Clan Raukaan vs Orks (Feast of Blade style)

So, I tried out a list for FoB: 1x Knight Errant, 3x Dreadnoughts with assault cannons, 2x Dreadnoughts with Multi Melta, 2x Razorbacks (lascannon) with 5 tac marines, a stormtalon, and Master of forge with Gorgan Chain.  This was not my original concept, but this is the first time I took a master of the forge, and I had NO dreadnoughts in my list, so I decided to go the other extreme and take 5.  My other list would have been stronger, especially against what my opponent was using.  He brought Orks, from the new codex.  He had 2 units of Lootas, 2 units of grots, 2 Forgeworld tanks (even though they won't be allowed in the tournament, but I was bringing a Knight Errant against Orks...), 3 units of mega'nobs, (each unit had 2 guys with double buz saws), 2 trucks (to carry the 2 of the 'nob units), and an aegis defense line.

He ended up going first.  I had positioned my Knight in the back, with my dreadnoughts closer and to the side (so they would keep up with Knight for a turn, but not be in his way).  As there was almost no middle cover (the board was 2 sets of ruins, divided my a street), my dreadnoughts go destroyed by the lootas.  We were playing the first scenario from the feast of blades qualifier pack.  My knight stayed in the middle of the because of of the 'Nobs waiting to charge.  At the end of five turns, I had 3 objectives to his one, but had killed 4 more units than me, giving his a massacre (so the score would have been 13 to 7 - he also had first blood)

What did I learn: By the end of the game, I had lost a flyer, 3 dreadnoughts, and both razorbacks, but I had three objectives, so it didn't seem so bad, even though I lost, until you consider that 3 of my dreadnoughts died and one was immobilized without any of them firing a shot.

• The Knight was not a fire magnet, because my opponent ignored him because of the shield, and it wasn't the charge threat I expected, because of the 3 units of 'Nobs (after the 5th turn, we went into the assault, and the 2 'nobs with buzz saws killed it - 10 str 9 armor bane attacks, needing 3's to hit, because formation gave them +1 WS).  
• My goal was to give my opponent more things to shoot at then the Knight, which is why I loaded on dreads, but the lootas tore them apart before they even got to shoot.  Need more than armor 12, or I need to give them a save.  Really, I think I need to give them drop pods, but I couldn't find the points, and the list was already low model count, even at 1500.

SECOND GAME:  We played another game, so I could try using my Knight as cover for the dreadnoughts.  I started with the Knight in front, and the Razorbacks and Dreadnoughts behind.  The cover worked on the first turn, I only lost 1 Razorback to Lootas.  I took a few other hits, but I saved about half of them (on 5+). On my move, I moved to the middle of the board, and then he charged my with a truck of 'nobs.  He buzz saws killed the Knight again, although this time they barely got the 6 HP they needed, and the death explosion scattered backwards into my  entire army.  While I only lost a dreadnought, and took a few HP on some others, we called the game (since we already knew that 24" ranged dreadnoughts were not going to survive the loota and tank barrage that was coming).

Game 3 2000 GK vs Black Templars.

This was crusade (5 objectives), with hammer and anvil deployment.  There is even less to tell about this game - by the bottom of turn 2, he had given up.
He had
1x Emperor champion with assault squad in a stormraven
1x Super character with assault squad in landraider
2x Assault Squads in Rhinos
2 land speeders
1x vindicator

All the objectives were in the middle (they were placed after terrain, and they were all placed in no mans land - which makes this the only time the my rear guard GKSS saw action, they crossed the wall on turn 4.

He went first, and by the end of turn 2, I had destroyed his vindicator, his land raider, both land speeders, and had velocity locked his stormraven.  The game ended something like 8-0.  There was some melee, which lasted a lot longer than I expected it to, since I had all power weaspons, but at the end of 3 game turns of combat, both of our 10 man squads were down to 1 man.

