Another battle where the White Scars vied for supremacy with the Genestealer Cults! These are both appx 2,000 point forces. Mine came in at 1,995, exactly. It consisted of two battalion and one outrider detachments, for a total command point total of 14, 5 of which I spent on upgrades and promotions for units before the battle, leaving me 9 CP to play with.
Said upgrades were for promote Veteran Intercessors, a Chief Librarian, a Master of Sanctity, to put a warlord trait (The Imperium's Sword) on the non-warlord (Gravis) captain, and to put Artificer Armour on my leftenant to give him better armor saves, including an 5+ invulnerable. The Khan on Bike was my warlord for this game.
The armies!
We decided to randomly select from the standard set of ITC missions, and wound up taking the first one, which meant the table was set up like below. Then, I rolled for deployment from the standard in the core 40K book, and got Spearhead Assault, which meant we were once again playing the table lengthways. I was fine with that since our last game was that way, and I had come up with several things I might do to race across the board.
Below you can see how I deployed. The Genestealers were alternating with me, but they only put out blips until after I was finished, at which point the Basilisk tanks came out--three, though only two are caught here in the pic.
I had three objectives right off the bat, within my deployment zone. I put tactical squads on two; one to the left, and one just out of sight on the other side of the wall of the terrain piece on the right. The intercessor squad at the fore is on the third objective. The Predator tank is set up to see to the basilisks in his back field. The Land Raider has a squad of tactical marines within, and is set to rush out into the field in the first turn. The Stormraven gunship is at the back for now, keeping its options open, having been set down before any basilisks, which will be its first targets. You can also see some bikers and intercessors in the backfield to screen for deep-strikers. Character-wise, my Khan on Bike is over to the right with the Scout Bike Squad. My Chief Librarian is just behind them with the Veteran Intercessors (with auto bolt rifles). My Chaplain/Master of Sanctity is between the land raider and rearguard intercessors, my captain in Gravis is with the intercessors at the fore, and my lieutenant is with the tactical marines and predator by the left side objective. I had no reserves.
In my first movement phase, I flew the stormraven up so that it was 24" way from the basilisks. I moved, but did not advance, the land raider up and then played Lightning Debarkation to have the tactical marines hop out. They couldn't advance up to the objective though, because the blip there means they have to stay back 9" from it. I moved my Attack Bike up a little, not wanting to open my screen up too much, but wanting it to be within movement range of the middle objective so I could go up and shoot it's multi-melta on the next turn. Further over to the other side of table, my right, I moved my scout bikers and khan on bike up that side of the table, planning to then strike toward the middle or enemy deployment on the next turn.
Another view of the table after my first movement phase. For Psychic, no enemies were in range at all, so I buffed my scouts and khan on bikes.
At the end of my movement phase, the Genestealers have to de-blip, and either appear on the table or go into reserves via CP. The ones that come out onto the table are a lot of mortar teams and bikers on one objective (below) , then many neophytes and more bikers on another objective (further down).
In my first shooting phase, I used the stormraven, land raider, and predator, to cripple all three of his basilisks, bringing two down to their final tier on the damage table, and the third to the middle tier. The missiles on the gunship and the lascannons on the two tanks took care of that. The dakka on the gunship then took out some of the mortar teams and bikers in that area, as well. So far so good!
The view at the end of my first turn.
In the first Genestealer turn, they really only moved up to the midfield objective. Nothing came out of reserve (first turn). My poor easy kill Attack Bike was the first thing I lost, to basilisk and mortar rain. Two games in a row! This speaks to how ITC incentives twist what you might think of as conventional or common sense strategy. He killed this unit because it was the easiest thing on the board to kill, not for any good (from the battlefield perspective) reason. From my point of view, he should have prioritized either my stormraven or predator instead. He did go on to win with this play style, of course--though it was close, in the end. I think I'd rather play GW rules, though.
He had some other shooting that killed one of my scout bikers, as well. You can see that guy missing from the pic below. This pic is from sometime in the second battle round. You can see the stormraven has pivoted from where it was and moved up some. My tactical squad is now on the midfield objective, and the land raider has also moved up some, as have the bikers. It was a combination of fire from the gunship and land raider that finished off a couple of his basilisks and the bikers near the midfield point. While my tactical squad advanced up there, there didn't end up being any combat, If I recall. They got close enough for a gimme charge, is all.
Go, land raider! You got this!
You better be glad I'm forced to fly away!
These guys are still here at the bottom of my second turn, getting bored waiting for Genestealers to pop up.
Here they come! And these are the Aberrants.. no joke, whatsoever.
He had some Neophytes pop in to take potshots at my tacticals on the midfield (actually the tip of his deployment, come to think of it) objective. I was scoring "hold more" at this point, for the ITC side objectives. I had my three plus one of his.
And now the hand-flamer nonsense, as well. Acolyte Hybrids. There was really little to nothing I could do to prevent this, but sadly I lost my other scout bikers and khan to this ambush, where they pop up 3" away. Without castling up like the sons of Dorn, they're going to get you somehow.
Slow-motion, orchestral music as our last hero falls.
Then, to make matters worse, the Aberrants charge at my intercessors and captain in Gravis, avoiding overwatch since they were behind the ITC-rules terrain, which blocks line of sight, but can be freely traversed by infantry. This pic is from after they have fought and killed the intercessor squad and done all but a single wound off my captain (thanks, Transhuman Physiology!). My captain fought back and killed a couple of them that round, boosted by The Imperium's Sword, having Heroically intervened.
