40K Doubles Sept 2012 - Battle Reports - Day One

In case you missed it I posted our list up on here yesterday. As I said in my previous post our aim was to have a more enjoyable experience than last time around where we ended up winning our final game on table 2 in a horrible environment. Here's how we got on:

Game 1 - Titanic Fenrisians vs. Brains & Brawn (DE/Orks)
We stood waiting at our table for our opponents to show up but when they didn't we headed over to play Jim & Robyn on a table right under the aircon! Despite freezing conditions we had an enjoyable game. Their list was a warboss with meganobz in a battlewagon, a beautiful ork bastion conversion with lootas on top, 28 boyz, 3 venoms with wyches, bloodbrides and lady malys with court in them, 3 reavers and 5 scourges.

Bit of a mixture but we were quite pleased to see a minimum amount of darklight weaponry that would upset our dreadknights. We were playing kill points (Purge the Alien) on Vanguard deployment. Our opponents decided to reserve the scourges and large mob of boyz. We took the first turn and slammed the dreadknights forward. They easily wiped out the reavers. The drop pod hunters took down a venom. The wyches charged but thanks to the new FAQ the wolf standard allowed re-rolls of 1s on the overwatch so they didn't have much chance once they got into combat.

Over the next few turns we cut down the venoms and their occupants. Our dreadknights passed a sickening number of saves but one eventually succumbed to poisoned firepower. The scourges came on and killed some acolytes before being rapid fired down by grey hunters (the sole survivor ran). The thunderwolves had no choice but to charge the meganobz and were wiped out despite killing all of the nobz but the warboss. He was quickly dealt with by the purifiers though. The ork mob showed up a bit late (turn 4) and with little else on the table, the combined fire from our army killed 3/4 of them and the rest ran. With the clock ticking down the only thing left standing was the bastion and despite the dreadknight penetrating it in combat the result was poor. The game ended at the end of turn 5. We'd lost a dreadknight, some thunderwolves and 3 acolytes and they had just an unmanned bastion remaining.

They were great sports about the whole thing though and seemed to enjoy it despite the heavy losses.

Game 2 - Titanic Fenrisians vs. Twilight (BA/SW)

Based on the team name we could imagine what we'd be facing when we reached table 8. Things didn't look good for us as they had a heavily mechanised force featuring two vindicators, 3 razorbacks, 2 large footslogging grey hunter packs, 6 long fangs with attached rune priest, furioso dread in a drop pod and a librarian joining one of two BA assault squads in the razorbacks.

We'd be playing the Hammer & Anvil deployment (lengthways) and Scouring mission (6 random value objectives, FA scoring). The game got off to a good start with us Seizing (thanks to Coteaz). The higher point objectives were in our deployment zone too. The drop pod slammed down and tried to wreck one of the vindicators with bolters and plasma into it's rear armour but sadly I could only manage 2 hull points as the plasma failed to penetrate. The dreadknights double incinerated one of the grey hunter packs leaving only 2 remaining.

The damaged vindicator span round and planted a pie plate on the drop pod squad killing something like 6 grey hunters. The dwindled enemy grey hunter pack charged in and both were reduced to a single remaining figure. Despite ours being a wulfen I fluffed a lot of my rolls and they ended up winning the combat after a few rounds of stalemate. One dreadknight incinerated more grey hunters whilst the other charged the full strength vindicator wrecking it. Living lightning from the rune priest finished off the other vindicator.

The dreadnought came in just out of the 12" Coteaz reserves range (I don't know the name of that special rule) but still frag cannoned a squad of acolytes. The purifiers fired their psycannons on heavy but failed to penetrate and eventually paid the price when the dreadnought charged in next turn. The thunderwolves charged both BA razorbacks, exploding both. The squads inside then charged in and, thanks to my appauling saving throws, managed to kill off the TWC. Things were starting to look bad. They only got worse when the rune priest's rhino headed over to one of the objectives and the meltagunner missed the dreadnought. The space wolves razorback popped open the rhino and then the frag cannon and long fangs killed the occupants.

