40K Battle Brothers Sept 2013 - Day One Battle Reports

Our last outing to Battle Brothers had seen us come away with the first place trophy so we had a title defend. This time around we'd be using our new army instead of the usual Titanic Fenrisians. Testing at the local "Blood Brothers" doubles had proved successful with us winning the tournament so we felt pretty confident that our new list was capable of retaining our title after a couple of tweaks.

1,500 pts of Ghostly Tides (Tau & Eldar)
Commander w/ drones controller, target lock, two missile pods, iridium suit
2x 10 Kroot
2x Riptide w/ fusion, ion, EWO, VT
4 Marker Drones

Farseer w/ eldar jetbike, Spirit Stone of Anath'lan
5 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent with scatter lasers
5 Dire Avengers in Wave Serpent with scatter lasers & shuriken cannon
Wraithknight (wraithcannons)

The list sticks with our theme of "blow all your points on big stuff and then see what else you can afford". However, unlike our previous doubles list, this one is actually capable of taking out flyers and has more ranged firepower in general. You could say we've given in to the 6th edition mentality of "shoot it until it dies" and you'd probably be right. Even so, we're under no illusion that it's a friendly list but there are far worse things we could've taken. Anyway, onto the battles....

Game One - Ghostly Tides vs. GK/Necrons

This game was set up to be a taste of our own medicine with us being on the receiving end of double Dreadknights for a change. In addition our opponents had Coteaz, some acolytes with crusaders, a Destroyer Lord, 2 lots of 5 Warriors in Night Scythes and 9 Praetorians. This would probably prove to be a tough start to the weekend. We'd be playing Big Guns with 4 objectives on Dawn of War.

Luckily we managed to get the first turn which we hoped would allow us to kill off one of the dreadknights and maybe even weaken the praetorians whilst the flyers were in reserve. If the wraithknight got lucky with it's distort roll then we might even kill both. Sadly thanks to a miscommunication we didn't position the riptides so they could both see the same dreadknight. The wraithknight failed to kill his target and thanks to poor rolling from me the riptides only managed to put the odd wound on each dreadknight. The dreadknights teleported up but luckily we hadn't got anything that could be particularly threatened by the incinerators (both wave serpents survived). We'd get another turn to shoot the praetorians before they could shoot or charge us.

The drones marked up the praetorians and one riptide pieplated them managing to put 5 down. The dire avengers were hiding in a building and attempted to move through cover to get up a level to add their firepower but failed both their difficult terrain and run rolls to do so. The commander and the wave serpents added their fire though to put down another couple of praetorians and leave the destroyer lord wounded. The wraithknight charged into combat with one dreadknight and managed to kill it off. The kroot arrived on the right flank and with help from the other riptide we hoped we might do enough to kill the second dreadknight but it passed all but one of its saves.

Both Necron flyers arrived and some disgustingly flukey shots from the riptides tore the weapon from one and blew up the other. This was a crucial point in the game. The praetorians charged one riptide whilst the dreadknight charged the other. Overwatch from one riptide managed to force the dreadknight to make an invulnerable save for his final wound which he irritatingly managed to do. The lord and praetorians easily took out their target whilst the dreadknight made short work of the commander, drones and farseer. Later the praetorians managed to kill off the other riptide. We'd need to focus now to prevent a whitewash. The kroot managed to help the wave serpents finish off the praetorians but the lord survived to charge the wraithknight.

The wraithknight won the combat but the lord got back up on a single wound. If the wraithknight remained in combat we'd really struggle but luckily the next time he put the lord down, he stayed down. With the game coming to a close we needed to shift some warriors and Coteaz from their nearest objective to claim it with our dire avengers so we moved a wave serpent up in anticipation. The other wave serpent turned its attention on the flyer to finish it off before turning around to finish off the other dreadknight in the next turn.

At the end of turn 5 we had the wraithknight claiming one of their objectives, some kroot on one of ours, dire avengers on the other and a wave serpent poised to clear theirs. Sadly the game ended there meaning we missed out on the points from their objective and linebreaker. Still we'd claimed a 13-4 win (9 from objectives, 2 secondaries and 2 bonus for killing the dreadknights). Not bad out of a possible 17 for the game.

Game Two - Ghostly Tides vs. Tau & Eldar

Despite talk of joining forces with my Tau opposite number we decided to stick to our partners. Will and Mike had suffered a heavy defeat in their first game with only a single model surviving. This would've never seen them play us in a proper Swiss Pairs system but more on that another time. They had Illic, two squads of Alaitoc pathfinders, vibro support batteries, two single model war walker squadrons, striking scorpions, sniper drones, tau pathfinders, stealth team, cadre fireblade, fire warriors and a crimson hunter. The game type was Purge the Alien on Hammer & Anvil.

Spot the missing unit....

Our opponents challenged us to table them with an hour to go knowing that it would be pretty inevitable with our mismatched armies. They were in good humour throughout which is pretty difficult when faced with those odds. Our first shot from the riptides landed an ignores cover pieplate on Illic and 5 pathfinders. I wounded with all 6 hits and scored four VPs in a single volley (First Blood, Slay the Warlord, Illic and the squad). I'm not going to go through the game in gory detail but the next couple of shots from us wiped out the tau pathfinders. Our opponents responded by killing a wave serpent with one of the war walkers but that still made it 5-1 after turn 1.