His commander squad occupied all 3 dread knights for the last 3 game turns, but I won that fight, since he needed the unit to hold an objective, and my NDK had already done everything I needed them to.

Overall, in the tournament, the alpha strike and teleporting to the rear was awesome for me.  I would have struggled against flyers, and 1 person brought 3 heldrakes, but I didn't end up playing them.  I am going to look into allies, to see about making the turn 1 strike even stronger - or maybe increasing the range of the rear base, so that they can support the forward elements.

2000 point GK vs Necrons

This was Dawn of war, the emperor's will.  I had same army, my opponent had necrons.
He had 2 annihilation barges,
The walker (necron marker light)
4x20 necron warriors, with 1 overlord in one squad, and lords with rez orbs in each of the others.

This game was very straight forward.  I deepstriked again with one the GKSS, and they took some heavy causualties turn 2 and 3, but didn't die until turn 4.

Necrons went first, but I was in cover, so no major damage, a few interceptors and 1 SS guy was all I lost.  I jumped everything across the board again, using 1 NDK to hold the necrons on the left flank, while the other 2, a GKSS and GKIS rolled down the right flank.

One of my NDK made crazy saves - even after he was marker lighter, and hit by everything in the enemies army, he took 1 wound.  Luckily, all I had to do was charge him off the objectives, so that he had no units to take the objective with, because I couldn't kill 20 necrons with 4+ FNP to save my life.  I kept winning by 1, and then waiting for them to finally fail a Leadership roll and run off the table.

Thoughts: My alpha strike plan worked perfectly, in that the entire battle took place in the enemy deployment zone.  The only complaint I have is that I had 2 units of GKSS, each with prescient psykers, who never got to shoot (which is close to what happened in first game - until it was too late).  40 re-rolling S5 bolter shots is a pretty scary fire-base, but a waste of points in the enemy can't get within 24" of them.

2000 point GK vs Blood Angels

This was the first game in the tournament from last post.  I had the same GK list from last post/

Blood Angels had:
 3 x Attack Bikes (I think there was 1 Heavy Bolter Bike and 2 MM Bikes)
 1 x 10 Devestators (4x Missile Launchers)
 a ADL with Quad Gun
 1 x 10 Scouts
2x StrormRavens - with sponsons
2x Furioso Dreads (1 with double fists, 1 with double claws)
2 x 10 Assualt Squads (each with a furioso priest)
1 Captain with Claw and Artificer armor

It was Vanguard Deployment, Night Fighting, and I had first Turn.  I held 1 unit of GKSS in reserve, BA had   the assault squads and furiosos on the stormravens, along with the Captain.

There wasn't much to tell on this one.  My Dreadknights jumped up and flamed his scouts into oblivion, giving me first blood, then they went on a rampage, killing all three bikes and was in melee with the devestators when his flyers came on.  He had shot up the Interceptors, and put some wounds on the dreadknights, but at the end of my turn 3 it was 5 to 0.

On his turn 3, he unloaded one of the flyers and wiped out a GKSS squad and 1 NDK.  On turn my turn 4, I killed his last devestator and the stormraven that unloaded.  He unloaded the other Stormraven, and assaulted the other 2 GKSS along with both inquisitors.

By the end, the score was 8 to 8 (we both had 7 kp and I had first blood, he had slay the warlord).

Thoughts, this was a much closer game that I thought it was going to be.  I should have sacrificed 1 unit of SS, so that he couldn't get 4 KP in 1 turn - all I had to do was stay out of range (hard to do against a Stormraven, but doable).  This was a case where I got into the spirit of Purge the Alien - I didn't need anymore KP, so the extra combats could only hurt me, but I kept playing like I was going to annihilation.

I was close to bringing the same army, but decided not to, and it probably worked out well, since his next game, the blood angel character had both flyers shot down with their cargo inside.

2000 point local tournament, with some less local guests..

