Redcap’s 2000pt Tournament

kingbreakers-iconRedcap’s June tournament was the first for 7th edition. Unfortunately it was very lightly attended, probably mostly due to the start of summer. In particular the two adjacent colleges, Drexel and UPenn, just went on summer break. Pat and John volunteered to team up to make an even four contestants and enable a round robin tournament. We bumped the points up from the planned 1850 to 2000 to make list rebuilding easier for them.

Otherwise this was a straight 7th edition tournament. Benn and Jake made up some new bonus battle point conditions and elaborated new details on the more exotic terrain pieces (Radiation! Tesla Towers!) but the missions followed Redcap’s existing format based on the 5e/6e/7e core missions. Notably, this already includes a simple alternate scoring scheme. For objective control missions you can optionally score one victory point each cumulatively at the start of your turn rather than three VPs each at game end. In annihilation you can opt to score a victory point for every 200pts killed rather than one per unit. No limitation was placed on detachments, unbound armies, allies, or anything else. Unfortunately no one showed up with anything super crazy, despite our hopes.

More photos are available in the Flickr gallery.

Stay on target!

Stay on target!

Army

The least traditional army composition actually wound up being mine, which featured a big stack of five source books: Space Marines, Astra Militarum, Inquisition, Stronghold Assault, Imperial Knights:

  • Combined Arms Detachment: Space Marines (Salamanders)
    • Captain Angholan—Vulkan
    • Ghost Squad Harmon—Sternguard x5 w/ 3x Combi-Meltas, Poweraxe, Drop Pod
    • Squad Scolirus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Powerfist+Boltgun, Flamer, Multi-Melta, Drop Pod
    • Squad Titus—Tacticals x10 w/ Vet Sgt, Chainsword+Bolt Pistol, Meltagun, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod
    • Scouts x5 w/ 5x Camo Cloaks, 5x Sniper Rifles
    • Squad Harbinger—Devastators x5 w/ Chainsword+Bolt Pistol+Signum, 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
    • Akil—Predator w/ Autocannon
    • Justus—Predator w/ Autocannon
    • Imperial Bunker w/ 2x Void Shields
  • Combined Arms Detachment: Astra Militarum
    • Commander Higgenbotham—Company Command Squad w/ Plasmapistol, Flamer
    • Veterans w/ Flamer
    • Veterans w/ Flamer
    • Armoured Sentinel w/ Plasmacannon
  • Inquisitorial Detachment
    • Inquisitor Coteaz
  • Imperial Knight Detachment
    • Knight Errant

The Predators were last second additions to bump to 2000 pts. Given more time to prep I would probably have kitted up another Drop Pod of Tacticals for more deep striking objective grabbing and camping.

One reason for that particular Guard structure is to have two Combined Arms detachments and together with Coteaz have three options for my warlord:

  • Vulkan if a bonus point condition warranted it;
  • Coteaz if I faced daemons;
  • The Company Commander otherwise.

I wound up using the Company Commander each time to get access to the BRB traits but they did not matter.

In each battle I took all of Coteaz’s powers from Divination as I really only cared about Prescience. Despite this list being a bit all over the place, I’m a big fan of keeping things simple, particularly new elements. I wasn’t planning on spending brain cycles debating between multiple powers. In addition, with two mastery levels I generally wouldn’t have enough warp charge to cast multiple powers.

This was the first time in quite some while that my army wasn’t pretty much entirely painted. That was a bummer, but I decided it was worth it in the spirit of trying new stuff for 7th edition. Unfortunately much of that army I had essentially no experience with. Coteaz I’ve used once before. Guardsmen I used in our January Apocalypse battle but they just sat around in a bunker. The Knight I just assembled this week; I actually had to buy the codex while signing up for the tournament yesterday.

All that said, despite its many parts and source books, for a 2000pt battle that doesn’t seem like an obnoxious list to me and is actually pretty balanced and fluffy. Unfortunately it seems like it would be banned under the restrictions some of the major tournaments are gravitating toward. More on that in a future post.

Let's do this thing!

Let’s do this thing!

