Battle Report: Imperial Guard vs Grey Knights 1850pts

Ah and finally the battle was met, after my dry spell I was able to get a game in and try out my new inquisitor and more importantly my servo skulls.  Yes I was playing grey knights again, I know it seems like I play them a lot and I do.  My brother has them, but I wasn't playing him this time.  I played a long time GK player who is usually at the store, he has other armies but his GK are his favorite and that is what he had so that is what I played against.  We played normal table length deployment, big guns never tire, had 4 objectives spread out mostly in the middle, and there was night fighting turn one.  I won the roll off for deployment and going first.

He had Coteaz in a chimera with a henchmen squad w/a mix of acolytes and deathcult with one jokearo(who made their weapons pretty :)) as well as another inquisitor which I can't remember what it really had, nothing special.  Had two 10x grey knight strike squads, standard load outs with nothing really special, the justicars had hammers.  They had rhino transports for each, though only one took a ride in one as the other went in his land raider crusader.  His last henchmen squad which had the same load out as the other was in his last rhino.  He had 2 riflemen dreads (2xTwinlinked auto cannons), and a storm raven with multimelta, assault cannon, hurricane bolters.  That was it, his army was definitely light but all of his infantry was scoring so def not a bad way to go and he certainly had enough armor on the field to make my day troublesome.  If Coteaz and the GK squads got into my lines, I would prob be toast unless I got lucky.

As I said I deployed first and had my aegis set up between two buildings and had my main veterans lined up along it with two in the buildings.  Creed was on the right with my second command squad on the left.  I had my blob with the inquisitor in it, who rolled the orbital bombardment!!!  My servo skulls were spread out along the center line of the board.  That was really it, marbo and vendettas were in reserve and I was set up to meet his charge from wherever it would come from.

He ended up deploying to the right heavy, with land raider block LoS for Coteaz's Chimera, the rhino with henchmen were hidden behind ruins with the riflemen dreads, and the last rhino was in the center of the board as his right flank.  This meant my inquisitor and his blob were going to be running to get into the fight.  I'm sorry the pics won't be that great, I was taking them fast and my phone doesn't take great pics.

First Turn was night fighting and was a huge boon to him as a lot of his army was going to be saved from my mean lascannons.  I move my one squad to the edge of the building on the right.  Moved my blob up onto the objective (White gas cans).  I got lucky and popped a rhino (first blood), thankful for fire on my target and re roll successful cover saves.  His guys popped out and luckily into range of my servo skull.  Guess what happened next, my MoOs killed all but 3 of them, meaning I had knocked almost 1/4 of his scoring units.  This was good as it meant I only had to worry about my right flank now.  He moved the surviving GKs into the cover and moved his land raider and chimera up on my right, unfortunately they got close enough to get rid of one of my skulls :(.  He tried firing a few pop shots but didn't really do anything.

Turn 2 came and it was a little more effective, marbo came on but the vendetta's did not, which hurt a not getting them on as I prob would have been able to stop his advance right there.  Marbo went in the building and stood ready to throw his demo charge.  Blob moved up on the left continuing to make its way towards the center.  I knocked the GK squad down to the last man and was able to destroy coteaz's transport and immobilize the land raider, plus get a glance on the rhino knocking it down a hull point as well as one of the dreads.  Not great, I just could not roll good for pens, but that's ok the orbital blast immobilized the land raider so it made a difference at least and knocked another hull point off of it.  Coteaz's squad took  a lot of casualties and were brought down to just him and two henchmen and deathcult.  Nothing great but I was grinding down hull points and men, which is where I like to play even though it may not be as glorious as annihilating everything with one shot.

He had a good turn, his dreads moved out and made some great shots, one killed the Icarus, I rolled two 1s for armor saves :(.  The other killed marbo, I again rolled a one on a cover save and he splatted, having EW on him would make him far better, but that's an  argument for another time.  His Storm raven came on on the far left and took some pot shots at my CCS and killed them all beside the MoO and the Commander, this would be key late in the game.  He then assaulted with his lone GK squad at my blob, who managed to not kill him with over watch despite a dozen hits.  But psychotroke grenades and psyk-out grenades meant that he had to take a lot of hits in CC and died to guardsmen, no loss to me.   Then the real combats began and my over watch continued to do nothing.  I actually was pretty good at rolling hits with over watch but could not wound most of the time.  Though Coteaz did take a wound and rolled a 1, so ha!  He would do this again later.  Anywho the GK squad and Coteaz charged my two vets, the ones on the now dead Icarus and the guys in the building.  I ended up doing another wound on coteaz and killing an acolyte and one GK.  I lost combat and my squads failed morale :), and escaped :)!  They each still managed to have their lascannons and were over 25% and didn't run off the board, that's some god damned good luck right there.  If they had died I would have been ok but them surviving was a great boon.

