Automated Rubric Marine of Tzeentch
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ok, so FINALLY got my first game of 10th edition yesterday evening.
i was running deathwatch vs nids, 1,000 points. mission was one form the main book, with the midfield objectives being "sticky".
my force:
Watch Master (warlord)
Firstborn Librarian
Primaris LT (the power sword + pistol version)
5 deathwatch vets (equipped with melee weapons, Watch master attached)
5 deathwatch vets (equipped with heavy weapons, Libby attached)
5 intercessors (ran them as the intercessors datasheet, not fortis kill team. LT attached)
3 agressors (flamestorm gauntlets)
3 eliminators (bolt sniper rifles)
Redemptor (plasma, icarus pod, Gatling on the fist, fragstorm on the chest guns)
the nids:
Winged Hive Tyrant, with the "redeploy 3 units" enhancement
2x carnifexes
Haruspex
Harpy
10 Gargoyles
10 Hormogaunts
3 spore mines to soak up some points
It was a massacre.
I got first turn, pushed my melee vets up a little, and the agressors made a long advance to claim a centre objective on turn one. My turn one shooting was nothing special, killed a few guants and took the Tyrant down to just 2 wounds via Oaths re-rolls.
his first turn just went aweful for him. he pulled the tyrant back into cover on his home objective to free up the gargoyles to push up, but he pushed them into overwatch range of the agressors, and a high roll for the number of hits (18, i think) just BBQ'd the whole squad in HIS movement phase. He'd played a few games of 10th before, but i think thats the first time he'd been stung by flamer overwatch like that before, and especially "out of phase" like that.
The Gaunts got a regen strat for free that replenished thier numbers back to full, then surged forward to Die for the Swarm (or Die Trying), but that held up the carnifexes & Haruspex a little, and kept them out of action this turn. I'd tried to be cagey with my melee vets and keep them far enough away to not get charged, but the Gaunt's advance and charge+ a lucky 9" charge got them into melee with me.....where they bounced spectacularly, only causing a single wound, and then were all promptly killed by the vets on thier fightback. the first battle round ended with me having done more damage to him in HIS turn than in mine.
Round two, I oath'd the Haruspex and activated the [lethal hits] detachment ability (deathwatch detachment ability, instead of combat doctrines), and the concentrated efforts of basically everything were able to kill it when the melee vets charged it. The lethal hits did really good service here, letting me score a lot of wounds on the toughness 11 Hauspex by massed small arms fire. His turn 2, the harpy deployed and fluffed its shooting, the spore mines deployed and did nothing, and the carnifexes charged my melee vets & killed the squad but not the Watch master.
My turn 3, I oathed the carnifexes, Watch master fell back, and again, focused fire form the majority of my army weakened them enough that the Agressors punched them dead in melee. this left him with the spore mines, the harpy, and the wounded Hive tyrant that was hiding in LOS blocking terrain and holding his home objective. His turn 3, the harpy made a bombing run and killed an intercessor, then failed to really hurt the Eliminators thanks to medicore rolls and the -1 to hit from Stealth.
My Turn Four, oathed the harpy, shot it down with focused fire, and killed the spore mines before they could get into range to blow.
At the start of turn 4, all he had left was the winged tyrant with 2 wounds left. I have no doubt i could have killed that in my turn 5 and tabled him, but we both agreed it wasn't worth the time to play out so we shook hands at that start of his turn 4.
final VP score was 7-2 (pure primary scoring, at 1vp per point per turn)
Post battle anaylsis:
The nid player had never played nids in 10th, was pretty young (mid teens), and was knowingly throwing a list of stuff he didn't normally use on the table, so its hard to draw too much form his list choices or comment on nids in general. That said, It was much to heavy on melee monsters with too little shooting, and he was never able to really inflict damage on me. My total losses that game were 5 vets a and 2 intercessors, plus a few chip wounds here and there. the harpy was a bad choice, its was too many points sunk into it for a 1k game.
He tried to pull a "bait and switch" deployment using his enhancement, but in the end it didnt have much effect, mostly because he didnt have the shooting to make me care and i was deployed pretty centrally and able to switch to follow him. When he pulled the Hive Tyrant back to hold the rear objective, combined with the harpy still in reserve, i was only actually fighting about half his total force, and it showed.
the center of the battlefield was a bit too open, in retrospect. the terrian layout was actaully sorted by the nid players father, but it wasn't favourable to the nids as i was able to bring almost all my firepower to bear on either of the center objectives.
speaking of objectives, sticky objectives was a real godsend this game. the center objectives were sticky due to mission rules, and my intercessors made the home objective sticky, all of which meant my squads weren't "tied down" holding objectives and could redeploy to keep the fight going. if i'd had to keep units on the points it would have been a significantly different battle
Oath of Moment is incredibly powerful, especially at 1k. By concentring fire on a big monster, i was able to bring them down though sheer weight of dice. A significant amount of damage was caused by massed small arms to those monsters.
Lethal Hits was a significant effect as well, both form deathwatch Mission Tactics and the LT. Against tough targets it really helped enable chip damage that added up really quick.
My MVP were the flamer aggressors. they were able to claim 2 objectives, deleted the gargoyles out of turn, and scored a lot of damage to the heavies through massed auto hits and re-rolled wound rolls. the Redemptor put in a lot of good work as well.
my weakest performer were the Eliminators, but that might be becuase they were character snipers in a battle with no embedded characters. i also deployed them on high ground that was just slightly too far back, so they have pretty limited shooting all game. Im not ready to write them off just yet, but they were deffo underperformed this game.
the vets did ok, but i need to tweak their loadouts a little, their need a touch more focus and reconfig as thiers too many shotguns (which likely means buying more, or finding a source of marine legs and torsos to strap weapons onto)
Also, game took only 2 hours form starting handshake to ending handshake, so 10th is MUCH quicker than 9th. The streamlining 100% sped up play as we almost never had a "wait, i have a strat for this..." moment.
we were both using the 40k app, and frankly it was perfectly serviceable. We never had a rules question we couldn't answer within the app. I'm already a WH+ subscriber, so I'm not bothered by the upcoming paywall for the list builder feature, and i intend to keep on using the app in preference to battlescribe.
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