White Scars vs Deathwatch 11/04/22

I got a pickup game at the Warhammer store nearby this evening. Open War, which means a randomly generated mission from a card deck, the details of which are in the pic above. 

I play White Scars, of course, whose main benefits on top of being just another Space Marine chapter are generally centered around the things they can do after having Advanced. The Twist in this game obviated all of that, since there would be no Advance moves permitted in this game. Sucks to be me!  

My opponent was running 50 PL of Deathwatch to my own 50 PL. His list was something like:

Primaris Captain

Something or other Kill Team

Two Invader ATVs

Assault Centurions

Gladiator Lancer

Inquisitor

He combat-squaded his Kill Team such that one half had four veterans with missile launchers and one terminator with a Cyclone missile launcher, and the other half had four veterans with fancy shotguns and the sergeant with a power sword and shield of some type. I'm not overly familiar with the Deathwatch kit.

My own list this time was the easiest way I could get to roughly 1000 points, or 50 PL, going with a Primaris theme, for variety. Not an optimized list by any means. No anti-tank capabilities to speak of.

Primaris Captain in Gravis Armour

Primaris Lieutenant in Phobos Armour

Primaris Librarian

Intercessor Squad with Bolt Rifles

Intercessor Squad with Bolt Rifles

Intercessor Squad with Auto Bolt Rifles

Reiver Squad

Aggressor Squad

Suppressor Squad

Eliminator Squad

He put his Centurions in a teleportation chamber to Deep Strike them, and I put both my Aggressors and Reivers into Outflank. Pics of deployment above and below. Most of my stuff began in the large ruins in my deployment zone near to a couple of objectives.

I won the roll off for first turn, but I decided to let him have it to allow him to come to me. I felt like this made sense without the capability to Advance this game, plus it would mean he had to stick his neck out first. 

In a first, he actually decided to use the Orbital Bombardment stratagem on me, as my stuff was all bunched up to begin with. This would mean that I would have to move a lot of it during my turn or face mortal wounds when it got back round to his turn. This suited me, since I had three Intercessor squads I wanted to get out onto objectives anyway, and my Suppressors were more than capable of moving to find a good line of sight. Only my slower moving Captain and the stationary Eliminators would knowingly risk the mortal wounds, though it turned out one Intercessor squad was also close enough to get clipped in the end.

You can see the results of my first movement phase below. The troops all moved out and onto objectives or toward the central one, and the Suppressors moved first onto the top of the crates, then after shooting made a successful charge into his remaining ATV. I believe their shooting and the Libriarian's Smite did for the first one.

Below is the state of the board at the end of my first turn. I had lost one Eliminator and one Intercessor at this point, but gained a VP by controlling more of the objectives for the round. 1-0.

When the Orbital Bombardment went off, my Captain took a fat 3 mortal wounds from it, leaving him with 4 wounds remaining.

During his turn, his ATV fell back from my Suppressors, toward my troops on my left side objective. He used a stratagem so that it'd be able to shoot, as well. 

By the time of this next pic his and my reserves had both arrived, so this had to be during his third turn. When I brought in the Aggressors over in his back corner I had them fire at the half Kill Team near them, but only one guy died. It took the rest of my second turn's shooting to kill only three of them in total.

His ATV had shot at my units close to it, but not done anything. In my next turn I had charged it with my remaining Suppressor, and everything else nearby, killing it with my Captain, who them consolidated over to the right back behind the crates.

This was the body count at that point. As of this point he had lost one full unit (the two ATVs), and I had not lost any, meaning I had a point from the second victory condition of the mission, as well as a second from the objectives, so 3-0 here.

This unit below with all the missiles blew my Aggressors away before they could move after their initial outflank arrival. Rough stuff!

Below, in my third turn, I have moved the Reivers up toward his Inquisitor, looking to charge him in order to get them on that objective. A note about his Inquisitor: he was running a proxy model, and wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do with the unit aside from Deny the Witch, so he elected to play it as nothing more than a backfield point holder and Deny source (no offensive moves). Whatever. My unit made their charge and he just picked up his Inquisitor at that point. Fair enough. He would have been facing something like 21 attacks, in Assault Doctrine.

