This will be a tough game to try to recount, because I only made less than half of the decisions on my side of the table, being teamed up with a force with many more units under its control. I had comparatively few units on the board, and because of the nature of playing two turns simultaneously, with coordination, there were a lot of things happening all at once, so it could be kind of hectic. I also was trying to participate and so didn't get as many pics as might normally in a game this size, with 2000 points on each side.
This mission was again an ITC type, with five objectives spread around the table in a cross pattern with one in the middle. This time, we deployed in the board corners, though, and the no-man's land was a strip down the diagonal center line.
My force for the game is shown below. I ran a battalion detachment and spent 2 CP on pre-game upgrades, so I was working with 6 CP total.
Below is one of the opposing forces, tyranids of hive fleet leviathan.
This was our deployment. I put my stormraven in the back corner, facing the middle of the board, with my assault squad riding inside. I then put a tactical squad on one objective, and an intercessor squad on another, with a second intercessor squad, chaplain, and lieutenant grouped to the fore ready to go and grab the mid-field objective. Suppressors on the second floor of some ruins, and aggressors in outflanking mode, to deploy in the second round.
Aggressors and the embarded assault squad.
Here the Alpha Legion and armiger helverins have deployed. There is a rhino, a lord discordant, some havocs, cultists, and plague marines. In the background, you can see a lot of small tyranids on the two terrain pieces.
In the first (enemy) shooting phase, my stormraven took 10 wounds from havocs and armigers, and so could only move 30" when it came time. You can also see here my tactical squad at the bottom has been depleted some, and my intercessors and chaplain have moved on the center objective. The buggies there belong to the genestealer force I allow to live as long as they fight against our mutual foes.
Intercessors are being moved on by some regular Alpha Legion heretics and some plague marine variants, as well.
Here the rhino has moved around the building toward my intercessors on the point ahead of it, while the tyranids are also moving in that direction. The brood lords beside the lord discordant will soon move up into the ruins to join the melee.
The armigers here have blown up one genestealer buggy and shot down my stormraven, killing one assault marine in the process. The others have debarked there, looking to join the fighting in the ruins for the middle objective. The zoanthropes, tyranid psykers, have floated up to the top of the ruins and smote some of my intercessors.
There's a good fight brewing in these ruins.
Two brood lords charge my chaplain! Together they fight and bring him down to a single wound. He fights back and takes a couple of wounds off one of them. Then one of them fights a second time to take the chaplain's last wound and kill him.
Now my intercessors and chaplain are both gone. My teammate and I have decided to shoot down the brood lords, and so I'll charge my assault marines into the plague marines, instead.
The aggressors arrive here to shoot and do some heavy damage to the brood lords, taking each down to only a single wound left.
This rhino is coming for my intercessor squad.
Aggressors hanging out acting like a big target here.
All game I've been shooting the suppressors at the helverins opposite, but not getting very many wounds through the 4s to wound, and 5++ saves. I still think that was the right play, though. I might have shot the havocs, but one turn at least they had character status somehow, and others they were out of sight.
This is my destoryed/dead pool at this point in the game. That intercessor squad dying was unfortunate because that meant extra points for the other team via Marked for Death, one of the ITC special objectives.
Soon the aggressors joined the dead pool, being taken out by helverin and havoc shots.
And at one point it came down to just my assault sergeant in the ruins hanging tough.
My intercessors and lieutenant were charged by the rhino, tying up their shooting, unless I wanted to fall back and use a stratagem. I didnt have any CP left by this point, if I recall correctly.
The genestealers below are all on my side, for this battle at least.
This is how I spent my 6 CP in this game. One re-roll, and the stratagems you see below.
I don't really recall why I took this pic, but you can see the UI I made for myself to indicate the doctrine, and my three litany cards. The one turned over is for the new White Scars litany that no card exists for, Strike Off the Head, which allows me to reroll wound rolls. My chaplain had that and Litany of Hate (reroll hit rolls) up at the same time when fighting the brood lords, but they rolled really good saves anyway.
This was the state of the board as I had to perform a strategic retreat to get home in time for another matter. I made sure to brief my genestealer allies of convenience on what the few remaining units were packing, most important of which were the suppressors which were still at full strength.
I had to duck out sometime in the fourth battle round, after our shooting phase. I am told the enemies probably won by a point or two, but my teammate was unsure of the count of wounds we dealt overall, so there's a slight asterisk there, and we might have had the points for victory ourselves via the Reaper ITC special objective.
Either way, it was good fun, if a little hectic, like I said. We actually began probably an hour later than we should have, because one player couldn't get to the club as early as he'd thought originally. I'd have like to have stuck around, but I think I would have been all but eliminated soon, because of my fewer and more dangerous units, many of which were on contested objectives.
Some thoughts:
Losing the stormraven early meant losing about a third of my whole army early. In the context of a 2000 point list, it's only about a sixth, but even though we had 2000 points on our side, I only had a 1000 point list of my own. We weren't so much acting like one general with the wits of two, as we were two forces and two generals aligned but not coordinated like one person would do it. So, I felt like I brought a too-big unit in a too-small list, in the end.
The armiger helverin models are bigger than I'd imagined, and very strong. Are these the troops choices of Knights lists?
The Alpha Legion's -1 to hit at 12" is deceptively good. He had a few units that were -2 to hit at times, which sucks!
I wish aggressors could fire twice after coming in from outflank, but alas. 18 plus 3D6 shots isn't too bad.
I've now played a couple of games in a row without a psyker, and you really feel it going up against armies that do have them.
My chaplain can just about always be relied on to be good value for points. I could have used Counter-Offensive to interrupt as the two brood lords fought him, but I wanted to save the CP for Rapid Fire later, and it worked out, thanks to the 3++ Sacrosanct Rosarius I gave him this game. The only times he's been useless was when he was too far away to assault any enemies AND didn't manage to get off a litany.
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