Wednesday, April 13, 2011

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.

11 comments:

  1. Man, rough draw on getting guard twice, especially on that table. I think that was the one they set up last minute when they realized 18 people were there.

    There's not much you can do when your dice are poor and your opponent has just about as many vehicles as the format allows.

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  3. Just want to say that I just recently found that web site and I really like it. Those 3 bat reps you did for that tournament are really good. Most of the them I get bored reading bat reps but those I can't get enough. Good job! And as a fellow nids player, I will surely take a look at all there is on your web site and hopefully learn a few tricks here and there and get better with my nids.

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  4. @ Tim ~ Yeah, the sad thing is those two games vs guard were my best for the day. I was more bummed about the look of the table compared to the others. The results could have been better this game with better fleet rolls, but I patted myself on the back for keeping my opponent from ever leaving his dz. He never had a chance to win because of that.

    @ Stephane ~ I'm glad you like the batreps and my blog. There are better batreps if you dig back into the history. Hopefully you find more valuable content and don't be afraid to email me any requests.

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  5. Great Batrep! My local area is IG overload and vendetta spam is a constant PITA. Plenty-0-tips and nice pics. BTW nice interview with the 11th company also.

    One question. Do you think raveners would have given you the speed needed vs fielding warriors?

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  6. The funny thing is I considered raveners when I was finishing the list. I was trying to decide between zoans, devilgaunts, and raveners. I didn't think anyone would out-assault me and I didn't think there would be that many vehicles, so I went with ranged anti-infantry.

    So I was wrong on both assumptions. Several people brought 5+ vehicles and the only game I lost, I was out-assaulted.

    Hindsight gives us the ability to plan for the future better. It's one of the reasons I batrep my games, even the losses. I often don't realize when and where I made mistakes until afterword, when I am writing up the reports.

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  7. Meh- one win, one loss and one draw, but a day off from work!

    Thanks so much for these batreps- they're consistantly excellent and a great learning tool.

    Nice deployment with the 'stealers here, for example. Clever use of terrain and the 'majority' cover rule, combined with avoiding LoS to the dangerous stuff.
    The picture says it all, but you take the time to point it out. Little touches like that make these batreps a valuable resource for 'Nid players.

    Don't worry 'bout bein' a lil' rusty...you'll get 'em next time!

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  8. Hey, Hyv3mynd!
    Dunno if you saw this, but I actually caught it cuz it was linked on your page!

    http://maximumheresy.blogspot.com/2011/04/tutorial-swappable-weapons-without.html

    It's an awesome tutorial for making swappable Devilgaunts/regular Termagants using no magnets, pins only.
    Seems like a new blog, so I thought I'd campaign a bit for some 'clicks, comments and followers' for them, cuz this tutorial was THAT GOOD.
    Anyone that plays 'Nids will LOVE this!

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  9. "I always go for the balls..."

    Best part of the batrep. Hilarious LOL Great content!

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  10. Hey hyv3,

    What was your reasoning for keeping the Tyranno and Tervigon back?

    I find against a decent guard player I need to go all or nothing or get blasted to bits. Having more stuff up may have let you get in close combat which would've been a win for you (Also if you have more targets running up some stealers may have survived). I find the 18 inch threat range of spawned gaunts invaluable against gunlines.

    If the stealers had a poor chance of making CC round 1, attaching the prime to them and taking those hits may have worked out well (any smart player will gun for them first). Have the warriors followed by the Terv with cover behind them and bam...hes got some tough decisions to make

    Great batreps! Keep it up!

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  11. You're totally right. In hindsight, I could have potentially caused more damage and possibly contested his objective by sending everything up.

    My mindset at the time was: I'm going second and he has 5 lascannons, a bunch of melta and plasma, and a battlecannon. I kept them back behind the only terrain feature that would grant them cover from alpha-strike.

    Good catches though. If I had the chance to do it again, I would have played it more aggressively. I figured that he would at least come for my objective and the tervigon alone wouldn't be able to stop tank shocks and such so I kept the tfex close and only started advancing him turn 3 when I realized he would never make it to my objective.

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