Local Tournament - Game 2

This was game 2 of yesterday's tournament.  I had the same army as I did in the last post, and my opponent played IG with Space Wolf allies.  He had 2 blobs infantry platoons (with a space wolf chaplain in each) - the platoons were naked, no extra, special, or power weapons.  He also had an aegis defense line, were he had a unit of grey hunters, 2 platoon heavy weapons squads, and a company command squad with a guy who gives me -1 to reserve rolls, and a master of ordinance.  He also had Marbo and a second 2nd Hunter squad.  Finally, he had 2 Valkyries (one of was modeled as a viking long ship, on a stormraven base - looked pretty cool, and will look even cooler painted).

Luckily, the first turn was night fighting, because I underestimated his fire power, and had started clustered up (I had deployed my ADL across my side of the board, but when I rolled crusader, I decided that I wanted to try marching across the board with everyone in 12", to benefit from preferred enemy.  While it is rules as written, I think it is lame that a blob of IG can be led by a space wolf, and benefit from all of his perks, including preferred enemy, but, since it is an IG unit, my preferred enemy was worthless against him (this is not a bash against the player at all, who is a friend of mine, but rather a complaint about GW rules).

We traded blows, and it was pretty even, even without my dragons for the most part (he had also gotten the warlord trait that effects reserve, so my reserve roll was 5+).  My dragons didn't really make a big difference - other than taking out his 2 flyers.  I tried to kill his warlord, or his troops on the objective, and I did kill a lot of them, but I forgot that the heavy weapon teams also counted as troops.

My warlord and cultists got into a fight with one of the blobs.  He had 3-4 sergeants that he kept feeding my warlord (which kept the combat going a while, but is also the first time I got to roll on the boon chart).  I rolled a 1 twice during this combat, including once against his chaplain, but still one the combat and, on the last turn, killed the priest and broke the 2 infantry units (he had also thrown in the platoon command squad, although now that I think about it, I think he only make 1 leadership roll, and he should have rolled 2, so he might have screwed himself there.

Overall, I won by 2.

Thoughts - Again, the Helbrutes didn't pull their weight (and in fact, gave my opponent first blood).

The Heldrakes, while killing a lot of guys, were not really game changing, other than destroying his aircraft, since they didn't wipe out any actual units.

The Warlord and his guys killed a huge blog, and tied it up, and eventually won, so I again, I can't really complain - I wanted to kill it faster, so far this unit had been good for wiping out one unit, and I feel it should be doing more, but maybe my expectations are too high, after all, it took a big threat out of the game. (First Rank, Second Rank fire from 30 guys is a lot of shots - the other blob almost decimated a unit of T5 marines (granted it still took 4 turns, and there were 2 guys left, but had he moved closer, and added rapid fire, it could have gotten ugly).

Since everything except my warlord and cultists are nurgle, and the warlord is basically acting like a tarpit, I am thinking about adding Typhus, and using zombies as the tarpit  -just don't want to do 70+ zombies, that's why I don't play orks :).  Still zombies are pure tarpit, my Khorn guys are a tarpit that eventually usually wins.

Battle Report - BA vs SW

So, I mentioned the tournament I played in last Saturday (the one I forgot to take any pictures of).  I recreated one of the games on Vassal.  This is the second game, and I will probably get around to the third, and final, game of the tournament.  I am not going to do the first game because it was such a cluster f*ck, that I don't even know what happened. (I won, but I am almost sure the guy had an illegal list, and he didn't know half the rules, and I didn't know Tau well enough to know what he could and couldn't do - all though I did know enough to know that he couldn't give all of his fire warriors a 4+ invulnerable save).

So, Second game.  10 minutes before the tournament, I realized that I had an illegal list, so I had do make do with the models I had on me.  This basically amounted to me playing with an Epistolary (which I normally wouldn't spend the points on), and playing about 50 points short.  (I was already nervous when I saw how much raw fire power I saw in the other armies)

My List was:
Stormraven with Assault Termies and DC Dread
Stormraven with 10 DC (7 bolters, 3 axes + pistols) and DC Dread
1 Whirlwind
An Epistolary Librarian, 10 Terminators (with 2 CML) and Corbulo.

SW:
3 units of SW tacticals troops (I don't remember all the names of his units)
1 Priest leading an elite unit (10 guys with double plasma pistols) / outflanking
4 Las/Plas Razorbacks (each RB also had HK missile and double stormbolters - "to pad the weapon
        destroyed results")
Big blog of IG (3 infantry squads, with a Commisar, and 3 autocannons), and a platoon command
        squad
Valkyrie

Set Up (Later I move the pond, because it was not right there, exactly)

Turn 1 - BA.  It's night fighting.  My CML take out one of the razorbacks, my whirlwind takes hits the second floor of the warehouse, and takes out the autocannon and a 5 more guard.

Turn 1 - SW.  He misses with both las cannons that are in range.

Score: BA - 2 (unit + first blood) / SW - 0
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Turn 2 - BA.  Both Storm ravens come in, each destroying a razorback.  Last game I hovered these, moving flat out, so that I wouldn't lose everything if they got shot down, this time I took a change and zoomed both of them.  My Whirlwind hit the 3rd floor, and took out another autocannon and some more IG.

Turn 2 - SW.  His super unit of double plasma pistols came out and shot up my terminators.  With his ability to re-roll 1's, he scored something like 18 wounds with plasma pistols.  1 Terminator made a invulnerable save, so the first 5 shots took down 4 terminators.  Then the wounds got to my librarian.  I look out sir (ed) the wounds from the librarian to Corbula, and he took 10 of them before dying, then my librarian took 2, and I lost one more terminator - Corbulo definitely payed for himself. 

Score: BA - 4  / SW - 3 (Libby + warlord + Corbula)
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End of Turn 2

Turn 3 - BA.  I unloaded my Stormravens, and moved into his troops, killing alot of them.  My Wirlwind missed the 3rd floor of the warehouse.  My terminators tried to charge the outflankers, but overwatch killed the SGT (failed his LoS), which, combined with weak roll, left them out of charge range. 

Turn 3 - SW.  His outflankers finished off my terminator squad.  His Valkyrie came on missed my stormraven. (Note: the Valkyrie isn't pictured because I forgot about it until just now.  It came on, missed, got velocity locked, and literally did nothing the whole game)

Score:  BA - 4  / SW 4
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End of BA Turn 3

Turn 4 - BA.  One of me stormravens flew off  the board (to protect itself from the Valkyrie), the other hovered and velocity locked the Valkyrie with the MM and missiles, and took out the other Razorback with the TL Autocannons.  The DC, Dreads, and Assault Marines tore through his marines.  My assault marines started heading for his platoon command squad (bottom floor of warehouse).

Turn 4 - SW.  His plasma squad started to come toward the fight, but they never get withing pistol range of anything for the rest of the game.  He moves his platoon command squad further from my assault terminators (and into Line of Sight of my Death Company).  He first rank, second rank fires into my assault terminators with the blob left in the building, and kills 2 assault terminators.

Score: BA - 4 / SW 4 (I must be forgetting something, because I don't remember us being tied for 2 turns, maybe he has characters in his units or something, but it doesn't really matter)
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End of SW Turn 4

Turn 5 -  Between my Stormravens and DC Dreads, I shot / killed the stragglers from the 3 units of wolves.  That left my DC free to bolter down his platoon command squad.  His plasma squad moved across the board, but still couldn't get in range of my assault terminators, since they moved further into the building, it order to be able to assault the IG blob.  We didn't get another turn.

Final Score: BA - 8 / SW 4.

End of Game