HQ
Company Command Squad (50) Officer of the Fleet (30), Bodyguard x2 (30), Regimental Standard (15), Grenade Launcher x2 (10)
135pts
ELITES
Sly Marbo
65pts
Psyker Battle Squad x10
110pts
TROOPS
Platoon Command Squad (30) Grenade Launcher x2 (10) Bolt Gun for Commander (2)
42pts
Infantry Squad (50) Plasma Gun (15)
65pts
Infantry Squad (50) Plasma Gun (15)
65pts
Platoon Command Squad (30) Grenade Launcher x2 (10) Bolt Gun for Commander (2)
42pts
Infantry Squad (50) Plasma Gun (15)
65pts
Infantry Squad (50) Plasma Gun (15)
65pts
Special Weapons Squad (35) Flamer x2 (10) Demo Charge (20)
65pts
Special Weapons Squad (35) Flamer x2 (10) Demo Charge (20)
65pts
Heavy Weapons Squad (60) Lascannons x3 (45)
105pts
Heavy Weapons Squad (60) Lascannons x3 (45)
105pts
Heavy Weapons Squad (60) Missile Launcher x3 (30)
90pts
Heavy Weapons Squad (60) Missile Launcher x3 (30)
90pts
Heavy Weapons Squad (60) Autocannons x3 (15)
75pts
1249/1250pts
Looking over the list I imagine most of you are asking "hey where are the tanks?!" quite rightly so you will see I don't run vehicles for 3 reasons.. 1) I don't own army 2) city fighting/light infantry theme 3) I hate transporting vehicles. With that said the second question that may pop up is "why not have heavy weapons INSIDE of squads?". Being a relatively new guard player (my cult used to run the Lost and Damned list from the Eye of Terror codex), it didn't make much sense for me to mix weapon fire.
After all why always keep a static position while one weapon fires at a tank having the rest of your fire patter off uselessly? So far in all the games I have played my Heavy Weapons Teams seem to survive the most, I can deploy them deep behind swathes of infantry. Not many opponents are used to guard advancing towards the enemy unless they are in a vehicle and even then its a rare occasion. I send masses of infantry to tie up or narrow an enemy's plans for movement.
With that said I will move on to quick summaries and thoughts of my games, note that lists are roughly off the top of my head.
Game 1: Nestor's Dark Angels
Sammael in land speeder
Landspeeder w/ assault cannon and heavy bolter
Landspeeder w/ typhoon missile launcher and heavy bolter
Ravenwing Bikes x3 w/ flamer, sergeant w/ power weapon
Ravenwing Bikes x3 w/ melta, sergeant w/ power weapon
Deathwing Terminators x6? w/ assault cannon
Tactical Marines x10 in Rhino (which he split into combat squad)
The mission involved Kill Points not exactly my favorite as I tend to play high Kill Point armies. But c'est la vie I attempted to at least trim 2 Kill Points by combining two infantry units and let them screen my army as Dark Angels won the roll to go first.
Highlights:
-After being shot at and assaulted one of the 20 man blobs managed to pull down all of the bikers in combat!
-Failing to take out an immobile/weaponless land speeder, getting three penetrating hits followed by two shaken results and a stunned result!
-Only failing 1 morale check all game! May not seem like a lot but when you are guard you wouldn't exactly call your leadership stat that dependable.
-It was a tense close fought game though I had no real answer to the terminators without hoping that the psykers getting a lucky roll and wiping them out, I felt I could of tied to the game as his marine units were quite low on models and taking the speeder out would of made it a possible tie.
Result: Loss 7? vs 4? With about 500 points left alive on my side and easily 50% of Nestor's army (points wise) being alive at the end.
Game 2: Ronnie's Tyranids
Hive Tyrant w/ wings and tl devourers
Genestealers 2x5
Carnifexes x3 w/ tl devourerers
Mawloc? w/ tl devourers
With a 12 inch deployment and 5 objectives on the board going first I felt good as guard tend to do better when it comes to multiple objectives. I knew that the Devourers would murder a unit at a time so I had to play the feeding game and hope that I could do enough wounds taking full advantage that Tyranids have not been bio-engineered to have the equivalent of frag grenades.
