Thursday, December 23, 2010

2k Batrep vs Raven Guard

I had a chance to take my most recent 2k list for a spin against Gabe's codex marines with Shrike tonight.

My list:
Tyrant +heavy venom cannon, old adversary, armored shell, regen
Tyrant Guard x3 + whips
Parasite of Mortrex
Hive Guard x2
Hive Guard x2
Venomthropes x2
Tervigon + ts, ag, cat
Tervigon + ts, ag, cat
Termagants x10 + devourers
Termagants x10 + devourers
Genestealers x20 + ts
Gargoyles x15 +ts,ag

Gabe's List:
Shrike
Chaplain + terminator armor
Assault Terminators x5, 4x LC, 1x TH/SS (with chaplain)
Land Raider Redeemer + xtra armor, multimelta
Ironclad Dread + drop pod
Assault Marines x10 + 2 claws, 2 flamers (with Shrike)
Tac Marines x10 + fist, flamer, missile launcher
Tac Marines x10 + plasma cannon
Scouts x10 + fist (pistols/ccw's)
Scouts x10 + combi-melta, 8 sniper rifles, heavy bolter, camo cloaks
We rolled dawn of war and annihilation.  The table was set up perfectly symmetrically with 1 forest/area terrain in each quarter, one in the center, 1 hill on each side between the center forest and table edge, and a hedge row in the center of each deployment zone.  I aplogize about not having pictures, my camera's battery died before I could take the first shot.

I won the roll off and gave Gabe first turn.  He's got a drop dread so I'm going to hold everything to walk on first turn since I can't deploy Tyrant+Guards or Parasite+Gargoyles in dawn of war deployment.  He deployed the 10 marines with flamer and missile launcher at the 24" mark in the center forest.  His sniper scouts went into the forest in the corner to my left and closest to hsi edge.

Gabe's turn 1...  He drops the podded dread on his side of the table next to his tac marines and it scatters back a bunch.  The redeemer rolls on between his scouts and tac marines.  His other tac squad comes on in the corner to my left mostly behind the raider.  His other scouts and shrike with assault marines are outflanking.

My turn 1...  I bring on everything with the deathstar centered,  venomthropes to the right.  One tervigon, one hive guard unit, and one devilgaunt unit on each side of the deathstar.  Genestealers came in on my left side.  Gargoyles and parasite jump up in front of the deathstar.  I don't risk any long range shots due to night fight and drop one marine from the center tac squad with the heavy venom cannon.  I shift a bit with running but not much as he is more mobile and fleet, I want him to come to me.

Gabe 0 Me 0

Gabe's turn 2... He receives the scout squad on my left flank where 20 genestealers are my bubble wrap.  He doesn't risk it and brings them in behind his land raider.  None of them are hosting parasite's rippers.  He swings the redeemer up and fires the assault cannon killing 2 genestealers.  Scout snipers kill 1 hive guard on the left flank and 1 devilgaunt from a hellfire shell.

My turn 2... Genestealers and gargoyles get FnP.  I fly up the gargoyles and parasite to ring the center forest where the tac squad is hiding.  Everything on the right starts shifting left to where the land raider and outflanked scouts are.  The tyrant blows the assault cannon off the redeemer and hive guard wreck the ironclad.  I opt to not assault as my gargoyles don't have the best position.  I'm still in the venomthrope bubble and old adversary bubble with the chain I formed so I'm not worried about him assaulting me.

Gabe 0 Me 1

Gabe's turn 3... Shrike and the assault marines stay out!  He's going to make a move even without them though.  He rolls up the redeemer, dumps out the termis, and burns a genestealer down with the flamestorm.  The tac squad kills 3 gargoyles between rapid fire and flamer.  It would have been more but I had cover and FnP.  His snipers totally wiff.  Gabe assaults his 5 terminators and terminator chaplain into my genestealers.  I have dangerous terrain and defensive grenades from the spore cloud, poison, and FnP.  After the dice settle, I've inflicted 12 normal wounds and 10 rends... the chaplain rolls 1,1 for his two saves and all termis go down except the hammer, who smashed one stealer and runs away, actually escaping me.

My turn 3... I'm feelin pretty good right now with a decent lead.  Termis and the ironclad were pretty good units to remove on my threat list too.  I jump the gargoyles and parasite up to assault and give them FnP again.  My devilgaunts on the left torrent down the running terminator.  My devilgaunts on the right kill 4 tactical marines in the center woods by the gargoyles.  Everything shoots the land raider and wiffs.  I assault with the gargoyles, surviving his strikes on me for assaulting into cover without grenades.  I kill 3 marines, spawn 5 ripper bases, and the marines hold with a fist and a normal marine.  Due to pile in, my parasite must touch the fist now and I hope he doesn't ID me next round.

Gabe 0kp Me 3kp

Gabe's turn 4... Shrike finally arrives on the left, same side as the other outflanking unit and land raider.  He plops them down right next to my genestealers.  The land raider shocks up and combined flamers melt 8 genestealers.  I remove enough models to prevent Shrikes unit from assaulting genestealers.  His snipers finish off the wounded hive guard unit.  I also lost 4 devilgaunts and a wound on the tervigon from the flamestorm cannon.  He tries to assault stealers and gants with his fleet scouts to finish off the wounded units.  Defensive grenades, FnP, and old adversary prevail and I kill 8 scouts leaving the fist sarge alive and alone.  In the center, gargoyles and the parasite kill the remaining tac marines.