So turn 3 started and it looked like he might be pulling it off.  But my vendetta's came on, the were scouted to the right and flew on to the middle of the board, my guys grav chuted in, though one squad scattered off  and into the corner and would fail to do anything :(.  The Blob moved up and both of my vet squads rallied!  I moved to bubble wrap my command squad and mortars.  My blob opened up and with FRSRF and prescience made a lot of shots and a lot of wounds, killing 5 Gks, knocked another one out from other fire and knocked another hull point off the last rhino and another off the damn land raider that wouldn't die (oh well).  Vendettas did their job though and blasted the storm raven out of the sky!  My meltas from my veteran squad managed to both miss(wonderful) but a krak grenade hit and glanced taking one hull point off of it.  Killed off all of Coteaz's henchmen and he some how avoided the lascannon snap shot (I rolled a 6 to hit).  MoO missed, def lose their effectiveness when outside of the servo skull bubble and I will def be deploying them differently next time.  So I had whittled him down some more but because of his good placement and the top level of the building protecting his GK from barrage, they were still alive and more than enough to give me a hard time.

He did some shooting and killed 3 of the guardsmen in my PCS, and then fired everything at the vendettas, knocking some hull points off but failing to kill them, I did not jink and that was worth the risk.  His last henchmen squad came out and the damn jokaero heavy flamed my vet squad and all but 2 died, who proceeded to run away :(.  Coteaz killed the vet survivors int he building and proceeded to flee down the stairs and hide under it from the mean mortars.  He assaulted creed and his squad with his GKs and as expected the squad was taken down, though the Officer of the fleet valiantly challenged the inquisitor and was slain in honorable combat.  Creed was wounded and dragged from the field to be tended, but his tactical genius had seen this and lured the GKs to their death now, in the open with the sights of many lasguns upon them.

Turn 4 started and my vendettas went into hover mode.  I know why would I do that?  Well the game was objective based and heavy supports were worth victory points.  The location of them meant that I could fly off the board or continue flying straight and do nothing and wait for shots on rear armor.  So I put them in hover, got a jink save at least and set my self up to kill a dread.  My blob moved more guys into position and my one vet squad moved out of their corner to try and relieve them on the objective.  I then lit up the surviving GKs and killed them all, and my mortars wiped his last henchmen squad, at that point he had no troops left and we could have called it game there.  But we continued, we were having a good time and our inquisitors were taunting each other.  The vendettas killed the dread, and another thrown krak grenade killed his last rhino, those grenades were really proving lucky this game.  That was about it, I fired other things but missed mostly or was ineffective.

He then continued to hid coteaz under the stairs and then fired his dread and land raider at my vendettas and got just enough through my jink saves to take them out.  They died but I got a kill point from their death and that was worth it.  Always remember that your goal is not to keep your models alive but to accomplish your objectives.  Other than that he had nothing left so it ended.

Now we kept on playing as of course it was one of those games that went to 7 turns.  To give the short of it, land raider was dead and the dread managed to get into CC and get in a slap fight with my guardsmen and inquisitor, neither doing a whole lot to each other.  Coteaz hid from mortars and the game ended with me winning 6 to 1, he had line breaker with Coteaz.  It was not a great match up with the mission, he had three heavy supports and I had none so that was three points that I could get that he could not answer for.  I def would have won hands down turn 1 if it had not been night fighting, which was a good thing, its no fun to just crush someone out of the gate and we had a good game and he had a chance up until turn 4.  His mistake was bringing his guys out of the rhino in the rear to kill my vets, I had guys to sacrifice and he didn't and they were really needed for him to take his rear objective.  He should have just fired from the rhino and thrown the dread at them, but oh well it happens.

I would def place my skulls differently, two in the center line and one in my deployment area as the back up so when they get past that first line I have something to still drop pie plates with.  Lesson learned.  Disadvantage of going first is that you don't get to see where your opponent is going.  And I really should have chosen to go second, that would have been better and lessened night fighting effects for me but things worked out in the end. Big thing is as always is paying attention to model placement, as I made some mistakes and lost special weapons and characters because of it.  Otherwise it was a good game and neither of us made a whole lot of critical mistake, it was one of those games that just came down to a few critical points and rolls, had he stuck in combat for another turn and my guys decided to be brave I would prob have lost, as he could have saved himself from rounds of shooting.  But that's how the dice roll and you just have to set yourself up to put yourself into a position to maximize your chances.

Hope you enjoy and find it useful.  It was a good learning experience for me and I will def be changing things around and fiddling with my inquisitor.

GG