One dreadknight died to weight of fire from the lascannon razorback and long fangs but the other made it's way to intercept the remaining blood angels who were trying to claim objectives. In the closing stages the game looked all but lost. We were actually quite happy with this as it would mean a trip down to the middle tables but we still wanted to win for pride's sake. We managed to kill off the remaining blood angels and with no troops left we held the only objective for 3 points. Combined with a point for Slay the Warlord we had a total of 4. They scored First Blood and two Slay the Warlords so we thought we'd narrowly won it. However, we remembered that TWC are Fast Attack and hence give up a VP when they die meaning the game ended in a draw.

This was a pretty reasonable result for the game as despite going wrong late on we definitely had the upper hand in the earlier turns.

Game 3 - Titanic Fenrisians vs Con Air (BA/GK)
Our draw sent us down the rankings a bit and we were hoping to stay there. When we saw our opponent's list featured 4 stormravens we were confident that's what would happen! As I've said our list simply can't deal with fliers as our only high strength ranged shooting is either Living Lightning or 2 psycannons. We realised pretty quickly that 4 stormravens didn't leave many points for anything else, especially when they had Mephiston and Coteaz inside 2 of them. This meant that if we could get the first turn and kill off anything that wasn't in reserve we'd win by default.

They only had a few inquisitorial henchmen in three seperate squads so were felt pretty sure it would be the shortest game we'd ever played. The drop pod grey hunters rapid fired one squad, one dreadknight incinerated another and the second dreadknight went for the final unit. Sadly this one had a couple of invulnerable saves in there so they survived the crucial first turn. In turn two we advanced the rest of our army and the dreadknights jumped on top of the ruin to kill off the remaining ground troops. After some debate the judges ruled that they could still roll for reserves at the start of their second turn but would lose if nothing arrived. They managed to get both Mephiston's and Coteaz's stormravens. These came on and stripped a couple of wounds off each of the dreadknights. In the subsequent turn they got the remaining empty GK stormraven. Meanwhile Mephiston hopped out and charged the thunderwolves. After some lucky storm shield saves the TWC didn't take much damage. The normal thunderwolves took 2 of Mephiston's wounds and when the power fist hit 5 times I was sure we'd kill him. Sadly I rolled two 1s and Mephiston passed an FNP save (from Biomancy powers) and stayed alive with 2 wounds.

The GK stormraven dropped off Coteaz who challenged our equivalent with both inquisitors killing each other. We didn't really understand why they'd done this until they showed us their secret missions! The stormravens had been forced to hover to drop off their cargo and engage targets. This left them vulnerable. The pair of dreadknights each only had a single wound left but charged into the hovering stormravens easily destroying both. The drop pod grey hunters made their way towards the objectives in the middle of the enemy deployment zone and those in the rhino headed for the objective on the enemy flank. In our deployment zone our acolytes held on to one of the home objectives.

The thunderwolves had recently killed off Mephiston and carried on their success by taking out the remaining GK stormraven which had hovered to engage and kill the dreadknights. The blood angels hopped out of their stormraven but were killed off by the grey hunters in combat. Their stormraven was then a target for the thunderwolves and was easily destroyed. The game was over and somehow our combat focused army had managed to deal with four flyers.

Day One Conclusion
We'd managed to win two games and draw the other. This would undoubtedly send us back up the rankings and towards the top tables which we were so desperate to avoid. Our final game of the day really proved that flyers aren't as difficult to deal with as people think. What we lacked in ranged fire we more than made up for in S10 combat! Now, had our opponents managed to avoid hovering their aircraft it would've been nearly impossible to take them all out. The problem is that any flyer will inevitably be forced to either hover or spend the rest of the game either flying off the table or pointlessly circling it. With little ground based support, flying off the table wasn't an option.

The thunderwolves clearly demonstrated why they're so much fun to use. They were devastating in the third game taking out 2 stormravens and Mephiston which equated to half of our opponents' army! They were actually unlucky not to have dealt with Mephiston sooner in fact! However, in game two they showed why they're often overlooked by SW players. Losing a combat to a few poxy marines means they didn't even make their points back. This is always going to be the case with these guys but at least they're faster in 6th edition.

At the end of day one we'd spectacularly failed in our plan to be firmly mid-table before the final games on Sunday. If we didn't lose our fourth game we'd be certain to end up on the top tables and quite likely to play a tense and argumentative game again. Come back tomorrow to find out what happened.