Here's the round three report for the AWC 2k Tournament I was in.
My Opponent Space Marines
Librarian in terminator armor
5x assault termies
TH/
SS in dedicated land raider redeemer
Ironclad dread w/ melta, heavy flamer, hunter killer missle
Ironclad dread w/ melta, heavy flamer, hunter killer missle
10 man
tac squad w/ lascannon, meltagun, combi-melta, rhino w/ hunter killer missle
10 man
tac squad w/ lascannon, meltagun, razorback w/ twin linked lascannon
7 man scout squad w/ snipers, missile launcher, camo cloaks
3x attack bikes w/ multi-meltas
3x scout bikes w/ combi-melta
Vindicator
Thunderfire cannon
I've never played against Brian before, but I had seen his army at Adepticon and it was gorgeous. Seeing it here, it certainly doesn't disappoint.
*The big wall behind his army wasn't terrain, that was his display board
*
Scenario
Dawn of War deployment and night fight first turn. There were two warp storms (small blasts) that we deep struck on the board before the game started. Every player turn, they would scatter. All units hit by the blasts suffered
2d6 str 10
ap 2 hits. If the scatter is doubles, then it would go to a large blast template and scatter
3d6" for the rest of the game. If more doubles were rolled, then the scatter of the blast goes up by another
d6, and the amount of hits every unit takes increases by another
d6.
Primary objective - Control table quarters - control more table quarters with scoring units than your opponent. Any other unit can contest a quarter.
Secondary - Get more units within 12" of the center of the table
Tertiary - Get more units into your opponent's deployment zone than your opponent has in yours.
Bonuses include things like - if you didn't lose any units to the warp storm.
We drop down our warp storms near the center left of the board, I aim for his side of the board, but it drifts back towards my side, his was aimed on the left sizd, and it drifted back to the left corner on my side.
The game can end on turn 5, but only if both players agree to end it then (No rolling for random game length). If either player wants to go to turn 6, then it goes to turn 6. If either player wants to go to turn 7, then it will go to that. The game ends after 7 turns always (no going to 8 turns).
I lost the roll for deployment and he made me go first.
Deployment
I deploy nothing, electing to bring in my force turn 1. He deploys nothing, electing to outflank his scout bikers and scouts, putting both his
tac squads in reserve (also elected to combat squad them), while the land raider (with termies and Lib), thunderfire cannon, ironclad dreads, and attack bikes choose to come on turn 1.
He chooses not to sieze initiative
Top Turn 1
I move my whole army flat out diagonally so that they can all claim a cover save, deciding to hang back, see where he comes in, and gun him down with lances before assaulting.
The warp storms move, one drifts towards my back left corner, while the other shifts more to the left side.
Bottom Turn 1
He bring his land raider, both ironclads, and the thunderfire cannon on my left side, on the far side of the table from me. He brings the vindicator on the same side as me and sends the attack bikes turboboost close to my raiders, on the other side of a wall. The vindicator pops smoke.
The warp storms move a little bit, one bounces into the edge of the table, while the other shifts more to the left.
Top Turn 2
I move my raiders to get lance shots on the vindicator, I moved up the
HQ retinue and disembarked them, ready to assault the attack bikes. I moved some raiders up along the right edge because I want to get side armor shots on the vindicator and I didn't think he had much of a long range threat. I shot the lances at the vindicator, managed to wreck it. My assault with the retinue results in a wiped out attack bike squad.
Bottom turn 2
His scouts come in from reserves and outflank on my right side, go into the forest on my right side in the middle of all of my raiders. His land raider moves up and the dreads move and run. The thunderfire cannon opens up and takes out one of my raiders, with the squad failing their pinning test. His scouts attempt to shoot one of the raiders, and then fail to assault as they roll too low on difficult terrain.
Top Turn 3
I sent my wyches in the raider in the far right out of the transport to assault the scouts. The
HQ retinue gets back in the transport and it moves forward, behind the hill for some cover. I moved my raiders forward to get shots on the land raider and thunderfire cannon. My shooting is ineffective. Only had 1 shot in range of the thunderfire, but it missed. I failed to damage the land raider. Between warrior squads shooting out of raiders at the scouts and a wyche squad assaulting, I wipe the scouts out completely and consolidate into the woods for cover.
