White Scars vs Genestealer Cults 500 pts 02/25/20

This was a quick game played almost as a warm-up for a later one. We pared down our larger army lists to just half their value, and played one of the new ITC missions. The deployment was Hammer and Anvil (lengthways, 24" deployment zones) with 5 objectives situated in a cross pattern on the table, with one in the middle.

You can see my deployment below. suppressors on one objective, assault squad at the bottom ready to advance toward another, tactical squad at the top same, iIntercessors in the middle same, and lieutenant and aggressors in a position to move up and potentially offer fire support to either squad to the side of them.

The dice here are all you see when genestealers are "deployed". They don't actually appear (or not) at these blips until the end of the first movement phase.

I had lousy advance rolls and couldn't get control of any of those three objectives in the first turn!

Now he's got a unit of acolytes that have popped in and are going to shoot at my tactical squad. Note the other squad appearing in the ruins at the upper right near that objective. Also note my intercessors and suppressors preparing to shoot.

Said acolytes managed to kill all five of my tactical marines, but notice the conspicuous absense of both them and the ones in the far ruins where the objective is. Now what big, ebon-clad unit might have shot twice in the interim?

Below are the stratagems I used this game. This was only a patrol detachment, so I only had three CP, and this is how I spent them, in a single play, on my intercessors.

I more or less had the game sewn up here, but my opponent made a good effort by deep-striking in a couple of characters and some acolytes and taking out my assault squad. I went on to kill them all with my suppressors and intercessors, mainly. I won this game by 4-5 victory points, if I recall correctly. I always let him track the ITC scoring, since he knows the rules better and has the app on his phone for it. And this was just a quick bit of fun, anyway.

It was a slightly odd game, for my White Scars. I never got any unit into melee combat, for one. Since everything was at range, and my units on the board mostly pretty capable in that regard, I never even left the tactical doctrine. But that just goes to show you that space marines are generalists, and can do anything pretty well.

My opponent contends that the game is, if not off-balance, just generally kind of weird in how it plays at low point levels. I think there is definitely something different in how it feels, but I wouldn't make a qualitative judgment about whether it is better or worse. I do feel like a game of 500 points on a side should probably be played on a 4'x4' table rather than a 6'x4' one, at least. All that empty space can make it feel sparse.