I’ll try to give a short account of the game I played this weekend between my new Sons of Omegon Crusade Force and my White Scars one.
First, who are they? A quick peek at the Order of Battle:
CRUSADE CARDS POWER RATING
Primaris Captain Herkyul 5
Primaris Lieutenant Ifit 4
Intercessor Squad Aldebaran 5
Intercessor Squad Bellatrix 5
Intercessor Squad Capella 5
Redemptor Dreadnought Ophiuchus 9
And the Outrider detachment (yes, I did pay 3 CP of their starting 6 for this) of White Scars ambushing them in this mission:
CRUSADE CARDS POWER RATING
Assault Squad Sirocco 6
Bike Squad Drover 7
Terminator Squad Stampede 9
Hibogen Khan - Khan on Bike 6
Land Speeder Tornado Berkut 4
So it was 33 to 32 PL, which would usually be an Incursion size game, but I wanted to play the final Strike Force mission that I had not, so I just took that one and modified it.
I changed the size of the deployment zones, and orientation of the table, so that the defender (SoO) deployment was in the middle strip of the table running from long side to long side, and the attacker was deploying along both of the short sides of the table. This allowed me to keep the recommended sizes of each deployment zone, since it was still 44” across the table from one attacker edge to the other. A much simpler way of stating is that I took the 60x44” table and then halved it and only used one side, which was 30x44”, only rotated 90 degrees so it was like the defender was being attacked from the west and east as they traveled north-south, rather than from the north and south as they traveled east-west.
Not that it matters much, but my intent was to keep the mission as much intact as I could, while using smaller forces. There are no objective points in this mission; it is purely a kill-fest. The twist is in how the attacker deploys and what that does to who gets the first turn. The idea is that the attacker is laying an ambush on the defender’s traveling convoy. However, the defender is faster or earlier than expected, so the attacker doesn’t have all of their forces ready to go at the best time. The attacker has a choice—go ahead with the attack without the complete force (reinforcements do not arrive until the third turn), or wait a little for the whole force to show up (the defender senses the coming ambush, and gets to take the first turn).
I did the roll-off, and it came to the SoO to choose to which role to play. The core idea of the army is more of a defensive one, so I chose for them to be the defender. And naturally, the core idea of my White Scars are that they are fast and aggressive, especially as an Outrider detachment. They were to be the attacker. Now, knowing my White Scars capabilities and my tendency to get them too deep and vulnerable, I decided it would be best for them to attack as a complete force (giving up the first turn to the Sons of Omegon). I reasoned that they would be either obscured or behind cover, so wouldn’t take too much damage from letting the enemy act first.
And, at the same time, I needed all of my units on the board in order to execute the pincer attack from both sides. See, if you opt to go ahead and attack without the full force, the number of units that are kept in reserve (again, until turn 3) has to be at least half of your force. I only had five units, so that would mean three of five, leaving only two units on the board. What would I do with any two of these units against the whole SoO Battalion? Well, now, after the fact, I have some ideas. I’ll go into those later.
I set the White Scars up with the Land Speeder and Terminators on one side, and the Assault Squad and Khan with Bike Squad on the other. The Sons of Omegon are in the center, in a line from top to bottom, with the Redemptor at the top, then the three Intercessor squads and two HQs clumped together in the center.
So, first off, I have to say that my ideal for how the Sons of Omegon should play went off pretty much without a hitch during this game. They were able to first blunt, and then weather the White Scars attack, and then punish them for it with overlapping defensive fire (Defensive Focus stratagem), auras (from the Lt and Captain both in the center of all three Intercessor Squads), and Heroic Interventions. How did it all go?
Round 1, SoO get the first turn. The Redemptor dreadnought immediately recognizes the largest threat to himself on the board as the Terminator Squad. He was, in fact, deployed as far from them as possible, since they were on the board first. He is able to get a decent line of fire on them using his 8” move, however they are still behind cover, so are getting to add 1 to their saves. To make matters worse, he rolls a 1 for his Macro Plasma Incinerator’s volley of shots, and that is then re-rolled into another 1. Bleh. Well, he is also re-rolling 1s to hit thanks to the strat giving him Rites of War for a turn, so he goes ahead and overcharges his single shot to 9 str, and kills one terminator with the 3 damage resulting.
The Intercessors around the table are to kill another with their combined firepower. The Lt and Cpt. are out of pistol range. There are no charges from the SoO. I considered having the Redemptor charge the Land Speeder, but had to decide on terrain rules, since there was a kind of low barrier between the models. I decided that the barrier and others like it around the table should have the Difficult Ground terrain trait, allowing for units to charge across them, but at the cost of adding 2” to the distance. The Redemptor then attempted the charge, but failed it.