Bottom turn 3
The rest of his reserves comes in. His
tac squad in Rhino shows up the same side as his dreads in the corner, with a combat squad with lascannon walking, and the sarge & melta riding inside. His other
tac squad comes in on my right, same idea, with the lascannon group going on foot, and the short range group inside the razorback. His scout bikes outflank on my right side, right about where his scouts came in the previous turn. His land raider moves forward again, and the dreads run behind. His thunderfire cannon shoots at the wyche raider (the one that's where his attack bikes were assaulted the 2nd turn) and immobilizing it. His land raider fires at my raider on top of the hill , exploding it, and the squad fails the pinning test. His scout bikes shoot one of my raiders in the back right, failing to damage it. His assault with the bikes results in the scout bikes exploding the raider with krak grenades, the squad passes the pinning check and morale check from casualties.
Top turn 4
I move my wyches out of the woods to assault the scout bikes. I decide that the land raider needs to be stopped, so I go for broke to put all the guns I can bring to bear, and set up my wyches and incubi retinue to charge anyone that comes out of the vehicle. I move the wyches out of my immobilized raider and have them move towards the lascannon razorback. I race up an empty raider flat out in an attempt to block
LOS of the lascannon combat squad and to give cover saves to the rest of my guys behind. I move up a warrior squad to try and help with taking the middle. My wyches in the woods moves to assault the scout bikes.
My shooting with the lances only manages to stun the land raider. The wyche squad that went towards the razorback gets a 6 on their run roll, putting it in assault range of the razorback, just needs to make a difficult terrain check getting over the hill to the razorback. Realizing the land raider shooting failed, I just ran the incubi unit to spread them out, to reduce the damage they take from a likely redeemer shot or thunderfire cannon. I have the warriors in my back quarter shoot the scout bikers, killing two of them, they make their morale check.
I assault the lone scout biker with my wyches, taking him out. My other wyche squad in the upper right goes for the razorback, and makes the difficult terrain check. They assault the razorback with plasma grenades and the agonizer (Woo strength 4 grenades and agonizer always glancing on 6's), I managed to get 4 glances, I roll on the damage chart and get two 5's and a 6, piling enough weapon destroyed and immobilized results to wreck the vehicle. The marines get out and pass their pinning. My last wyche squad goes after the land raider in a move of sheer desperation to stall him, failing to damage the vehicle.
Bottom Turn 4
He disembarked the terminators, separated the librarian to go after a squad. He moved the ironclad to go after my incubi retinue. He moved the land raider back to open up
LOS for other units. The land raider fired a multi-melta at the closest raider, exploding it. The librarian follows up on the warriors with the vortex of doom, killing most of the squad. The lascannon combat squad in the right shoots at the raider directly in front of them and explode it. The combat squad nearby moves and rapid fires the wyches, killing 5 of them. The warriors the librian killed fail their morale test and flee. The wyches make their morale check. The thunderfire cannon shoots at the incubi, killing 1. The terminators assault the wyches and kill a bunch of them, while the wyches do nothing to the terminators, they fail morale and flee off, being under half strength, unable to regroup.
*No pic for this, sorry.*
Top Turn 5
I move the remaining 4 wyches at the combat squad that rapid fired them. The Incubi retinue moves to assault the only thing they have a chance of hurting, the terminators. I jump the empty raider (the one that transported the now fleeing wyches) back 24" to pick up the wyche squad in the back. My warrior squad on the hill shot at the librarian and managed to kill him with the blaster. My other shooting was not very successful, only good thing was that a horrorfex from a raider on my far right pinned his lascannon combat squad. I shook the land raider
Assault consists of my wyches charging the combat squad that rapid fired them and my archon + retinue charging the terminators (normally not the best thing, but they had nothing else to charge...and we were both out of running for the top spot, so we went for the epic combat.) *Had to move some guys back a bit from base contact, as the hilly terrain was forcing people to fall over (despite all my guys being weighted down with washers under the bases)
Epic Showdown!
My wyches get in and get 2 marines, while the marines get one wyche. Marines make their check. The archon goes after the termies...boosts up on combat drugs, and does 3 wounds, but the termies make all their saves. The incubi retinue do well and kill 3 of the termies. Termies hit back and manage to do two wounds to the retinue. One gets applied to an incubi, and deciding to keep with the theme of "go big or go home", I put the other one on the archon...sure enough he went running home with his tail between his legs...rolled a 1 on the shadowfield save, killing the archon. The morale checks were made and everyone else stayed in combat.
The warp storm jumps over the epic combat, and just clips the terminator...doesn't touch the incubi, so the termies take
2d6 str 10
ap 2 hits.
They ended up taking 10 hits and 9 wounds...but he made 8 out of 9 invul saves and kept one alive.
