent looking pods that'll do well enough until GW comes out with the models.

Thanks for the link on how to make the pods.