Monday 31 May 2010

Clubbing a Baby Seal

Played a game today, first game in over a month and it was kind of unsatisfying.

You see, the closest real life example would be of clubbing a helpless baby seal. I slaughtered the other player and it was one of the easiest things I have done.

It was a 2500 point game using a Battle Missions mission. I believe it was Dawn Raid from the Dark Eldar missions ( I dont have my book close at hand to check but was 1st mission from the DE section)

I was running a somewhat balanced Marine force that swung towards a gunline and he was running a very odd mish-mashed Chaos Marine force

Due to the size of the store we were forced to use a 4x4 table. I wasnt keen on using 2500 points but he wanted to test his list. Fair enough I guess.

His force from memory was.

Typhus
Demon Prince with wings
5 Terminators
Defiler
Dreadnought with TLLC
Squad of Possessed marines
Squad of Beserkers in rhino
Squad of Noise Marines
Squad of Thousand Sons
Squad of PLague Marines

Mine was:

Captain with Twin Lighting Claws
Command Squad (first outing for new squad)
Land Raider Godhammer
4 x Tactical Squads
2 x Rhinos
1 x Dreadnought with Plasma Cannon
Assault Squad
Land Speeder with HF, MM
Attack Bike with MM
Devestator Squad with 10 marines, 2 x LC, 2 x PC

The rules for the mission made his deployment pretty aweful as he ended up playing as the Dark Eldar which only allowed him to deploy Fast Attack (which he didnt have) and Troops in transports (only the beserkers)

I, on the other hand could only deploy Heavy Support and Troops.

Deployment was table quarters with 4 objectives.

I am not going to go into a detailed turn by turn, just the highlights.

His rhino and Beserkers were his only unit on the table when we started. They were both vaporised from all my heavy guns.

Most of his army came on 2nd turn and had to march across the table towards my quarter. His shooting was ineffective. My turn 2 saw his defiler fall the LR Godhammer and a few Thousand Sons die.

Turn 3. Rest of his army came on. He moved across the board some more towards objectives. He killed off 5 Assault marines with his noise marines. He assaulted my LR with his terminators and they failed to do anything. My turn saw the rest of my army come on. His demon Prince found itself in the sights of the Dev Squad as well as the LR. No more DP :) Plague marines ate a vindicator shell and PC from the dread

Turn 4 saw him assault my Land Speeder with his possessed and wrecking it. His terminators were hit with Lascannons, Plasma Cannons and a Vanquisher shell and were no more. I assaulted his TS with my command squad and killed them all.

Turn 5 only had a few possessed, noise marines dreadnought and typhus left. He assaulted my command Squad with his possessed and they got munched. Command Squad consolidated towards the noise marines. My turn saw Typhus die to massed fire, my command squad go through his noise marines like a knife through butter and the Attack bike melta his dreadnought into a blazing wreck.

Result: Massacre to me. I only lost 5 assault marines, company champion and a tactical marine who died to gets hot.

Not I dont know what this guys issue was. If he just lost interest after his poor deployment or if he was just a bad player but they way he marched his troops into my guns was just bad. Granted the deployment did not favour him but I could have done better with his army and I do not play Chaos. While I enjoyed winning, I took very little satisfaction out of the win.

Lessons learned: Gun Lines still have their place, especially with some of the Battle Mission missions. Also, despite many opinions to the contrary, Lascannons are still potent. S9 shot that can reach out across the table = win in my book.

Unit of the match: Its a toss up between the Captain with command squad and the Land Raider. The raider killed a rhino, defiler, took 2 wounds off a DP, killed 2 terminators and 1 Thousand Son. The Command Squad and Captain on the other hand mopped up 3 squads with only 1 loss.

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