Round 1

First up: Carl and his Tau, featuring a Commander, some Broadsides and Marker Drones, a Skyray, 2 Riptides and 18 Crisis Suits. The mission was Crusade (4 objectives), long axis deployment. We both picked alternate scoring. I deployed first and went first.

Fight!

On the drop I wasn’t able to land my Sternguard out of line of sight and they got hammered by Riptides on the intercept, yielding First Blood, a 2 VP swing as it also denied me First Blood on the Skyray. Tacticals though came down to contest Carl’s home objective. With all his Crisis Suits reserved and the army preferring not to move out aggressively, that left Carl scoring little in the early going. In contrast the Kingbreakers spread out all over the board and ran up an early lead.

As usual with the alpha strike though and particularly against Tau shooting, the momentum slowly turned and the thinly spread Kingbreakers got rolled back across all quadrants. Exacerbating the issue, the Knight was taken down right in the locus of the army, generating a catastrophic titanic explosion that crippled a number of units. Eventually the bunker’s void shields were broken through and the battlements started taking casualties, notably yielding Slay the Warlord when Commander Higgenbotham and his veterans got fragged by a cover-ignoring blast.

Look at me, I'm so awesome!

Look at me, I’m so awesome!

Outcome

Kingbreakers hold out for the win, 9 objective points versus the Tau’s 3 objective points, Slay, and Blood. Tragically the endgame death of my warlord deprived me of a crushing victory by putting Carl just above half my points.

Analysis

I think Carl’s big issue here was that he incorrectly decided very early on that he would have to table me to reclaim victory from my initial points lead, and he focused entirely on that. Among other things, that’s a risky strategy if you’re not totally sure of the clock; between my infantry movement and his extensive shooting + movement—the many assault jumps in his army take quite a bit of time, effectively adding an entire second movement phase to his turn—this game only went 4 turns. Particularly with those assault jumps giving so much mobility, if he hadn’t lost sight of the objectives he would have been easily able to start cranking out objectives points very soon after his Crisis Suits arrived from reserve.

Random meetings in a dark alley in the 41st millenium.

Random meetings in a dark alley in the 41st millenium.

Round 2

Next up: John and Pat with their Clan Raukaan and Imperial Fists team-up, both using their respective codex supplements. Core elements included 3 lascannon Devastator Centurions, 3 grav-amp/hurricane bolter Devastator Centurions, two Librarians with various relics, a Stormtalon flyer, a Thunderfire Cannon, a collection of Drop Pod Tacticals and Sternguard, and of course meltaguns and lascannons everywhere. The mission was Purge the Alien (annihilation), very much a rarity at Redcap’s. Deployment was 12″ long edges. I chose alternate scoring, they went for normal. I deployed first and went first.

Fight!

Ghosts on the drop managed to wound the Raukaan Librarian despite his Centurion bodyguards soaking up wounds. This paved the way for the Librarian to die from Perils of the Warp and yield First Blood and Slay the Warlord. Tactical 1 had little impact on the drop and took heavy casualties but Angholan eliminated the Thunderfire Cannon before expiring to overwatch fire. Most of the Imperial Fists spent the game engaging the Knight Errant en route to their encampment, eventually taking it down as it thrashed through ruins. The Stormtalon buzzed about strafing the bunker’s void shields to hopefully expose it for random lascannon potshots. Everybody else spent the match in a drop pod furball mirror match, with Raukaan and Kingbreakers going blow for blow throughout the trench works and ruins across the board.

Barbarians at the gates!

Barbarians at the gates!

Outcome

Kingbreakers prevail again by a slim margin, 5 kill points plus First Blood, Slay, and Linebreaker versus 6 kill points plus Linebreaker. This was a really great game, with tons of different activity going on all over the board. Not only was it extremely close but it was super hard to quickly gauge the score throughout. Nobody had any real idea who was up or down until the final tally, though I think they thought they were much farther behind than they were.

Thoughts

One notable local meta thing is that Redcap’s reworked their cathedral/dockyard ruins set up quite a bit. It’s now visibly more open, though there’s still a ton of ruins for cover and straight out line of sight blocking. I liked the board a lot before even though its very limited firing lanes hampered me, but the new version is much smoother for 40k play, particularly at the larger end of the points spectrum, and more fair to more armies.