There was another local tournament on Saturday, although this time we had some guests from some other local stores.  Overall, I got second place - the tournament was based on points,so I never actually got to play the first place guy; I think I could have beat him, based on what I saw (he didn't have the tools to take my list), but he beat some stuff that I probably couldn't have taken (3 Heldrakes).

What was interesting about this tournament is that I got to see some armies I have never seen played before. My last game was against Black Templars (and I see why I probably haven't played them before, they were like ultra marines, but more expensive, and if they had any cool toys, this player didn't take them - other than putting POTMS on a vindicator.

Second place was sisters of battle.  I didn't get to see much that final battle (Sisters went into final in second place, so they played the first place necrons), but what I did see was pretty impressive - although they suffered a massive loss (only 2 troop choices in a 5 objective game).

I was planning on bringing Blood Angels, or Marines, but ended up going with Grey Knights, since I couldn't decide on a list for more traditional marines - especially since the Grey Knights solved the army I lost to last game (all deep-striking monstrous creatures), with warp quake and force weapons.

I brought
ADL with Icaras Las Cannon
2x 1 Inquisitor with Prescience
3x 10 Strike Squads, 1 hammer, 2 psycannons, SGT with Halberd, Psybolt ammo
1x 10 GK Intercept Squad
3x NDK with teleporters and Heavy Incinerators

In all three games, I deployed with 2 squads of GKSS behind the ADL (with one model from each squad touching the gun) with an Inquisitor in each squad, and deep striked the last squad of GKSS.

I'll post more details later but, as usual, I forgot to take pictures.

Local Tournament - Game 3

This is the 3rd game of the tournament yesterday.  I, of course, used the same list.  My opponent was playing Vanilla Marines.  He had a drop pod with lysander and 10 sternguard, a unit of assault terminators, led my the Chapter Master (can't remember his name, but the guy with 2 power fists), 3 vindicators, and 3 squads of tacticals.

I won this game by a large margin, primarily because I out-maneuvered  him (although almost messed it up on the last turn by charging his unit away from an objective with my cultist, instead of the unit toward objective - had the game gone another turn, I would have had a minor victory instead of major).  He dropped the pod and terminators behind my ADL, and swept through my back field, whereas I deep-striked everything with a 2+ save behind his lines.

In this game, my Helbrutes contributed by being roadblocks that he had to assault to get to my troops.  They still died without killing anything, but by forcing him to charge them instead of my marines, I bought my marines 2 turns (which left me with an objective I wouldn't have had, and would have lost in 1 more turn).

My terminators and oblits landed behind his lines and took out 2 vindicators, and my autocannon heldrake killed the other with a side shot (I am liking the flexibility of having 1 each weapon on the heldrake).  The fact that I was able to take out 3 vindicators in a turn is re-enforcing the fact that the helbrutes are superfluous in this list, and can probably be replaced, maybe with bikes or more terminators.

I already knew I would have a hard-time against terminators, but my plan of staying away from them worked, and I don't know of plasmaguns would have made much difference against stormshields (although, if i hadn't needed to kill the vindicators, I could have dropped plasma cannons on them).  The only problem is, you can't stay away from them, if you need to hold an objective, so I might need more tarpitting (thinking more of zombies)

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.

Local Tournament - Game 1

Played in a local tournament yesterday.  Points-wise, I was tied for third, but I had lost a game, and the other  2 third placers hadn't, so one of them got it.  Following my own advice, I tried to take a diverse list, with tools to handle everything, without a auto-win gimmick.

