Greetings,
initially Trotzki and me just had in mind to play one of our usual weekly games. We met after work, Trotzki had his daemons and I was up playing tau again, as my tyranids are not ready for more than "test-games". We decided to play cities of death again (imo the best addition to 40k so far). We set up a board with an abandoned fortification in the center consisting of our three bastions and aegis lines, surrounded by some buildings and containers and a street. The mission would be to secure the own building and attack the one the enemy had declared to be his own (I never can recall how the missions are called correctly). In hindsight we chose absolutely pointless stratagems. I fortified my home building and would get feel no pain additionally. Trotzki had the two stratagems where he would get a 5+ cover save in the open due to smoke grenades (amazing when you have a 5+ invul save as well...) and wrecking gear to tear down buildings.
I lost the first roll.off and had to set up first. I placed my broadsides and the kroot in the fortified building the railhead and the two deathrains and the stealth suits behind him next to the street. The ionhead and two fireknives on the other side. I wanted to create some kind of two-pronged assault on his building on the opposite site of the board. I kept both my warfishes and the command fireknife team in reserve.
On my first turn I just moved towards his objective and as no daemons were on the field yet, no shooting occured. Trotzki was lucky to get his designated first wave and so a greater daemon of tzeentch, 15 daemonettes, a tzeentch herald and a daemon prince dedicated to tzeentch as well materialized in real-space. But the warp was treacherous and the daemon prince mishapped to the other end of the board. Maybe a sign of things to come.
Things like the greater daemon of tzeentch "el poldo diablo" shooting on my fireknives.
Nothing spectacular, the bolt of tzeentch just roasted one shield drone leaving the suits unharmed. But who would have thought that this particular shield drone was the shas'ui's heirloom which he favoured more than his XV8 suit? Every evening he spent his free time with lovingly cleaning and optimizing it while his buddies went out to meet the girls or getting involved in a good old brawl in the local tavern. And now that. A warp-spawned monstrosity hurled a shiny bolt at him and in a desperate hover-jump his drone finally fulfilled its duty and saved him (and his squad-mate) from being turned to slimey goo. That was too much for one day. With a cry of desparation on his lips the shas'ui jumped for the burning remains of his once beloved drone, grabbed them under his battle suits arms and turned tail, running home!
That seemed to be the signal for a game of mutual abysmal dice rolling.
On Trotzki's second turn no reserves arrived, not a single unit. Oh lucky me. Don't blame me that I don't remember every normal detail of that game, I just want to share the highlights. On my turn the command team of three fire knives showed up and under the combined firepower of them, the ionhead and 6 firewarriors and the warfish el poldo diablo was sent back to the warp. Can you imagine what happened on Trotzki's turn with the command team? I guess you know what this is all about. Right, the shield drones were destroyed. And what do elite firewarriors do when that happens? Right again. They cut and run, turn tail, flee. To make long things short, the deathrains lost their single drone as well, failed their morale check and fled. But hey! I learned from the other two squads and I had moved them more to the center of the board. So when they fled 8" to my table edge they ended their run merely 1" from it! And as exceptions some kind of proof the rules, they passed their morale check to regroup. Hah!
Next remarkable thing was the soulgrinder. He didn't do much damage the round he appeared. And I was of good spirit as he materialized right infront of two BS4 twin-linked railguns and railhead lurking on his side.
The broadsides hit but didn't penetrate and the railhead missed with a 1. Over the remaining course of the game I just managed to immobilize him and destroy his mawcannon. It's not too spectacular but it matched the feeling of the game.
Trotzki had bad luck with his last daemonettes which didn't show up until turn 5, where they mishapped and were sent back to warp. On turn 6 they appeared again, scattered, mishapped and were claimed by the warp.
In the end I didn't manage to get anything to Trotzki's building, the last surviving deathrain was annihilated by the daemon prince, who later smashed the railhead.
Trotzki had the damaged soulgrinder with one foot/claw in my building and nothing to claim his home base. So the only acceptable outcame was a draw.
I am definitely not complaining about this poor dice rolling as it was bad luck on both sides and wasn't one-sided, what would have caused a rather disappointing if not annoying game for one of us. So sometimes it was that ridiculous it even was starting to get funny again.
I want to end with a citation from the "Imperial Infantrymen's uplifting Primer" concerning cowardly battlesuits:
"There are several types of tau 'Battlesuits' (as they
are laughably known), all equally ineffective. Battlesuits
are given to warriors who are even more
cowardly than their compatriots, and who refuse to
enter combat without maximum protection.
Feckless cowards! The tau encased in the cumbersome,
brittle arnour are usually inexperienced and
untrained.
Battlesuits are such easy targets that they
might as well have a bull's eye painted on them.
