Monday, November 05, 2007

Black Storm Ascendant

This weekend was one of those rare occasions that I got to game on Saturday. So not only did I play Lawrence in the promised rematch I owed him for last time, but I got to play Peter (Fleetwood_Mac) on Saturday as well.

Friday: Lawrence's Space Marines versus the Black Storm - Part Deux

Pictures!

2000 pts, Secure and Control, one of my favourites.

Lawrence used his "Ball Busting" list which consisted of over 60 marines, 7 apothecaries, lots of heavy and special weapons, and no vehicles and only one low level character (a chaplin). I used the same list as last time.

Chaos Lord with terminator armour and lightning claws
Daemon Prince
4 Terminators in Land Raider
2 x 10 Marines with las/plas in Rhino
10 Marines with missile launcher
10 Marines with flamer/plasma pistol in Rhino
3 Obliterators
Defiler

We rolled up three loot counters (each worth 666 pts!!!) and Lawrence made his first mistake of the day. I let him place two counters to my one and while his first and my first were near the centre line between both deployment zones, he placed the third much closer to one of the zones. I won roll off for picking sides and picked the zone with the closer objective.

As the battle started I used my land raider and rhinos to create a wall of cover to advance behind, and here we see Lawrence's third mistake: besides his Chaplin and Assault squad, his mobility was severely limited. I was able to grab all three objectives by turn 2, forcing him to fight to take them back which is an advantage for me as he loses firepower on the move.

He split the chaplin off from the assualt squad and tried to break my line by having the chaplin charge in deep to one of my tactical squads while the assault marines went after my terminators in the centre. Well, the chaplin broke an ankle going into the ruins and while he smacked a couple of chaos marines down, he was no match for the rest of them and died quickly. The assault marines faired better by taking four terminators down to four of their own losses, but next turn the Chaos Lord, Daemon prince, and a tactical squad made short work of them and thus revealed Lawrence's third and final mistake: by charging too early and unsupported, he lost his most mobile unit and hardest hitting character, failed to disrupt my lines, and surrendered the centre to me where I could continue to advance.

Lawrence had no quit in him and fought back hard on the flank and successfully destroyed three obliterators, the chaos lord, and a tactical squad to secure one of the objectives back. By the end of six turns he was even winning in victory points for models killed by 101 pts! But the third objective, the one close to my deployment zone gave me all the points I needed to claim a solid victory.

Admittedly Lawrence was dead tired on his feet after an all-nighter writing an essay, but nonetheless I take great pride in having faced his "ball busting" list and walked away alive.

Great game!

Saturday: Peter's Renegade Guard versus the Black Storm

Pictures!

2000 pts, Take and Hold.

I used the same list again (I really like it!) and faced off against 155 zombie guardsmen with a Leman Russ and Demolisher. All I could think was "oh boy, this is gonna be tough".

I got lucky off the start. He went first and had the Leman Russ fire its lascannon at the Land Raider and failed to pen. The Land Raider returned fire and blew the Russ up with a 6 inch explosion, taking several guardsmen with it. That set the tone of the battle.

When playing a horde army, you need to be able to bring as much of your horde as possible to maximize attacks. Piecemeal and the elite armies like mine will chew up unit after unit. Well, Peter spread out across all 6 feet of the deployment zone while I swamped the centre and used the terminators and land raider to black access for a third of his army. The other two thirds I was able to shoot and then assault.

When playing a horde army, you always need one or two or five models capable of dealing killing blows to hard units like characters or terminators. Once the Daemon Prince got into a combat he was virtually unkillable without extraordinary luck (5s to hit, 6s to wound, 3+ save) and the Terminators also absrobed charges from 3-4 squads without great duress. This allowed the rest of my army to advance, kill, and secure the centre zone.

Peter's army was ballsy, I'll give him that. But I think trimming the horde for some more ommph in certain areas is called for.

Another good game.

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