Back over to my turn for the third battle round. Finally, assault doctrine! The stormraven pivoted again to the right and moved up 20" to waste a good portion of the unit that had ambushed my bikers earlier. My land raider also shot into that same unit, for lack of any other meaningful targets. There was still a single basilisk on the board, but it was down to 1 wound and was worthless anyway. There was some other shooting as my support around the captain in Gravis tried to whittle down the extremely durable aberrants before charging into combat.
When it did come down to combat, my intercessors and librarian rushed his acolyte hybrids, killing a bunch of them. Come to think of it, I think I spaced the Veteran status and forgot to apply the extra attacks! They wiped out the unit they fought anyway, though.
The lone flamer tactical marine below left the "midfield" objective to charge a nearby character. He would have been killed had he not, anyway, and this option let him do some good, advancing, flaming, and then charging into the guy there.
Back over to the melee with the Aberrants, I've charged back in with my Gravis captain, who had fallen back to allow for shooting, but also to then trigger Shock Assault and his warlord trait. Also charging in to finish off these tough beasts are the chaplain, leftenant, and bike squad.
Together, and with Honour the Chapter on the captain, they get the job done, wiping out the unit of Aberrants and the character one that came along with. I should again note that my Gravis captain is down to a single wound due to this encounter.
Another view of the action from that same phase. If I recall, the flamer tactical marine finished off that character in combat.
Here you can get a good view of where the Genestealer Patriarch (warlord) has been literally hiding.
These guys are still holding this objective, and I've done little to try to push them off. They got a round or two of fire from one of the stormraven's weapons, but that's about it.
This is what I spent my 9 CP on. One command reroll, Lightning Debarkation and later Steady Advance on the tactical squad that came out of the land raider, Armour of Contempt when a psyker cast Smite on the stormraven (nothing in return; might not recommend), and THP and HTC on the Gravis captain.
Now it's the third battle round, so all of his reserves need to come in or die, so a last unit of acolyte hybrids pops in here. Also note how I have reversed my land raider off the hill it had been on. This was to get it way from the mass of infantry he had not too far away from it. Here it also had a better angle on a couple of his other units.
When it gets to his Fight phase, he has enough near my intercessors over there to finish them off.
The backfield intercessors finally have their purpose fulfilled. Fire! Note we're back to my turn for battle round 4, which will be the last due to time (his family wanted him home), but I've forgotten to move my tactical squad through the terrain onto the point (and out of sight of his acolyte hybrids). That would have been a good move, though.
I mentioned his Patriarch had been hiding. Well, it disappeared using a stratagem, leaving only a weaker character behind in this nook. My bike squad sped over and shot him up.
There was a lone enemy biker on the midfield objective (which is below my land raider in the pic below). I wanted him off it and to take control of it, so I charged him with both the land raider and the stormraven, which was now in hover mode in order to reposition. The stormraven whiffed, but the land raider ended up killing him in combat, with its six S8 attacks! High five!
The bike squad charges some nearby neophytes just to get more kills in, since I was working toward the points for killing 80 models (the ITC side objective).
Sometimes you fight off a pack of gene-cursed xenos abominations, and sometimes a lone guy with a pistol pops you in overwatch. RIP
The battlefield as he begins his final turn.
I've eroded his acolyte hybrids a good deal with shooting and in overwatch, but they eventually charge into my squad keeping the objective here. They kill two, if I recall, and I kill two in return.
The Patriarch resurfaces!
He, with the buff shown below, proved too much for my leftenant, even with the 2+/5++ relic he was holding.
And that was pretty much it! We could have kept going, for sure, but by this time it was after 9:00, and he needed to be going. We had been keeping score throughout in the ITC fashion (he had the app on his phone which seems to make it pretty easy), and it came out 18 to 15 in his favor, though it could very easily have been the other way but for some dice flukes (see my Gravis captain's death for instance).
I think I've covered just about everything here. Takeaways:
I got some solid use out of my various biker units, aside from the unlucky Attack Bike, of course. I'm not certain I've entirely got them figured out yet, though. They certainly work well as highly mobile and tougher infantry, but I think that extra mobility opens up more of a tactical possibility space that I will need more time to explore. I don't think I was wrong-headed with my approach in this game, but maybe a little careless with the scouts and the Khan. I didn't have a clear, defined reason for sending them where I did, other than it was toward the enemy. I don't think I could have saved them, per se, or that I should have. They ended up being a good magnet for the 3" 20 flamers strike that was inevitable, anyway. If that had appeared in my backfield I could have lost an objective to it. I think I need to get more bikers to run a larger force of them.
Not only was this my first game with my stormraven, in which it really demonstrated what it can do, but my land raider put up its best ever performance, as well. The predator, too, was instrumental. I neutered his basiliks in the first turn, and all but annihilated them on the second. It was a good game for the vehicles. The one small issue I ran into was that after that, all the lascannons went to waste shooting a lot of 3 and 4-toughness infantry! I would have done better to have taken the predator autocannon, after all. Of course, I had no way of knowing this going in. I was expecting Leman Russ on his side, but as it turns out, he says the Genestealer variants are not very good, and likes Basilisks better for his purposes, at least.
My first time with a flyer went about as well as can be expected. I didn't fly it off the table, and he only took two wounds off of it the entire game, through Smite. It also fairly churned through his infantry and vehicles, both. But then, he was ignoring it and the other vehicles almost entirely, looking to kill characters and weaker units for his ITC sub-objectives. Again, I think they add odd incentives to the game. I don't think every game will play out like that for the stormraven, unfortunately!
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