Highlights:
-Hive Tyrant attempting to cast power Perils of the Warp a wound off, assaulted my platoon command. Only manages to kill one model, I follow up by actually getting through his armor and causing a wound. Due to Regimental Standard won combat, no retreat stripped another wound off of him. If that wasn't bad enough for 3-4 rounds of combat the Platoon Command held the Tyrant up at one point the Commander even rolling double refractor field saves!
-Mawloc assaulting two survivors from a platoon command squad through a building, he only had one wound died to 2 attacks from the survivors.
-My high AP weapons failed to do any real damage to his army, yet the humble lasgun and even a few stray close combat attacks did more damage to his army!
-Autocannons failing to hit once with 6 shots at a lone genestealer holding an objective! drat!
The result was a tie and I was quite happy though had the auto cannons HIT there would of been a good chance that I could of walked away with the win. At the end of the game he had a Tyrant with 2 wounds (he gained 1 back with spirit leech?) and a lone genestealer. I believe we ended the game on turn 5, had the game gone on another turn I would of gotten the game regardless since he would not be able to contest/kill off all my units on objectives.
Game 3: Space Marines
Shrike
Assault Marines x10 sergeant w/ power fist
Scouts 2x5 w/ sniper rifles
Predator x2 w/ heavy bolter sponsons and autocannon turret
Dreadnought x2 w/ multi melta
Again the mission was 4-5 objectives, deployment was quarters, I won the initiative the only exception was that my opponent could only get 5 turns in so we entered a gentlemen's agreement that it would cap out at 5 turns. This is both a good and bad thing since I did not have to wonder if I had to gamble on the game going on, that and I was started to get tired and wanted to head home as soon as possible.
I have played this opponent before whose name escapes me at the moment, friendly guy that doesn't mind thinking competitively so my favorite type of opponent. Though he did not have many scoring troops he did have a lot of armor... and despite having many heavy weapons I have little to no luck taking down vehicles for good...
Highlights:
-After Shrike and assault marines anhiliated a squad, good thing my good old "mop up team" AKA Special Weapons Squad came to clean up the Assault Marines with a demo charge.
-My heavy weapons cannot get through armor, despite twin linking via orders etc he either made every cover save OR I kept stunning/shaking his vehicles. I only managed to destroy a rhino and immobilize a dread despite firing heavy weapons at vehicles EVERY turn!
-Sly Marbo let me down threw a perfect demo charge at his two units of scouts that were bunched up... Rolled TOO high for scatter only managed to kill two of the scouts before they all unleashed bolt pistols at point blank range.
-Opponent needing a 3+ on a fleet roll to get another objective and managing to roll a one. Mid way through his turn there was nothing either of us could do to really change the outcome of a draw once that happened.
Lessons Learned:
-Of all the games played I saw that my guardsmen were lucky to pass most of their leadership checks. Off the top of my head all tournament I failed maybe two morale checks and ran. This could be because I failed some orders and got some "bad dice" out of the way or the Regimental Standard allowing re-rolls when needed.
-Using infantry to herd enemy models, simply move up and surround the enemy, with ten models you can cover a lot of ground and most enemies can ONLY deal with them during shooting/assault.
-For enemies that have jump packs or other movement tricks simply have another unit not too far behind so they have no safe place to "land". Dictating where and how an enemy moves I have learned to be a great benefit to guard where I can just keep tossing bodies in the way.
-Need more practice with Sanctioned Psykers... though I do have to chalk a lot of it to bad dice. I would say I easily botched 50% of the tests to cast Soulstorm though I never periled. On the positive side they never went below half even when they managed to get off their powers.
Unfortunately I was not able to snap any mid game pictures as my opponents turns were quite short and I had to move/deal with a lot of models on my side. I did manage to snap a few photos during the last game's deployment though.
With the tournament done for now and the Guard being relatively complete for now minus a few odds and ends for units it is time to focus on my Dark Eldar and other projects. I am slowly getting models painted up and churned out to bring about more battle reports filled with painted miniatures. Stay tuned everyone!