My list was:
Chaos Lord - Mark of Khorne, Melta bombs, Sigil of corruption, Power Armour, Axe of Blind Fury, Bolt  
                      Pistol

Unit of 3 Chaos Terminators - Mark of Nurgle, (Combi-melta, Powerfist), (Chainfist, Combi-melta),
                      Terminator Champion (Combi-Melta, Power Axe)

Helbrute - Multi-melta, Power fist with Heavy flamer

Helbrute - Multi-melta, Power fist with Heavy flamer

30 Chaos Cultists - Mark of Khorn, 3x Flamers

10 Chaos Space Marines - Mark of Nurgle, 1 x Heavy Bolter (I waited so long to make my list and
                      assemble my Heldrakes that I had to go with what I had)


10 Chaos Space Marines - Mark of Nurgle, 1 x Heavy Bolter

10 Chaos Space Marines - Mark of Nurgle,

Heldrake with Baleflamer

Heldrake with Hades Autocannon

2 Obliterators with Mark of Nurgle

2 Obliterators with Mark of Nurgle

Aegis Defense Line with quad-gun

  As usual, I am terrible at knowing what the opponent had, and I am least familiar with 'nids, but he had 7 monstrous creatures, and a total of something like 16 psyker powers (all of which were biomancy, so  there was endurance and iron arm buffed monsters), and some monster that every shooting phase, causes every unit within 6" to roll 3d6 leadership test, and take ap 2 wounds for every point over your leadership (this cost me a unit of oblits on my turn, as I didn't realize that it worked on my turn as well, so I moved oblits closer to charge)

  So turn 1, all he had were the bosses that spawned gaunts, and 2 large units of gaunts, everything else was in reserve.  I had infiltrate,and he had the warlord re-deploy, so my Warlord and a unit of his gaunts were in combat pretty quickly.  My warlord rolled a 1 for his deamon weapon, so it was not the charge on the slaughter it should have been (and in future turns, he buffed his guys with feel-no-pain, and de-buffed me with -1S and -1T.  I still won that fight, just in time for his Warlord (bone saber guy with iron arm, so initiative 8, Str 9, Tough 9) to kill my warlord, break my squad and wipe them.  - This was turn 3 (we only got 4 turns); the game was slay the warlord, and, up to this point, I was winning 7 to 3.  This combat shot him up to 7 to 6.  Then, on turn 4, I shot some stuff, came close to willing 2-3 monsters (all he had left), but with an average of T6 and 4-6 wounds (some of which were then buffed with Iron Arm), I couldn't kill one that turn (I probably could have focused fire, but since he was about to charge all of my units, I was trying to soften them all up for overwatch, or melee kills.
  On his turn 4, he assaulted 2 units of marines, 1 unit of oblits, and killed them all, making it 7-9 nids.

Thoughts on the game -
  The Helbrutes were about as bad as everyone said.  I can see a use for long range Multi-Melta, but I have that with Obliterators.  I didn't realize at the time, that Helbrutes don't even get a 5+ daemon save that every other walker in my army has.  With no pods, no way to make them outflanking, and no invuln save, I was not impressed.  Of all 3 games, this was their chance to shine, because they might have beaten an unbuffed monster in combat, but they couldn't survive the shooting to get there... from 'nids.
 
  Warlord with cultists.   They got him there, and he killed stuff, but not as quickly as I would have liked, although in this game, I was not going to win against his warlord no matter what I brought, so it is hard to make that call.  The advantage to this, over bikes, is that I was able to use my warlord trait to give them infiltrate.

  Everything else did about how I expected, and the heavy-bolter wasn't even a terrible choice, although double plasma guns would have been better (and 50 points more expensive)  In fact, more plasma, or autocannon havocs was probably the only thing I could have about this list to help against so many monsters.  

Tactics-wise, I should have fallen back through cover and made him chase me a little as I shot, although monsters have move through cover, and all his guys were fleet, but still, a few missed charges might have made the difference, as most of his monsters had at least a few wounds (which is also something I could have done different - I should have focused fire better, but my units were so spread out that they couldn't support each other).  This match-up was a tough fight, but I don't think it was un-beatable with what I brought, had I played it better, although it showed a glaring weakness against psyker strong armies (unfortunately not a weakness I can do a lot about).