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So one of my regular opponents had finally gotten tired of losing(getting crushed) because they(the group) refused to change their tactics to face off against my Heresy Drop Pod Assault Night Lord army with back up flyers. I have been playing this force against them for a year and so one of them comes up with a grand scheme to tailor a scenario and army against mine with his DA. I only travel up there once a month so I only get one game a month in, and I only bring the points I intend on using for that game. So he picked up stronghold assault and I don't want to know how much he spent in money on a hideous amount of GW fortifications. He set his side of the board up and his line covered his entire board edge. He had two firestorm redoubts, the trenchline, the big tower and bunker system, the giant D-Weapon cannon turret building with bulwark and a void shield giving it AV15, several independent turrets that fire 20 shots and an ungodly amount of Icarus lascannon turrets. He gave me some too, I had two bastions with the shield and bulwark upgrades and a landing pad and a massive amount of aegis walls and quad AA autocannons. I asked him if I could set things up how I wanted and put some of the aegis in the no mans land area and he agreed. He set his guys up, obviously manning the walls, he had two psykers(one of them named) and he had Azrael. and 4 tac squads. 3500 points, and he had four tac squads, that's how much he spent in fortifications. Oh yeah, he had a knight too, behind his defensive line to shoot over it. Oh yeah, he had a techmarine and some servators in one of the towers for some reason.
I knew though he had this tailored against my night lords as soon as I saw it and he knew I wouldn't be using any of the fortifications on my side if I was using Night Lords like I had used for the last year. Well the surprise on his face was priceless as I pulled the first Wraithlord out of my box. My Night Lords were 4.5 hours away, I had decided to try out my wraith elder army for the first time just to try something different. I fielded two forces, and one was just to make up points to get me there after I "turned in" some of the fortifications for bonus points. Wraithseer, spirit seer(bare bones), 2 wraith lords(BL, scatter, sword), wraithknight(base), Vibro-cannon battery, two wraithguard squads in TL BL serpents, two squads of pathfinders with Illic, two 8 man warp spider squads with an exarch with twin spitters, and a Lynx with the pulsar.
I had set the bastions at each corner with the landing pad in the center. I put a spider squad in each bastion and a pathfiner squad on top of each. Illic and the vibro cannons I put on the pad. I hid the Lynx on the other side of the pad so his D-Weapon turret couldn't see it. All my big wraiths I put into a formation on the left middle in between the bastion and pad and put the serpents behind the fortifications out of site of the major nearest enemy guns.
Round One:
He got first turn and deviated his D weapon turret, and his knight did a melta wound to my knight, he killed a vibrocannon and inflicted a wound on each of the others(I don't know why he wasted shots on them, but the reason they all took hits was he spread his turret fire from across the board to hit them. He got some lascannon hits on my Lynx but there was only one glance after the holofield stopped the rest.
All my wraiths walked forward and spread out a bit. My serpents moved forwards 12". Spiders jumped out and landed behind the aegises he said I could deploy out there. Lynx moved over to get the full benefits of its field. It fired and killed the knight, but no major devastating explosion to gut his center defenses unfortunately. The left waveserpent used its TL bright lance to ignore the AV15 fortification with the D weapon and dropped the void shield. the spiders shot up and killed the sergeant and lascannon of the squad on that battlement. The other wraith constructs quickly killed the main D cannon and the building it was on. Vibrocannons, pathfinders, and Illic did absolutely nothing. I did not realize how fragile buildings really were when hit with a penetrating hit, yay bright lances.
Round Two:
He was kinda down that his biggest two threats had been neutralized so quickly with no real contribution to the battle. All he did was shoot. His 20 shot guns killed almost all of my spiders in both squads despite not having any AP. I think he did a wound to a wraithlord from a deviating krak missile swarm aimed at the knight.
My wraiths moved forwards again now towards the center line, shifting the focus of their fire. Lynx shifted to the side-like. Serpents moved forwards. I bright lanced one of his 20 shot cannons and killed it. My Lynx took out the bunker shooting the krak missile swarm things. The rest of my shooting was not real effective aside from someone killing Ezekeal(sp?) with a bright lance he failed his look out sir roll from. Vibrocannons, pathfinders, and Illic did absolutely nothing, again.
Round three: I don't remember exactly what happened but he was running out of heavy hitters. He killed my right wave serpent, and took another hp point on the Lynx. Even with lascannons he could not pen me ever.
My turn had the left waveserpeant move up and deploy D-Scythe guard next to the remainder of his left tactical squad. Wraiths continued forward, sweeping toward the right. Other wraith squad moved up and took out the remaining 20 shot turret. Warp Spiders jumped a few inches forward and killed the techmarine after a failed LOS. Lynx took out the tower. D-Scythe guard template the squad in the remaining part of the former d-cannon bunker(big enough to be two pieces) and wiped the squad and destroyed the building. Wraith phalanx took out right side Firestorm redoubt but did not kill anyone inside while knight missed with everything. Vibrocannons, pathfinders, and Illic did absolutely nothing, again. Well the pathfinders did kill a marine.
Turn Four:
He had nothing at this point hardly but kept plugging along. He did wipe both the right side wraithguard and the warp spiders.
My turn was mostly clean up as the d-scythe wraithguard destroyed the left firestorm redoubt and the marine team inside. Lynx took out the remaining bunker on the tower piece killing a couple more marines. My pathfinders inflicted two wounds on Azrael killing him(he had already taken a wound at some point.)
Turn five he moved his remaining librarian and team out to try and do something?
My turn was mop up. Lynx killed the wall of matryes in from of the tower and wiped everyone still standing there as well. All four big wraiths charged librarian and his squad and predictably it was a wash for his squad.
I managed to wipe out every fortification on his side and tabled him for the loss of 16 warp spiders, a wraithguard squad and its serpent. What I learned from this was, do not assume your opponent will be playing something specific. Do not tailor your army soo specifically to do something that its too inflexible to do anything else. Vibrocannon and scouts suck. Wraiths rock. If I had played my Night Lords and they got stuck in his ambush, I likely would have lost. He had a ton of anti-AA weapons and that army is totally reliant on shock value and he was very prepared for this. So not knowing about his ambush plans I hit him with a slightly mobile army with decent ranged fire and very high toughness and no flyers. I think I had texted him I was trying my elder out.
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