But it should be put on the back because they will,
in all likelihood, run away at the first sighting of a well-armed and determined Imperial Guardsman!"
Did you experience something similar or have you had games like this where all and everything seems to fail?
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.
With the first game being a very narrow win, I was in a good mood for my second game. The second game was holding table quarters and my special objective was killing the enemy’s most expensive elite unit. My opponent played space marines and has he handed me his list, I was starting to feel a sort of panic. 10 Terminators with a Null Zone Librarian (most expensive elite unit … ouch), a Land Raider Crusader (full of Assault Terminators and a Thunderfire Cannon. The list was completed by two Rhinos with Space Marines and a small five man squad of scouts.
Game started quite bad with me loosing the role to go first. My opponent handed me the first turn and to add insult to injury my second wave decided to come first, leaving me with no shooting to destroy his Thunderfire Cannon of Doom. It all went downhill from there with me learning that a +5 invulnerable save that’s rerolled due to Null Zone doesn’t allow much room for soaking a turn of firepower from any unit. The Thunderfire Cannon destroyed one unit of Demonettes and the Horrors in its first two turns of shooting with me not even denting it.
After 4 turns all I had left, were 15 Demonettes hiding behind a building on the far side of the battle field, hoping to at least keep me one quarter. Of course the game went on until round 7 allowing my opponent to also wipe my last unit and thus giving him a solid massacre with 20 tourney points for him and a uncomforting 0 for me. All my kills in this game counted up to a whooping 4 scouts and a immobilised Rhino. Well at least I learned why Fatecrusher lists are so abundant in tourney environments…
This being the first game on my first tourney I was really nervous about the army my Daemons will meet. When the games were called I was partly relieved partly terrified to hear that I´m going to have to take on the Imperial Guard. I´ve played Guard before so I knew some of their tricks but I also knew, that they have a lot of evil tricks upon their sleeve that can hurt Daemons badly (I´m looking at you, Officer of the Fleet). Big blocks of chimeras also really scare me, because they really take a lot of firepower to get to their juicy inside and that´s exactly what my Daemons can´t dish out.
My opponents list consisted of 3 Leman russ,a basilisk, a Thunderer (basically a Imperial Guard Vindicator sourced from FW´s Imperial Armour), a Command Squad in a Chimera (kitted out with Master of Ordnance, bodyguards and Officer of the Fleet [here we go - 5+ for reserves]) and loads of footslogging infantry.
We played Capture and Control (One objective in each deployment zone) with Dawn of War setup. My special objective for this mission was to get one troop choice into one of the terrain features in his deployment zone – quite a good one for Daemons because that´s exactly where I´m going. Terrain featured a big AV14 bunker on one side and several ruined buildings on the other with some craters and trenches in between. I won the roll to go first and let him go first. He chose the side with the bunker and deployed everything he had during his turn. In my turn I got lucky and my first wave struck all over the place. I won´t go into turn by turn details but the game was very close with a lot of loses (my Demon Prince and the Lord of Change soaked many, many shots but where both sent back to the warp) for me in first turns against the overwhelming firepower of the Imperial Guard. I slowly munched through his right flank and the Officer of the Fleet proved to be more of bonus then a hindrance. Most of my unit deepstruck in later turns directly into his right flank where the bunker shielded me from much of his firepower, while my horrors held my own objective against a hell lot of fire. I was able to contest his objective with my Soul Grinder, who proved to be the absolute Monster of the Match by killing the Leman Russ squadron and absorbing 2 turns of incredible amounts of firepower without a scratch.
So I won with 1 objective to 0 but hadn´t it been for the additional victory points I collected for holding one terrain feature in his deployment zone, I would have lost by about 200 victory points in the secondary. With the 300 points for the special objective I luckily left the game with around +100 victory points (draw) and 14 tourney points for the one objective I was in the lead.
So the Tau got tabled in Round 1, almost tabled their opponent in Round 2. And went into the 3rd Round game with mixed feeling, who would it be? Funny enough it was the same guy that the demons had to face in Round 1.
3rd game: Imperial Guard
Pitched battle, seize ground (5 objectives)
I cant’t remember the exact list as I am not familiar with guard lists. I remember:
Command squad with master of ordnance and master of the fleet
A lot of infantry with missile launchers, lascannons and plasma rifles (nice conversions with WWII style rifle grenades!)
1 chimera (with to me unknown content)
Heavy weapons team with 2 missile launcher and 1 lascannon
Leman Russ squadron (3 with heavy bolter in the hull)
Thunderer siege tank
Basilisk
2 scout sentinels with autocannon
Again this was a very funny and exciting game with a nice opponent.
