40K Master's Battle Reports, With Pretty Pictures! Options

[Matt--ShadowLord]

Masters battle reports

At the last moment, I decided to pack my new and not quite finished Imperial Hoth army rather than the Echo Base one, so this was my very first try with Darth Vader as my army’s company commander.
One way or another, the local star systems would learn to fear the Emperor.




Round 1 vs Neil’s Daemons
Deployment - Dawn of War
Primary - Annihilation
Secondary – most troops entirely within 12’ of Table Centre

It was Daemons and DOW, so seeing Neil’s army with 18 fiends and 2 princes I very generously gave my opponent first turn so that he’d come down on an empty table not knowing where my army would arrive.
He landed, spread out with runs and braced for impact as I came on the end of the table furthest from his first wave. The first turn of shooting was unspectacular, most vehicles reduced to firing one weapon and the darkness of night fight stealing a few shots.



In his second turn more daemons arrived, gravitating to an icon near my lines, and he managed to take out a couple of chimeras. I know most people playing Daemons prefer to stay in their metal boxes if possible, but running infantry forward on foot to within 1’ of his units prevented most from being able to move much, and vastly superior firepower took out all major threats in charge range.



Neil gave it a good shot, but the rest was just a matter of target priority robbing him of any opportunity to pull the game back with assaults, and then, as I secured the centre with troops, with nothing but a few deamonettes in the corner he conceded.
Really big win (12)– reduced to Big win (10) by Comp.

[Matt--ShadowLord]

Round 2 vs Jeff Dunster’s Nuclear Guard
Deployment- Spearhead
Primary- Seize Ground (3 Objectives)
Secondary – Annihilation

This was a game I was really looking forward to – Imperial Guard vs a renegade guard army of rebellions peasants with air-support and nuclear weapons!



Jeff’s army has a manticore and two of the insane one-shot potential game-winner’s called Deathstrike Launchers, plus 2 vendettas and a Multimelta Devil Dog. I was fortunate enough to get first turn and raced forward to killed his manticore, take out a deathstrike with a lucky shot and shake a vendetta.

Seeing that he would outflank three units of penal infantry behind my lines, I sent my junior officer with flamers back to hold the flank, careful to not get too close in this turn because I’d need a 7’ move next turn to be hard to charge when they arrived. Beating outflankers is a precision business



Jeff retaliated by shooting down a vendetta and having his devildog move 12’ and blast my commander’s chimera to molten metal. My payback was the squad disembarked and hit the devildog with 4 meltaguns, ripping it apart. They would then start a long slog on foot behind enemy lines to get to the hidden Deathstrike – would they get their before the timer ticked down to zero and I lost a third of my army to a single fireball?

Awesome scene:


Jeff made the critical error of the game when his 30 angry penal warriors arrived on the end of flank as predicted… and the drunken rabble forgot to charge! With a look of utter contempt, my Junior Officer General Veers ordered his crew to purge the filth, laying down a heavy flamer and 4 flamers to crisp 28 enemy infantry who, to their credit, had had the foresight to come on in teardrop shaped formations.




Reaching the back of the enemy’s lines on foot, my Commander and his squad finally reached the enemy launcher and hit it will melta, just as the clock ticked down to 007.

Dramatic re-enactment


On the other side of the board I completely underestimated Commissar Yarrick, having never played against him, which lead to him punching not one but two vendettas right out of the sky and proving insanely hard to kill. And once I killed him, he got back up next turn to head towards and objective. And when I killed him again, he got back up and headed onward until finally tripping on a burnt out vehicle and staying dead.
I won’t dismiss the power of sweet zombie Yarrick again.

The game ended with Jeff having 5 men left alive, but since he very cannily managed to contest an objective with them it meant he still took some points from the game which cheered him up.

Big win – reduced to Win by Comp.

[Matt--ShadowLord]

Round 3 vs Dave Fleming’s Grey Knights
Deployment - Pitched Battle
Primary- Capture & Control
Secondary – Most troops in enemy’s 12 Deployment Zone

I expected Dave to set up his objective on the same flank as me, so purposefully chose the side with no cover at all for my army. That seems counter-intuitive until you’ve had terminators and Gk right in amongst your lines and they start getting cover saves against melta and lascannons. This meant we were playing a very tightly packed battle in a narrow space.




And then…….. He stole the initiative and took turn 1!

Dave outflanked a dread and a strike squad (are their any special rules GK don’t have! Lol) and got off to a good start by taking out 3 chimeras with his massive amount of psycannons and the psyfldread he had deployed. All but one of a squad of psykers died.


Dave had interceptors in the open, so rather than use lascannons on their usual primary targets of terminators I turned them all on the 3+ marines to kill all but one. The rest of my shooting did somewhere between virtually nothing and nothing.


The outflankers arrived to greet a chimera that had used smoke and moved 6+ on the end of my line (as usual) but still managed to take it out, while his second dread marched on and shook a vendetta with S8 Autocannons. I would have gladly taken a draw at this point, but since that would mean he would win (comp) I had no choice but to push on.