No doubt important in this game was the Sternguard more or less successfully going after the Raukaan Librarian. Him taking a Perils wound was huge, but it was a big deal that the Sternguard got at least one wound on him beforehand. The guy’s tough to kill: Can’t be insta-gibbed by double strength, has a 3+/3++ save, Feel No Pain, and typically hangs around with some 2+ save Centurion bodyguards. Even without the Libby going down though, taking out two grav-amp Centurions in that first turn was a big mental boost. John did come in with Invisibility known to his Librarian, but with two of them down I was much less worried about him being able to shield that unit even before he expired prematurely.

Skeletor says: Protect me, you fools!  With your lives if necessary! And maybe even if not!

Skeletor says: Protect me, you fools! With your lives if necessary! And maybe even if not!

Alternate Scoring

This was the first I’ve seen Redcap’s alternate annihilation scoring, and it might actually have been its first appearance. It was pretty obvious for Pat and John that they should take normal scoring as my list featured a whopping 21 possible kill points, even before any combat squadding. Much of that was also fairly squishy.

On my end, choosing alternate scoring was a mistake that very nearly cost me the round. Glancing at John & Pat’s army they didn’t seem to have a ton of units, certainly an underestimate. None of it seemed super squishy either—not many Rhinos or such, and a bunch of hard targets like Centurions and a flyer. My logic was that alternate scoring would defeat a core strength of Marines: Having a bunch of single dudes or pairs hanging around doing nothing but not yielding up a kill point for wiping their entire unit. This is precisely a big part of how I snuck in the win: By the end I had four near-dead but persistent Space Marine infantry units—3 Tacticals, 2 Tacticals, 1 Sternguard, 1 Scout. Thinking about it more clearly though, 200 pts per Victory Point in alternate versus a straight-up unit per point in normal scoring is too high a tradeoff. For example, you’d have to kill an entire 10 man Tactical (140 pts + upgrades) as well as their transport (35 pts) for that point, versus two under normal scoring, three if they combat squad.

So, under the current Redcap’s rules, my new heuristic is I should all but always choose alternate objective scoring and almost always choose normal annihilation. Alternate annihilation only possibly makes sense if facing an extremely dense Terminator army or such, and even then only if they have large blobs (not the standard 5 man squads) or very expensive kit-outs. I think that logic holds for most armies, so both sets of alternate scoring conditions probably warrant some tweaking, one for being universally better and the other universally worse.

All these void shields and no one brought a fly swatter?!  Damnit!

All these void shields and no one brought a fly swatter?! Damnit!

Round 3

Final match: Colin and his Blood Angels/Dark Angels deep striking bonanza. He brought close to what he announced he would: Belial, 15 Terminators, a Reclusiarch, 2 Furioso Dreadnoughts, a Death Company Dreadnought, Assault Marines, Death Company Tacticals, and Scouts. The mission was Crusade (4 objectives) and table corners deployment. We both went for alternate scoring. I deployed first and went first.

This was probably the most thought I’ve seen put into objective placement under the new 7th edition rules. I placed mine as hard as possible into diagonally opposed corners, hoping to curtail adjacent deep striking surface area. Colin placed both of his near the center, in opposite directions along the long axis.

Deployment.

Deployment.

Fight!

The Inquisition detects a group of Blood Angels Scouts skulking about outside a continental capital and decides to bring them in for questioning about suspected mutations within their geneseed. Captain Angholan takes this charge a bit too zealously and accidentally flames the initiates to a crisp for First Blood. Hearing their dieing calls for help, equally suspicion-clouded Dark Angels in the sector drop in alongside more Blood Angels to avenge their barbecuing. Kingbreakers call in reinforcements, and before long nobody can back down from the fighting throughout the shanty town surrounding the city.

Far from the Kingbreakers outpost, Belial precision deep strikes in tight quarters and wipes out Squad Titus. The Kingbreakers’ Knight ally is mobbed by Furiosos and assault cannon Terminators, with Angholan nearby but unable to break through copious slum detritus in time to assist before it is detonated. Ghosts make a desperate landing into a massive vat of highly corrosive industrial waste, taking heavy casualties as the veterans struggle to not sink under the weight of their power armor. Their sacrifices are awarded however by perfect positioning and the outright kill of a fearsome Death Company Dreadnought before joining the ongoing firefight echoing down the main avenues.