Again I lost the roll to decide whether to go first or second and he decided to start. I would have done the same. He deployed everything evenly stretched over his table half with the basilisk, heavy weapons team and leman russ squadron on the flank to my left and the thunderer on the other side. The sentinels would be outflanking. As it turned out I missed that he said that and completely forgot about them.
I was a bit unsure of what to deploy and what to put into reserves. As it was an objective based mission I held my troop choices back of course, the kroot would make a flank march. I decided to place the broadsides in the highest ruin in my deployment zone with one model in each storey so that his numerous pie-plates wouldn’t do so much harm with one hit. The hammerhead was placed on the other side on my right flank behind some cover. But as every ruin in my zone was too small to hide a tank it would be targetable from at least one lascannon/missile launcher and of course from my big concern the basilisk. As the hits on side armour with strength 9 would bring me into serious trouble, I placed the death rains next to the broadsides out of line of sight so that they could jump-shoot-jump and hopefully kill the artillery tank and maybe could target the heavy weapons team later on. The ionhead would be pretty much useless this game so I decided to use it as kind of a bait or flying cover and placed it in the middle of my deployment zone. I didn’t really know what to do with my fire knives so I placed them there too, to take some shots at the heavy weapons. My command squad would be deep striking.
So I can’t remember how each turn went on in detail. First turn of his shooting made my fire knife team lose their morale seeing one of their precious shield drones destroyed so they decided to cut and run. Cowards. Another shield drone of the broadsides was destroyed but they bravely held their ground.
On my turn I destroyed the basilisk as planned but just managed to stun one of the leman russ and destroy the battle cannon of the same. Very short turn.
And then my luck turned on me. The remaining gun drone of the broadsides was destroyed and I rolled double 6s for the morale check and again double 6s for the retreating distance so my broadsides fled from the battlefield. In addition the railgun on the hammerhead was smashed. So stripped of any kind of anti-tank capability I faced a forlorn battle as I couldn’t do much against armour 14.
So in the remaining turns my kroot outflanked and killed the heavy weapons team and another 10 men squad before being killed by an overwhelming number of guardsmen.
I risked deep striking my commander and retinue behind the thunderer and was awarded by its destruction.
The sentinels I forgot appeared behind my incapacitated hammerhead and immobilized it before being destroyed by the ionhead and deathrains.
I charged my command squad into the two squads on the right flank and tried to kill at least one of it and thereby pulling them from the objective they held until then but failing a lot of armour saves and rolling high for morale and then low for the initiative test didn’t help much. The commander and his remaining bodyguard were overrun. In the end I managed to kill enough of this squad with smart missiles of the crashed railhead so that they had to fall back and couldn’t claim that obejective. My firewarriors never disembarked and their transports armours couldn’t be penetrated by a lot of shelling so I held one of my own objective and contested the other one which was in turn contested by the leman russ’es. I lost 1 to 2 and a lot of victory points. My secret objective was to brake one of his squads in close combat so that that squad would run away from the table. Ridiculously hard to achieve with tau. But funnily my opponent didn’t achieve his objective too. He had to destroy my most expensive tank, the railhead, which was immobilized and stripped of all weapons but not destroyed! Yeehaw ;-)
So coming to the end I want to thank my opponents for mostly very nice and smooth games and of course to all who made this tournament possible.
Conclusion:
So what do I think of my army performing in a tournament. Considering that I didn’t face only tournament-streamlined armies I am very happy with the overall performance. Against the Chaos list there isn’t much I could have done. I am not sure if a list like this could be beaten with tau, at least not with my army composition and experience. My second opponent’s list wasn’t really a challenge and marines in the open are no match against 5 plasma rifles, an ion cannon and a lot of strength 5 shots. And my last game was more a case of bad luck than of anything else. I think that I could have got at least a draw when all my railguns wouldn’t have been destroyed so early.
I think it was the right choice to take the ion cannon armed hammerhead instead of the skyray and I’ll be fielding it again in future games, at least at these point levels. At more points I might consider taking a second railhead. Another option of course is to take 3 broadsides and both hammerhead variants. I have to try this some day. And I have to emphasize the kroot. They are so great I really really recommend taking them. They give such a great versatility either by being just a cheap meat shield or by outflanking and thereby offering the opportunity to threaten the enemy’s flank. And of course they are the only choice which has something like close combat abilities. And they are scoring.
One thing which was of a concern is that a unit consisting of 2 suits and 2 shield drones have to take a morale check when one drone goes down. And that is really annoying when your precious unit flees the field of battle just because their silly drone is a smoking wreck and they are. I thought, that’s the purpose of the shield drones. A unit of 3 suits and 2 drones should be better as it would take 2 destroyed drones to force the morale check. So that’s something I am going to change.
