Battle Report: Fall League 2013, First Game for Week 2

For my week 2 game I played against Chip, of Torrent of Fire fame.


Chips list was interesting.

Hq's
Chapter Master - Bike - Shield Eternal - Power Sword - Artificer Armor
Khan!!!!!
Rune Priest - Bike
Bear Wolf Lord - T-hammer, Storm Shield ect

Troops
5x 10 scouts
2x 5 bikers w/ 2 grav guns
1x 10 grey hunters w/ meltaguns in a drop pod

Fast
Thunder-wolf squad


Chip opted to get diviniation powers for his rune priest, and got Prescience and the 4+ invuln for the group powers.


Mission: The Scouring, Dawn of War

We rolled for objectives / sides, Chip won
When rolling for go first I won the roll and gave first go to Chip.


Chip deployed in an even distribution across the board. He put a bike squad on each side, with his big block deathstar in the middleish. I deployed defensively around my bastion (as pictured below), and left my havocs outside the bastion so it couldn't get targeted and nuked by the drop podding wolves turn 1.

So to the left is the bottom of turn 1. Chip moved all his guys up and shot at my maulerfiends with the drop podding melta. He did get a pen through but i managed to block it with a 5+. I moved all three of my spawn squads into combat with his Thunderwolf calvary. Abaddon is in a challenge with the beefy chapter master-  like a boss.

More of turn 1 as pictured. We both knew at this point the game would largely come down to whomever won this combat in the middle. Chip has more troops than me,  but if i can break from it early enough, i can go run and kill them. If not, I don't have the firepower to deal with all of them in a timely fashion which would give him the win.

Helldrake comes on, roasts a biker squad and sets up position to annihilate some backfield scouts (which then i forgot to fire! boo). Maulerfiend finally kills his space marine squad, but then dies to krak grenades from scouts! Go scouts!
Our middle combat has turned into a lot of dead spawn, and some slowly dying thundercalvs.

Eventually thanks to the timely intervention of a maulerfiend, and the juggy lord, all of the thundercalv squad go down, leaving the chapter master by his lonesome, vs. abaddon. I guess oblivious to the ruin around him? Focused on the chance to end the Horus Heresy for good.

Oh we forgot to do it until after the chapter master broke free with hit and run, but my khorne lord turned into a daemon prince for the privilege of killing the rune priest, and my nurgle lord turned into a spawn, for killing khan. The spawn died to scouts in CC a turn later =/, giving chip slay the warlord. The Daemon prince bossed it up and hung out but basically just stood there looking cool the rest of the game.

My havocs were forced to leave the bastion to go run to an objective to contest it, and my cultists had to drop down to claim the one in front of them. This left my bastion wide open, which Chip saw as an advantage straight away.

Bottom of turn 5. The helldrake has made a full table circuit, having annihilated most of Chips troops single handed. Which is lucky for me, or else chip has the game. His chapter master has hit and run out of combat to go contest my 4 point objective with cultists. His scouts manned my quad gun in the bastion to try and kill some stuff before the helldrake got them. My spawn which were freed from combat went down to the destroyed maulerfiend scouts to contest / kill the scouts. But the scouts held out like champs and didn't die until the very last turn / last combat of the game.

Chips chapter master also charged into a squad of cultists. I challenged him with the cultist champion, who was promptly obliterated. The following round, the poor chapter master was dragged down by a living wall of cultist bodies.

Poor guy.


So, it was a fun game, chip served up some good brews. I had fun, and despite helldrake going around obliterating things, chip held on like a champ and gave a toss-up game until the end.



So my thoughts on this game:

Chip over-extended turn 1. Ground rules of assault armies is always be the assaulter, not the one taking it on the chin. UNLESS, you have defensive grenades. We (chip and I) discussed this so I feel comfortable putting it out there.

The chapter master on a bike is a beast well worth his points. I'd probably go further than chip did myself and give him a beast meele sword, but i understand why he didn't. I also like super-star lords more.

Grav guns are always meh against my type of army, so unfortunately that's just how it is.

Scouts combat squadding out of outflanking or reserves really is a neat trick that helped multiply his board/scoring presence. Chip did a good job with this and really forced me to chase down his stuff the hard way.

Havocs in a bastion w/ are actually pretty good. Same firepower as a land raider. 4 Lascannons + a heavy bolter shooting a turn = CSM land raider, except with more durability, without the movement. So I'm pretty happy with that squad.

It's actually kind of nice to have a few guns in my army again.

Chips pairing of vanilla w/ space wolves was a good call. I really liked this setup. I probably would have found some points for a t-fire though. They are just super good.