1850 RTT - Game 3

Game 3 was against Rob M.  I've seen him at the shop just about every week for 40k open play night, but we've never faced off.  He took 1st last month in the non-comp tourney with dark eldar, and I know he has other armies in the works, so I'm guessing he's a pretty solid player.

His list:
CCS + plasma x3, medi pack, officer of the fleet, pw
Lord Commissar + pw, cloak
Inquisitor + tarot, hood, 2x hiero, 2x mystic
PBS x8, overseer + chimera, hb
Infantry platoon; PCS + hb, s1 plasma/lascannon, s2 plasma/lascannon, s3 grenade/hb, s4 grenade/hb
Vet squad + melta x3
Vet squad + plasma x3 + chimera, hf
Vendetta
Armored Sentinels x2 + ac
Manticore + hb
Hydra x2 + hb's
Russ + 3 hb's



The game was drawfest (cap. 'n control) and pitched battle with one additional objective placed where the first HQ unit dies.

The pre-game:  Before anything, I ended up at the same table as game 1 which had potentially the worst terrain of all tables, and against guard again.  I was already down on myself for botching game 2 and the idea of facing guard again on the same table with an even harder list had me nearly defeated before we rolled a dice.  Rob won the roll-off with his tarot and decided to go first.  Yeah... 3 games in a row going second also... hehe.  Ok, I'm done bitching, I am human you know.  On to the real pre-game...

I never play drawfest to draw.  I always go for the balls so I decide to rush as much as I can up and see if I can break his mini-leafblower.  Not much to say... He's gonna shoot me and I'm gonna try to assault him.  It's going to be a straight forward dice-off.

Rob places his objective dead center and deploys a parking lot on top of it.

I put my warriors on the left in whatever cover I can find.  Tervigon, tfex, hive guard, and gants go into terrain with my objective on the right to maximize cover and firing angles.  Genestealers infiltrate behind some small hills and strung out to minimize those manticore templates.  It's about here that I realize my tervigon is nowhere near catalyst range for my offensive units and what a huge mistake that was.  I fail to seize the initiative and sit down and prepare to roll a million cover saves.

Rob's turn 1...  He moves nothing except a few guys to open a path for the sentinels.

You see in the above pic how my string of genestealers uses the terrain and his deployment to achieve 50% obscurity even without area terrain.  Anyways, he shoots me a lot for a long time and I lose a bunch of genestealers.  I think it was 8 from the front and 5 from the back.  I lose one hive guard also.

My turn 1...  I spawn some gants and move up my second prong.

On the right, my other prong moves up and runs.  I get 1's and 2's for my runs (!).

You can see there how I wrapped my screen unit around terrain to maintain cover, but don't move into terrain and risk low move through cover results.  I was really doing everything I could to cross that distance fast.  My secret plan is hope he shoots my warriors.  If he I allocate enough wounds to kill the prime, he becomes an objective and even a lone surviving warrior can score it for the tie-breaker.  I think I shake the manticore and one chimera with shooting.

Rob's turn 2...  He brings out the sentinels and doesn't move anything else.  In shooting, he turns on the toxic stealers and warriors leaving the front unit so his sentinels can assault them.

He kills one and I get two glances.  We lock.

My turn 2...  I spawn another batch and get dupes.  I keep them back as they'll be the last scoring unit I can produce.  I move the rest of my right prong forward.  This will push for his objective and intercept tank shocks.

On my left side, that prong moves up, but my free stealers roll a 2 for fleet and won't make it to the manticore this turn.  They are also string around the hill and units in CC to maintain cover.  My warriors drop a few guardsmen.

In assault, my genestealers wreck and explode the sentinels and I get a 2" consolidate...  Not enough to get that unit in cover so they're standing in the open.

Rob's turn 3...  He aims at my genestealers...

He rolls some dice and when the dust settles...

I end the turn with 4 stealers and the broodlord left.

My turn 3...  I move up the warriors, genestealers, and gants on my right side.  I stun the vendetta with shooting and wreck a hydra.  I'm ignoring the chimeras now because if he was going to come for me, he would have left his deployment zone by now.  I multi assault the unit on the first level of the ruins and the manticore.  I kill the unit and rip the missiles off the manticore.

Rob's turn 4...  He moves up a sacrificial HQ to try and create another objective.  Then he shoots down my remaining genestealers and kills the broodlord with his inquisitor unit.

My turn 4...  I shoot what I can, but he has 2 scoring units within range of his objective.  I inform him I'm not killing his HQ and he tells me he's not targeting my warriors, so we call it a draw there.  He can't get to my objective or kill my gants behind the hill.  My warriors will never make it to his objective or kill all his scoring units to contest.

Post game:  Well, what did you expect?  I think I actually did well considering everything.  I should have deployed to give my offensive units FnP, but everything else was solid.  My dice gave me 1's and 2's for every run/fleet roll except when the 5 surviving genestealers assaulted into the ruins, but that was really the only place where things could have gone differently.  At least I maintained my "never lost to guard" record lol.

Tournament review:  A solid tourney just like every one Millennium has hosted.  I was irked about my pairings and tables, but it's the first time in over a year so I had it coming.  Hopefully I get better tables and pairings for the May 14th tourney.  No comp and I'm taking my ATC list so I'm hoping for some real good games.  Zack (another local regular) took 1st with a mixes CSM list with one lash, some noise marines, and a 15 man unit of raptors.  Paul, my 2nd game opponent took 2nd overall also undefeated for the day.  Chris C. took 3rd with necrons despite losing to Zack in round 3 due to his high painting and sportsmanship scores.  I went 1-1-1 and ended up 8 out of 18 which isn't terrible since my army wasn't nearly painted.