There are a couple of Veterans in the pic above near to my models. They're gone in the pic below, to Smite and my Captain's shooting. I believe this gave me the "kill more" point for Round 3 as well, so 5-0 here if I'm not mistaken.

Below you can see how my Reivers have grabbed that objective, and also how his missile combat squad is lining up their shot. His Gladiator did a lot of shooting this game but mostly wasted shots at my Eliminators in cover, who he found extremely tough to kill (though they did very minimal work for me other than drawing his fire).

I know well the value of Assault Centurions with melta guns and siege drills from my own. Dealing with his was rough. I was able to Smite one away entirely with a D6 damage cast (4 mortal wounds exactly). I took another out when my Captain charged the remaining two. I should have been able to kill both, with nine power sword attacks on the charge, hitting on 2s and wounding on 3s (WL trait buffing his S stat), especially since Assault Doctrine made each attack -4 AP and 2 damage! Instead I had absolutely awful hit and wound rolls, and only two of the nine attacks made it through to damage. Four made it through to need saving, but he miraculously rolled two 6s to save. Well, two attacks at 2 damage each meant another dead Centurion. That left one, however, that was able to smash my Captain to bits after I failed three invulnerable saves at once.

His missile guys opened up and killed three of my Reivers, as well. I think two survived due to Transhuman Physiology.

In Round 4 I also moved my Lieutenant back into cover but still on the left side objective.

I was controlling 3/5 objectives at the end of Round 4, but he had killed more units, so 6-1.

In Round 5 he was finally able to finish off my Reivers, Eliminators, and kill my Librarian, leaving me with only my Lieutenant, and also him in control of more objectives, so the score was then 6-3 at the end of the game, in my favor, with my Phobos Lieutenant retreating to take the news of the battle to high command.

My list was not really geared to take on his Gladiator, or the combination of the ATVs and Centurions, either. If not for very cold dice I could have done for the Centurions, though, and the ATVs were taken out, too.

His combat squad of missile guys wrecked both my Aggressors and Reivers (over a couple of turns), but the other of shotguns didn't do all that much. Armour of Contempt makes marine on marine battles real slugfests.

This was a very fun game that felt very close all the way through. I was tracking my own VP as we went, but he wasn't, really, so I didn't know how much of a lead I had until I sat down to write the game up and figure it all out. We both kind of came with half-baked casual-ish lists (his was meant for Crusade night), and ended up having a good time. Win/win/win! 

Alpha Legion vs Iron Hands 09/29/22

I'm writing about this game well after the fact, but at the end of September there was originally to be a small RTT, or Rogue Trader Tournament, which in Warhammer-speak refers to a small casual tournament event, usually only over a single day.

Well, a few people had to drop out for one reason or another and suddenly the tournament was off. The organizer had become an acquaintance since I'd attended a previous tournament though, and was going to be at the store that day anyway, so he said he'd be glad to play a game against my new Alpha Legion force anyhow.

If I recall, we played at 2500 points. He had an Iron Hands army featuring a unit or two of Veterans, a unit of Scouts, a Spartan, a Leviathan, a unit of backfield artillery whose name escapes me at the moment. Rapier Batteries, I think they were. Or perhaps some Iron Hands variant. Oh, and he had some Terminators.

I remember his Terminators giving me some trouble by deep striking into my backfield early on. I had to peel off my Contemptor from his planned advance up the board to go back and deal with them.

In this game I put my Headhunter Kill Team in some central ruins on his side of the board, and they ended up getting wiped out without doing too much for the cause but being targets.

My Contemptor did do well though, killing the deep striking Terminators.

My veterans also did pretty well, getting a Rhino kill on one hand and later a Spartan on the other.

Phospshex from the enemy Leviathan dreadnought.

Spartan vs Spartan showdown.

He had some infantry in the Rhino carrier there that got out to fight my Veterans.

The Rhino was a wreck at this point, with his guys climbing over it.

All the while my Kratos kind of languished in the middle of the board, unable to get many notable targets. Eventually his Spartan blew it up with a lucky Lascannon shot.

Almost don't even bother trying to fight a Contemptor with Terminators. You'll likely lose pretty decisively.