During the White Scars turn, the Terminators advanced toward the Redemptor, planning to tear it to pieces with their Power Fists. I used Hunter’s Fusillade to turn all their storm bolters and heavy flamer into assault weapons for the turn, so they could shoot, as well. The Land Speeder flew up to be on top of the center building on the map, out of Redemptor charge range, but in a spot to shoot him with the multi-melta, and an Intercessor Squad (Capella) with the heavy flamer. The Assault squad advance, also toward Capella, and get to a pretty trivial charge distance. The Bike Squad move together with the Khan (who advances, to trigger his -1 to hit status), right up to Intercessor squad Bellatrix, hoping to get at the Captain behind them. I should mention here that one agenda I took was Quest of Atonement, to try to remove the Bike Squad’s battle scar by killing an enemy character of 5 PL or more. Well only Captain Herkyul fits the bill, since Lieutenant Ifit is only worth 4 PL.
The other agenda I took were mostly unimportant, but for SoO it was Know No Fear (get experience points for passing morale tests) and King Slayer (Slay the Warlord). The other on the Scars side was First Into the Fray, which says the first unit you have to Charge or Heroically Intervene gets 1 xp, 2 if they do it in round one, and 3 if they then succeed in killing an enemy unit. This one is (afaik) only found on a card (like stratagem card sized) I got from the Warhammer store around the time of when 9th had just come out last year. I wonder how many of these there are?
Anyway, back to the WS turn, in shooting, the Terminators remove one Intercessor from squad Aldebaran, the Land Speeder unleashes raw melta fury into Redemptor Ophiuchus, dealing him 8 wounds (even after subtracting 1 per attack), and kills one of squad Capella with the heavy flamer. The Assault Squad have a flamer also, and I think do one more wound to Capella. The Khan can’t shoot since he advanced, but the Bike Squad have 4x twin boltguns, a heavy bolter, and a combi-melta. They remove one, maybe two guys from Bellatrix.
Charge phase, Terminators go at Ophiucus. There are three left at this point. He fires overwatch with everything he’s got, and removes one, so two get in on him. One with a power fist, and the other a Sgt with a power sword. 2 more wounds taken off. Either I forgot to fight back with the dreadnought, or he missed all 4 attacks due to his reduced WS of 5+. I think it was the latter. Assault Squad fights Capella, killing one, losing one in the fighting back. The Khan and Bike Squad charge into Bellatrix. At this point I used Defensive Focus to allow up to 3 other units around Bellatrix (but not Bellatrix itself, per the FAQ) to fire Overwatch on behalf of them. This would have been Aldebaran, the Lt., and the Cpt., since Capella up above were already in combat with the Assault Squad. I wish I could recall exactly what went off. I don’t think anything died. Anyway, Lt. and Cpt both Heroically Intervene (Lt has Warden of Macragge, so he can do so from 6” away, even). The Khan fights first, killing one or two more of Bellatrix. The Bike Squad fight next, trying to finish off that squad. They remove all but the Sgt. The Sons of Omegon fight back, the Captain wounding the Khan, and the Sgt and Lieutenant together killing one biker, and nearly killing the attack bike also (which has 5 wounds). Watch out for that Burning Blade! S3/-5 AP/2 damage on that thing. Morale tests are taken, and that is the end of round 1. The SoO had lost 7 Intercessors across all 3 squads, and the WS had lost 3 Terminators, an Assault Marine, and a Biker.
Round 2: The Sons of Omegon fall back from all combats. The Lt. retains the ability to charge back in with his hellacious blade via the Fall Back and Re-engage stratagem. The Captain has the Calm Under Fire warlord trait, so all shooting will be done at normal BS. Conveniently, it’s not an aura that specifies Core units only, so he can fire his own Sunwrath pistol at 2+. This is a Pistol 2 S8/-3AP/2 damage gun, by the way. Ophiuchus is Core, but out of range, so after falling back he’s shooting at 6+. Still, he manages to kill a Terminator. Squad Aldebaran kills the final one with their Bolt Rifles and Astartes Grenade Launcher. Squad Capella up on the building shoot at the Assault Squad they were in combat with, killing a second of them. Only the Sgt is left from Bellatrix. He and the Lt and Cpt. all shoot. The Captain’s Sunwrath pistol finishes off the attack bike that is part of the Bike Squad. I believe that is all.
The Lt is able to charge back in, and does so, killing both remaining Bikers. End of SoO turn.