Up and down the alleyways, Devastators and Predators trade fire with Terminators, screaming balls of plasma charges and pounding autocannon thumps rebutted by the continual chittering of assault cannon hits across the scrap metal structures. Heads tucked low, the Forest Guard charge forward in all directions to reclaim ground for their fallen battle brothers but are repulsed by the raging Blood Angels Reclusiarch and caught short working their way through ruined Drop Pods.

Stick 'em up! --- I can't! This is as much flexibility as I have!

Stick ’em up! — I can’t! This is as much flexibility as I have!

Outcome

Dark-Blood Angels win convincingly, 8 objective points and Linebreaker to 1 objective point and First Blood.

Through turn 3 we were tied, neither of us scoring much on objectives as nearly all were contested. After that though Colin had swept my Troops off and gotten more of his on, quickly racking up the points with three objectives scored on each of turns 3 and 4. Nearly all his army consists of troops, including the Dreadnoughts and Drop Pods, and in several cases trumped my Predators and other units to claim objectives out from under them.

Both of us screwed up and forgot to take a moment to punch a building when we had nothing else to do, and thus gave up a cheap bonus battle point. Always stay on top of your bonus points!

Thoughts

Everybody else chose to go second against Colin so the Deathwing and Pods would come down and they’d have a chance to shoot at him on their first turn. I went first so I could claim First Blood against the Scouts and setup my guys on objectives to hopefully claim points on turn 2. I think that was a reasonable decision, though I have to think more about whether it was best. Among the downsides were letting Colin basically optimally target all my dudes rather than forcing him to go after some objectives blind. It put a lot of pressure on me to instantly build up effective defenses around those objectives to score at least once or twice before probably getting wiped. Compounding the basic challenge there is basically everything in his army having Objective Secured. It’d be a lot easier to do when looking at opposing Sternguard or regular Terminators coming down. All in all, not a ridiculously poor strategy, but a tough road.

In practice though I poorly bubble wrapped the far objective with disembarked Tacticals. In my head I was trying to get a couple shots on the opposing Scouts just in case, and to bubble wrap the Drop Pod a bit. The first of course was completely unnecessary, and the second a lesser priority. That line of thought wound up skewing my deployment around the objective and Belial’s squad was able to contest it, preventing me from scoring it on turn 2. In reality with how my Pod came down I should have been able to deploy those guys to force Belial far enough away from the objective to score that critical point at least once.

Mid-game.

Mid-game.

Somewhat similarly, despite me placing my objectives in the corners, I opted to not build my castle there. That left my control over that objective much much more tenuous, and in fact Colin got a lucky break when my combat squad holding it broke from shooting casualties and ran out of place, costing me another point. Otherwise though my whole castle group would have had extremely limited firing options.

Instead I placed the fortification where the Devastators would have somewhat reasonable firing lanes on both the central objectives, and they did wind up doing a lot. The fort was also then positioned for the Guardsmen to run at either my corner objective or the closer of the central markers.

Unfortunately I wound up not actually executing that well and used my Guardsmen poorly. Timing is everything and I misgauged a bit. I also didn’t utilize my orders well, just through inexperience. Moving toward the corner objective, if my Guardsmen had charged Colin’s Assault Marines a turn earlier instead of rapid firing I might have been able to stall the Blood Angels just long enough for my Predator to score it once. Similarly, I started moving my other squad of Guardsmen toward the central objective late, partly out of neglect and partly fear they’d get shot up too early. I then compounded that by not using my orders to have them shoot + run, or even better to run faster, and potentially get onto that objective to score once.

Stop kicking me! Stop kicking me!

Stop kicking me! Stop kicking me!

Outcome

Despite the crushing loss at the end, I still wound up apparently winning the tournament, though I confess I don’t fully understand the rankings. Carl actually wound up with more battle points than me, with John and then Colin in 3rd and 4th. I’m assuming that whatever scoring was used in Torrent of Fire to run the round-robin—not the way most 40k tournaments are usually done—bracketed me ahead for beating Carl and John, Carl beating both John and Colin, and John beating Colin. Carl also won the painting raffle so I think he came out ahead on loot regardless.

