I had my only local war gaming opponent over for a round of 40k. One of the few games I get to play besides at Crossroad Games (my not so local, lgs) tournaments. We are trying to practice and tune up our lists for the 2015 Standish Standoff. I just need to learn my army (so many new rules) and my opponent needs to tune his list. We played an ATC mission specifically mission 1 as it has both progressive missions as well as end game scoring.
I was playing a modified formation. Basically we made it up. Rather than the crazy try faction mech/skittari/knight formation we built one that uses the Mechanicum and Skittari detachments and grants the Skittari the Canticles of the Omnissiah rule. I figured we would have a more balanced game as I get to learn the same basics in tactics of using the canticles but have no knight, no free wargear and no loosing of gets hot. I took a good smattering of choices.
(As always clicking the image brings up the full size version so you can read the text in the image)
- HQ tech priest Dominus
- Troops 1 unit of 3 destroyers with grab and flamers.
- 1 unit of 3 Breaches with torsion cannons and arc claws
- 10 Vanguard with 3 plasma
- 10 Vanguard with 3 arc rifles
- 5 Infiltrators with taser goads and flasher bladters
- 5 Rustalkers with chirdclaws and transonic razors
- 3 Dune Crawlers with neutron lasers
- 1 unit Kastelan Robots with 2x hvy phosphor blasters
My opponent brought along a chaos space marine force containing
- Abaddon
- 2 units of chaos terminators one 3 and one 4 man. Both with combo weapons
- Cipher with 2 units of chosen kitted out with plasma and melta
- And Obliterator
- And 2x Vindicare Assassins.
- A Chaos Marine squad
I deployed first and set up pretty much across the table. I had a unit to infiltrate with my opponent had several infiltrators. I knew with progressive objectives I needed to pick one wing and hit it hard before abandon and the terminators arrived so I could get out ahead and hopefully hold it. I chose my table right as he had only 1 chosen squad near that progressive objective. Once infiltration and scout moves are resolved I had infiltrators threatening his Vindicare Assassins on my table left and Rustalkers moving in at cipher and his chosen on table right. My dune crawlers moved to table center to get best line of sight for shooting and to hold the middle come end game. They have proven very durable for me in the past.
My Destroyers and Breachers fanned out to left and right paired with a vanguard squad each to back up and support the Infiltrators and Rustalkers. The robot maniple with the tech priest held center to back up the crawlers. First round shooting saw one Vindicare dead some chosen dead and a marine. Fairly low end for this shooty army. Especially as I used the re-roll shooting attacks and +1 bs canticles and skittari power.
My opponent moved up cipher and company to shoot then assault the rustalkers. The vindicare number two put a wound on a infiltrators and pinned them. The marines put another wound on them. The chosen board center popped out and shot a lot of melta into the crawlers and immobilized 1 but the 4++ kept the unit mostly whole although I lost one crawler so if be at a 5++ after this round. The assault phase however flipped things on me. The crawlers took several more hits but weathered the worst thanks again to the invul save. The Rustalkers however folded like a paper sack killing only a single chosen before all dying. He moved them forward toward the Vanguard squad ready to repeat. Havering been jumped hard in assault I opted for the canticle granting my units essentially 3 free strength 4 hits per model in assault each round. I moved all my squads towards the two chosen. Planning to overwhelm them in are 4 hits. On Cipher and company I got two squads in, both the Vanguard and the Breachers and buried them under 39 Str 4 hits, wiping that unit. I failed all my charges at the squad locked in combat with my crawlers. However some poor saves on his part saw me kill 3 of the 4 chosen, and the broke but not before his meltabomb took out a second crawler. Meanwhile the Infiltrators sprayed useless fire while pinned and got ready for the following turn.
His terminators dropped in and sunk all the melta into my destroyers. And failed so badly they only put out a single wound. The return grav and Vanguard plasma volley wiped Abandon and friends from the table and we called the game at that point.
Although my opponent started off in great position a few key moments went against him and with so few models that spelled the end. First Cipher killed the Rustalkers in a single round of combat leaving them open to to much counter fire and counter charges. Had the Rustalkers not fallen over so easily but died the next round he could have dictated the flow of combat. Secondly the poor melta performance from all the terminators left them in the open for grav retaliation. He should have killed two with the amount of melta he threw forcing a leadership test on a poor leadership squad. (Or allowing the vindicare to finish them off) I was surprised at how quickly a single melta bomb equipped squad took out crawlers in hand to hand. Best keep those boys in the back.
After the game we pondered ways to help his list be more killy (technical term I swear) but still feel elite and chaos marine not cultist or daemon heavy. We hit on a few good ideas and should see them soon.
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