The outflankers died in a withering hail of return fire, while my shaken Vendetta did a turbo boost to drop infantry in his deployment zone to try take at least 2 points from the game.

I’d concentrated all my efforts on the closest enemies and the dreadnoughts, and soon my own objective was looking very secure while Dave’s vastly more elite army was starting to look surrounded.



This was my cue to start charging infantry across the board across the open space, counting on him being able to kill any but not all of them.

On turn 5 I turboed a vendetta into terrain on to his objective (not rolling a 1 to destroy it), but the game continued. By this time, my waves of infantry with meltaguns and lasrifles were in ‘Front Rank Fire’ range and the remaining Grey Knights and Terminators were dispatched.

It was a good game, Dave played well and it was a definitely a lot harder than the result makes it look.

Really Big Win (12) reduced to Really Big Win-lite (11) by Comp

[Matt--ShadowLord]

Round 4 vs Tim Neal’s Eldar
Deployment - Dawn of war
Primary - Seize Ground (5 Objectives)
Secondary – Annihilation

I’d hoped to play a Low KP Grey Knight army in the 5 objective game, but got sneaky objective stealing space elves instead. Oh well, as long as I didn’t get one of the 7 KP Grey Knights in the final Annihilation round it would still be ok.

Tim’s list is one of those incredibly hard to kill ones with fortune, waveserpents and holofield falcons.
I set up to channel the Eldar down the far end of the table away from my guns so I could take 3 objectives almost immediately, and then split two hydras away from the rest of my army to take advantage of almost inevitable clear shots


Tim came on where expected in order to reduce the amount of fire directed at him, although it meant the Hydras had a nice clear channel of fire.





Striking before fortune was cast, I managed to take out the avatar turn one, with the next highest priority being missile armed walkers (high damage output and actually possible to kill). I pushed hard into the corner with chimeras, infantry and vendettas, and as the battle went on Tim managed to kill two of the transports but was taking much higher casualties.
After losing their transport, 4 firedragons got into close range and evaporated the hydras, but were hit by a heavy flamer for their troubles. As I took the far side objective, Tim turboed the fortuned waveserpent down to my home objectives two turns in a row. This survived a hailstorm of firepower, and by the end he had managed to contest an objective with his now immobilised and weaponless waveserpent and dump out his farseer to contest a second.
These and another immobilised weaponless serpent were all that remained of his army, but it did what he needed in reducing the scale of my win and gaining him a couple of well-deserved points.
Great play under the circumstances.

Big win – reduced to Win by Comp.

[Matt--ShadowLord]

Round 5 vs Denis Grey Knights
Deployment - Pitched Battle
Primary- Kill Point
Secondary - Capture & Control

So not exactly my lucky day! Eldar for 5 objectives and then a GK army with 7 KP for the annihilation mission. My own army has 18 KP, including 4 from guardsmen and psykers on foot – which aren’t exactly the hardest points to score.

I won and kept first turn and set up to hold my objective with the majority of my army, with a smaller force ready to take his (I say smaller, but it still has as many KP has his whole army).

Dennis is a wily player, and decided to really mess with me by deploying nothing and making a dreadknight and interceptors outflank, two strike teams deepstrike, and his other interceptors and a dreadknight (both of which can move 30’!) come on from his board edge. Basically this meant while he had nothing on the table, virtually nothing in my army was safe and he would be coming from…. Everywhere.

I did everything I could to prepare: fast moves with tanks, using smoke launchers, turbo boosting vendettas, angling vehicles for maximum front armour, lining a board edge with infantry, moving 18+ from the other edge and ordering my infantry to dig in (extra cover saves) and then; the knights began to arrive.



Denis’ dreadknight leapt over my wall of vehicles (counts as 12’ jump troop) while his second teleported 30’ from his board edge and 2 combat squads of grey knight deepstruck into the rear arcs of my vendettas. Fortunately for me damage was lower than anticipated, and when he failed his charge into cover I was able to retaliate with melta teams I’d carefully pre-placed followed by lascannons. Twinlinked melta and lascannons saw to it that both dreadknights were killed in a single turn.
More troops arrived on Dennis’ next turn, some coming in 30’ and stormboltering my psykers (13 wounds on 7 men in the open meant everyone would die but my overseer could survive if he rolled a 6 on ‘Go to Ground’– done!).

10 more exceptionally heavily armed knights appeared on the left flank and charged my chimera and Darth Vader’s command squad. With nothing but laspistols and close combat weapons, the command squad managed to draw the combat with the only one of the 9 knights that attacked the, exactly as Denis had planned. This kept them out of the danger of my guns.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the next turn, Vader would pass an invulnerable save and kill two knights and win the combat, meaning they were prevented from charging or shooting in Denis’ turn. IMHO they were just lucky they didn’t break and flee.