Either way and despite the low attendance, I was pleased to continue my streak of not finishing worse than 2nd this year. The loss to Colin was a blow as I had tried to kit out my army specifically to fight his, but I think with just a bit better play I might be able to swing at least a close game.

Army Thoughts

Scouts continue to be particularly useful in 7th to infiltrate onto objectives way out in no-man’s land. That’s going to be increasingly important through the combination of the new objective placement rules with increasing focus on cumulative and other scoring mechanisms not simply applied at game-end.

Even with my inexperience and some misplay, the Guard contingent did a good job. The bubble wrapping was useful and they actually did some damage in shooting. That core of Company Command + a Veteran Squad or two is basically the cheapest setup for an Allied or Combined Arms detachment, respectively. Taking an Infantry Platoon would incur another ~40 points, trading off the Vet Squad surcharge for a required Platoon Command Squad. This scheme also basically matched the models I had on hand, though I still had to build four plain Guardsmen the morning of the tournament as my others all had obvious special weapons and such. I would definitely consider bringing more Guardsmen just to sacrifice for bubble wrapping both the bunker and the Knight.

Two Combined Arms detachments would also enable both a bunker and a Void Shield Generator. That’s definitely something I’m thinking about, caveat that I think castling up is going to be less and less viable with the newly developing objective placement rules and scoring mechanisms.

No castles, only attack!  Attack!

No castles, only attack! Attack!

The Knight was somewhat disappointing, though not a blowout. It didn’t actually manage to kill hardly anything, but everybody saw it as a huge threat and devoted significant focus toward bringing it down, in and itself a useful thing. I was torn beforehand but currently think the Errant with its melta blast is indeed the better option, compared to the 2x large blast of the Paladin variant. It’s a tough call, but the second blast is probably overkill and the melta bonuses more useful.

With Drop Pods and such increasingly back in vogue the Knight can really stand solid bubble wrapping to stand off melta weapons. It also needs to be kept away from terrain to have maximal impact. Somewhat oddly it moves a very fast 12″ over open ground but apparently—the intent is unclear—moves in terrain like a typical model with Move Through Cover, at most 6″. Note that this is a big debuff for super-heavy walkers versus other super-heavy vehicles, which move 12″ regardless of terrain and can’t immobilize. Given the fire that will concentrate on the Knight, I think you really want it running forward as fast as possible to smash some enemies in assault before it goes down. Just as importantly, that will help ensure the catastrophic super-heavy explosion happens in their lines and not yours.

Seventh

Although a small tournament, this was a great day with a bunch of good players and tight games. It was unfortunate there wasn’t a wider variety of armies to see more of what’s possible under raw 7th edition rules. We also did uncover a whole bunch of things that are either ambiguous or deceptively substantial changes in the rules. But I remain really optimistic about the core of this edition, and am currently as excited about 40k as I was at the start of 5th, which is quite a bit.

Again, more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

You gonna die, boy! --- Aw, leave me alone, you guys don't even score!  Seriously, you're like the only thing in the game that doesn't anymore!  Just let me have this, it's all I do!  Aauuguguh!

You gonna die, boy! — Aw, leave me alone, you guys don’t even score! Seriously, you’re like the only thing in the game that doesn’t anymore! Just let me have this, it’s all I do! Aauuguguh!

40k: Redcap’s 1250pt Tournament

kingbreakers-iconRedcap’s December 40k tournament went off well yesterday, ten people attending.  The majority of armies were loyalist Marines, with a sprinkling of Chaos, Eldar, Tau, and Orks.  Colin’s Noise Marines wound up second, Brett’s Orks somewhere in the middle.  I only finished seventh, getting annihilated in the first game by Owen’s Blood Angels, which went on to win, and a closely fought but ultimately crushing loss to Jeremy’s Daemons in the third.

