Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Well, here's my first battle report and my third game, and I am pleased to announce my first actual victory. Prior to this, I had fought the Tau twice and been shot to pieces, so this was a nice change. The terrain is not completely painted yet - the plateau will be a stone/grassy hill, and the two obelisk type structures are going to be ancient ruins. We just needed to get a game going and didn't have time enough to get all the tiles done. Also, I am unsure on how to put images inline with the post, so they may all be at the end. Regardless, they are there! Enjoy!

Units:
Me (Steve): Full loadout CC Tyrant with one Guard
15 genestealers, with scything talons (reserve)
10 hormagants
1 lictor (reserve)
8 warriors with dakka and boneswords
1 Tyranid Prime with the Warriors, armed with scything talons and boneswords.

Dan: HQ bossman with 7-8 henchmen (Some CC, some guns, some invuln save shieldy guys.)
3 Arcoflagellants with mad skillz and soothing hymns
2 Penitent Engines
1 heavy weapon squad with an assortment of gunnery... Heavy bolters, plasma or something fairly deadly.
One priest with 5 shooty types armed with shotguns. I do not know what they were exactly.
One tank (Exorcist) with missile launchers and a smile. It is red, but does not in fact go fasta.
One Vindicare Assassin (Held in reserve)

Deployment: I roll first go, we deploy and Dan keeps his assassin in reserve while I keep 15 genestealers and the Lictor in reserve. Everyone can infiltrate, yay! After an uneventful first turn where I run everything at him and fail to make shooting range with anything, Dan takes his first turn and launches D1 missiles at my Tyrant... and misses, thankfully. D6 missiles at S10 AP2 means that I am terrified of this thing.

I have my dudes spread across the board with hormagaunts on the left, HQ tyrant in the middle and the Warriors and Prime on the right. Dan has his entire army clustered together on my right hand side in the corner... I believe he was trying for mutual fire support and cover saves. I also believe that this bodes well for me. Second turn rolls around and we roll for reserves: I get both of my guys right away with two rolls of 5. Awesome. Lictor can go wherever he wants due to his super camouflage; he hides, likely terrified, in some rocks near the tank. Genestealers roll to infiltrate on my right hand table edge: Super-wicked. I place them a few inches from his tank, which has been conveniently parked... on the table edge.

At this point Dan has begun his approach with his insane Penitent Engines; they are making a beeline for my Warriors. Mr. Lictor shoots his flesh hooks at the tank, and fails to have any effect whatsoever (I believe he missed entirely.) However, the close combat squad Dan has is heading towards my Hormies, but swiftly turns around... because the 4 Genestealers in assault range hit and wreck his Exorcist Missile Launcher Tank of Doom. After they do their thing, he assaults the genestealers with his shotgun wielding squad of dudes because the attendant Priest within the squad has exhorted them to do so - apparently they have a death wish. Due to initiative, I go first and slaughter 4 of them. He successfully kills 2 genestealers, then runs off the table in blood-soaked terror.

The Arco Flagellants proceeded to assault the trouser jockeys at this point and were wiped out to a man :( I believe I successfully rolled 18 hits and wounded with many of those. After armor saves, there were 8 wounds to go around... resulting in no more squad.

No more pictures; camera ran out of battery power and I had to depart after another turn.

The Witch Hunters Command HQ Squad fellows tried their hand at assaulting the pointy end of the Genestealers, and suffered six instant wound casualties (rending) as well as some regular casualties. One rend was saved by an invulnerable shield man, but most everyone else died. The Penitent Engines did a good job, killing one Warrior and wounding 3 more quite badly. Plasma weapons from the heavy squad by the ruined tank also damaged the warriors twice...

No damage was done to the psychopath engines except in one shooting phase, I now understand that close combat was essentially hopeless against the raging metallic doom windmills of fury. Which was pretty badass as they are really quite unpredictable - at one point there were 3 of my units in opposite directions from them at almost the exact same range so there was some real possibility of a delightfully random attack occuring where neither of us expected it. So that was neat.

Dan's Vindicare Assassin came in on Turn 2 as well but was unable to fire until turn three which never ended, I was hoping to see his turbo-penetrator in action. Oh well. The hormagants saw no action and no bullets or plasma of any type; they were alone and lonely. My Hive Tyrant spent the entire game trudging desperately across the board doing nothing (getting shot at once) but was unable to make it into close combat which is what I had kitted him out for (no shooting for him apparently, should have grabbed a gun - then he could have at least shot and missed!)

