Monday, May 17, 2010

'Ard Boyz 2010 qualifiers: Game 1

The first game of the day I fought against a fellow named Stuart, who brought along his blood angel army sporting a lot of 3rd edition miniatures which is always a plus in my book! He brought along:

Reclusiarch w/ jump pack (leads death company)

Furioso Dreadnought

Tactical Squad x10 w/ melta gun and plasma cannon in rhino
Tactical Squad x10 w/ melta gun and missile launcher in rhino
Assault Squad x10 w/ jump packs, melta gun, vet sarge w/ power weapon
Assault Squad x10 w/ jump packs, melta gun, vet sarge w/ thunder hammer
Death Company x13 w/ thunder hammer jump packs
Death Company Dreadnought

Baal Predator w/ pintle mounted storm bolter
Land Speeder w/ typhoon missile launcher
Land Speeder w/ Multi-melta and assault cannon

Vindicator
Vindicator
Whirldwind

The mission was Seize Ground with 5 objectives, bonus battle points for: killing the most scoring units, killing more of the opponent's HQ, killing highest point unit and having more scoring units in your opponents deployment zone.

Deployment:
His
Left Flank: assault squad, land speeder (melta/cannon) and tactical squad in rhino
Center: death company, two vindicators, baal predator, land speeder (typhoon) and furioso dreadnought
Right Flank: assault squad and death company dreadnought

deep into his deployment was an objective guarded by a whirlwind and tactical squad with rhino.

My deployment was fairly simple all my grey hunters went as far back as possible to avoid combat by the second turn. My long fangs hugged board edges to get excellent fields of fire regardless of turn.

The Game:
Turns: 1-2
First and second turn his fire did a few casualties here and there I believe on squad of grey hunters went down pretty quickly. First turn the rune priest cast "Jaws of the World Wolf" catching five models including his Reclusiarch... in an unexpected turn of events ALL of the models caught died! I followed up by virtually obliterating the rest of the death company via 14 missiles of the long fangs and random bolter fire so only two survived.

Turns: 3-4
The last two survivors of the death company get assault by my grey hunters including the wolf guard with thunder hammer. Amazingly one is still left alive in a dragging combat when the furioso dreadnought decides to join in, thankfully I thought ahead of time and led the thunder hammer wielding wolf guard on the edge of combat expecting a dreadnought to join in. Though I took a few casualties I knocked out the dread and stayed in combat versus the lone thunder hammer wielding death company who was having trouble hitting.

My blood claws with attached wolf priest managed to chew through his tactical unit on the charge and when they were eventually charged by the assault marines they polished them off also! After neutralizing any threat on my left flank they advanced jumping from cover to cover.

An assault squad and dreadnought jumped onto one of my depleted grey hunter packs near an objective mauling them with a handful of casualties. At this point some of my units were barely holding on and a lucky round of shooting could of changed things easily.

By the end of turn four I believe I managed to knock out both vindicators and shot down a weaponless land speeder that was trying to contest and objective.


Turn: 5

Both forces are looking worse for wear so he starts by driving his baal predator onto an objective and backs it with the surviving dreadnought. He strings a tactical squad across two objectives in his deployment with a typhoon land speeder for good measure. Ineffectual fire from the baal predator ends his shooting without much effect.

He jumps an assault squad onto a depleted grey hunter squad, counter attack does me proud though and cause I more casualties than they can dish out. With "no retreat" tacking on another wound or two against the assault marines.

A time warning starts my turn and I know this will be the last gasp to make or break the game so I set about my business. So far it's one objective a piece so I had to get lucky in order to win. I wasn't thinking straight and took a gamble ran up my double melta gun grey hunters to the baal predator and hoped my scouts (with combi melta/melta gun) could deal with the dread giving me another objective.

Things worked out on on this turn though I did manage to nuke the baal predator despite shooting at the rear of the dreadnought either the scouts shots missed or didn't roll high enough! Which means I wasted a perfectly good scoring unit for nothing.

Luck decided otherwise, for all the bad rolls versus the dread the rest of my grey hunters walloped the assault marines and made the lone survivor head for the hills. Thankfully for me I failed to catch him leaving me free to consolidate back onto one of my home objectives!

Thanks to my blood claws barely being within one of his objectives it was 2-1 in my favor and I garnered myself a victory with 2 bonus points killing his highest unit (death company) and killing the most scoring units (only his tactical squad in his deployment survived scoring wise).

Post Game Thoughts:

It was a very close run game and it was down to the final roll, I have to say Stuart was a great opponent and a great sport. We didn't have any rules quarrels and ew both had our moments of good and bad luck. With that being said my first turn "Jaws of the World Wolf" caused way more damage than I thought I was going to get. I assumed that I would tag a model or two, but when he failed his chaplains initiative test with a 6 my jaw dropped. Followed by 5,5,6 and 6 for the four death company unlucky enough to be right behind him I honestly couldn't think of anything better.

I knew that if the death company approached my lines with anything near full strength they would tie up units until their buddies arrived. With that in mind I focused most of my fire on them and slowly backed away buying me a few turns to organize my units and focus on his piece meal.

If I had to do anything differently I should of used one of my scout units to knock out his whirlwind (in deployment) and hide behind it's wreck out of LOS from the tactical squad to thin out their number. Also I should of run with the blood claws one turn instead of trying to knock out the land speeder. It would of ensured that I would of reached combat and at the end of the game I would of been 2-0 objectives in my favor.

Survivors:
Whirldwind
Death Company Dreadnought
7-8 tactical marines

Rune Priest
Wolf Priest x2
Blood Claws 6/10
Grey Hunters 5/10
Grey Hunters 3/10
Grey hunters 6/10
Long Fangs 7/7
Long Fangs 3/7

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