Tuesday, 20 November 2012

GT Heat Report Part 2


Game 4

Tyranids. 2 winged Tyrants, 2 Harpy’s, 2 Tervigaunts, 6 Hive Guard and loads of gaunts. Hammer and Anvil, Emperor’s will.

In 5th I never lost to Tyranids. The weight of high strength low AP fire just killed them before they got anywhere near my gunline. Oh how things have changed…!

And the change is flying monstrous creatures. I simply could not kill them. I managed to get first blood and (eventually) kill the warlord (one of the Hive tyrants). So I decided to hunker down and weather the storm. However, the FMC’s just flew up, shot me, and then charged…and I just could not ground them. It was close. I eventually managed to kill all but one Hive Tyrant. However, I lost because a squad of Kroot held up a Hive Tyrant in Combat for 4 turns – if the little buggers had broke and run, as they usually do, I would have been able to kill the Tyrant, and keep my objective, but as it was the combat was smack bang on the objective and the Tyrant contested. The Kroot lost 4 rounds of combat but made very single moral check…..!

Again, I found this game intensely frustrating, but to be fair, I should have won this. I made some really stupid mistakes (getting my fire warriors out their fish too soon, to have them pie plated from the Harpies and flee off the board, not keeping the Ork Squad on the objective and allowing the Hive Tyrant near it in the first place, etc etc)

Learning points – FMCs are a pain. What you need is some “throw away” fire from smallish units to ground them. The problem was that all my units were big chunky ones, so I was “wasting” a lot of shots to ground the FMC, before I could kill it. Who said MSU is dead!

And I need a quad gun.  That would have made a big difference. The Quad gun could have taken out the Harpies (they only have a 4+ save) while everything else focused on the Tyrants.


Game 5

Against Tau and Grey Knights. Shasel, 2x6 firewarrios, 3x2 Broadsides (no drones!), Coteaz, 10 man strike squad, 5 man interceptor squad, minimal henchman squad, and a Stormraven. Kill points, Vanguard strike.

Spot the deliberate mistake? He had 2 fast attack choices in his allies. So after pointing this out and some (i'm pretty sure) genuine surprise (by this time he had played 4 games and nobody had pointed it out!)… the TO said he should bin the Henchman and play the interceptors as an additional strike squad. He would be docked points for all his games.

Anyway….he got first turn and took it. I was able to hide my Broadsides and one Hammerhead out of LOS from his Broadsides, and I spread out the orks to discourage deep striking. Everything else in reserve. In his turn he was able to move one of his broadside units and snap fire his team leader at my Broadsides. Because it was a precision shot, he allocated it to my Commander. However I managed to Look Out Sir onto one of the Broadsides and lose him instead. Phew!

My turn I killed a Broadside squad for first blood. We then had a squabble over whether one Black Sun Filter in a team gave Night Vision to all other models in the team (it does). So a 2nd trip to the TO for rules clarification. In my opponents 2nd turn all his reserves came on. He then proceeded to deep strike both Strike Squads into the smallest of holes in my bubble wrap. If he had scattered at all they would have misshaped, but he hit with both of them. This meant a 3rd trip to the TO. My recollection was that when you deep strike, the second circle needed to be in base to base with the first circle, and with other models in the 2nd circle.  My opponent was arguing that only the first one had to be in base to base, the second one only needed to be in base to base with the first circle, but did not need to be in base to base with each other i.e. he wanted to choose where he put the models in the 2nd circle. I’m pretty sure I was right (read the rule – it depends on the meaning of “concentric circles”), but this one went his way.

Didn’t matter because he opened up on my Broadsides with everything and they made an insane number of 2+ saves, more than making up for their poor performance in game 3! In my next turn I blew away all 15 marines, without really breaking sweat.

Finally, he jumped Coteaz out of the storm raven and charged a squad of orks. This lead to the 4th trip to the TO when he argued that after jumping out of the Stormraven he could still go flat out. To my surprise the TO ruled in his favour (it clear says you can’t do it), but after a brief discussion, that decision was reversed.

Long story short I won.

Learning points…..leaving holes for people to deep strike into can at times work in your favour.  Dpod cover saves are awesome against ranged shooting. He shot at my vehicles with his Broadsides all game and only downed one Hammerhead. Finally, I really need to get to know the rules better. While I was right on all the rules calls (except perhaps the deep strike one), I wasn’t able to point to the exact page and the exact rule to convince the guy I was right.


Game 6

Against the same Tyranid player as in game 4. Won’t bore you with the detail, but it went pretty much as before. I set up, he charged me. I eventually managed to kill 3 of the 4 FMCs but the Tyrants bogged me down in combat (again!) to contest an objective.

It sounds a bit tedious, but it was actually a lot more fun than the last game. I dare say I was a bit more relaxed, and because I knew what to expect, I became less frustrated about all the grounding tests he passed.

Next, some general thoughts on the tournamnet before some list reviews.

EYIG

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