*I haven't been mentioning the warp storms because they spent most of the game bouncing around, not hitting anything
Bottom Turn 5
He moves the iron clad to assault the incubi, moves the land raider. On my left side, he moves the rhino
tac squad and ironclad to take my back left table quarter. Land raider and thunderfire cannon fire at the
HQ's raider, exploding it. The iron clad dread charges the incubi, killing a few, my incubi send as many attacks as they can at the terminators, but fail miserably. The flee and escape, but don't go far, so they'll be within 6" of an enemy. The combat between the wyches and combat squad kept going, dropping the marines to just the sargeant, who stayed in combat.
Since we were both having fun, we both wanted to keep playing out the game, and it was still close for the objectives.
Top turn 6
My fleeing warriors and incubi run off the board. My raider in the back picks up the wyches and moves forward 12" (aiming for an attempt to contest his table quarters turn 7.) My few lances left dont do much, the horror fex from my raider in the upper right pins the lascannon team again. Close combat ends with the wyches taking out the
tac sargeant. the squad consolidates behind the hill (out of
LOS of the thunderfire), and ready to charge the lascannon team turn 7.
Bottom turn 6
His terminator gets back into the land raider and they move towards my bottom right quarter. The thunderfire cannon fires at my raider transporting the wyches, failing to damage the vehicle this time. dreadnaughts move a little bit.
We decided that the game was fun and close enough that we wanted to fight it out to turn 7 and we had time to get the turn in.
Top 7
I move the raider carrying wyches 24" to get into the upper right quarter, contesting it. I move my Raider in the upper right (carrying warriors) and rapid fire the combat squad, managing to drop them down to a few guys left. I fire a few blasters and lances at the land raider, still failing to immobilize or kill it. The wyches then followed up, charging and wiping them out, consolidating to hide behind the razorback wreck.
Bottom Turn 7
His terminator gets out and moves near my warriors, in my quarter to contest. The land raider moves 6" to flame my warrior squad on the hill. His ironclad moves towards my raider preparing to flame and assault it. His land raider shoots a multi-melta at the raider that's contesting his quarter and uses the flamestorm cannon on the warriors on the hill. The flamestorm gets all but 1 guy, while the multi-melta wrecks the raider. My guys get out, trapped between an inroclad dread and a thunderfire, I put my guys on the side away from the dreadnaught, hoping for his shots to scatter. He fires the thunderfire at the wyches and it does not scatter at all. I attempted to go to ground in the open for 6+ cover, but that didn't help to save anyone. My lone warrior made his morale check and stayed.
Here's what the whole board looked like
End of Game
The game ended. It was a slugfest, but it was alot of fun. We each had control of one table quarter, with each of us contesting another. We had a draw on the primary objectives, and he won the secondary (have more units within 12" of the center of table) and tertiary (get more units in opponent's deployment zone.) Despite me ending up with the minor loss, it was one of the more fun games I have ever played. Brian was definitely one of the nicest and most fun people to get in a game of
40k with.
That thunderfire cannon was brutal. Most of the time when that thunderfire cannon fired, it either wiped out a squad or damaged one of my vehicles with the strength 6 shots. It tore my army apart. I have since made a note of that unit and consider it a high priority threat.
Overall thoughts
This was the first time running this army to the tournament, so it had some growing pains. I did learn some things worked well, the splinter cannons were almost useless (have scrapped them from my future lists and am running more dark lances.) The archon + incubi retinue worked well, but having the full 9 man retinue was just overkill (I think taking a 5 man minimum sized retinue works better). The wyches are good with tying units down and eventually winning combat.
One area my army has lacked in has been killing tanks. Despite the lances, I think I need to bring more blasters and maybe some more haywire grenades to be able to get a better chance to deal with the land raiders. In general, I had fun with the army. I don't feel like the army wasn't able to compete with any of the armies I played against (which is nice to say about a 10+ year old codex), the games I lost either came down to my tactical errors and/or bad dice (for the first game), or was close enough that it could have gone the other way (for my last game, if I would've rolled better the times I managed to penetrate the land raider...the game may have been quite different.)
One thing I've noticed in the tournament and other games since then, is that my forces just don't have the tricks like other armies have (outflanking, scout moves, easy access to deep striking, etc). I'm not too worried about it because my army is very fast, and they'll be getting a new book in a few months.
I ended up 16th out of 22...so not amazing, but alright considering I had only been playing the army for about 2 weeks or so.
) but was mainly looking to get some good experience against some good opponents and have fun.
anyone else think this looks like an upside down Marathon symbol?....classic
1750pts