Back From the Dead

Yet again, rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated!!

After a dramatic start to the year (3 tournaments in 3 months Caledonian Uprising, LVO and Dark MIllenium 3), I hadn’t played a game of 40k until this weekend!! Real life has conspired against me, and the hobby has been on the back burner for some months – even to the extent that all my models, paints etc are packed away to the garage.

However, things have improved, and I’m getting back to playing with my toys again. Breaking news is I’m going to the LVO again in 2017. After this year I know I don’t want to sight see in Vegas (horrible place), and my hope that I would recover from jet lag by getting there early was plain silly. So next year it will be a flying visit – I fly in on the Thursday and out on the Monday. My gaming buddy isn’t joining me this year (he’s just back from the ETC, and feels that a trip to Vegas might just be a little OTT), but my brother is. So I’m going to fly half way around the world for 9 games of 40k, and to spend some time with my brother (who I only see a few times a year because he lives in the US). Sounds good to me!! 

But anyway, I played in a one day 20 man  RTT on Saturday. … and that’s really what this post’s about.

I was going to take the Raven Guard list I took to DM3, but the TO decide to incorporate some of the draft FAQ. In particular those parts that ban battle  brothers from starting in each other’s transports, and stop auras from taking effect from inside vehicles. This has a pretty significant effect on the Raven Guard list, so I fell back on the trusted podding battle company. The list I took was

Iron Hands Chapter Tactics

Cataphracti Terminator Captain 

Chaplin on a bike. 

5 man Tac Squad, melta gun, combi melta, Drop Pod

5 man Tac Squad, melta gun, combi melta, Drop Pod

5 man Tac Squad, melta gun, combi melta, Drop Pod

5 man Tac Squad, melta gun, combi melta, Drop Pod

5 man Tac Squad, melta gun, combi melta, Drop Pod

5 man Tac Squad, melta gun, combi melta, Drop Pod

Assault Squad, 2 flamers, Drop Pod

5 bikes, 2 Grav Guns

Iron Clad Dreadnaught, twin Heavy Flamers, Dreadnaught Drop Pod

Iron Clad Dreadnaught, twin Heavy Flamers, Dreadnaught Drop Pod

Devastators, 4 Grav Cannons, Drop Pod

Devastators, 4 Grav Cannons, Drop Pod

5 bolter Scouts

5 bolter Scouts

5 bolter Scouts

So pretty straight forward – Cataphracti Captain goes with one of the dev squads making them slow and purposeful, doctrines makes everything shoot better and everything is Ob Sec (bar the scouts). I went for Iron Hands chapter tactics to help keep the pods and the dreads alive. 

The tourney was playing the ITC FAQ, but incorporating some of the draft FAQ, and playing ITC style missions, but not the actual missions. Three games, 1850pts.

Game 1

Against Tyranids, but not multiple Hive Tyrants. He had one, but the rest was a mixture of stuff that I really didn’t understand. However, judicious application of grav cannons lead to a 20 nil win to me. That makes it sound easy, but there were a few tricky moments (like one of my Iron Clads charging a big gribbly MC …. and rolling three “1’s” to wound!), and I made a lot of mistakes. Largely my mistakes were not having as real feel for what the various parts of the army can do – for example committing both devastator squads to killing a unit of 3 Carnifex, when one could probably have done it. Very rusty.

Game 2

Against a KDK army with a Knight. Flesh hounds, soul grinder, some cultists and other stuff. This game was a very good example of the battle company’s strength. Broadly speaking I made a complete mess of this game. I over committed my Tac squads in turn 1, in the hope of killing his knight. Of 6 twin linked melta guns, only 2 managed to hit!! I took 3 hull points off the knight, and all my tac squads died in his turn to bloodletters. I then tried it again, and again failed to kill the knight, or anything else of consequence. Yet again, most of my marines died to his counter assaults. However, the sheer number of Ob Sec bodies, not to mention the Drop Pods, (it helped that Kill Points were irrelevant in this mission) meant that I managed to scrape a 13-6 win – one I really didn’t deserve.

However, with very mixed results around me I found myself on table 1, playing for the win!!

Game 3

This was a fantastic game, marred by an unfortunate incident at the very end. I was playing a Skyhammer Annihilation Force, with supporting CAD. The Skyhammer had 2 deve squads, all with grav cannons, a 10 man assault squad with Eviscerator and Thunder Hammer, and a 5 man assault squad with Eviscerator and Thunder Hammer. The CAD had a chapter master, two 5 man tac squads in Pods, two 5 man Sternguard Squads in Pods, and 2 Thunder Fire Cannons. My opponent was a former member of the Scottish ETC team who I have never beaten in the 3 tournament games we’ve played. Mission was Emperor’s Relic, Primary with maelstrom secondary and a tertiary mission as well.

Long story short I won the roll off deployed nothing, and made him go first. He countered this by deciding to bring his Skyhammer in on turn 2. Nothing much happened turn one – I brought in my dreads beside the TFCs, but both scattered badly and opted to stay in their pods. I brought in 3 tac squads to try and kill the 5 sternguard he brought in on his turn 1. I failed to kill the Sternguard (!), and hunkered down to weather the storm of his Skyhammer. One grav dev squad killed a dread naught drop pod, and the other one killed the Iron Clad inside. However, everything failed to kill the the other Dreadnaught. Both squads of Assault Marines failed their charges!! On my turn 2 pretty much everything came in, bar one of the Dev squads. I killed both his dev squads, and the larger of the 2 assault squads. In his turn his TFC’s took a horrible toll on my marines, which I had stupidly bunched up.

I won’t bore you with the detail, but for the rest of the game it was a tight, tactical struggle. At the end of turn 5 I had primary, and he had secondary. I needed to kill 3 of his drop pods (one of the tertiary objectives was kill 3 vehicles in a turn) to draw tertiary and win the game, and the tournament. For once my melta guns managed to hit something and I killed 2 pods relatively easily. It all came down to whether 5 scouts could kill a drop pod with one hull point left. I threw a grenade (which missed) and charged …… but failed to roll a “6” with 5 grenades (we weren’t playing that part of the FAQ). Bugger.

So I thought it was a draw, which meant my opponent would win the tournament and I would come first. Howe3ver, when reviewing eth battel field I realised that I held the relic and both emperors will objectives. One of the tertiaries was “claim” 3 objectives in one turn, which would mean we drew on tertiary, I won the game, and the tournament…..! And this is where it became tricky. My opponent read “claim” as meaning you needed to claim all 3 in that turn, i.e. if you held one at the start of the turn, and moved on to the other 2 in that turn (which is what I did), it didn’t count. I read it as meaning that as long as you held 3 objectives at the end of the turn, you were good. Argument ensued. I really need to let these things go … but sometimes I just can’t help myself. Eventually we called over the TO and he agreed with me.

So I won, but it wasn’t a great way to win, particularly against a friend. And the Irony was, next morning in an email exchanged, we realised that both of us had missed the fact that he killed 3 of my pods in one turn earlier in the day, so it was a draw after all!!! 

Some thoughts on my list to follow.