Benn and Adam have Redcap’s 40k tournaments super dialed at this point.  All the small but critical stuff a bunch of us have asked for over time, like posted  terrain specifications and tournament standings formulas, are all getting done, and notably lacking at other similar venues.  As always the missions are straight forward and well balanced, with a number of critical details from the book missions adjusted, like setting a fixed and even numbers of objectives where appropriate.  This diversity of nice looking, well playing tables also really demonstrated their excellent terrain collection, especially with a lot of very thematic setups.  I myself played in a French village, in a lush greenland canyon, and a parched, corrupted desert.  Other tables featured a snowy border checkpoint, ruined mega cathedral, and Imperial loading dock.  Pretty sweet!

Orks invading... no, running away from... an Imperial dockyard.

Orks invading… no, running away from… an Imperial dockyard.

More photos are in the Flickr gallery; I was able to get at least a few of most of the armies.

Army

In dropping my usual list(s) down to 1250 points I wound up with one that was built of my standard elements but felt very different overall:

  • Capt Angholan—Vulkan
  • Sternguard x5 w/ w/ 3x Combi-Meltas
  • Tacticals x10 w/ Razorback, Vet Sgt, Powerfist, Plasmagun, Missile Launcher
  • Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino, Vet Sgt, Melta Bombs, Meltagun, Missile Laucher
  • Devastators x5 w/ Vet Sgt, 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
  • Predators x2 w/ Autocannon, Heavy Bolter sponsons
  • Aegis Defense Line w/ Quad-gun

Notably missing are the Librarian, the Sternguard’s Drop Pod, my numerous Landspeeders, and fewer Troops than I usually run even at this point level.  From these changes it was much less alpha/early-strike oriented, and much less able to spam camp objectives.

It’s worth noting that all the games were played on 4×4 boards.

Round 1

First up was Purge the Alien against Owen’s Black Templars-disguised Blood Angels.  This was brutal.  To a large extent I think I was just rusty, not having played at all since last month’s Alternate Universes tournament and still being hesitant enough with 6th edition for that to have a big impact.  I could definitely tell the difference in my play between the 1st and 3rd rounds.

There were really two problems.  One was that my table side was dominated by two large impassable buildings, situated such that I only had two small pockets with clear firing lanes on opposite table edges to deploy into.  With my new gunline oriented army vibe this is a big problem.  I debated castling up behind the buildings almost entirely, but then I would have gotten only at best one round of shooting off before getting assaulted.  In the end my army wound up divided in half with two components relatively unable to support each other due to the terrain.  Owen was thus able to specifically pit his dudes against their best match in my army, e.g., keeping his Land Raider away from my Sternguard melta-bubble and crushing Tacticals on the other table edge.

Damn it, people, I said everybody better bring melta, *everybody*!

Damn it, people, I said everybody better bring melta, *everybody*!

The other issue was his army, essentially a tight, hard brick with only seven units.  Through the first couple turns the only things facing me were that Land Raider Redeemer, a Mortis Pattern Contemptor Dreadnought, a well hidden TL Lascannon Razorback, and some Scouts tucked away in his backfield.  That basically meant I was staring down AV 14, AV 13, and a serious cover save.  With just a few (combi-) meltas on hand, and none particularly mobile at that, the Land Raider was basically unstoppable.  The Contemptor similarly shrugged off what limited Str 7+ shooting I could apply to it, while it in turn rained down tons of high strength shots.

In fairly narrative fashion, the Contemptor climbed up into the top of a ruined steeple and began raining down high strength shots while the Land Raider drove itself like a wedge forward into one of my encampments under its baleful gaze.  A Reclusiarch and Death Company then piled out and annihilated what few Kingbreakers were left standing, turning this into a complete rout.

Hahaha, I will rule this world like a king!  LOLz!

Hahaha, I will rule this world like a king! LOLz!

Somewhat ironically, my traditional lists that I’ve been moving away from and left behind almost entirely this tournament would have been much better suited to this opponent.  Owen would be tough no matter what, and I could do better with this weekend’s list in a rematch when I’m less fuzzy, but this is basically exactly the opponent for which my Melta-Pod Sternguard/Landspeeder Multi-melta fleet/Vulkan re-roll army and aggresive, mobile play-style was designed.  Damn it!

