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We had a fun but very one sided game this past weekend. My long time friend and opponent made a huge tactical error on deployment and it cost him the game.
My list
Shatterblade(cant remember his real name) RoW: Pride of the Legion(allows terminators and vets as compulsory troops)
IW tactics: They do not make panic checks from shooting casualties and reroll failed pins. They automatically play extra rounds if the game allows if the opponent wants.
Terminators x5 plasma combisx 4, plasma blaster, power fists
Landraider Phobos, ceramite
Terminators x5 power fists, havoc auto-cannon< everyone else has stock combi-bolters
Spartan flare shield, ceramite
Caestus Ram with missile launchers
Tyrant terminators x5 stock. They come with cyclone launchers and power fists
Iron Havocs x5 missile launchers, augary scanner on the sgt. (Think expensive dev squad with tank hunter and all members carry heavy weapons)
Rhino- Havoc missile launcher
Sicaran with lascannon sponsons, ceramite armor
Bastion with no upgrades
And that's it, 21 guys and some heavy vehicles
My opponent played Ravenwing with
Samiel, a plasma bike command squad
Black Knights(the knights on bikes) with twin linked plasma
3 Ravenwing squads with 8 guys. two plasma in each
Chaplain on a bike in one of the ravenwing squads
3 land speeders with heavy bolters and assault cannons
2 of the large DA speeders with plasma weaponry
3 Attack bike with heavy bolters
2 Dreadnoughts with missiles and assault cannons in drop pods
No one besides me in my meta really plays a lot of heavy vehicles for some reason. My army wasn't made to take advantage of this, its just all the left over vehicles I have from my Night Lords army which I made all drop pods using that rite of war and doesn't allow ground vehicles. All of his sergeants have melta bombs, not that it mattered.
terrain is a cityscape terrain with two main roads running left to right with the 12" mark in the middle of the road, two roads connecting the main roads with heavy ruins pretty much everywhere there isn't a road, but with large amounts of open space. All of my objectives are right outside my deployment zone, his are likewise near his zone line, funny enough they were almost parallel from each other, all were mysterious.
He gets first turn and sets up his attack bikes on an objective on my far left. Object turns out to be the one that rerolls 1s to shooting. His command squad is set up behind a building in the center on the center objective. Squad was big enough that the end guys were in cover but visible.
I set my Bastion dead center behind a building and put my Iron Havocs on top. On the left side of it I placed my Landraider and plasma termies. In front of the bastion, I put my Tyrant termies on the center objective(also turns out to be the reroll ones on shooting buff). On the right side of the Bastion I put my Sicaran, then my Rhino, and on the other side of some ruins the Spartan and its dakka terminators. The commander I place in the Spartan. He has two useful skills, one allows him to quasi-bolster a fortification, and can either raise the AV or raise the cover save by +1, I choose the cover save. His warlord trait places a supply depot next to a unit in your deployment zone and as long as they stay there, they also re-roll ones to hit. Yeah the Iron Havocs got that one.
Turns out mass krak missiles rerolling ones is awesome, just saying.
Turn One: Dreadnought drops in dead center and he moves the dread behind some cover. Attack bikes move up a little and shoot the Havocs killing one. Before that though I do get my intercept since he deep struck in. Augury Scanner allows intercept of deep strikers, but not normal reserves or outflankers. Havocs light up and stun the dread doing two HP. Comman squad takes the center objective on his side which gives him sky fire.
My Turn One: Landraider pivots to face the attack bikes, Spartan moves out onto the road to present its flare shield to the expected outflankers. Its sponson however can target the drop pod. Tyrants move up a little to get out from behind terrain so they can shoot the command squad once the dread is out of the way. Shooting inflicts one wound on the attack bikes from the raider. The Sicaran destroys the dread. The Spartan's Quad lascannon sponson destroys the drop pod. Tyrants fire a full volley of krak missiles at the visible command squad. I hit with 8 missiles and wound with them all I think. He fails enough cover saves to lose his entire command squad. Samiel does not take anything. So bam a lot of his firepower that could actually do anything to me is gone.
Turn Two: he gets the big speeders coming in along with a RW squad on my left. Two other RW squads come in on the right. Attack bikes move forward to get my Havoks back in range(they guy they killed last turn was at the 36" mark.) It goes down hill for him at this point. Both big speeders open up on the Tyrants. They do manage to kill one. One speeder manages to blow itself up with its own plasma weapons. I am rolling armor and invul saves like a champ. His attack bikes kill another Havok.His other RW squads cant do anything to the Spartan. His RW squad tries to shoot the havoks and doesn't kill any. His Knights, speeder squadron and other dread did not come on.
