Friday, March 2, 2012

Blood for the Blood.. er.. Emperor?

Played another 500 point game. I swapped out some tac marines for assault marines in my list:
Captain, bolt pistol and power weapon.
5 tac marines (all bolters)
5 scouts (all snipers)
5 assault marines, power weapon
dreadnought

He played blood angels:
Captain, plasma pistol, power weapon
5 tac marines (4 bolters, pistol & chainsword)
5 assault marines, power weapon, melta gun
Contemptor dreadnought with assault cannon

As you can see his army was almost completely analogous to my own, but with the points I spent on scouts put into the contemptor dread (he asked if I minded and I said I didn't). In the game we ended up with his captain and tac squad in assault against mine, and his assault squad against mine, so it really did feel like fighting a reflection. My scouts spent the entire game repositioning to try to get a shot (the only unit I had a chance to shoot at was the dread, but with armour 13 there was no point, even rending hits couldn't even glance), while my dread was knocked out early by a single shot from his assault squad's melta after they entered by deep strike (he did not even get a single shot off).


He got the charge off on both assaults - the first because I forgot you can assault after rapid firing (which did nothing), the second because I completely misjudged the distance and just plain rushed my assault squad towards the action.

In the end he won both combats. By the fifth turn I only had my scout sergeant left, who finally managed to get a shot off, rolling two sixes in a row to land a rending hit on his captain. Who subsequently failed his invul save and lost his last wound. The game ended there on a roll of a 1.


As usual a few mistakes were made, but less than usual I think. He forgot about the captain's plasma pistol, for what that's worth. He didn't have a copy of his dread's rules so we played the assault cannon using the regular stats. Oh, and we initially forgot the tac sergeants had an extra attack.

My luck was actually not bad (even if every single run roll I had was a one), but the loss of my dread to a single melta shot was a big blow. If it had survived it would have attacked his assault troops, allowing my own assault squad to get the charge later. Not that it would have changed the final outcome, as it would have needed a fair bit of luck to take down his own dread.

No, I lost because he outmanoeuvred me. I let him him get the charges, split my forces, and made bad decisions with my snipers (apart from just taking them in the first place) - honestly, I don't know what happened there.

In terms of strategy, I need to try to anticipate more, and I'm thinking I should stop splitting up my forces. In terms of the army list, I'm going to try dropping the dread in order to bring my tac squad back up to full strength - the added durability (and power fist) should make them useful again, as right now they don't do very much. I do have some ideas for lists I want to try, but it'll have to wait until I get the models.

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