I already posted this on The Four Horsemen: http://lionsangels.blogspot.com/ , but I am not sure how active they are right now, and I can't see all the stat stuff, so for now I am going to double post.
So, it has been a while since I have played, but I've gotten 3 games
in 7th edition in the last 3 weeks, so I throw out some thoughts on my
experience with Blood Angles in 7th. The first game I played in 7th was
against IG, or whatever they are called now - Militarium?
It
was a tank line behind an Aegis defense line, with some special
forgeworld rules. The IG played had a 30 man platoon bubble wrap
between the tanks and the wall, so I could not drop pod my Sterngaurd or
either of my 2 Furiouso dreads close enough to get a good melta shot
off. I made good use of enemy's ADL, and all my stuff that was not in a
pod is in 1 LR or 2 Razor backs, but all the vehicles got popped, and
then it was bunch of marines being pounded with AP 3 barrage. Death
Company did ok - by that I mean they lasted 2 turns of getting pounded
before dying without killing anything.
- The biggest
lesson I re-learned from this game was that I should have drop podded my
stuff into the ruins on the flank, instead of landing in front of wall
and trying to chew through his infantry to get to the tanks (with the
Furiousos did in 2 turns, but not fast enough to open gap for other
melta before they were destroyed.
-The other lesson was
that, since we were playing with tactical objectives, and I had the
advantage early, I should of stayed out of range. It would have been a
fast, not very exciting game, but I let myself get sucked into trying to
destroy stuff, and charged into his tanks -instead of using my speed to
take the points I could, and then making HIM change HIS game. (instead I
lost by 1 point, even though the game ended on turn 5 and all I had
left was 2 drop pods and 3 space marines)
I
used the same army for the next 2 games. It was 4 Assault marine squads
(5 men), each with a land raider (2 landraiders and 2 crusaders), 2
Furiouso dreads with claws (for counter charge), and a stormraven with
meph.
The first game I played against chaos space
marines allied with demons, and did not get iron arm with Meph, so he
stayed in the plane until it was shot out from under him. Besides
Typhus, there were 2 demon princes and at least 1 greater demon. He had
very little that could punch through my armor (in fact he glanced 1
land raider, 1 time). This was a pretty well matched game, because my
opponent, although he couldn't kill the Raiders, almost tied because he
played the tactical objective very smartly - for example, when I
grounded a demon prince, and locked him into combat with my dread, that
demon summoned a squad of horrors to take the objective. all of my stuff
did what I expected, and I even used one of the 5 man squads to clear
some demons off of an objective - too late to stop him from getting
tactical points though.
-The game was a lot of fun, and
really close, but not a lot of lesson to learn, I won, and every unit
did what I wanted - the LR kept stuff safe, the Furiouso's locked up
demon princes (or kept them from landing). Although I wasn't playing
the monsters, it was worth noting that the change to making smash attack
only 1 attack (instead of half) took a lot of threat out of demons
princes against armor and dreads - they are not really a threat to heavy
armor). Also, if Mehpiston is going to sit in the plane all game, I
could save a lot of points with a cheaper HQ.
The
second game, I was caught off guard by an Imperial knight. I wasn't
expecting a super heavy (we never really discussed the list, beyond that
they would be 2k points), but I was game - (good thing, because I found
out that not only did he not have enough IG without the knight, but
that he had bought and put together $250 worth of guard the night
before, so that would have enough points to play. Once my Land Raiders
got popped (all by turn 3 I think), things went down hill fast. In the
end, the game ended on turn 5, and I lost 11-1, but the momentum was
finally turning in my favor, and had there been a turn 6, I am pretty
sure (baring some stupid lucky - or unlucky dice, I would have won 6-5)
Lessons from this game: -
-
mostly about the imperial knight. The armor, the shield, nothing
special - I did not realize that they could move 12, and that their
chainsword did "D" damage. His cannon didn't do anything, but he killed
2 of the land raiders in melee in 2 turns (I had moved in to get the
melta shot bonus)
-If you are close enough to hit the
knight with the melta bonus, you are probably close enough to take a "D"
hit from the explosion when the knight dies - I lost a squad of
infantry and a furiouso dread to the explosion.
-Mephiston
is pretty tough. With iron arm, las cannons needed 4's to wound, Meph
took 4 to the face, and kept trucking, and almost single handedly won me
the game (in another turn). The problem was that it took him too long
to be useful. He came in on turn 2, but the stormraven had to attack
the knight. The next turn, the stormraven zoomed to the drop zone (with
the intention of hovering on turn 4 so meph could charge), but the
stormraven got stunned, and Meph had to "fall from the skies", which
meant to charge until 5. Like I said, he took 4 LC shots, killed a LC
squad, and was poised to clear an objective (and probably take out the
enemy warlord with a pskyker attack). Again Meph proved how tough he
was, but if it takes him 5 turns to charge, he is going to have a hard
time leveraging that toughness. Maybe I can put him in one of the Land
Raiders (then he would almost be guaranteed a turn 2 assault, which
would have made a big difference in that particular game.
-Also,
a rule note that I had not seem mentioned - how damage is allocated to a
squadron. It might have always been this way (I don't fight squadrons
much). Once you score hits, you assign them, and resolve them one at a
time - I always thought it was roll all penetrating and glancing, and
then allocated them - it doesn't make a big difference, unless some of
the shots are at a different facing, but then it might.
Edit:
It is worth noting that if the Land Raiders had contained full squads,
it might have been closer in my favor. Granted that this was IG, but I
still was able to break 3-4 units in charges (usually with only 3
marines (that's all that was left before the charge), but then I would
get shot down to 0-1 guys; 5 more bodies in each of those charges might
have let me keep one of the objectives (as it was, 3 marines almost
defended an objective from 3 units of guardsmen, and probably could have
if it wasn't for the hotshot lasers)