Well Round 1 was a bit of a let down for the Tau, so good for us there was a break. So we went to get some food and talk it over.
After some nice hot dogs we were ready for Rouns 2, and i think this was a much more enjoyable experience, but enough of me talking!
2nd game: Dark Angels
Spearhead, table quarters (at least one scoring unit and no enemy unit in one quarter)
Army List:
Interrogator Chaplain in terminator armour with combi-flamer
5 terminators (2 with shield and hammer, 2 with twin lightning claws, 1 with heavy flamer)
2x 10 marines with melta and heavy bolter/plasma cannon
5 marines with melta
10 devastors with 2 lascannons, 2 plasma cannons
Land raider crusader with multi melta
Vindicator
Land speeder with multi melta
This game was in every way the opposite of the first game and the guy I played against was very nice and a good sport.
I faced a more or less foot slogging marine army with a lot of bodies and every single unit could hold one table quarter as everything was scoring. He chose to deploy and go first and set up everything close to the middle so that his units could walk into every quarter first turn with the land raider, vindicator and land speeder coming to my quarter.
I was a bit impressed by so many marines so I decided to build a castle in my quarter with the broadsides standing on some kind of fortification with tanks and crisis suits behind that more or less out of line of sight.
As I only had 3 scoring units I decided to keep my fire warriors and the kroot in reserve with the latter outflanking. My bonus mission objective was to have more points of HQ on the table in the end so my commander would be in reserve as well.
First turn was as expected. He boosted the land speeder 24” towards my homebase and drove 12” with the land raider and vindicator, popping smoke. All marine units (all combat squadded) except the 2 lascannon dev-squad walked into the adjacent table quarters. The lascannons were the only ones able to shoot so they opened fire on my broadsides, killing one shield drone.
On my turn I jumped out of cover and opened fire. I thought my death rains could down the land speeder but I only managed to stun it. The hammerhead and the broadsides opened fire on the land raider but as the dark angels smoke launcher reduced every hit to glancing I only managed to shake it and destroy the assault cannon. The ionhead killed one or two marines of the lascannon dev-squad. In the end all suits jumped back behind the fortification.
In his second turn he continued to drive his tanks towards my little castle and his troops marched again. I don’t know why he did that, so he couldn’t fire one more turn and he even did not walk into cover (which was rare, admittedly), only the lascannons held their position. He fired the demolisher cannon at my broadsides but scattered a bit so I suffered only one wound which was saved by the shield drone. The railhead suffered one hit from a lascannon but the disruption pod negated any harm.
All railguns fired on the land raider and shook the crew, no immobilization, damn. The deathrains immobilized the speeder and destroyed the multimelta. But it still would contest my table quarter so it would take one more turn of fire to bring it down. I decided to start the push into another table quarter, so I jumped my fire knives not behind the fortification but towards the so far unclaimed quarter.
Third turn’s movement saw the land raider and vindicator continuing the push to my deployment zone and at last shooting from the marines. The demolisher shell scattered yet again and caused no damage. A few heavy bolter shells pinged off the armour of the broadsides and the lascannon weren’t able to damage the skimmers.
One devilfish and my commander arrived and I placed them to shoot at the marines in the table quarter to my right, the commander and bodyguards being able to jump behind cover in the assault phase. I destroyed the land raider with the hammerhead so the broadsides, the two fire knives and the ionhead fired on the disembarked death wing terminators, killing only one lightning claw armed one. The combined fire of the command squad and the devilfish killed 9(!) marines.
In his fourth turn he shot another gloriously scattering demolisher shell at my fire knives, killing none and the few bolter and heavy bolter rounds didn’t do anything as well. His terminators destroyed the shield drone of the death rains but weren’t out of assault range. I really started to feel sorry for him at this point.
On my fourth turn all remaining reserves arrived and the outflanking kroot showed up on my right hand side in charge range to the plasma cannon dev-squad. The ionhead fired at the side armour of the vindicator and destroyed it, while the fire knives killed the 5 men-squad in this table quarter. My commander used his target lock to kill the last remaining marine in front of the team and his bodyguards killed one of the devastators. The death wing terminators and the interrogator chaplain threatened my home base, so I fired everything I had at them, even the firewarriors disembarked to fire and the deathrains used their flamer. I killed everyone but one lightning claw terminator. I don’t know why he put a wound from a railgun on his chaplain. Maybe he thought the rosaries would save him. But it didn’t and the solid slug killed him instantly. The kroot charged the remaining four devastators and killed 2, losing 2 of their own. The death rains jumped in front of the firewarriors to protect them from getting charged by the last terminator.
