For those of you who watched the Walking Dead on Sunday, you will get the reference of the title and a pretty good idea of how our games went last weekend. For those who haven't seen it yet don't worry, I'm not going to spoil anything but I do highly recommend that anyone who is a fan of the show to watch it. Two weekends ago I attended the team event at the Millennium Games month tournament. Once again I teamed up with my good friend and fellow club member sinistermind to wage war with our xeno's tag team of Tau and Eldar.
Here is a recap of what me and my partner brought to the event.
My list:
Crisis Suit Commander
TL Plasma Rifles, MultiSpectrum Suite, Neurochip, Iridium Armor, Shield Generator, Ongar Gauntlet
Riptide: Ion Accelerator
2 x Crisis Suits: TL Fusion Blaster, Missile Pod, Bonding Knife
TL Plasma Rifles, Missile Pod, Bonding Knife
12 Kroot with Sniper Rounds:
6 Fire Warriors:
6 Fire Warriors:
6 Pathfinders:
Broadside Team:
TL HYMP, TL SMS, Velocity Tracker, Shas Vre
TL HYMP, TL SMS, Velocity Tracker
TL Heavy Rail Gun, TL SMS, Target Lock
Sinisterminds list:
Spiritseer
wave serpent kitted out
4 dire avengers + exarch
wave serpent kitted out
5 wraithguard w Scythes
5 rangers
2x fire prisms w/ holo fields
Game 1:
Hammer and Anvil
Primary Scoring was kill points and Secondary was objectives.
Our opponents for game 1 was Koszka and Neil. I don't have a copy of their list but off the top of my head they had a lot of bikes, a thunder cannon, two dreads with auto cannons, a drop pod with some white scars, and a small squad of the legion of the damned.
We rolled for 3 objectives and we put two in our half of the board and they put one in their backfield near the thunderfire cannnon. Night fight would be in effect for turn 1. We roll for first turn, win and elect to go first to take advantage of night fighting.
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| Our deployment zone. Note sinistermind put the two fire prisims and a wave serpent on our left flank. |
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| Our opponents deployment. All of their bikes and dreads started in cover but the Tau don't care about that, do they? |
Turn 1: Tau/Eldar
Movement: My riptide jumps out from behind the trees and the kroot move up a bit so that I can jump my crisis suits up into firing range. Sadly my broadsides missiles were out of range so only the 1 heavy rail rifle would be firing this turn.
Shooting: My riptide kills one of the bikes in the squad on our right flank while sinistermind kills 4 bikes on our left flank. Not too bad for the opening turn.
Turn 1: Marines
Movement: The White Scars drop pod enters on turn 1 and Koszka decides to drop it right next to the group of fire prisims and the wave serpent. Then they move up all of their bike squads and dreadnoughts.
Shooting: The dreadnoughts have range on my pathfinders and despite the cover saves from being in the woods and being shrouded due to night fight I lose 2 patherfinders. The thunderfire cannon ends up killing the rest of the pathfinders.They get first blood!
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| Drop pod ends up near the fire prisims. |
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| All of their bikes move up. |
Ok, losing the pathfinders sucked but we still had a lot of firepower.
Movement: Crisis suits jump forward to get all shots on the incoming bikers. One of my suits takes a wound from jumping on the hill.
Shooting: The broadsides fire on the center squad of bikers and ends up killing 4 and putting a wound on their captain. The wave serpent and prisims kill 3 of the white scar marines and my riptide ends up over heating when it goes to fire and I end up failing my save.The crisis suits and wave serpent on our right flank fail to cause any wounds. My kroot and fire warriors also fire into the center squad but he passes all of this savign throws.
Assault: I jump my crisis suits back behind the hill.
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| Kroot and fire warriors fail to take out any bikers. |
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| Broadsides focus on the bikers in the center. |
Turn 2: Marines
Movement: The Lost and the Damned units deep strikes in behind the fire prisims and all of their bikes continue to move forward.
Shooting: Both dreadnoughts open up on the wave serpent on the left flank and end up wrecking it, forcing the 5 Dire Avengers to come out. The green biker squad on our right flank shoots some meltas at the other wave serpent and ends up immobilizing it. The thunderfire cannon hits 8 of my fire warriors but oddly enough I pass all of my saves.
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| Their bikes continue to move forward. |
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| The Legion of the Damned deep strike in behind the prisims. |
Turn 3: Tau/Eldar
Movement: I shuffle the kroot and fire warriors back from the oncoming bikers. My riptide and crisis suits jump up to unleash Tau doom onto the bikes.... and once again one of my crisis suits takes a wound from jumping on the hill. The prisims move away from the legion troops that deep struck in.
