Alright I got a game in last night and was able to use some new tactics with my psykers, though sadly not against Tau. I did play a beautiful Emperor's Children theamed Chaos Space Marines/Deamons army. I sadly forgot to take pics, got caught up in the game and it was late so we tried to rush through it. Suffice it to say that they were great looking and his converted Deamon Prince was awesome, lots of green stuff and if I catch his army again I will def take pics. So we played 1850, had corners deployment and played big guns never tire, which meant nothing since neither of us had heavy support. I won the roll off for deployment and there was no night fighting.Now his army to the best I can remember:
DP with wings and Burning brand flamer, no psyker levels, power weapon
Lucius the eternal
10x Termie squad with 2x reaper auto cannons
2x Noise marine squads in rhinos w/blastmaster (meltas)
1x CSM squad in rhino (meltas)
the Masque w/deamonettes(15 I think)
I had:
CCS with creed, all advisors, bodyguard, vox, regimental standard
Primaris Psyker (rolled on telepathy took psychic shriek and the embolden(the fearless one))
Psyker battle squad 6x psykers
Marbo
Platoon w/2x squads w/melta, vox, Sgts w/power axes, commisar with maul
PCS with 3x grenade launchers, vox
2x Mortar squads
5x vet squads(3x w/lascannon, 2x with Melta and heavy flamers)
2x Vendetta's
So this was a decent match up, he didn't have a lot of anti-armor but I had little vehicles for him to kill and we each had something that could fly. He didn't sieze so I went first. The board had ruins in each corner, and we had a massive LoS blocking piece of terrain in the center. I personally like having them, even as a guard player, it adds more to the game and gives the army that doesn't have the sit back and shoot button a chance to mauever. There were 5 objectives, all of them around the center peice of terrain, with one off in the corner of the board.
Turn 1 I moved my Platoon up on my left flank, nothing was in line of sight of them so thats all they did. I then tried shooting but he had a lot of cover and made his saves, mortars shot at the termies, I got one to a lascannon and the master of ordnance knocked a hull point off a rhino. Not much else, he had a lot behind cover and out of LoS, the big center blocker helped him a lot, which is a good thing, not fair to have it open and just be pummled by turn 1 shooting.
I got lucky and he immobilized one of his rhinos, the other 2 moved up, the DP and the termies followed. He had no shooting and no assaults, so a very exciting turn one ended.
The Next turn was more fruitful, Marbo and my Vendetta's came in from reserve, dropped marbo behind the terminators in the rear ruins. The blob moved up, making to move around behind the big center terrain. PCS moved toward the objective. Psykers moved out and got behind the Aegis. Shooting was much more effective, blasted the lead rhino with lucius in it, but he made all his armor and FNP saves so nothing big but it is first blood. Get a termie with marbo and a few more with my vendettas, bringing them down to four. My barrages continued to be ineffective and miss, as they would the entire game, it was pretty bad. But I manage to get first blood and knock out a bunch of termies.
He moves over next and and gets his DP in range of my blob and burning brand of skalthraxes them. Kills seven and then charges later. His squad with lucius moves up and engages my vet squad and kills four with their noise guns, but my guys hold. His last rhino moves up and is in position to get into combat next turn. The game is pretty even right now, luckily my Master of The fleet has prevented his deamons coming in, def worth the pay off. I've hurt him but he still has two pretty much full noise marine squads and a CSM squad, the termies are still a threat and the DP is going to be munching guardsmen. I refuse the challenge first and try and do as much damage, my hope was that the sarges with power axes would do something but that was a mistake, no dice there. Only lose three though and make my Ld, thank you stubborn. Oh and the Termies failed their morale and fall back.
So turn three begins in earnest and I have a two pronged assault coming my way with the DP moving on the left and the rest of the marines on the right. So I drop the vendettas into hover and drop my vet squads out, vendettas move back. PCS moves in front of my line and gets in line for an attack. The rest stays in position. I open fire with my dropped vet squads, do a little damage but he makes a lot of saves. Then comes psychic shriek, so first off he deny's my psyker battle squad so they are still Ld 10, but I roll 18 on my 3D6 and cause 8 wounds, pretty much anhilating the squad except for lucius and a marine. Note he made so many FNP saves during the game. I kill th elast rhino, wreck it only and mortars are able to kill two, master of ordnance misses again. Try as I might I could not roll a damn hit all night long. Only time he did anything was because I at least go lucky with the scatter. Oh well. The impoartant thing here is he know has to chew threw my squads before getting too my line, buying me another round of shooting. Note I did this on purpose and I had no desire for these guys to survive. This def kept the game in my corner, forcing him to deal with those squads and not be able to make it to my lines. DP kills a sarge, they hold, go stubborn!
So his deamonettes come in despite my fleet master, he places them in the top building to take that corner objective, but thankfully doesn't try to run them at me. His termies rally and shoot up marbo, but he makes all his cover saves. He does what is expected and has his marines charge my two vet squads, he doesn't shoot them and I think I kill one in overwatch, I didn't roll very well. And as expected they die, unfortunately he doesn't send them all straight at me with one squad consolidating back, but the other one and lucius move forward, hoping to live.