The genestealers basically did the whole army's job; they killed a tank, an Elites squad (flagellents), most of the HQ squad, and a unit of shotgun-toting religious nuts as well. The Lictor shot at the tank once and missed, then spent the rest of the game hiding behind it doing nothing whatsoever. Slacker.

Penitent Engines are effective and scary.

Don't hesitate to chime in with thoughts, questions or advice!

No thoughts? Guess we must have done everything right.

As I said in your intro thread, the Witch Hunter played a very... interesting army. Very Ecclesiarchy, indeed !
It's great to see these twists in WH army list, but I can imagine difficulties which come with choice like that.

I am not sure why your friend kept his vindicare assassin in reserve. I found it hard in many game to really profit from his skills so I can't imagine if he's not on the table on the first turn. Any idea ?

And what are theses miniatures he used ?

Congratulations on your victory !
I hope to see more battle reports from you !

Bat rep could use more pictures with captions under to show stages of the game, was hard to follow and read, esp since the WH player is using not a single actual WH model.
Ok, I know you're not the WH player, but as a WH player I've got some comments on it. IMO the army looks like some legoland space marines, and the only models I've figured so far out are the penitent engines and the exorcist.

Not only is it a bad looking army, but a really bad list as well. The WH player has pretty much taken all of the bad choices in the WH codex, threw them in a list, and then kept his Vindicare Assassin (who is never worth his points in the WH codex anyways) in reserve the whole game, just to waste a good 110 points (or aka 10 man sister squad.)

3 Arcos is too small of a number to be effective and will just die, I'd suggest 7+ or don't take them at all. Inquisitors and their henchmen are squishy, outside of transports, they should never ever be foot slogging across the board, or in CC because a CC squad is crazy expensive. The only current viable roll for an Inquisitor and henchmen is to sit 3 warriors with 3 plasma guns or Melta with an Inquisitor and 2 sage henchmen in a rhino. It's a cheap durable and viable unit that only takes up an elite slot for 158pts including Rhino(or an HQ slot if so desired)

And last but not least, Penitent Engines, the current worst choice in the codex. Penitent Engines have no smoke launchers, and are open topped which means +1 armor pen, which also means AP 1 wrecks Penitent Engines on a 3+, if Penitent Engines are run in a squadron they die on a 2+ to AP 1, 2 becomes a 4 which immobilizes, which wrecks a vehicle in a squadron. The only reason you had problems was lack of armor pen, which you should probably look into getting more of, seeing as these things are much easier to wreck than a space marine rhino. Against any mech type army you're really going to see an issue.

So, after all that, seems like a fun game with a decent nid list.

Grenat wrote:As I said in your intro thread, the Witch Hunter played a very... interesting army. Very Ecclesiarchy, indeed !
It's great to see these twists in WH army list, but I can imagine difficulties which come with choice like that.

I am not sure why your friend kept his vindicare assassin in reserve. I found it hard in many game to really profit from his skills so I can't imagine if he's not on the table on the first turn. Any idea ?

And what are theses miniatures he used ?

Congratulations on your victory !
I hope to see more battle reports from you !

Thanks, we're both still getting the hang of things. Dan has never played a game before, so he essentially went with what looked cool in the codex - I really don't know why he reserved his assassin, though. He had the range to hit anything, anywhere, so it really would have made sense to keep him in the backfield from the start.

My buddy's trying out the codex for now to see if it fits his style, before he drops a few hundred on models. We were surprised that the Sisters were metal, and priced out a basic setup at 400+, which was too much to throw around without knowing he was going to enjoy the army. What he's done is made his guys from modelling clay, and made them a little smaller than normal... :p the larger models are assembled from miscellaneous model kits, and it's all painted as though they were hugely Communist! lol...

Kreedos wrote:Bat rep could use more pictures with captions under to show stages of the game, was hard to follow and read, esp since the WH player is using not a single actual WH model.
Ok, I know you're not the WH player, but as a WH player I've got some comments on it. IMO the army looks like some legoland space marines, and the only models I've figured so far out are the penitent engines and the exorcist.... ...So, after all that, seems like a fun game with a decent nid list.