Terminators on Terminators however, is very winnable.

The Veterans with my Praetor and Contemptor maneuvering around another wrecked Rhino to finish off a Scout squad.

My Cataphractii Terminators walking into battle against his Indomitus Terminators, with some Phosphex going off on my unit of Veterans.

A well-place Melta bomb did for the Iron Hands Spartan. Hydra Dominatus!

The endgame Terminator scrum.

As you can tell, my memory of this game is patchy after two and a half months. It was a win, though. Not bad for a first outing with a new army. Hopefully the first of many to come.

Horus Heresy: Age of Darkness Thoughts

This weekend I attended a small tournament for the new edition of Horus Heresy, also known as 30K. It was held at 2,500 points for the maximum army size, with lists limited to a single Primary Detachment from the Crusade Force Organisation Chart. No Primarchs, Lords of War, or Allied Detachments of any sort were allowed. This kept the lists within the realm of approximiately balanced and simple enough to comprehend. Most of the attendees seemed to know the rules well enough, but none of us were dyed in the wool experts, so the simpler the lists and rules interactions, the better.

As it happened, in three games I never had one go into the fourth battle round (game turn, if you prefer) in the 2.5 hours set aside for them. Had the lists been set to 1500 points I think we may have finished more games. All of mine had to be settled by less than optimal haphazard points allocating, once even after my opponent had gotten two turns and I had had only one.

I brought a 2,500 point list of White Scars to the event comprising:

Praetor on Legion Spatha bike

Stormseer Consul

Champion Consul

2 Tactical squads of 10 models, one with dedicated Rhino transport

1 Scout squad of 5 models 

2 Indomitus Terminator squads of 5 models

1 Indomitus Terminator squad of 10 models

1 Veteran squad with dedicated Rhino transport (Champion joined)

1 White Scars Dark Sons of Death squad of 5 models (Stormseer joined)

1 Outrider squad of 10 models (Praetor joined)

I ran this list using the Sagyar Mazan Rite of War, which gave me some respectable buffs while only placing limits on me that were all too easy to abide by, given what I had available and painted to choose from during list construction.

I played against Word Bearers, Emperor's Children, and Iron Hands. Also present were second armies of the Word Bearers and Emperor's Children, and an Imperial Fists army. There was another person who registered who probably would have had Space Wolves, but who was a no-show.

My record, as such, was 1-2 on the day, with the win against Iron Hands. Both losses, I will say, were decided by a single point of Attrition (I had lost one more unit than my opponent had when the game was called). I think this was a respectable showing for the list above.

I came to this list by a process of testing and rebuilding my prospective tournament list over a week and a half leading up to the tournament, playing out solo games against a cobbled together Opposing Force of Word Bearers from my other various collections of painted sci-fi soldiers.

Originally I had thought not to run any Rite of War, and had included a Predator, Vindicator, and Land Raider Explorator in the list. Running it with a couple of Tactical squads required me to paint up a couple of guys holding bolters (as this is a 40K army, my Tactical squads for that system include heavy and special weapons not permitted in this one). I also decided to knock out another guy with bolt pistol, chainsword, and jump pack, so that all of my Dark Sons of Death could be WYSIWYG. That unit didn't end up being used to much benefit, but I'll get to that.

Testing against my hard-as-nails Word Bearers OpFor list, which for brevity's sake I'll suffice it to say had two Contemptors and a unit of Gal Vorbak led by Argel Tal, revealed both of those to be major weakness of the army. But, I had noticed that my unit of Veterans (which I did not mix in among the Tacticals due to their black Ebon Keshig-style armor) were much better in game than I had expected, having a better WS, more wounds, and more attacks than the Tactical squads.

So, I decided to lean into them and re-tooled the list into one using the Pride of the Legion Rite of War, which then limited me to only a single Fast Attack choice and Heavy Support choice. This meant first combining my two units of 5 Outrider bikers into one unit of 10, then dropping my Attack Bikes and Land Speeder, as well as the Predator and Vindicator. I kept the Land Raider Explorator in this version.

