November 23, 2009

Daemons vs Imperial Guard - Battle Reports from the 9. SiG - TrotzkiHatesMe Round 3

After having received some serious pain in the last game, I was disturbed hearing that my next opponent was playing Space Wolves. I had seen several lists on the tourney that really gave me a headache (full of Thunder Wolves and Rune Priests). The last game was played with 5 objectives with long table edges as deployment zone, with my special objective being to keep one HQ and one troop choice alive. When he handed me his list I was kind of relieved that his list was quite “usual” with 3 Rhinos full of Grey Hunters (one with a Rune Priest inside) and a Drop pod loaded up with 4 Wolf Guard (combi melters). But most of his 1650 points were seated in his Land Raider Crusader that carried Ragnar Blackmane and a Killy Unit o´Doom of Wolf Guard (kitted out with everything) that really gave me a the shivers.


I won the roll to choose sides and allowed him to go first. He set up everything in one big wall of tanks and awaited my arrival. The Chaos Gods again decided to leave me with my second wave and I deepstruck them in serious distance to his units. My Soul Grinder deviated greatly taking him far into the open ready to be blown away by his melter drop pods. With almost shooting in this turn (with the exception to my flamers flaming his Rhinos destroying one Storm Bolter – whoot !) I awaited his counter strike. In his turn he drop podded the Wolf Guard next to my Soul Grinder and drove two of his Rhinos onto the objectives on his side of the table, while his Land Raider and the last Rhino speeded directly into my lines. He then started his shooting phase and went on a bad dice streak I haven´t seen like that for a long time. Of the 4 melters in the Wolf Guard unit only one hit the Soul Grinder, rolling snake eyes for penetration.


His Land Raider opened fire on my Chariot of Slaanesh dealing him only two wounds with hurricane bolters and assault cannon fire, while the two storm bolters on the Rhinos failed to even deal one wound to the flamers. In my turn everything I had in reserves arrived giving me a lot of confidence to take the upper hand in this game. I was able to destroy one of the Rhinos (housing the Rune Priest and 9 Grey Hunters) through shooting and my flamers started to chase one of his Rhinos across the map for 3 turns blowing of its storm bolter. In my assault phase the Fiends of Slaanesh nearly obliterated the Grey Hunters that left the Rhino with only one wound taken in return.


The Soul Grinder annihilated the 4 Wolf Guard next to the drop pod. So this was a real bad turn for him and this trend continued for the rest of the game. Ragnar Blackmane died in a two round combat against the Lord of Change without dealing a single wound and the big bad Wolf Guard unit inside the Land Raider proved to be two killy for its own good.
They destroyed the whole units of Fiends and stranded in the open ready to be blast away by all the shooty goodness I had. When the dust settled only two Wolf Guard had survived. His Land Raider was unable to destroy my Soul Grinder until it was to late and he was catched in assault, destroying the mighty tank. At the end all he had left was a single squad of 2 Grey Hunters, hiding behind the wreck of their Rhino. Had the game taken one more round I would have tabled him, not through good gaming, but due to his real bad luck. So I left the game with 16 tourney points and waited for the final scores.

Concluding Remarks
I left the game taking place 14 out of 27 with two wins and one loss. My goal was to win at least one game and I´m quite happy with the outcome. The Daemons proved to by better than I thought and was surprised how well they kept their ground against the armies in game 1 and 3 (I never want to talk about game 2 again…). Even though I only got my first wave in one of the games and my deepstriking results were quite unfortunate, I never had the feeling of this "completly random" - feeling thats often criticized about Daemons. There wasn´t a real "Model of the Tourney" but the Soul Grinder really suprised me in a positive way by taking an incredible amount of punsihment in all games (in contrast to many of our normal games, where he just was destroyed in the first turn after deep striking).
As real positive suprise my Daemons also won me the "Best Painted" award at the end of the day, making the whole tourney a really pleasing experience that I like to repeat in the future.


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