I'll certainly pass along your thoughts on the army list - it should help him out, especially when I get a few more Zoanthropes rolling out. And where the pics and commentary are concerned, we'll certainly have more detailed/larger pics for the next battles, likely for every turn.

I think for next game, I'll have a more viable WH list to fight... this game was tons of fun though, and we both learned a few things about our lists (I won't be taking Warriors up against S10 CC attacks again if I can help it!)

What would you suggest as a good foundation for his army? He likes the fluff surrounding the Inquisition, but neither of us really knows where to start with them as far as a well rounded force goes. He's going to be fighting me (nids, of course) fairly regularly, and Ultramarines, Tau, Orks and Dark Eldar on a semi-regular basis.

I'll certainly pass along your thoughts on the army list - it should help him out, especially when I get a few more Zoanthropes rolling out. And where the pics and commentary are concerned, we'll certainly have more detailed/larger pics for the next battles, likely for every turn.

I think for next game, I'll have a more viable WH list to fight... this game was tons of fun though, and we both learned a few things about our lists (I won't be taking Warriors up against S10 CC attacks again if I can help it!)

What would you suggest as a good foundation for his army? He likes the fluff surrounding the Inquisition, but neither of us really knows where to start with them as far as a well rounded force goes. He's going to be fighting me (nids, of course) fairly regularly, and Ultramarines, Tau, Orks and Dark Eldar on a semi-regular basis.

If he's wanting to go Inquisition, he's might want to play out of the GK codex, there's a rumor that WH is going to drop Inquisition alltogether and go with Ecclesiarchy only units. He's already got a ton of GK stuff minus the exorcist. If he's still wanting to play out of the WH codex however, he's going to still want Sisters units for troops, they're 1 point more than a Inquisition guardsman, and with faith they're one of the most resilient troop choices in the game, the only other one equal IMO would be Nurgle plague bearers. They've also got their own version of stubborn, which allows them to choose to use their unmodified leadership for pinning and morale checks, so if you choose to fail, you can clear up a squad for shooting at in your next turn, or you can tarpit all day.

If he's wanting to run a good Henchmen squad, here's a good loadout, that's cheap and very effective against nids. Run x3 of this for a good amount of shooty to wipe out terminators, and MCs, sage x2 allows to reroll one hit in the squad (reroll a get hot). With extra points and you really want plasma to live, you can pay the extra 10 points each for power armor for the warriors.

Elite Inquisitor - 158
Warrior x 3
Plasma Gun x 3
Sage x 2
Rhino
Extra Armor, Smoke

That being said, his heavy should be focused in any WH list with at least 2 exorcists, and if points permit always try and
get a third exorcist, reason being it's the only long range firepower in the codex, same reason GK take 3x rifle dreads.

Maybe something like this?

HQ

Inquisitor Lord - 175
Warrior x 3
Plasma Gun x 3
Sage x 2
Rhino

Troops

Sister of Battle/Inquisition Storm Trooper - 209
Heavy Flamer, Melta Gun, Veteran, Book
Rhino
Extra Armor, Smoke

Sister of Battle/Inquisition Storm Trooper - 209
Heavy Flamer, Melta Gun, Veteran, Book
Rhino
Extra Armor, Smoke

Sister of Battle/Inquisition Storm Trooper - 207
Melta Gun x 2, Veteran, Book
Rhino
Extra Armor, Smoke

Elite

Vindicare Assassin - 110

Inquisitor - 158
Warrior x 3
Plasma Gun x 3
Sage x 2
Rhino
Extra Armor, Smoke

Inquisitor - 158
Warrior x 3
Plasma Gun x 3
Sage x 2
Rhino
Extra Armor, Smoke

Heavy

Exorcist - 135

Exorcist - 135

Total 1498


This list will tear nids apart. So much AP 1 from Exorcists and AP 2 from Plasma will tear up nid MCs and will vaporize warriors and elite units, the heavy flamers will take care of nid swarms from gaunts and genestealers.

Fantastic - I'll pass it along and I'm sure he'll be grateful for the insight. List looks really solid!

I'll have to make a few new lists myself, if he goes this route, hah! Should be fun.