'Ardboyz: Round One - Fight!

So we had a pretty good 'Ardboyz here at the Midnight Judges. Didn't make a tremendous showing in terms of numbers, but then half the people who pre-registered didn't show either. As a former redshirt I definitely felt the pain of the organizer. Those of us that did (Qustav with his Tyranids, Tyri with his Eldar, and me with my Steel Talons) at least made a good showing of ourselves. I'll let them post their own details, but without further ado, the write up!

Game 1 - Loot Counters Steel Talons vs. Traitor Armored Company.

I almost had to laugh. 2/3 of the games have kill points and I drew the armored company on the objective holding one. He had no allies, so he had no scoring units. That said, I still had to win this, and he was determined not to let me do better than a draw. Barring some unfortunate luck with powerfists (in one turn I rolled 1s for every single penetrating hit) this would have been a massacre.

As it was I got a major victory. Squad Bedwyr (double meltas) and Squad Thelonious (double flamers) held an objective a piece, Squad Lazarus having been blown apart along with my Librarian, and Squad Petrus-Postumus' last man sniped by a lascannon on the last turn as he desperately clung to an objective. Even so, all of my devastator squads, one vindicator, and the tank hunting dreadnought were still kicking, and he had, I think, 3 mobile tanks left to fight, and 2 were Hellhounds with no guns. All in all a pretty solid victory for the Golden Company.

Cheers: Revered-Brother Bran for proving that rending can still work by blowing the tracks off of his command tank and then ripping it in half in the assault phase, and just generally terrifying the heretic into forgetting all about half of my troops choices.

Jeers: Brother-Sergeant Lazarus. With Might of Heroes I expect a powerfist to do more than shake a stationary tank. I also expect to get more than 2 penetrating hits out of 4-6 attacks!

As a brief aside, having my opponent's friend nearby was really annoying. I'm pretty okay with people watching my games. I don't even mind if they bring up different rules interpretations, or remind my opponent of something like "Your Lictor comes with Flesh Hooks, so he is I 6 when charging into the ruins." I do mind when he gives tactical advice, suggests targets for shooting, and generally tries to play in a tournament he's not in.

Game 2 - Annihilation Steel Talons vs. Tyranids (Qustav)

We were pretty sad about this one. We were matched up through the swiss system, so there wasn't much we could do, but it was still sad. Qustav has a pretty tough nid list, taking full advantage of scuttlers and Monstrous Creatures alike. I didn't fully agree with some of the choices of the list (I don't like his 2 units of scuttling termagants), but he's got good synapse and good scary fexes.

The game started off pretty poorly (I hate Dawn of War and they used it for 2 missions, more about this later) so he had all of his genestealers and tyrants out and I had no devastators. If my rhinos hadn't been keeping him really far away with deployment push, I would have died real fast. As it was his flyrant quickly made itself a nuisance. Twin devourers with all kinds of upgrades dealt 11 wounds to my 10 man double plasma. I of course promptly failed 5 saves, killing both plasma gunners and the powerfist sergeant. Grr. Happily I completely annihilated a Genestealer squad with vindicator fire, and pretty heavily shelled another, but there was cover close to me, and that nearly got me killed.

Highlights of the first 3 turns were killing all but one genestealer squad, and of course the death of the Flyrant. Aside from that I basically withdrew, playing a conservation game. The second half killed off a carnifex, and chased off both units of termagants in the last turn of the game.

That last genestealer unit was a pain. I shot them with demolisher cannons till there were about 4 left. They charged and shook one of them. My vindicators promptly backed up, shot them, leaving two remaining. They were too close to my devastators, so they had to die. Squad Aodh (the plasmacannons) were even within rapid fire range with their bolters. My plasmacannons weren't terribly accurate, but still got two hits on two genestealers. Double ones. 8 bolter shots later one genestealer was still alive. On his turn he promptly ran over to a vindicator and with 3 hits rolled 3 sixes to rend right through my armor. To add insult to injury the vindicator died, but didn't have the courtesy to blow up and kill that loathsome bug. Cost me a battle point too

Final Result Massacre to me

Cheers: Brother-Captain Aurelius Aquillus in his first newly converted outing killed a Flyrant single-handedly!
Jeers: That damned Genestealer!

Game 3 - Get dat Jelly Donut! (Deployment zones/Kill Points) Steel Talons vs. 200+ Orks

Yikes. 180 boys, with Ghazghkull, a Big Mek with a forcefield, and an irritating habit of overlapping to give them all a 4+ cover save anyways. And because this was modified dawn of war that all started on the table, and none of my heavy weapons did.
He also started 24" on, with the first turn. Gulp. So I dutifully lined up my tactical squads to face down the area he was going through (the terrain funneled him a bit) He ran forward and I hopped in my rhinos and ran for it, abandoning my objective. A couple of vindicators rolled up to give him something to play with in a different direction from my troops, who were all running towards where my devastators had come in. Then he Waaaghed.

