Arcanacon, Game Two

Yup, I haven't forgotten :)

In fact, I've recently upgraded my computer, and even installed Battle Chronicler. Which, by the way, is fantastic!

So a quick recap; I went to Arcanacon in January, a 1200 point 40k tournament. The first game is here, in which I narrowly escaped with a win against my bete noir, the Imperial Guard. So, for the second game I was quite pleased to see an army that I felt would be a better match up for me, Blood Angels.

And not just any Blood Angels, but gorgeous Spartan themed Blood Angels, complete with King Leonidas (acting as Mephiston)!

Here are Dion's Spartan's in all their glory. I actually took this shot while I was walking around in the prelude to round 1, so I was quite chuffed to actually play against them!

Dion was an absolute gentleman, and we kept up an engaging chat throughout the game. I would've very much enjoyed chatting more than we did, but unfortunately we had to reap the harvest of the seeds we'd sewn in round 1; the judges announced at the beginning of the round that we would need to reduce the time allotted for this round to get back on schedule. Sadly, that left us only an hour and a half for the round, and resulted in us feeling quite rushed for this game.

I paid particular attention  to trying to move my dudes as quickly as I could, but this might have impacted on our game, as might the unfortunate necessity of keeping things moving throughout. Despite these limitations, it was a very fun game.

The terrain was... unsurprisingly, a bit different from the first round. We had an ork village in the desert to try and dominate. Some rough crags provide odd patches of rocky cover, and a small triangle of trees formed an oasis around the centre-west.

Here's a snapshot of the board from the south-east corner.

The mission was essentially the same as the first one; 5 objectives, Dawn of War deployment. Only this time, my Fast Attack units would be scoring, and my opponent's Heavy Support would be scoring. So I had scoring Hellions, and better yet scoring Reavers! Rock on! And my opponent had a scoring Stormraven... so we both benefited here :)

Here's how I've interpreted deployment through Battle Chronicler - the blue pools are the objectives.

I lost the roll to place objectives, but with 5, I was still able to place 2. The first of mine I put near the first of his, both were relatively central. After he placed one in his deployment zone, I put one as far to the east as I could, to the advantage of my speedy jetbikes. The remaining one he put near the others, in the woods, to make it easier on his small assault army.

I won the roll to choose turn order, and elected to go second. With no significant guns to worry about from the Spartans I was quite happy to let them come to me. Perhaps with my lances in mind he deployed his men behind the orky huts, out of sight. Leonidas/Mephy was with the sanguinary guard (and sanguinary priest) in the centre. Two combat squads of assault marines deployed, with one other to deepstrike in, and the final to walk on.

In response I weighted my army on the western side, where the objectives were concentrated. This also seemed to offer the best killing zone, as there was no good place for his sanguinary guard to hide. I declined to seize, rolled +1 attack for my drugs, and the Spartans began the game!

Turn 1

Or did they? Not much happened. He shuffled around, perhaps hoping I would initiate offensive maneuvers, or perhaps waiting for his reserves to come in.

Back to me then.

Sitting still is for armies that can't go fast. Nonetheless, I had no intention of marching into his assault range. Everything moved around to at least get a jink save, my Reavers redeployed to the east to stare down the assault marines opposite the objective on that side. The wyches advanced, hoping some space marines would move into their assault range, and that was more or less that.

Turn 2

Ah yes, reserves. Here they come! A combat squad with two flamers deep strikes near the north-western rock column, in support of their friends who move up nearby. For a while Dion considered dropping them aggressively close to the Wyches' Raider (R2 on the map), but settled for a support drop. I was just glad he didn't drop next to and barbecue my Reavers, who are particularly vulnerable to that kind of thing.

Next the Stormraven came in, deftly placing itself between my Wyches and and the Ravager. Meanwhile, the east assault squad advanced toward that objective, and Mephy and the Sanguinary Guard advanced into the midfield to threaten the centre of my lines.

The only shooting this turn was the Stormraven, but I had forgotten that it could split fire with its gimmicky machine spirit, so I had a brown trouser moment it turned its fire on both the Ravager and the Wyches. Luckily for me, the gunner had been on an all night bender or something, and the only damage was a single hull point to the Ravager - despite being targeted by missiles and a multimelta. The Raider likewise got off scot-free from the twin-linked assault cannon, leaving me in a considerably better position than I had foreseen.

Time to retaliate!

My own reserves (my Razorwing) came on this turn, ready to drop a monoscythe barbecue on the Sanguinary Guard. Since it was clear that they would be able to assault me next turn, I devoted most of my firepower to dropping them, and moved accordingly.

On the west side, the Wyches (including my warlord) jumped out of their Raider to menace the newly arrived flamer squad. The warriors disembarked from the Raider and moved to capture the south-western objective, while the Raider moved off to target the Guard. The 5-man warrior squad captured the central south objective, moving to put their weapons also in range of the Guard, and the Hellions fanned out at the edge of their range. This was not just to shoot, but also to present an inviting assault target to Mephy next turn. I'd rather he had a go at the hellions than the Warriors, and I didn't even hope to kill him as well as his entourage.

The combined firepower of most of my army successfully killed all of the Sanguinary Guard, though a dark lance left over failed to put a wound on Mephy himself. The Sanguinary Priest failed his morale check for having his squad shot out from underneath him, and fled to within an inch of the board edge.