In the remaining turns I killed the marines in his corner and all other marines on the table, wiping him out completely. In the end I only lost 3 shield drones and the death rains and 5 kroot.
I have to thank my opponent for a really kind and funny game, never losing his humour even when facing a massacre. And that made me feel a bit bad about tabling him in the end. But I think his list isn’t very suitable for a tournament environment. He mentioned he usually plays the double wing and I think that would be far better.
so i finally got around to post the battle reports the guys wrote up and put in some pictures. I promise I gonna get you the full army lists for each game as my stupid "online codex" program isn't working as it should!
So without further talking lets start with Managarm´s Report for his Round 1 game!
Managarm here, tuning in to report of my three games during the local tournament.
1st game: Chaos Space Marines
Dawn of War, capture and control
Army List:
2x Daemon prince with wings and lash,
3 chaos terminators
2x5 chaos marines with melta in rhino
5 chaos marines with melta in land raider with daemonic possession
3x3 obliterator
The standard “dual-lash-9-obliterator-I-win” list. Boring to play (in my oppinion) and boring to play against. And that was exactly how it turned out. I was a bit disappointed that I had to play my first tournament game against one of the hardest list one can field, but okay, let’s take it.
The guy I played knew what he was doing and had played a lot of tournaments so far. He won the roll to go first and did so. He placed one rhino with the side exactly at the middle line with daemon prince behind it (actually no daemon prince but a conversion from bits of the possessed and chaos spawns…so not the usual size for a monstrous creature...) and the other rhino behind some ruins in his deployment zone. I deployed nothing and kept the fire knife team in reserve to deepstrike later on, so he moved everything else on the board and the rhino and daemon prince further to my deployment zone.
I don’t want to go into too much detail as the game was not much fun to play. I made one mistake that I didn’t shoot at the daemon prince in my first turn. I don’t know why I did that. The remaining 5 turns consisted of jumping to me, lashing the suits to the daemon princes, killing them in my turn so I couldn’t shoot them and blasting the tanks to pieces with the obliterators. Rinse and repeat until no tau is left on the field. In combination with that this guy wasn’t very polite (re-measuring every second move I did is not something which makes me comfortable) and I made a mistake in close combat (I hit his prince on 4+ instead on 5+) which seemed to piss him off more than necessary I was glad when the game was over.
Of course I got no tournament points by getting tabled.
As announced, we played our first game of planetstrike. We decided on 2500 points on each side, Trotzki attacking with eldar, me defending with marines. We placed 4 objectives thus giving us 4 points for stratagem selection.
Eldar stratagems:
Webway assault
Supply drop. Space Marine stratagems:
Void shield (middle bastion)
Escape hatch (middle bastion)
Krak attacks
Additionally we decided that the long table edge where I based the bastions was a denied drop zone. I think we house rule this for most of our games, as we don’t want to play planetstrike competitively and 3 stratagem points is rather expensive to spent on this stratagem. Another change we made is that the guns on the bastions have the intercept special rule as well as the guns on the ground (why should a gun on a raised position not be able to shoot on incoming attackers but the one on the ground can?).
Space Marines:
Grand Marshal Hermann (counts as Lysander)
10 terminators with assault cannon, heavy flamer, 2 chainfists
5 sternguard all with combi-meltas, sergeant with single lightning claw
Dreadnought with assault cannon, heavy flamer, extra armour
3x 10 tac marines with powerfist, flamer (1 plasma gun), lascannon, locator beacon
2x 6 devastators with 3 heavy bolters, 1 plasma cannon
6 devastators with 3 missile launchers
Whirlwind, extra armour
10 assault marines with 2 flamers, power fist
Land speeder with multi melta, heavy flamer
Eldar:
Avatar of Khaine
Farseer with fortune, doom, runes of witnessing (with warlocks in falcon)
5 Warlocks with embolden, enhance
Autarch on jetbike with laser lance, mandiblaster
5 shining spears with exarch, skilled rider, withdraw
10 howling banshees with exarch, warshout in wave serpent with TL bright lance, shuriken catapults, star engines, spirit stones, vectored engines
6 fire dragons with exarch, fire pike
10 dire avengers with exarch, bladestorm, defend in wave serpent with TL bright lance, shuriken catapults, star engines, spirit stones, vectored engines
2x 10 guardian defender squads with missile launcher, warlock with singing spear, destructor
10 warp spiders with exarch, withdraw
Wraith lord with eldar missile launcher, bright lance, 2 flamer
Falcon with holo-fields, spirit stones, shuriken cannon, scatter laser, pulse laser
I positioned the 3 bastions at the long table edge with the relay station in the middle surrounded by aegis defence lines and placed some craters and two ruins on the remaining space of the board. With Lysander’s special rule I fortified the barricade in front of the base. The attacker’s drop zone would be on the right hand side.
