IFL Matches, week 2 and 3

Happy Day to all!


So earlier this week I got my weeks 2 and 3 games in for the IFL league. 

I played VS. XV25 (Andrew) for my week 2 game. He was testing out  the new eldar and had taken a diverse quantity of models. Our game was objectives, with vanguard deployment.

I rolled at my warlord trait the d3 infiltrators, and ended up infiltrating plague drones and my soulgrinder. After deployment I set up my soulgrinder as pictured in the photo left, and Andrew then wisely blocked off the other place I was going to infiltrate with his infiltrating rangers (I didn't realize infiltrators alternate). I ended up placing my plaguedrones dead center.

So this game played out basically with Andrew shooting the crap out of me, and I ran at him full speed with all my tentacle and wobbly bits swinging. After several rounds, I ended up winning on the primary.

One hard lesson which was impressed on me from this game was to not forget what monofiliment does to my I3 models.

 

 

My next game was vs. Lbrady, also known as Lee.

Lee noted this was the first time he had ever played vs. a zerg rush type of army like mine, so thought it would be interesting to see how his army handled it. Despite it being his first time playing vs. this kind of list, he handled my army beautifully and came very close to wrecking me completely.

Our game was hammer and anvil, big guns never tire, with 4 objectives (2 in each deployment)

 

His army was, 2x warscythe lord on barge, 2 squads of warriors in transport barge w/ 2 destruction crypteks, 2 squads of immortals in nightscythes w/ 2x storm crypteks (haywire), 2 annihilation barges, monolith.

This is the bottom of turn 2. Monolith existed in the diced off area
the soul grinder is already dead from haywire shots

 I opted to go first, (never a wise choice vs. necron air, due to last minute contests), however I was feeling gutsy. I think the haywire crypteks also affected my judgement a bit, I didn't want them popping out and wrecking my maulerfiends turn 2 before I could charge with them. However, as it turned out, that was largely irrelevant, as Lee destroyed them both first turn w/ gauss and annihilation barges. So first turn, I ran at him, all my bits swinging. Came as close as I dared, without coming to close to the monolith portal. Lee spent turn 1 adjusting his line to block charges with his transport barges, and blowing up my maulerfiends.












Bottom of turn 5, right before Lee started shooting. The nurgle bike
lord in the bottom right was a blackened smear on the hill after the
annihilation barge was done with him.

Turns 2 - 4 consisted of beating each other up really badly. He killed my soul grinder with haywire, so helldrake took revenge and killed the entire squad  + night scythe, and then promptly was gun downed by Lees second night scythe. I charged at units and hurt them, he would shoot at me and exact terrible revenge.

There were two key pivots in this game from my perspective. His destroying of my maulerfiends and soul grinder removed a significant portion of my easy to use anti-tank, anti-vehicle, and particularly anti-monolith. So that crippled me from the start. Luckily, my nurgle lord melta-bombed the monolith on turn 2, blowing it up, so I dodged a huge bullet there. I also managed to nock a barge lord out of a transport, which as it turns out later was good, because Lee was not shy about using a fast transport to turboboost into my backfield and contesting / killing my troops with them. Something I had not pondered, but now will watch out for in the future. (see the second photo bottom left).

I had to chase Lee's barge lord all over the board this game.

So on turn 5, I am contesting his objectives with a nugle lord, and nurgle spawn. I'm holding my objectives with cultists, and plaguebearers. I win on turn 5 on the primary of objectives, if Lee forced it to go to secondaries, he wins on Slay the Warlod & First Blood.  I had to hope it ended on turn 5, otherwise Lee would be able to clear off my pictured bottom left objective, and take back one or both of his right side objectives letting him win on first or secondary objectives.

I was sweating bullets at this point as you might imagine. I did not want to roll to see if continued, so Lee rolled it, and it ended!

So victory! sort of .. kind of a shallow one for me given the beating I took (and was about to take).

This game was a lot of fun, basically just slugging away at each other. Every turn was devastating to both sides.