Round 2

Next up was John, a new player, and his Dark Angels, in the Scouring.  To a large extent I had a number of significant lucky breaks go my way this game.  First, tragically for his entirely Deep Striking army, we wound up on a table with tons of rock columns.  I then won table edge selection and used that to fill up the single clear area on the entire board with all of my dudes.  No stranger to aggressive Drop Pod tactics myself, I was careful to leave almost no space for him to come down within my lines, and to have a lot of overlapping fire fields on anything that did land nearby.  The highest value objective also came up right in my ideal location.

Let's go this way!

Let’s go this way!

The terrain, my deployment, and bad scatter all worked to put his Drop Pods down in unfortunate locations.  His warlord Librarian and a Command Squad with Banner of Devastation were wiped out immediately after landing, having only managed to take out a Predator.  In the final substantial lucky break for me, one of his two teleporting Terminator squads mishapped itself out of the game.

Supported by my firebase and with a large portion of his army out unduly early, I was able to spread pretty thinly, with a Combat Squad on one objective, a Tactical Rhino advancing to another, Sternguard eventually running to and clearing one of the Dark Angels’, and Capt Angholan + Squad Scolirus wiping out another DA squad to claim a third objective and a crushing victory.

Though they didn’t last long enough to have a ton of impact, I did like John’s Command Squad fielding multiple meltaguns and a Banner of Devastation.  At some point I expect to start fielding a Kingbreakers Command, it’s almost definitely become a worthwhile & efficient unit this edition.

Noooope, can't get out that way.

Noooope, can’t get out that way.

One very interesting thing that happened in this game was that I actually wound up boxed out in deploying my three objectives.  Between me placing two in my quarter (Vanguard Strike deployment) and John running his across the center diagonal, the geometry worked out that I could not put my third anywhere near my dudes and had to put it in his table half.  Granted, by necessity that means one of his was not too far from my corner, but I was a bit flummoxed for a moment.  I don’t think I’ve ever had that really happen before, an unanticipated consequence of the small 4×4 tables and large number of objectives (6) that I should have anticipated better.

Round 3

Finally I faced Jeremy and his Chaos Daemons in Big Guns Never Tire.  His army is hilarious, in a positive way, because it consists entirely of 6 units: 4 big daemons, and 2 groups of 10 little daemons.  It’s just funny to look around at the various hordes and fleets of flyers and big vehicles… and then see his force very neatly arranged onto an 8.5×11 sheet of paper.

CHAAAAOOOSSSSSSSS!!!

CHAAAAOOOSSSSSSSS!!!

Deployment

I put one objective deep in a corner and he did the same across the table, probably meaning that I would have had to go straight through his heavy hitters to get to it, rather than flanking around like I would hope.  My second also went along my back edge reasonably close to the first, and he put his second at table center, conveniently enough in the middle of a Chaos Shrine offering improved invulnerable and cover saves to the Daemons.

I gave him first turn, thinking otherwise he’d just deploy entirely into reserve and leave me nothing to shoot at.  Some plaguebearers camped out in a ruin around the Chaos backfield objective and basically removed themselves entirely from the game at that point.  Certainly the Kingbreakers never got over there to ask what they were doing or if we could have the objective instead.  The Khorne Prince and two generic Princes then set up a flying vanguard phalanx at table center in front of a Keeper of Secrets.

Let's do this thing.

Let’s do this thing.

Kingbreakers took a few risks in deployment.  Unusually for me, I broke both Tacticals into Combat Squads, on the theory that:

  • Daemons would eat them in assault no matter how big the squads were;
  • One each could then be used as a speed bump, sacrificing itself to keep bad guys away from its partner on an objective for another turn;
  • One would then be able to fire at a daemon and force a grounding check, hopefully enabling the other with a heavy weapon to fire at full effect.

Contrary to the lessons of the first round and my usual preferences for large self-supporting groups, I also broke the army into three groups.  Sternguard, Tacticals, and a Predator camped out in an Aegis encirclement around one objective.  Devastators and the second Predator camped out on the opposite table edge.  Angholan and Tacticals prepared to move toward the center objective, leaving behind a Combat Squad on another.  The main rational was that on a 4×4 table and very clear board with broad sightlines, my relatively large number of 36″ weapons would still be able to support each other all across the back edge, which turned out to be largely true.