Hermann and the sternguard were positioned in the void shielded middle bastion, the devastators with plasma cannons and heavy bolters manned the outer bastions and the remaining devastators with missile launchers were placed on the fortified barricade. I combat squad’ed the tactical marines and placed the the Las/Plas squads around the comms relay. The remaining combat squads were positioned behind the aegis lines, lascannons in the back and on the barricade, flamers and power fists at the first rank. The whirlwind prepared to let loose barrages of vengeance missiles in the back of the strongpoint. The terminators, dreadnought and land speeder were put into reserves.
So the stage is set and the onslaught of the eldar force on the imperial strongpoint is inbound.
Eldar Turn 1:
Trotzki rolled a 4 for the preliminary bombardment and thus got formidable 8 firestorms to drop onto the marines. The opening firestorm then destroyed 2 quad cannons, shook the whirlwind and killed 3 tactical marines, the squad at the comms realy took cover and the other 2 squads failed their pinning test and wouldn’t do anything in my turn.
Everything but the footslogging guardians became available from reserves. The Avatar deep struck next to the right bastion and was attacked by krak grenades and lost one wound. The wraith lord impacted next to the left bastion and the warp spiders appeared behind the devastators on the barricade. The fire dragons materialized between the middle and right bastion, eager to melt one into oblivion but they landed in sight of the one remaining quad cannon and one aspect warrior was blasted to pulp by a stream of grenades.
The tanks moved on the field and used their star engines to get close to the defense lines, the falcon actually flew directly into the base. Cunning eldar! One of the icarus lascannons on the bastions intercepted the wave serpent transporting the banshees and blew the bright lance off the tank. The shining spears raced towards the marine squad manning the foremost defense line. By supply drops for the eldar the seer council, warp spiders and shining spears acquired all kinds of grenades. Shooting saw the the left bastions melted to a burning pile of rubble by the fire dragons after the avatar of war missed with his melta. But the devastators inside were unharmed by the collapse. The anti tank devastators on the barricades were not that fortunate and were obliterated by the warp spiders. The shining spears assaulted the marine squad and slaughtered them to a man before they could do anything.
Marines Turn 1:
So after having lost the first bastion, a devastator squad, a combat squad and three further squads pinned I was desperately praying to the Emperor to send help against the vile xeno threat. The Emperor protects, all reserves became available and arrived all in the eldar deployment zone! So ten terminators, a full squad of assault marines, a dreadnought and the land speeder were in striking range of the eldar force. Things were getting to look way better than minutes before.
The terminators opened fire on the avatar and I rolled so badly that he wasn’t wounded. Hermann’s sternguard squad targeted Khaines incarnation as well and five hellfire rounds hit home, wounding him once. The two assault marines carrying a flamer jumped to the front and bathed the eldar jet bikes in burning promethium killing the hole squad but the autarch. The warp spiders where killed by a signum assisted plasma cannon shot followed by a rain of heavy bolter shells from the left bastion. The same fate awaited the fire dragons as the devastators paid back the destruction of their bastion. And the land speeder did what he does best: failing to hit with the multi melta so the wave serpent carrying the banshees was not harmed. Assault was horrible, the assault marines managed to do nothing against the autarch on jetbike.
Eldar Turn 2:
The guardians arrived from reserve and took aim at the terminators and the land speeder. The fortuned seer council disembarked and the falcon raced on towards the middle bastion. With a howling scream the banshees jumped out of the serpent transport and ran towards the doomed assault marines which were still engaged in close combat with the autarch. The other wave serpent flew directly in front of the barricades unloading the dire avengers who bladestormed the marine squad. Trotzki rolled miserably and just killed two. The land speeder was stripped of all weapons and immobilized by the fire of the civilians at arms. The other guardian squad was as successful and killed two terminators. In a shower of sparks the middle bastion lost its void shield leaving it nearly defenceless at the bright lance attack of the wave serpent. The lance beam punched right through the enforced permacrete and the bastion collapsed in a cloud of dust and smoke. In the ensuing assault the banshees charged the assault marines and wiped them from the board before they knew what hit them. The avatar charged into the ruin of the left bastion and killed two devastators but the marines hold their ground stubbornly. Both combat squads behind the aegis lines were attacked by the seer council and both squads lost one marine to the assault and they didn’t manage to hurt the fortuned eldar. On the far right the guardians charged into the waiting power fists of the terminators and the dreadnought and suffered dearly. Four guardians were smashed and their morale broke so they ran off the board. But not before the guardian warlock immobilized the dreadnought with the singing spear. On the other side of the battlefield, the monstrous wraithlord hammered into the last remaining bastion and destroyed it in a huge explosion which consumed one marine.