I wasn't actually expecting this that early, but Ghazghkull did get into contact with a rhino, and his boys did rip apart my vindicators, so I can't say it was a terrible move, by now though his boys were very spread out. Ghazghkull ripped apart the rhino, sending Squad Petrus-Postumus tumbling out, but honestly that was okay. Every squad that could blew apart as many orks as they could, opening up the charge for Aurelius and Cwethan who killed enough orks that Ghazghkull ran away and was killed. This is when the Ork player lost some of his cockiness about his chances. Honestly though he was still in a pretty good place. He'd left a pretty sizable rearguard for his objective (60 orks!!!) and he had mine. I had gotten 4 kill points for Ghaz and company, but he'd done the same for my vindicators.

The rest of the game basically consisted of me trying to bring down as many of his small expensive squads (kannons, deffkoptas) while holding off his big squads with rapid fire and heavy bolters. Not Missile Launchers and Plasma Cannons because Snikkrot jumped both of them. Last turn of the game he finally finished them off, and my heavy bolters gunned down all but 3 of them. They promptly passed their morale to my chagrin, as did both units of deffkoptas which my drop pod and rhino had forced to take tests. This turned out to be extra unfortunate because we tied on kill points, and because the objectives didn't matter unless you had both, we ended up with a draw. Oh, on the last turn I drove rhinos up to one of the objectives, thereby frustrating his victorious ambitions.

Cheers: Aurelius for chasing off Ghaz, and beating back squad after squad of orks, also for attracting the attacks of 15 orks in the last turn and surviving them all.
Jeers: The mission. Dawn of war is balanced because of the relatively small numbers. The modifications that they made give tremendous advantage to horde close combat. Very few armies can reasonably handle that amount of bodies, and if he'd done a better job blanketing the map, he very well could have won.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot like 'Ardboyz

Hoping Kill Points won't be used for the win.

Don't have my exact list here with me, but here's what it's looking to be:

Brother-Captain Aurelius Aquillus (Master with thunder hammer, storm shield and other fun wargear)
Chief Librarian Cwethan Rathk (Epistolary with Fear of the Darkness and Might of Heroes)

Squad Gilbertus (8 man tank hunting Devastator squad with 3 Missile Launchers and a Lascannon)
Squad Aodh (8 man tank hunting Devastator squad with 4 plasma cannons)
Revered-Brother Bran Tank hunting Venerable Dreadnought with Drop Pod, A. Cannon and Heavy Flamer)

Squads Lazarus and Petrus Postumus (8 and 10 man Tactical Squads in Rhinos, Vet. Sarges with P. Fists, 2 plasmaguns a piece)
Squad Thelonious (8 man Tactical squad in a rhino with 2 flamers and vet sarge)
Squad Bedwyr (10 man tactical squad in a drop pod with 2 melta guns and vet sarge with p. fist)

Dagda's Hammer and Ogma's Maul (2 Vindicators with PotMS)
Squad Ghalib (8 man devastator squad with 4 heavy bolters)

17 Kill Points... ech. 5 of those are rhinos or drop pods which used to (cue whiny aside) give up 58 victory points at the max! (end whiny aside)

The whole army still works on my tried and true hammer and anvil theory. I set up a solid firebase (devs, vindicators) and try to crush my enemies against it with my cavalry (rhino squads, drop pods). It's a pretty direct plan (though one with a surprising amount of room for finesse), but one I stick to against all but the killiest assault armies. When that comes up I just circle the wagons and use the rhinos to harass while getting the most bolter shots that I can.

Haven't fought some of the weirder armies with this yet. Haven't fought a nob biker list or hell, even daemons with the marines yet. That said, in a lot of ways they play pretty similarly to my Eldar who have, and so I'm pretty confident of killing the xenos and purging the heretics.

I think my stock against horde armies has gone up with the new blast rules, and so I'm not as worried about them as I maybe should be. A horde ork army duffed me over pretty well at Adepticon Gladiator... though in some ways that seems like a hard thing to have avoided while packing the necessary anti tank to fight an armored company with a baneblade, or a hierophant, or a titan. Sigh... Gladiator lists have a lot of options for killing you dead.

I'm a bit worried about outflanking units (and my favorite/my most hated Nob ever, Snikkrot), especially scuttling Genestealers at the moment. Mainly because if I want to be out of a potential off the table charge, they narrow my deployment zone to a foot across. Not great with the whole 4+ cover save from my own models bit.

As far as missions go, anything that's not kill points I'm not too worried about. I've got the speed and the staying power for Seize Ground and the speed and objective clearing shooty for Capture and Control. I'm going to usually want to put the objectives in the open, but that will vary enough that I'll deal with it on a case by case basis.

I don't think there's a lot of preparing I can do for the weird things that the missions might end up being, but 4 mobile scoring units should help that out a lot I'm hoping. It may not be a windrider host, but the Talons should get the job done.