My Turn Two: Caestus comes on, moves up 18" and has a big clump of bikes and attack bikes in range. Here was my main mistake. I deploy both terminator squads. Sicaran moves onto the road and presents its tail to the back on the Spartan and gets clear LOS to the other big speeder. To be honest, I don't remember what killed what. Big speeder goes down either to the havoks or the Sicaran. My plasma termies forgot that standard bikers are toughness 5 and simply shoot their bolters and pasma blaster at the RW squad and do nothing. Caestus unloads on the attack bikes and inflicts two more wounds spread out on both remaining unwounded attack bikes and kill two of the RW bikes. Krak missiles don't do anything. Tyrants and whatever else I had handy shoots up the far RW squad and bring it down to one guy. Spartan kills one biker out of the closer RW squad which contains a chappie.
Turn Three: His remaining reserves except the knights come on. The left RW squad moves into close charge range of the plasma termies. The Chappie RW squad moves close to the other term squad with my commander. Speeders line up to shoot up the plasma termies. Dread lands in some ruins next to another objective next to my Spartan. Havoks then intercept and blow it up. RW right squad unload on the termy squad there and do nothing with 14 bolter shots and 4 plasma, yay 4++ saves. My other term squad is not so lucky and combined fire from the speeders and RW squad. Attack bikes try and fail to kill a Havok. He charges on the right and manages to kill a terminator. My terminators wipe his squad and the Chaplain and my commander face off in a challenge with him doing no wounds to my guy and my guy doing one to him, he made a lot of rosaries saves.
My Turn three: Tyrants move to the left 4"(gotta love slow and purposeful :/ ) but get the RW squad there in LOS. Not a lot of movement. Raider shoots first killing one speeder and doing a HP to another. Sicaran tears up another one and does a HP on the third one. Rhino shoots its launcher and kills a RW guy on the left. Tyrants open up and thanks to his 4++ cover save, the squad isn't wiped but is reduced to one guy. Caestus moves across the table and shoots his commander and inflicts two wounds. My commander kills the chappie and the squad consolidates 1" towards objective 4 and the lone remaining RW guy sheltering on it.
His Turn four: His Knights come on next to my commander's squad. There he takes out the whole squad and loses a guy to plasma. Commander also takes two wounds. Theres a little shooting on the other side but nothing really happens.
My Turn Four: Commander moves towards objective 3. Caestus moves enough to line up the Knights in its cross hairs. Spartan, who by the way has a tank trap in front of it so it cant follow the commander around(tank traps are impassible to ground vehicles). Tyrants take Objective 3 and sit there at point blank staring at the RW guy on the left. I unleash fire. Tyrants take out the RW guy. Spartan kills the Drop pod. Landraider and Havoks kill the attack bikes. Rhino in a burst of brilliance kills the speeder. Sicaran kills the lone RW guy on Objective 3. Caestus kills three Knights with its magna-melta and two more with krak missiles as his knight decided they did not want to pass 4++ cover saves this round. My commander shoots the knights with his volkite charger and wipes the squad. And I drop the objective card that gives my 3+d3 victory points for killing off six units in one turn.
Turn Five: His commander being the only guy on the board moves over to Objective 3 and shoots my commander. Samiel manages to inflict a wound bringing my commander down to one. And he throws down the card for controlling objective 3.
My turn Five: I put the Caestus into hover mode and move to target his commander. Unfortunately I ended up right next to him the way terrain and everything worked out. Everyone else gets into a position to shoot Samiel. My commander shoots first and does nothing. Caestus opens up and fires the magna melta getting the first deviation of the game for me. It deviates just enough to tag both itself and Samiel. Samiel takes a wound and fails his invul, dying. Caestus rolls a six to penetrate(it ignores melta rule and has AV13 in the front) so it pins itself and then rolls a six for damage which the AP brings to 7. So my aircraft literally shot itself out of the air.
I wasn't marking objective things here as I only remember the big ones like the massacre one. Ended up being 16 to 4. His mistake was on deployment. He knew what I was fielding, it was all laid out on the table prior to deployment. My army has no surprises and only 21 guys in it. I think if he would have skipped his outflanking and simply swamped me on the first turn he could have likely wiped my off the board by turn three, four at the latest. Melta bombs ignore ceramite. With all his plasma he could have taken out the Tyrant terminators quickly in the first round. Even not knowing what they were, its pretty obvious they are deadly with those giant missile packs on their shoulders. If he would have wiped them and my havoks, it would have been game.
Lesson learned by this, toys and special skills are nice and all, but sometimes not using them is the better option.
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