Guardians in the open, dire avengers bunched up after disembarking and howling banshees not locked in close combat with a heavy flamer standing ready and a whirlwind loading vengeance missiles. Things would get ugly next round…
Marines Turn 2:
The whirlwind swiveled its turret towards the dire avengers to let loose a devastating barrage. The missiles killed seven dire avengers and two more were killed by the decimated marine squad on the barricade by bolter fire. Just before the bright lance of the wave serpent led to the collapse of the bastion, Hermann and his squad of sternguard escaped through tunnels beneath the strongpoint and appeared unharmed next to the falcon through the escape hatch of the middle bastion (my third stratagem). The veteran space marines used their one-shot melta guns and wrecked the falcon with a well aimed shot through the engine of the sophisticated tank, the holofields all but useless on such short a distance. In the back the plasmagunner of the squad defending the comms relay shot a bright hot plasma bolt on the autarch on jetbike, killing him instantly. In the ruins of the right bastion the devastators lost no time and a searing plasma blast found its mark on the wraithlord and wounded it once. The immobilized dreadnought brought his assault cannon to bear on the last guardians and killed two, even the heavy flamer was in range and roasted another one. The terminators marched in the direction of the howling banshees and bathed them in a gout of promethium and a hail of storm bolter and assault cannon fire. Three terminators charged the remaining two aspect warriors while the other five stood back. One terminator was cut down before his brothers avenged him and made short work with the fragile but nonetheless deadly eldar women. Meanwhile one marine was killed by the seer council.
Eldar Turn 3:
To avenge the slaughtered banshees the remaining guardians pushed under fire towards the terminators and unleashed a torrent of shurikens against the astartes, killing one. The still unharmed wave serpent moved away from the barricades and targeted the whirlwind with its bright lance which destroyed the missile tank. Three marines fell to the flamers of the wraithlord and another one was smashed when the monstrosity charged into the ruin. The avatar continued his rampage at the backfield and charged the combat squad at the comms relay making short work in close combat and killed 3 marines getting no wound in return. The marines passed their leadership test and the fight would go on. The last standing dire avenger gathered his wits and charged into the ongoing close combat between the seer council and the two marine squads. Two marines lost their lives to the witch blades. The guardians attacked the last terminator and killed him
Marines Turn 3:
The wraithlord had to go, so Hermann left his squad and ran towards it but couldn’t reach it and by doing this, he took one wound when he stumbled into the ruin of the bastion (yes, I rolled three 1s in a row!). The sternguard jumped over the wrecked falcon, losing one veteran, ready to charge into the melee with the seer council. On the left flank the terminators continued their march and fried the guardians with heavy flamer fire and a few stormbolter rounds. During close combat the wraithlord killed one marine and the avatar wiped out the squad at the comms relay. The sternguard charged the seer council and killed two.
Eldar Turn 4:
As everything was locked up in close combat this round was rather short. The avatar charged the last tactical combat squad and killed 2, of course getting no wound in return. The seer council killed one sternguard veteran.
Marines Turn 4:
I moved the terminators in base contact with the right ruined bastion to capture it. Hermann’s luck didn’t return and he wasn’t able to wound the wraithlord (I required 3s to hit, I rolled three 1s and one 2, rerolled one, hit and rolled another 1 to wound…). Following the same concept the whole sternguard squad was killed by the seer council and the remaining lascannon marine failed his leadership test and broke from combat. The three tactical marines from the barricade weren’t able to do anything harmful as well. In the back the avatar got rid of the last marines and the comms relay was now under eldar control.
Eldar Turn 5:
The wave serpent fired its engines and flew over into the strongpoint next to the collapsed right bastion, capturing it. The fleeing marine was melted by the avatars wailing doom. Hermann at last hammered the wraithlord into a pile of wraithbone and consolidated towards the avatar. In the never-ending fight in the middle one marine died under the witchblades.
Marines Turn 5:
Another marine was killed by the warlocks, but the squad hold its ground. The terminators moved around the crater and fired at the avatar to no effect. Hermann charged the avatar. Running under a stream of heavy bolter shells fired in his back by the surviving devastator he crashed into the towering incarnation of a wargod, sparks raining from the protective energy field of his shield as the giant sword of the avatar awaited him. One strike slipped through his defense and cut easily through his ancient tactical dreadnought armour and bit deep into the marshals flesh. But he had suffered worse and wielded his hammer in a devastating back-hand strike into the abdomen of his enemy. In an explosion of sparks, pieces of lava and half-molten rocks the thunder hammer unloaded its energy, sending the avatar reeling back. Stunned by such a tremendous blow Hermann took the advantage and another mighty blow of the mastercrafted weapon hit home and the avatar was down to one knee. With a last, all-destroying overhead strike khaines avatar was destroyed and the comms relay was back in imperial hands.