WS turn 2. At this point all that is really left is the Land Speeder, 3 Assault Marines, and the Khan with I think 2 wounds left. The Assault Marines fly down to be near the Khan and enemy HQs, and the Land Speeder also comes down off the same building. The Khan advances to trigger his -1 to hit status, just looping around a terrain piece, ending on the other size of the Assault Squad, and close for charges either into SoO HQs or into squad Aldebaran. In shooting, the Land Speeder again face-melts Ophiuchus, right off the board this time. The heavy flamer removes two form Aldebaran, as well. The Khan can’t shoot, and the Assault Squad can, but does maybe one wound to Captain Herkyul with their flamer and single bolt pistol (Sgt has two chainswords). The Khan and Assault Squad charge into the Cpt/Lt./Sgt from Bellatrix grouping, and get a few wounds off the Cpt, but that’s all. In the fighting back, the Khan dies, as I recall. Records indicate it was probably the Lt. who killed him. I think one Assault Marine dies, as well.
Round 3, SoO turn 3. All that is left of the White Scars is the Land Speeder and I think two Assault Marines. Again, the Lt. gets Fall Back and Re-engage. Everyone in combat falls back, the Captain finishes off the Assault Marines with the Sunwrath pistol, and the Lt. charges in and destroys the Land Speeder with The Burning Blade. That thing is sick. Game over.
So, what might I have done differently as the White Scars? Well, I don’t think the Sons of Omegon would have extended too much out of their defensive posture in the first two turns, knowing the hammer was going to drop eventually. So, perhaps I could have forward deployed the Terminator Squad and Bike Squad, both units being made up of 3-wound and relatively tough models defensively, and tried to stay hidden from as much of the SoO as possible, while still taking pot shots to harry them as the opportunity arose. Then, once the Land Speeder, Assault Squad, and Khan all showed up, I could probably count on at least one successful charge from the Khan (rolling 3D6 and dropping the low one as a stratagem, and rerolling the charge roll if needed by virtue of his Warlord Trait). I might even been able to get two charges off using that strat on the Assault Squad and counting on the Khan to make do with his trait. The Land Speeder doesn’t need to charge of course, since it is there just for the multi-melta and heavy flamer.
Then again, its also possible that the SoO would have seized the chance to wipe out two units ahead of the other three. Would they be able to take down the T5 bikers and the five Terminators? It’s certainly possible, given good rolls for the Redemptor and smart positioning of the Lieutenant and Captain with their powerful melee weapons. And of course we can’t discount the 3 Intercessor Squads combined 30 bolt rifle rounds (and grenade) per turn, either. Defensive deployment of the Scars during the first two turns might have foiled these plans, though. it’s hard to say.
So, I’m very happy with how the SoO held up as intended under fire. I think this game has finally illustrated to me how Heroic Interventions are supposed to work. You have your character screened by another unit, the chargers go into said unit, and now your character jumps in, giving the attacker the bad choice between killing the screening unit (which are not too shabby in combat themselves—no guardsman, these) or trying get to the character with whatever few models are close enough to it. Thereby, the attacker might be splitting the fighting unit’s attacks between the target character (for those models close enough) or the screening unit (for the ones not close enough), and in all likelihood killing neither. They are then also left receiving the return attacks from both screener and character. Heroic Interventions have never been something I concerned myself with all that much, since they have occurred fairly rarely in my games, but they are something I’ll definitely be more mindful of going forward.
I want to also mention the attacks disparity between firstborn and Primaris marines. Now that everyone has 2 wounds, this is the only thing differentiating the two generation of marines. Well, on the stat line, anyway. It felt like a little bit of an uphill battle having my firstborn bikers and assault marines, who only get one attack base (two for the Sgts), fighting against Intercessors, who get two base (three for Sgts). Just something to keep in mind. The balancing factor is that the firstborn are either cheaper to run, or come with more wargear like jump packs or get to choose special or heavy weapons where Primaris don’t. Or they come in larger sized units (Bikers vs Outriders). Terminators match baseline Primaris’ 2 attacks for your average guy, but then Aggressors and Bladeguard (as Veterans) get 3 attacks base, 4 on the Sgt.
I think more attacks might be more than enough to offset the other stuff in Primaris’ favor. In the case of a combat-focused chapter like White Scars, at the very least. It might be time to hustle along my Crusade narrative so that the force starts to pickup their Primaris reinforcements! My Requisition for this battle, though, has already been spent to add a second Bike Squad to the force, with another attack bike, this one with a multi-melta. So, next game will probably be another Outrider detachment full of bikes and the Speeder and whatever else. Or, since I’ll probably go against my Astra Militarum, I can probably bring a Battalion and not spend those 3 CP—which I did miss, by the way. They might not have made a huge difference, but with a re-roll here or there, you never know. I want that new 9th edition Ravenwing detachment consideration for my White Scars.
