 |
| The final battlefield. |
TURN 4
In
the sober light of morning, the battle looked lost for the defenders. Even
though we were currently winning, the end of turn 4 would most likely see the
attackers controlling all six objectives, for a massive 36 victory points. This was an insurmountable points difference, as
we had very few units left that could contest or control them. We decided that
the game was the attackers, but decided to play a final turn and see if we
could create some fun match ups.
 |
| Endgame overview. |
 |
| The attackers ready to assault Yarrick's platoon. |
 |
| Superheavy Slam! |
In
the centre of the battlefield, the eldar titan turned towards the imperial
knight, ready for an epic clash of the titans! The titan fired its D weapons at
the knight from scarcely inches away, eager to pummel his foe. Four of the
shots rang true, and the damage rolls were made. If the Knight was lucky, his
invulnerable save would stop the damage, allowing the Knight to charge the
titan and most likely kill it. Unfortunately, one of the rolls came up a 6, no
saves allowed and stripped the undamaged knight of all its hull points in one
fell swoop. However, one of the shots fired by the titan had scattered back
onto itself. The damage roll was made, and……another 6! The titan was utterly
destroyed, along with is hated foe in two enormous explosions.
The
other fight was between the two supreme commanders; Mortarion and the Great
Unclean one. Mortarion was not having a great game. Twice the primarch had
attempted to deep strike in to the battle and twice he had suffered a mishap,
going back into reserve both times. He finally arrived and charged the greater
daemon. At first sight, it should have been an easy win for the Primarch.
However, the Greater Daemon kept getting buffed by his Biomancy powers,
constantly gaining increased toughness (to 10!) and eternal warrior, preventing
the Primarch from causing carnage. As it was, the Great Unclean One came out
ahead in a war of attrition, slowly whittling down the mighty Primarch’s wounds
and emerged victorious.
 |
| Mortarion vs a very classy Great Unclean One (top hat and all). |
The
wraithlord, two units of screamers and Defiler advanced on Yarrick’s squad. All
the massed flame attacks resulted in the loss of most of the 40 strong squad,
leaving only four remaining. We never fought that combat, but it wouldn’t have
gone well for the Hero of Hades Hive.
 |
| Now you see them..... |
 |
| ....and now you don't. |
At
the end of the game, the attackers held 5 objectives, while Yarrick managed to
hold the objective in the centre of the wall.
Strategic
Victory Points:
Attacker-
55
Defender-
37
LESSONS
FROM THE BATTLE:
It
was a great game that sadly went away from us in the final turns, well done to
our opponents for enacting such a good battle plan and keeping us on the ropes
from the start.
We
made quite a few tactical errors in both deployment and during the game that
they were able to exploit, while they made very few.
Ranged
D weaponry is incredibly powerful in the game. The titan was able to remove
pretty much whatever it shot at. As we had no ranged D weapons, it was very
hard to counter the titan. A large number of shots were levelled at it
throughout the game and it still had 2 hull points remaining at the end of the
game. It didn’t help that the hollowfield meant that about half of our hits
were discarded. Our best hope of killing it reliably was the Imperial Knight in
combat. However, with a 36” move and still being able to fire all four
destroyer shots (from 2 weapons), this would never happen unless our opponents
allowed it.
Of
the three stragetic assets we chose, two were pretty useless. The minefield,
while thematic, actually did very little damage to the enemy, maybe causing a
dozen wounds over the four turns. Equally, the orbital bombardment was not too
effective, the cover saves of the eldar and daemons preventing a lot of damage
from being caused. The attackers could actually use a bombardment every turn
for the cost of a strategic victory point, but after seeing the effect of ours,
never chose to use it. The flank march worked well, allowing our fast reserves
to destroy or damage many of the enemy skimmers. Perhaps a better use of assets
would have been the smoke screen and shield generator. The smoke screen could
have shielded most of the defenders on the wall for the first turn of shooting,
allowing them to better address the approaching enemy. The shield generator
could have been used on the guardsmen in the centre of the battlefield, preventing
them from being shot at and forcing the enemy to assault them to clear them. As
it was, these troops were easily destroyed by the mass ignores cover of the
Tau, the aegis line proving useless.
As
for deployment, the objectives were placed late, after we had deployed most of
our troops. As a result, the objective in front of the wall on the west flank
was captured quite easily and was never contested once during the game. If we
had deployed the central guard in front of the wall, this may have forced a more
difficult fight on the west flank.
A
better deployment may have been a thin line of sacrificial guardsmen along the
central line of the table. This would have limited how far forward the
attackers could deploy and may have prevented the very effective refused flank
deployment that they used. With the refused flank deployment used, they were
able to neutralise many of our units on the east flank as they were simply too
slow to be able to effectively redeploy, something that was no problem to the
Eldar skimmers we faced.
We
considered the reserves arriving on the west flank. This would have allowed
them to focus on the eldar and daemons on that flank and seize the objective in
front of the wall. This may have forced the attackers to split their forces to
death with the Ravenwing on one flank and Death Guard on the other. It may also
have helped Typhus and his terminators to survive as the firepower of the flank
would have more targets to focus on.
Oh
well, hindsight is 20/20.
Oddly
enough, we jokingly rolled to see if we could seize the initiative at the start
of the game. Of course, the die roll came up a 6.
In
the end though, it was a great game. Lots of fun and lots of destruction.
Thanks to my teammate Jamie and our opponents Alastair, Greg and Rian.
I
was happy to see my vast wall get some use and to have a nice battlefield to
fight over. We were winning up till the final turn, when it was cruelly
snatched away by the superior side (also, Jamie and I thought we should get
bonus victory points for fielding a fully painted 11,000 points, just enough to
make us win I think!). The highlight for me was Yarrick finishing off the bloodthirster.
No comments:
Post a Comment