Meanwhile, on the eastern flank the Reavers buzzed the combat squad arraigned opposite them. Cluster caltrops and bladevanes accounted for 4 of them, leaving a solitary marine to guard the eastern half of the board.

Back to the west, I didn't like the idea of charging into two overwatching flamers and the other squad as well (I was considering the multi charge here), so fired some pistols etc to soften them up. I successfully removed a flamer, and one other marine; but disastrously they failed their morale check, leaving me high and dry. They finished, again, an inch shy of the board edge. Gah! My poor wyches would be toast next turn!

Turn 3

The other combat squad of assault marines came in, walking on from the north west to help decimate my wyches. The squad with the flamer predictably bounced right back to where they were, ready for toasties. Gulp.

The rallied Sanguinary Priest raced over to support the flame people, but wasn't quite close enough to join in the movement phase, so ran into position for next turn.

The free combat squad took their chance to assault the warriors on the south-western objective, and Mephy launched himself into the Hellions in the centre. The lone assault marine on the east moved to take control of the objective there... for now, anyway!

The Stormraven wheeled around to bring the Razorwing into its arc of fire, training its assault cannon onto the Ravager as it did so. More missiles, long range multi-melta and assault cannon fire improved slightly over the previous turn. This time, it produced a stunned result on my Razorwing. The assault cannon again failed to do anything, leading us to speculate that it had accidentally been loaded with blanks. I got lucky again!

Mephiston did not leave me any luck though, slaughtering 6 Hellions and leaving the others fleeing impotently from his wrath. They successfully escaped, and halted just a couple of inches from the edge. It seemed to be a theme for this game.

The assault squad on the south west kicked the (formerly large) warrior squad off the objective with heavy casualties, sustaining only one loss in return.

And the wyches... surprisingly, when the smoke cleared there was still my Succubus and three wyches standing. They passed morale, and prepared to strike back.

captain Razorwing had little choice this turn, so drifted 18" forward. Elsewhere, I dedicated my shooting to taking out the marines on the south-western objective. My Hellions rallied, but though I can't exactly remember what happened with my remnant warriors, I think they fled the field.

The remaining warriors moved off their objective, putting themselves in rapid fire range of the marines. Given it was turn 3 I felt I'd have plenty of time to move back, or would if they survived Mephy, anyway. The Ravager and Raiders moved around to contribute their dark lances, and the warrior's Raider blocked the northern side of the objective from any marines that survived my wyches' counter attack. The venom moved away from Mephy, with plenty of range to target the marines on the objective.

The reavers flew over the lone assault marine on the west, killing him several times over and dropping onto the objective, claiming it. My shooting gallery killed off the marines on the south west objective. In fact they did so quicker than I thought, leaving me the Ravager to shoot at something else. Unfortunately, only 1 dark lance was in arc of Mephy, or 2 of the Stormraven, so I decided to have a ping at the flying beast. The metal one :)

It was a nice time to roll a double 6. One of the hits proceeded to penetrate, and I asked Dion if he wanted to jink (I was supposed to ask before I rolled, I found out later). He explained that he was on the horns of a dilemma. If we were able to get another turn in, he would prefer not to, to take the risk that he would be fully functional to do some damage. If not, then clearly it made sense to jink. By now, it seemed like our 90 minutes was almost up, the 10 minute warning had passed, and I could see the judges starting to wander the tables. So I was starting to think that this might be it. But maybe if we were quick... to expedite things as fairly as I could think of at the time, I offered to roll the damage and then let him decide. So I rolled an explosion, and he successfully jinked. Damn, so close to dropping a Stormraven with my first ever shot at one!

With time clearly running short, I charged my remaining wyches into the freshly arrived combat squad, and killed half of them. Although I lost another wych in the process. By the by, their Raider had successfully sniped the Sanguinary Priest.

As Dion started to plot his fourth turn moves, the judge came over and called time.

My reavers clearly held the eastern objective. But despite extirpating the marines on any objectives, my warriors had moved away from the central one (oops). Was the Stormraven close enough to claim it?

Nope. Not quite.

So I claimed the win, 1 objective to nothing.

I would've liked to have been able to finish the game - it was very entertaining, even though I felt more or less in control for most of it. While his assault marines were basically a spent force, the most expensive models in his army, the Stormraven and Mephy, were both very much alive. The fact that the Stormraven could claim would have made the endgame particularly interesting, particularly since its ceramite armour could basically ignore my reavers' heat lances. Having said that, I think it would be hard for him to stop my reavers claiming an objective, somewhere; a 48" move is pretty ridiculous for a scoring unit. Pity they don't score in more missions!

It would also have been interesting to see how much damage Mephy could do before I dark lanced him down. He was setting up to collect quite a few kills!

Finally, I think this is the first game if not ever, then for so long that I can't remember, where I didn't lose a single vehicle. Not one Raider went down, not even a Venom. Mainly thanks to the Stormraven forgetting to bring proper bullets, but I will take it!

So this put at me at two wins from two games, and feeling very good about things. This was definitely a better match up for me than round 1, and probably not ideal for Dion. I was however Dion's only loss for the tourney, as he went on to score 3 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss.

Next game was Necrons. Stay tuned!