We rolled if the game would go into another round but it ended here.
Defender: 2 objectives.
Attacker: 1 objective.
Victory Space Marines.
Afterthoughts:
Phew, that was close and it was a really tense and hard fought battle. During almost the whole game I thought that I wouldn’t be able stop the eldar from taking all objectives. Planetstrike brings everything directly into contact and close combat starts at the very first turn and that’s something marines really don’t shine at. But having some heavy hitters in reserve really can turn the tide. And I was lucky that all came on the field at the same time (comms relay helps on that part), all from the same direction at the attackers drop zone. So I could charge eliminate some serious threats very early. The shining spears would have done havoc to the defenders and by having so much force in his back, Trotzki was forced to divert his army. I am honestly surprised now that I could win with my army in the role as defender. As I said in the announcement I had the impression the attacker has the advantage simply by having the possibility to blow things up with the firestorm and then attack in the first turn what is left. And not having the need to wipe out any defender at an objective but simply being in base contact with it is sufficient to hold it and on top of that, a tie is actually a win for the attacker led me to this opinion. But of course all that was based only on theory, only having read the codex and not having played an actual game. I stand somewhat corrected now. Hard hitting reserves seems to be the way to victory for the defender.
Ok, that leads me to a little rant about planetstrike and armies in general. On bell of lost souls there was a poll, which army would be the best at defending. The great majority voted for imperial guard. Admittedly I haven’t seen them playing planetstrike (we will do this in the coming weeks) but I doubt that they will be such a great defending force. Of course, they can field so many heavy weapons, one might think that they will blow every attacker out of the skies and they have heavy tanks coming from reserves to shoot the remaining forces to pulp. Hmm sounds great, but what happens when the bastions are destroyed at turn one and the squads inside are charged by dedicated assault units and “everything” is in close combat? The tanks cannot shoot. To make long things short, the attacker kills everything in the base and then goes to ground and awaits the end of the game, maybe firing some shots at the tanks. Attacker wins. I am not saying the imperial guard has no chance here, but I can imagine way better armies, both at defending and attacking. The one great choice for both roles is simple, at least in my humble opinion. Who has heavy hitters with serious staying power? Right, Death Guard. At the moment I see no easy way to get rid of plague marines sitting on an objective (this problem isn’t new, I know). As defender, a lot of plague marines should do the work by just charging everything getting too close to the objectives and thereby creating long lasting close combats. And as attacker they just have to get to an objective and stay there. And that’s what they excel at. But that’s again just my few cents. I really would like to see how Tau and Tyranids fare in planetstrike as I just have no idea how I would use them. Or what would you guys out there think?
End of rant.
Coming to the conclusion. I thank Trotzki for a really nice and exciting game and I think we both had fun. I always like close games and for my part I had no idea how the game would end during the most time.
Concerning my army choice I was rather happy as everything performed well and I think the list is rather solid. When I use that list again I still have about 100 points I could free as the locator beacons, the extra armour on the whirlwind and maybe all the powerfists in the tactical squads aren't really necessary. Maybe I could take another hq choice. And Lysander really is a beast and making the whole army stubborn is awesome for defenders. I would have lost the combat against the seer council many times but with stubborn I could hold and thus negating the council a consolidation into the middle bastion/ruin.
Planetstrike is really a nice addition to warhammer 40k and makes up for funny and enthralling games. But you have to keep it in a friendly environment and not try to play it in a competitive manner. It is really more like apocalypse where careful planning and maybe some narrative aspects pay off in the end. What I somewhat disliked is that your lovingly created strongpoint with its bastions and carefully erected defense lines and overlapping fields of fire of the quad cannons and whatnot is overrun in the very first turn. When I initially thought of planetstrike, I imagined there would be hard fought battles to get into such vital strongpoints with the attacker suffering horrendous losses by charging a well fortified position. This aspect comes a bit short for my taste and I think it would be cooler when the bastions would last a little bit longer than turn two. Maybe we have to think about changing the rules a little bit that there are bubbles the attacker cannot deepstrike into so that he has to walk/fly/whatever to the bastions. Of course that will be a disadvantage for the attacker but I think, permitting the attacker more points will solve such problems. And that would bring the image of a stronghold more in line with reality when the outnumbered defenders hold off wave after wave of onrushing attackers.
This brings me to the end of this battle report, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.
Bellum Aeternum is a blog about Warhammer 40 000. We are a small group of friends who like playing the game, painting and converting miniatures and all the background of the Dark Millenium.