Meanwhile, his large strike squad had deepstruck in, and opted to shoot rather than run to spread out, since my remaining blast weapon was the AP4 Manticore that marines laugh at.



I used a Psyker Battle squad to reduce their Leadership with Weaken Resolve, then fired the manticore at them. It rolled 3 warheads, then 3 hits in a row, putting down 30 hits on the grey knights which turned into 24 wounds! Even with allocation for weapon types, every Knight was killed in the resulting explosion. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: It’s not like me to waste a weaken resolve. But we all make mistakes.

I’d planned to take a before and after pic, but since there was nothing left you’ll have to settle for this:



Dennis finally managed to take out Vader’s squad, although never managed to kill the immortal chimera his 10 strikes with a deamon hammer and Dreadknight had had a go at, and the game ended early with the Grey Knights being tabled and the objective in Imperial Hands. He’d played a good game, especially with the complex deployment, and I was more relieved to win than anything.

Really Big win – reduced to Big Win by Comp.


I definitely felt under a bit of extra pressure in the games to push for major victories even when it meant taking extra risks because of the comp score ensuring any draws would be a loss for me, but it paid off in the end with a clean sweep of Big Wins.

Jeff was boasting that he took the most points off me despite having just 5 infantry left at the end of the game, so I know some of the results may look like landslides but in reality none of the games were anything but challenging. These were good players, and I was lucky to escape unscathed.

Thanks to all my opponents for the games, well played! Hope to see you all next year.

[Eldar_Storm]

Wow, nice report! A punishing amount of guns, winning every single 1st turn (minus a stolen initiave) and great play saw you take home the trophy.

well done mate, much deserved!

This post has been edited by Eldar_Storm: Jan 23 2012, 05:59 PM

[Matt--ShadowLord]

Thanks! Yep I went first 3 times, and with hind-sight would probably have preferred to go second against Denis' Grey Knights ---so that at least I would know where he was, instead of having to treat him as being everywhere and nowhere like a field full of ninjas!

With the ATC and next year's masters being Comp-free this may have been my first and last ever comp score, but to any guard players who come up against it regularly I should say something about how the Psyker Battle Squads performed.

I took 2 squads to this tournament but all it did over 5 games was cause 5 dire avengers to flee. It's fairly pointless against Guard who either don't care if they lose a weakened squad, have comissars or keep many of their men inside vehicles. Against the ubiquitous Grey Knights it is extremely hard to cast (more often on -4 than -1) and like the other MEQ they have ATSKNF frequently giving them an easy regroup and 3' move. Against Eldar, the Runes of Warding make it very dangerous, and I had to remove an avatar to even make it worth casting on those 5 dire avengers mentioned above. The daemons are of course fearless, Wolves very frequently have excellent protection, and BA tend to love to take Mephiston along.

The playing field has changed over the last couple years to the point where LD9 psykers reducing leadership isn't all it once was. Weaken Resolve is great and I intend to continue to run at least a squad of 6 psykers, but if you're getting hammered for it, it is worth having a second look.

[Good ol Shakey]

It has its uses, but is very much opponent dependent. Just remember, stubborn doesn't affect pinning tests...

BTW, congrats!

This post has been edited by Good ol Shakey: Jan 24 2012, 04:59 PM

[Reunion-Round]

I'll agree throughly that Psykers are next to useless. Mine had as much luck as yours, I made half a veteran squad flee and 4 dire avengers ran as well.

I was toying with dropping them for some other things. But in the end, I didn't get the motivation to paint anything extra and I wanted the extra chimera.

[Eldar_Storm]

also agreed. against Diffey they hid all game. against tim they failed to get through the runes, but rolled a total of 11 so no perils luckily. against stacy he was all mech or a blob with commissar and their blast didnt do too much. against scott they made a strike squad run off the board, but there was only the justicar left at that point. then i rolled 9's failing the next psychic test against his ageis!

[trigger happy]

Psykers + pinning = winning.

Its just a pity your all dumb and focus on killing rather than disabaling. Well not that much of a pity when i think about it.

[Blackhearts Reaver]

disabaling

ouch

[Angmar]

Did he mean Disballing ?

Sounds, nasty ?

[trigger happy]

Stupid phone, but yeah go with disballing, sounds effective enough.

[Matt--ShadowLord]

Psykers + pinning = winning.

Its just a pity your all dumb and focus on killing rather than disabaling. Well not that much of a pity when i think about it. armata_PDT_14.gif

Lol, well for the record I use WR before pinning weapons pretty consistently, since taking an enemy out for a turn by disballing him is worth the effort.

Apart from the increasing difficulty in casting psychic powers, there's also the issue that MEQ's who take casualties and test for pinning might also take enough casualties to fail leadership, auto-regroup and get stuck straight back into the fight.

Don't get me wrong, when used correctly Weaken Resolve is still one of the best psychic powers, but it's certainly less of an auto-include than it used to be as the metagame changes around it.