War is hell

I had a game against a guard army. I forgot to bring my assault marines so I played my old list:

Sentinels Eternal:
Captain with bolt pistol, power weapon, melta bomb.
Tac squad with power fist, plasma cannon, flamer.
Scout squad with sniper rifles.
Dreadnought.

As usual my opponent was not ready for such a small points game and had to write a list on the spot. For some reason he decided to go all-infantry. I believe he had two squads of veterans, some sort of commander who could give orders in a small squad with a banner, and a squad of stormtroopers with hellrifles (I think that's what they were called, they were 18" S3 AP3 rapid fire), who he gave infiltrate and pinning on the first round. He also had three lascannons.

We rolled annihilation. He gave me first turn so I combat squad the tac marines with the flamer and fist together and the cannon in the other team with the captain, then deployed them in the open in order to charge forwards. The dread hugged cover (THREE lascannons?), aiming to walk through a building. After he deployed I put my scouts as far forwards as I could to get at the lascannons, but even with the scout move I needed their first turn to get them in position.

I started by moving everything forwards. My tac marines and captain ran forwards while my dread took a pot shot at the limit of his range, surprisingly killing a couple of storm troopers. He responded by using orders and firing en masse at my marines, but he forgot that he was using vets with ballistic skill 4 and only killed a few models from my plasma gunner squad.

Just before the dying started

Some pretty cool looking Imperial Guard

Next turn my captain split off the depleted squad and joined the fist squad moving forwards. The snipers fired at his lascannons and actually managed to kill one! I was stunned! I then fired my plasma cannon squad at his commander, and scored a hit! Five 2+ rolls later and the entire squad was vaporised in a single blast of superheated plasma, and with them went his orders.

Now that's just incredibly unlucky

Now bereft of both orders and luck, he was unable to do much damage to my army, with even his hellguns failing to take down more than a couple of marines. My snipers managed to kill another lascannon, then my plasma cannon rolled a 4 on the scatter dice to bullseye the last one. He concentrated most of his firepower on the plasma cannon squad, but a succession of unlucky rolls saw the canoneer himself survive right up to the end. With most of the rest of his army running after losing spectacularly in assault to my captain and fist, and with the store was closing in five minutes, we called it. I had two killpoints (four if you count the two guys retreating), he had none.


It's worth mentioning that I had forgotten my dice so I had to roll with his, and those traitorous little backstabbers betrayed him just about every chance they got. I actually felt bad about winning, his luck was so rotten and mine was so good. My plasma cannon took only two shots but both were on target and killed everything they touched. My captain only had one round of combat, in which his five attacks counted for five dead guardsmen. Even my snipers took out a lascannon on every turn they got to shoot. In fact, even my power-fist sergeant, who in all my games has never managed a kill, took down two guys. His first ever kills, I'm so proud. Could this be the end of his losing streak?

The fact is my win was not down to skill. Had my opponent decided to include some tanks in his hastily written army list, things might have been very different, seeing as I had very few models which were quite bunched up at times. My opponent was a great guy who didn't seem too bothered by his bad luck, I suspect if we play again he'll be better prepared for such a small points game.