Turn 4 sees my Vendettas move back some more, I move my PCS around a little but not much more, I was going to use him on lucius. Anyways shooting. I kill Lucius in shooting, the front noise marine squad, and a few marines with psychic shriek, I payed for my high roll with a low one, but still got a couple. Mortars hit for the first time, but then he made all his saves so they continued doing nothing. FML. I guess they were tired still from killing all the kroot in hand to hand last game. So, he had on termie left, one CSM squad left, demonettes, and the DP. Not great, but we were tied in objectives and if his DP broke loose he could contest one of mine and win the game. Not over yet.
So his termie moves up and his squad moves back to hide. Demons stay still in the building and keeping his objective. Termie shoots a marbo, does nothing, he charges, only does one wound to marbo, but makes all of his saves from marbos attacks. Note this is prob the longest he has lasted in a game in a long time and did his job well, the termies focused on him and kept them from supporting the rest of the attack and kept them in the open for the vendettas to blast. Anywho, DP has finally made through all the sarges and kills a few more guardsmen, I am down to 8 now with a commissar, but I make my Ld again, thank you so much stubborn!
Turn 5 I zoom my vendetta's back into the corner and get set up for gun run next turn on the last squad. Other wise I am holding my objectives and hoping for my blob to hold the DP one more turn. And they do, he gets 3 more, I have 5 left. he rolled really badly to wound pretty consistently. They again make their Ld. I think the only Ld checks I failed were orders and one actual morale check the whole game. My mortars continued donig nothing, master of ordnance did nothing, I couldn't see anything so it was pretty uneventful.
He moves his guys out in a bid for the game to end turn 5. He moves his marines out, fires more shots, which kill enough guys in my vet squad to get them off the objective. Then he finally kills the blob squad, he gets a great consolidate and moves back getting cover. But thats it, he is winning currently, I only have one objective and first blood, he has two objectives. But the game does not end.
Turn 6, I move back into range for the objective, and then move my vendetta's into position, and wax 4 marines, the MoO finally does something and kills two, he only has one left behind the building. And I get weaken resoleve off, and then the killer thing happens, he deny's my shriek. Oh man still in it, the DP could throw me off the objective. Well I gambled and lost there. But I had enough fire power left to hopefully kill him.
He moves his DP, the guy kills all but two of the PCS but critcally seperates them from the psyker, which he charges. The psyker dies, but me guardsmen are still alive and on the objective. He consolidates back.
Turn 7, yes it kept going. I blast everything at his DP, and I kill him with lasguns, he made most of his invulsaves on the lascannons, but I blasted him with flashights and eventually banished him back into the warp. So we called it there, he had 3 VPs, I had 8 with two objectives and slay the warlord and first blood.
This was a great game and he just held in there. He made a lot of FNP saves and his DP would not die. However I kept the thing tied up for so many turns it did nothing the whole game except squish guardsmen. Though I intended my psyker tactics for tau, they actually were not too bad at all. I got a lot of damage with the weaken resolve and shriek combo. But I will say for it to go off, you better hope no deny the witch rolls are succesful. But thats how it goes and for what they cost they really are a no brainer. Sorry for no pictures. and I got tired of doing the power point half way through, sorry I am lazy and tired today. Will see about doing it more in the future, its just time consuming to do, I need to remember to take pics more.
He could have done things different, def should have ignored marbo with his termies and just moved towards me, that would have helped, as marbo is pretty useless with his pistol, luck dependent. It was def a game stacked in my favor and I got lucky when i needed to most of the time. The big play was the two veet squads sacrifing themselves for the emperor, buying me another turn of shooting. Other than that this game was a grinder, and guard excells at that. And as guard player, you can never be afraid of losing or sacrificing your guys, even what you consider expensive squads. The fact that they did not "get their points back" in kills does not mean they didn't win the game for me. The speed bump they provided was just enough. I had guys to throw away and my opponent didn't. He should have charged his demonettes but that is debateable as had the dice rolled differently he could have won by keeping them back. Either way is a gamble and its only a mistake in hindsight.
I had a good time and I hope he did too, though I know its now fun getting blasted in the face by guard, sorry I can't help that. Well still undefeated for now, will see how long this winning streak lasts. have yet to play a good eldar player yet so, waiting to see how that goes. I have never been afraid of eldar and refuse to do so. So I will win, somehow. We will see.
GG
I've always wanted to try out the psyker battle squad combo w. the shriek! good win though!
ReplyDeleteIt makes the primaris psyker pretty powerful even though only mastery level 1. Best thing is he can take 2 powers though, expect that to change in the next codex. Only thing is stay away from powerful psykers and eliminate SM psykers/sorcerers with sniping/barrage to get rid of psychic defenses.
DeleteI don't suppose you're in Northern California and willing to face a stranger's Eldar?
ReplyDeleteI am more than willing to face a stranger's eldar, especially if there is candy and a van involved. However I am in Washington, I will be in northern cali in December though. If you are up this way, more than welcome to a game.
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