That list still could not effectively deal with the Contemptor problem. They would get to the Land Raider before it could kill them with its Lascannons. My solution to that was to not give any opposing Dreadnoughts any juicy targets--I would remove the Land Raider which wasn't getting the job done, and instead bring in a squad of Terminators with Thunder hammers as my anti-vehicle and anti-dreadnought tool. I have 6 models with hammers and shields, so I added to them 4 with dual lightning claws, mostly as ablative wounds, and redid the list again.

By now I had finished painting the models I needed to run two 10-man Tactical Squads. This new list, above, seemed to really lend itself to the Sagyar Mazan Rite, which grants all infantry a 5+ Feel No Pain, and Fearless on the turn they charge. Couple that with the Heroes Never Die warlord trait that is exclusive to the White Scars, and you may have an entire army that is flat out Fearless (and thus auto-passes all Morale and Pinning tests) for most of the game, should the warlord be killed early and in line of sight of the rest of your models on the table. This exact thing happened to me up against the Emperor's Children. Which brings me to my next topic--the utility of certain units.

Even in a big 10-model block (11 with the Praetor), Outriders just melt under any amount of pressure. Coming to this game from 40K, I'm used to my bikers being tougher than infantry, with triple the amount of wounds, to boot. No, these guys have the same 4 Toughness as anyone else, and only a single wound. They also shoot half the shots, but that's another subject. This is how my Warlord died in the first round one game, granting the entire army Fearless for the rest of that game. I have learned that they can put out a decent amount of bolter fire, but that they shouldn't really commit to combat with anything more numerous than them and definitely not anything with a higher weapon skill, like say a unit of Veterans. When and if I get around to painting a unit of actual Heresy-era units for White Scars, I don't know if I'll use these guys much, when there will be jetbikes to choose over them.

I was also kind of let down by the Stormseer and the Dark Sons of Death I had accompanying him, though that's probably mostly due to the former's Psychic Weapon. See, it's both Heavy and Barrage, which effectively means he has to stand still in order to fire it. I kept trying to get it to do any good, and so kept leaving the whole unit just sat where they deployed all game. The idea is that the Stormseer is calling down lightning to zap entire areas of the battlefield. It's a 5" large blast, so it scatters, of course. That I can live with. It starts out as S4, though, which is really not great. You can buff it to S8, which is a lot better, but even if you do so, it's still AP 4, which I have to say, sucks. It's also got the Force and Shock Pulse special rules, which can be pretty good against Corrupted (Gal Vorbak et al) and Dreadnoughts, but good luck getting your single hit on a Dreadnought through it's 2+ armor save! The possibility to Instant Death daemonic units aside, I can only imagine the power would be at all dependable against massed Imperial Army-level mortal opposition. Against single-wound marines it could maybe get a couple of kills, but you couldn't rely on it. Anyway, you could fairly say my Stormseer and Dark Sons were both wasted on trying to get any utility out of this power that I had give me Perils I think three times over three games. At least the Dark Sons saw use as ablative wounds for that, I suppose.

Now for the bright spots. The Legion Champion consul is awesome. You can use him to call out and kill pretty much any character on the other side, including enemy Praetors. Veterans are really good, as I mentioned above. Terminators, also good. Thunder Hammers are your only hope as far as melee weapons for infantry trying to take down a Dreadnought. Aside from Melta bombs, maybe. The humble Tactical Squad, very very good! Fury of the Legion combined with the Return Fire or Overwatch reactions. Very enjoyable. The scouts were able to Concuss enemy units  (with Astartes Shotguns), and thus make them fight at -1 WS during the next Assault phase. This is immensely good, if you can pull it off.

The event was a ton of fun. All the guys I met were just happy to be there playing this cool new game. 

Going forward, I'm hoping to hobby up my Alpha Legion to the point where I can take them as my main Horus Heresy force. I'll keep the Scars on the back burner as far as 30K goes. I've got more Word Bearers already painted for this system than anything, but already seeing two guys playing them at an 8-person event? I'll focus on my Alpha Legion, which I've been wanting to do for a long while, awaiting the release of this game. I have Headhunters on the painting desk right this moment, and Tactical Squads and Contemptors and Terminators and tanks galore to do later, too.