Early goings.

Early goings.

Fight!

Those overlapping fire fields then went to work on the daemons as they flitted about.  One generic Prince went down immediately, though he would later make a brief reappearance via Warp Tether.  The Predators both went down and various Marines got Vector Striked, but the two fire camps did a good job at taking down the Khorne and generic Princes that split up to go after them.

In the midst of and following that, the center field featured extended tight action with the Keeper of Secrets.  Angholan was deceived by its tricksy ways and rolled four 1s on his buffed out 2+/3++ to die immediately in combat with the beast.  Tacticals strove bravely against it but were slowly chewed down.  By the time supporting fire could end its rampage, Kingbreakers were left with a single Troop unit to hold the home objectives.

Simultaneously with the end of those fights, a unit of Daemonettes spawned onto the center objective.  Faced with a tough choice, Sternguard trusted the Tacticals to do their duty to the Emperor and handle the Keeper while they attempted to clear this horde off the shrine.  Their valiant effort was for nought though as the daemons managed to sweep them up in their claws, and carried that momentum onto the remaining Tacticals and the Kingbreakers’ home turf.  The Marines stood their ground staunchly, but could not ultimately claim the field of battle.

TO THE DEATH.

TO THE DEATH.

Outcome

Like many great battles, in the end this swung from pretty tight to a crushing win for Jeremy.  I could only contest the one objective—with a single Marine, locked in combat—plus Slay the Warlord, while he claimed an objective, Slay, First Blood, and Linebreaker for the victory.

At one point near the end I could have played more strongly for a draw by sending the Sternguard to support the already-stricken Tacticals on my second objective against the oncoming Keeper.  I consciously decided though to risk a loss and play for the win by attempting to clear the center objective, hoping the Tacticals would also wipe the Keeper and remain to hold their objective.

That didn’t work out, but I can’t complain.  It was a tight and fun game, and any number of small changes in rolls could have tipped it either way.  Even just Angholan (Vulkan) not uterrly failing all of his saves and getting in a single wound on the Keeper would have a good chance of leading to at least a draw.

Umm, yeah, to the death?  Whatever those guys said...  I guess?  Help!

Umm, yeah, to the death? Whatever those guys said… I guess? Help!

Analysis

I’ll have to think more about Daemons and first turn now that they can actually deploy rather than spawn.  Particularly with a bunch of flying creatures and their relative survivability to shooting making it more feasible for the opponent to start them on the board, there’s probably little reason to give them the first go.

In picking table sides I did choose wrongly.  They were both very clear so I didn’t think too hard about it.  There was though on my side a very small impassable building in the center of my deployment zone, while the other side was totally clear between the edges.  That meager couple inches of blocking though did eliminate just a couple potential shots, particularly approaching the endgame.  Though only a slight change, in such tight action in my home field, having those could have made a huge difference.

One huge standout in this game were the heavy bolters in my Devastators.  The unit got decimated by Vector Strikes, but they continued to hang tough and contributed enormously to the game.  Their ability to target the flying creatures and attempt to force ground checks was a big deal, while the plasma cannons were almost useless in this particular game.  I’ve always maintained that the 2x Plasma, 2x Bolter Dev mix is pretty good, even when it was overpriced last edition, and this is yet another reason why in the new 6th edition rules.

For the emperor.

For the emperor.

Lastly, one small note is that in general I really dislike such clear boards despite my recent shooting-oriented efforts.  Redcap’s boards and terrain look so good though that I really like the visuals of the empty-ish, desert themed boards they make, and they ensure just enough key terrain on to make it interesting game-wise.

General Thoughts

This was a great day, even after I got crushed in the opening.  The small boards and well thought out, thematic terrain looked particularly good.  I was also pleased to fight three very different armies, from Owen’s mechanized Power Armour, to John’s alpha-strike Drop Pods & Terminators, to Jeremy’s extremely compact Daemon force, with an especially good game to end the day.  I’m not super sure how I feel about the increasingly static shooting nature of my army, but it’s reasonably credible, and has at least been interesting to experiment with.

Again, more photos are in the Flickr gallery.

Boogedy-boogedy-boo!

Boogedy-boogedy-boo!