My turn 4... I see an opportunity and go for it... Shrike is in the open with his assault marines.  I move the tyrant over and spawn gants giving them FnP.  Tyrant attempts to paroxysm Shrikes unit and is 0.25" out of range!  Hive guard wiffs on the land raider.  Now I'm in a pickle with only a few stealers left and I don't want to assault Shrikes unit with a handful of gants.  The scout sarge dies in close combat.

Gabe 1kp Me 5kp
Gabe's turn 5...  He flies shrike's unit over to my swarm.  Redeemer pivots and Gabe melts a total of 10 gants and my remaining genestealers.  He multi-assaults the spawned gants, venomthrope, and devilgaunts with Shrikes unit.  I kill 1 marine and lose all 3 of my units!

My turn 5... Now I have a problem.  It 5-5 and the game could end here.  I leave the center mass of gargoyles, parasite, rippers, and devilgaunts alone as there's no way they can reach Gabes snipers and marines without suffering big casualties.  I paroxysm Shrike's unit and charge in with the tyrantstar.  Both tervigons get assaults on the stationary redeemer.  I smash 3 marines and do a wound to Shrike.  Despite needing 5's to hit and 6's to wound, Gabe does 2 wounds back and we lock.  Luckily my tervigons wreck the land raider with combined blows.

Gabe 5kp Me 6kp

I roll for the game and we play on with a 4.  Not much left to do here, Gabe's plasma cannon marine finally melts himself.  His snipers do largely nothing.  In close combat, I beat down the remaining assault marines and splatter Shrike.  That puts it up to 5-8kp and we call it as it's about to be my turn.

Review:  It was a really fun game.  I have a much better time playing a list that I feel is competitive rather than a compy hodge-podge.  Gabe's dice failed when they needed to succeed, starting with the terminator chaplain failing two 2+ saves and all his terminators going down.  He did pull a great comeback in turn 5 that almost caused a draw.  I was greatly satisfied with the synergy of spore cloud, catalyst, preferred enemy, and poison.  My 20 genestealers alone took out the chaplain, 4 terminators, and around 5 scouts while also weathering the entire brunt of Gabe's anti-infantry fire including 4+ flamer templates.  Hive guard did well killing the Ironclad on turn 2 and then nothing else for the rest of the game.  The tyrantstar did exactly what it was designed to do: stay alive, provide debuffs, and preferred enemy.  Can't wait to test the list again!  I promise there will be pics next time!

4 comments:

  1. Sorry to tell this but without pics, this is too text heavy for me, as I am greek :S I just saw the lists and the conclusion and I think you did good. Because I see you use the parasite of mortrex a lot, is it that good?

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  2. The PoM can be good, but not always. Here's why I like it:

    1. Buried in a unit of gargoyles (which are cheap), you have a fast synapse unit that is hard to kill.

    2. Buried in a unit of gargoyles (which are cheap), you have a model that can kill infantry and vehicles.

    3. When used properly, it can be very good at objective missions. Rippers have stealth and can go to ground for a 2+ cover save, making them great units to contest enemy objectives.

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  3. This is Gabe....

    A suggestion I thought of after we left. Don't feel you have to keep the gargoyles and PoM within your buff bubble. I think you could have taken out my tac squad earlier if you had just been more aggressive with them. And, if you had done this, you would have freed up the gargoyles to go after my corner units. You had enough of them that you could have survived the shooting. Even if all they did was to tie up the shooting units, that would have been less shooting for you to face.

    As for me, I think my two big mistakes were a) assaulting the termies in the wrong direction. I should have sent them after the gants in the middle. I had the assault range to do it, but got caught up on trying to wittle down the stealers. And b) I should have moved the redeemer, just enough to force you to roll to hit. I think if I had done that, it would have had a chance of survival, and if it had survived, I might have had a fighting chance to do something more effective at the end.

    But it was a good game. I had a lot of fun with it. Being a generally comp player, I do have some trouble with building harder lists. Not so much because I don't know how, but I don't own the models since I buy stuff with comp in mind. Looking to change this, so hopefully I can give you more of a run in the future.

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  4. "A suggestion I thought of after we left. Don't feel you have to keep the gargoyles and PoM within your buff bubble. I think you could have taken out my tac squad earlier if you had just been more aggressive with them. And, if you had done this, you would have freed up the gargoyles to go after my corner units. You had enough of them that you could have survived the shooting. Even if all they did was to tie up the shooting units, that would have been less shooting for you to face."

    ~~ True. I was thinking that with grenades and fleet, you would push out and assault me first to plant the power fist on the parasite. As for tying up your two backfield units, I didn't really feel the need to. The scouts caused a few wounds as did the plasma cannon from the tac squad, but I didn't see either turning the tide and was happy to stay out of rapid fire range.

    "As for me, I think my two big mistakes were a) assaulting the termies in the wrong direction. I should have sent them after the gants in the middle. I had the assault range to do it, but got caught up on trying to wittle down the stealers. And b) I should have moved the redeemer, just enough to force you to roll to hit. I think if I had done that, it would have had a chance of survival, and if it had survived, I might have had a fighting chance to do something more effective at the end."

    ~~ I agree to both statements. Assaulting the gants would have at least got you one more KP earlier on. All vehicles should be moving when near nids as our anti-armor ability doubles when we can charge vehicles with MC's.

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