(40K) Give those scouts medals
Nov. 12th, 2011 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lederhosenShowed up for another 40K on Thursday. To my relief, CPM wasn't there this time, and I ended up playing with somebody hygienic instead, hooray!
We ended up playing 700 points: my Raven Guard vs his Grey Knights. I don't know Grey Knights very well, but my understanding was "powerful and expensive", which seems to be correct.
Me: two squads of sniper scouts, one Devastator squad, a big squad of assault marines, and a chaplain with jump pack.
Him: one squad of Grey Knights with some sort of leader, one squad of GK Terminators with Justicar Thawn.
I lost the first game - not horribly, but the good & bad luck pretty much cancelled out and I made a couple of minor tactical mistakes. I learned to really hate Thawn; I killed him three or four times and he just kept resurrecting, pinning down my assault squad and grinding them down to nothing.
We had time for a rematch, which turned out rather differently from how I'd expected it to go...
The scenario was Dawn of War, in which most of the forces come onto the board as reserves. I set up my scouts in cover, reasonably close to the two objectives, and he elected to keep his entire force in reserve.
Turn 1: My Devastators moved onto the board and set up in a tower overlooking objective #1. Scouts stayed where they were, waiting for targets.
Turn 2: We each rolled for reserves, needing a 4+. My assault squad showed up with the chaplain, near objective #2. Neither of his squads showed up.
Turn 3: My assault squad moved to guard objective #2, and I didn't have anything much to shoot at.
On his turn, he needed to roll a 3+ for reserves. The Terminators and Thawn rolled a 2, and stayed off the board, but his other squad teleported in on top of objective #1 and blasted away at my Devastators, without inflicting any casualties.
Turn 4: I moved my assault squad up to sit on objective #2 in case he had any funny ideas about teleporting in on top of it. Both my scout squads and the Devastators had a line on objective #1, so they opened up with assorted heavy weapons. When the dust settled, there were only two GKs left.
This time, needing to roll a 2+, he rolled a 1. Apparently the Terminators were still experiencing technical difficulties. Not to be deterred, the remaining GKs charged into the tower and walloped my Devastators; I killed one of his GKs (leaving only the leader) but lost three of mine, and the remaining two turned tail and fled with his leader in pursuit. This also put the leader out of sight of my snipers, which was probably a good thing.
Turn 5: My remaining two Devastators fled off the board. (It's okay, Raven Guard are allowed to run away if it's for 'tactical reasons.') I moved my scout squads to claim both objectives, and didn't have anything to shoot at.
His Terminators automatically showed up this turn. Since we were approaching the end of the game, he decided to teleport them in near objective #2, presumably planning to walk in and butcher my puny scouts.
Sadly, they scattered... and in the middle of some fairly clear terrain, they scattered in the one direction where things could have gone wrong, directly on top of my scouts. Which meant a roll on the Deep Strike Mishap table. His bad luck held, and the entire squad - about 70% of his force - was instantly killed. Given how long it took them to show up, I suspect the Techmarine working the teleporter was having an off day.
And that was the end of the game. I expect those scouts are going to be bragging for a long time about the time they took out an entire GK Terminator squad, although maybe not about HOW they did it.
So I won an overwhelming victory due almost entirely to my opponent's horrendous bad luck. I will say that you're much more vulnerable to bad luck when you have an small force, but still, the dice really weren't kind to him that day. Points for good sportsmanship, and I'm sure there'll be a rematch one of these days...
We ended up playing 700 points: my Raven Guard vs his Grey Knights. I don't know Grey Knights very well, but my understanding was "powerful and expensive", which seems to be correct.
Me: two squads of sniper scouts, one Devastator squad, a big squad of assault marines, and a chaplain with jump pack.
Him: one squad of Grey Knights with some sort of leader, one squad of GK Terminators with Justicar Thawn.
I lost the first game - not horribly, but the good & bad luck pretty much cancelled out and I made a couple of minor tactical mistakes. I learned to really hate Thawn; I killed him three or four times and he just kept resurrecting, pinning down my assault squad and grinding them down to nothing.
We had time for a rematch, which turned out rather differently from how I'd expected it to go...
The scenario was Dawn of War, in which most of the forces come onto the board as reserves. I set up my scouts in cover, reasonably close to the two objectives, and he elected to keep his entire force in reserve.
Turn 1: My Devastators moved onto the board and set up in a tower overlooking objective #1. Scouts stayed where they were, waiting for targets.
Turn 2: We each rolled for reserves, needing a 4+. My assault squad showed up with the chaplain, near objective #2. Neither of his squads showed up.
Turn 3: My assault squad moved to guard objective #2, and I didn't have anything much to shoot at.
On his turn, he needed to roll a 3+ for reserves. The Terminators and Thawn rolled a 2, and stayed off the board, but his other squad teleported in on top of objective #1 and blasted away at my Devastators, without inflicting any casualties.
Turn 4: I moved my assault squad up to sit on objective #2 in case he had any funny ideas about teleporting in on top of it. Both my scout squads and the Devastators had a line on objective #1, so they opened up with assorted heavy weapons. When the dust settled, there were only two GKs left.
This time, needing to roll a 2+, he rolled a 1. Apparently the Terminators were still experiencing technical difficulties. Not to be deterred, the remaining GKs charged into the tower and walloped my Devastators; I killed one of his GKs (leaving only the leader) but lost three of mine, and the remaining two turned tail and fled with his leader in pursuit. This also put the leader out of sight of my snipers, which was probably a good thing.
Turn 5: My remaining two Devastators fled off the board. (It's okay, Raven Guard are allowed to run away if it's for 'tactical reasons.') I moved my scout squads to claim both objectives, and didn't have anything to shoot at.
His Terminators automatically showed up this turn. Since we were approaching the end of the game, he decided to teleport them in near objective #2, presumably planning to walk in and butcher my puny scouts.
Sadly, they scattered... and in the middle of some fairly clear terrain, they scattered in the one direction where things could have gone wrong, directly on top of my scouts. Which meant a roll on the Deep Strike Mishap table. His bad luck held, and the entire squad - about 70% of his force - was instantly killed. Given how long it took them to show up, I suspect the Techmarine working the teleporter was having an off day.
And that was the end of the game. I expect those scouts are going to be bragging for a long time about the time they took out an entire GK Terminator squad, although maybe not about HOW they did it.
So I won an overwhelming victory due almost entirely to my opponent's horrendous bad luck. I will say that you're much more vulnerable to bad luck when you have an small force, but still, the dice really weren't kind to him that day. Points for good sportsmanship, and I'm sure there'll be a rematch one of these days...
