Throne of Skulls Battle Reports

So here they are 5 brief battle reports.

Game 1

Against Demons. Kugath, Great Unclean One, Nurgle Demon Prince, Pink horrors X2, 1 squad of blood letters, one squad of fiends, a squad of flamers, a squad of screamers and 3 Blood Crushers. Capture and control, pitched battle. I was given first turn.

So, a dilemma. Demons deep strike half their army first turn. One way to deal with them is to reserve everything, wait for them to deep strike and then shoot them dead from range. Now that kinda works in kill point games. You just stay away and kill stuff. It also works in seize ground with a few objectives – you hope they drop on all of them and kill them bit by bit. However, in capture and control it’s tricky, cause they can drop on both objectives, and with stuff as hard to kill as Kugath (T6, 4+, 4++ with feel no pain and 6 wounds!) I couldn’t be sure I could blow them away if I come on piece by piece.

So I decided to castle up on my objective, and hope to contest his. First turn on comes Kugarth, the Great Unclean one, the demon prince and 2 squads of pink horrors. The pink horrors blow away one squad of kroot and a squad of pathfinders. Bugger. I now have a choice, try and kill the scary stuff (3 Nurgle Monstrous Creatures), or take out his troops (the Pink Horrors). I decide to try and block off my remaining Kroot squad with a Hammerhead and a Devilfish (to preserve my troops) and kill his troops. The problem with that of course, is that the big scary things then charged my Hammerhead and the Devilfish, threw a bundle of sixes to hit, and then 2d6 to penetrate, and then more sixes to blow them up…leaving my Kroot (and now my Fire Warriors) exposed, and dead next turn.

So turn 3 I have no troops left. The only thing I can do is draw - if I kill his last troop choice. So by turn 5 I need to kill 7 Bloodletters to draw – I kill 5. If the game went on I would kill both remaining Bloodletters for the draw…but it ended.

Great game, and cool opponent.

GAME 2

Against Grey Knights, capture and control with 4 objectives. His list - Librarian, Crowe, 10 Terminators with Thawn, and 2 squads of Purifiers. One objective is way over on my right side, with three on the left, one on my side of the table, one in the middle and one on his side.

Now luckily the board is devoid of terrain in the middle, so if he’s coming to get me he will need to walk into my gun line with no cover! So I castle up on the objective on my side planning to take or contest the other 2, hoping he will be tempted to take the other objective, taking one of his squads out of the game.

And that’s what happened. He deployed one purifier squad on the far right objective and his terminators and the other purifier squad on the one opposite the objective I had castled on.

The game consisted of me staying more than 24 inches away, until I killed enough of the terminators and the purifiers to allow me to advance on the objectives.

Frankly the tactic worked, but I mistimed the breakout. At the end of turn 5 I was 5mm short of the objective with my Kroot (if I had rolled a 5 for my run move rather than a 4…!), and if it had gone on to turn 6 there was a good chance I might have tabled him (certainly by turn 7), but it ended turn 5 for a draw.

A great game played in good spirits, but I really should have won this one!

Game 3

Ravenguard – spearhead annihilation. His list - Shrike and a Librarian with an assault squad, 2 scout squads in land speeder storms, 2 tac squads in rhinos and 2 predators with las cannon sponsons.

Well, this is my perfect mission – spearhead so I can keep away and annihilation so I don’t need to worry about scoring. However, he got first turn…and after a bit of thought and some mental arithmetic, I worked out that it was impossible to avoid a first turn charge from the scouts and probably also from the assault squad. Hmmmm!

So I resigned myself to getting charged first turn and bubble wrapped with the Kroot expecting to have them wiped out turn one unless I seized… I didn’t seize.

So he turbo boosted the storms in their scout move and infiltrated the assault squad 18 inches away from my bubble wrap. Turn one he charges my Kroot with both scout squads and the assault squad and wipes them out. However, that brought them into rapid fire range. Long story short – I killed all of them in two turns (although I did lose my Broadsides and my Pathfinders). So I had 7 kill points and he had 4. So I ran away out of range and took 2 more kill points at long range with my Hammerheads.

To be fair my opponents made a huge mistake. For some reason he did not multi assault my XV8s with his assault squad when he charged the Broadsides. Nor did he split off Shrike and the Librarian so he could assault the other suits. If he had done that, I probably would have still won, but it would have been tougher.

Game 4

Against Necrons. This was one of those games you want to blank out. By the end of turn 2 I had my Broadsides one squad of Kroot and a Devilfish left!

Mostly I screwed up objective placement and deployment. However, a turn of night fighting caused by a solar pulse where I couldn’t shoot anything, the drive buy attack from the command barge, and forgetting that (a) wraiths are jump infantry, and (b) they ignore terrain (allowing them to multi charge all my suits) didn’t help.

It was just horrible…..!

Game 5

Capture and control, dawn of war against codex marines. Captain with jump pack running with a JP Vanguard Squad all with storm shields and power weapons (!), 2 tac squads in rhinos, a venerable dreadnaught in a drop pod, two MM, HF Land Speeders and a Whirlwind.

Hmmm…. my initial thoughts were that I should really win this one. As long as I downed the Land Speeders quickly (and missile pods are pretty good at that), the only thing I was worried about was the Whirlwind (yes really!). It ignores cover and would murder my Kroot. Without my Kroot I might struggle to block enough stuff allowing my suits enough time to kill everything else.

However, everything went to plan and I managed to keep the WW stunned until I had enough “spare” fire power to kill it. The game ended with me holding one objective and contesting his with 2 Hammerheads. I think he had perhaps 4 marines left.

So that was it, 2 wins, 2 losses and a draw. Again!

EYIG