The kroot arrived behind their lines and killed off some fire warriors whilst the rest of our army picked off both war walkers, the stealth team and striking scorpions. The crimson hunter showed up and was promptly shot down before firing a weapon. The second squad of kroot showed up and between the two squads they killed the sniper drones, fireblade and fire warriors. The wraithknight charged the support weapons and despite only killing one crew member swept them. We tabled them with 1 hour and 2 minutes to spare. Not my proudest moment at a tournament but mostly down to the daft random pairing system. 16-1 to us.

Game Three - Ghostly Tides vs. SW/DA

When we arrived at the table we saw the armies that'd played on there before. One consisted of 5 tervigons and two tyrannofexes. Suffice to say they had a huge bag of termagants (apparently 100 of them). Anyway, we'd be playing the Relic on Vanguard Strike. Our opponents were fielding a thunderlord with hammer, 5 thunderwolves with 4 storm shields, a drop pod full of grey hunters, Belial and two terminator squads. With so few models and only three scoring units they should already be struggling but against our list even they thought they'd have no chance. Well they shouldn't have at least....

We won the roll off again and shot at the only models on the board, the thunderwolves. Thanks to a combination of sheer weight of fire and some unlucky rolls on the armour saves we managed to kill three wolves and wounded a fourth but sadly the lord held his nerve so we'd be unlikely to take First Blood which is crucial in the Relic. Their turn was pretty much a blur of disbelief for us. I realised too late that I should've positioned my riptide in melta range of the Relic as that was almost certainly where the drop pod would arrive. Even so I attempted to kill it with interception from my fusion blaster but could only strip a hull point. The squad inside had no other option but to fire at the commander and his drones with help from one of the deathwing units who both (unsurprisingly) arrived on turn one as well.

The grey hunters could only kill one of the drones but the terminators fired their krak missiles at the squad with the farseer as the next closest model. Matt needed to make a single Look Out Sir roll to save him but rolled a 1 and another 1 for his 4++ save meaning he was vaporised for First Blood to our opponents. Gutted. This wouldn't have been so bad but I followed this with an 11 for the squads morale check and thanks to Jet Pack 3D6" fall back the whole squad left the board with my Commander for Slay the Warlord too.

We were in a state of shock after that as there's no doubt the Farseer is a the key model in our force. Without his Guide and Prescience our shooting is far less accurate. If only we'd realised just how big a loss it would be and we might've just gone home then!

The following turns can be summarised as follows. The riptides tried to overheat for an S8 blast six times after and failed five times and three of those times they also failed their 2+ armour save! This meant that the terminators didn't get pieplated nearly as much as they should've done. This wouldn't have been so bad but our opponents passed an obscene number of 2+ and 5++ saves to keep Belial and a lone terminator alive until turn 5. Of course with the help of the farseer they'd have been re-rolling which would've meant at least a couple of extra blasts!! The wraithknight shot at the thunderwolves with is S10 gun, hit twice, wounded twice but both were saved on the storm shields. The wraithknight then only killed two of them in combat (even with S10 hammer of wrath) leaving the thunderlord alive to hammer him to death after the grey hunters had joined him in combat but failed to charge.

Meanwhile the terminators were free to charge both wave serpents and wreck one whilst blowing up the other. This was after we'd caused 11 saves on the unit which were all passed on 2+. The thunderlord then proceeded to toss krak grenades at nearby units and caused the odd casualty which were often enough to finish off units. The rest of the game was spent watching the riptides fail to kill Belial or take the single remaining wound from the thunderlord. Eventually Belial fell and one squad of kroot hid in their deployment zone for linebreaker. The Relic had been in the hands of the grey hunters since turn 1 and they'd been steadly moving back towards their own board edge. With the final shot of the game we had a chance to pie plate them. This was out last ditch (long shot) attempt to stop them claiming the Relic. If we could kill 3 models and force a morale check they'd be close enough to the board edge to run off.

Unsurprisingly the riptide got hot and took a wound thanks to our insane ability to roll 1s. The final roll of the game was also a 1 to deny us a turn 7 and two further attempts to pie plate the grey hunters. Perhaps I've not adequately conveyed it here but this was easily both of our worst games of 40K ever. An army we should have comfortably beaten and we'd struggled to even get two points from the game with our opponents taking the full 6.

Conclusion
Looking back now our big mistake in game one was trying to spread our fire out too thinly. Had we focussed everything on one dreadknight at a time then gone for the praetorians I reckon we'd have won more decisively. We were pretty unlucky not to kill them earlier mind you as the dreadknight's saving throws were solid and most of the praetorians got back up. With the benefit of a 6th turn we'd have scored enough points to make a big difference to our final standings (more on that soon).

The second game was a great example of why random pairings don't work. I'll be discussing it fully in a later post but suffice to say such a mismatch would never have happened in the second round of Swiss Pairs. Our opponents were good sports despite the odds being heavily stacked against them.

Our third game was, in a different way, a good example of why random pairings don't work (I'll get to that soon I promise). Essentially our dice beat us in that game. That's not to insult our opponents who played well but with even half as many 1s we'd have comfortably won the game. Incredibly frustrating but what can you do? Still at least we'd lost the Relic game with the lowest number of available VPs and we'd still managed to come away with 2 VPs. We'd need to do well in our final games but we'd be in with a shout of the top three assuming we got some favourite games.