Shooting: The kroot, fire warriors, and crisis suits kill 4 of the bikers in the center unit and then the broadsides kill the rest, just leaving the commander alone. The dire avengers shoot at the white scars but fail to bring any down. The prisims shoot at the Legion of the Damned but they pass all of their invulnerable saves.
Assault: I jump my suits back.
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| The center bike squad is slowly getting whittled down. |
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| Dire Avenger and Prisims pull back. |
Turn 3: Marines:
Movement: Vulcan deep strikes in behind my broadsides with a squad of scout marines. The white scar troops consolidate onto the objective by the trees and the lone biker commander joins up with the biker squad coming up along the left flank.
Shooting: Vulkan and the scouts unload on the rangers hiding with the broadsides and kill them all. The Legoin of the Damned troops assualt the fire prisim and take it down. The white scars are able to see the Dire Avengers through the trees and finish them off.
Turn 4: Tau/Eldar
Movement: Crisis suits and riptide jumps towards Vulkan and the scouts while the fire warriors pull back toward the building with the broadsides. The Wraithguard and spirit seer dismembark from the immobilized serpent to head towards the objective on the hill.
Shooting: The Riptide, Crisis Suits and Broadsides unload into Vulkan's squad and while it looked like he was going to make his invulnerable saves he eventually fails and dies, along with a couple of scouts. The firewarriors and remaining kroot also manage to kill the biker commander and another biker.
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| Vulkan is no more. |
Turn 4: Marines
Movement: With them holding two objectives they start to consolidate towards the last objective. The remaining bikes, dreadnoughts and the legion troops move towards my lines.
Shooting: The bikers and legion troops finish off the kroot and a couple of fire warriors.The thunderfire takes out 4 of the wraithguard, leaving one and the spirit seer.
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| The situation at the end of turn 4. |
Time was nearly up at this point and we were definitely not going to be claiming the primary objective but we decide to go on to see if we can hold onto our objective and maybe shoot off the white scars on the objective near the woods.
Turn 5: Tau/Eldar
Movement: Only movement was to jump the riptide out to get a line of sight on the white scars. The spirit seer leaves the remaining wraithguard and joins the riptide.
Shooting: The crisis suits, fire warriors, and broadsides all unload on the remaining bikes and kill all but two. The riptide kills 4 of the white scars, enough to cause them to panic... bu they make their morale test.
Turn 5: Marines
The remaining bikes move up to contest our objective. We call the game at this point.
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| The last two bikers contest our only objective. |
In the end they scored 9 kill points of of us while we only got 4 or 5 kill point out of them.
They held 2 objectives while we held none.
They scored first blood and line breaker while we only scored Slay the Warlord.
ugh... I hate marine bikes, especially lots of them. Koszka and Neil rolled well on their armor/jink saves to keep their bikes alive so long. Plus having the white scars and legion of the damned drop on on the cluster of vehicles hurt as well. Sinistermind and I played an all biker team at the Da Boyz this past year and it seems like we need a better way to figure out how to deal with an army with a lot of bikes.
I'll post games 2 and 3 in a future post but for now I'll leave you with some shots of the other games going on throughout the afternoon.
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| DaCock/Lucko (nids) vs ChaosCraig and Buffalo Bill (marines) |
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| Kdawg/C4 (guard) vs Nogle/Chip (marines/grey knights) |
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| Crimanth/GoldenEagle (marines/guard) vs Koszka/Neil (marines) |
The best way to deal with bikes is just focus on them one unit at a time. Bike armies tend to have either multiple small units or 2-3 maxed out units. Even with just two bikes, although diminished in strength, can still be a nuisance ( especially for str3. models in melee.)
ReplyDeleteHit and run (scars) also make it hard to tie them down. By neutralizing bike squads one by one you will slowly tighten the noose and render the opposition into a defensive game of hiding squads and holding objectives.
Also, a monstrously effective turn one could have been your commander suit joining up with your riptide. Having an ignore cover, large blast str.8 shot that re-rolls scatters would have been crippling turn 1. I feel that your list was brutal and your tactics were sound, but deployment that round really made a huge difference for the outcome. As always Kevin, you are a delight to play against. It just sucks when small mistakes are exploited... That and my captain tanking like 20 saves turn one.
Not a Tau player, so I could easily be missing something, but... Can you join an IC to a single model unit (Riptide)? Good to see Bike armies out there, locally the Heldrakes burned them off the fields and we haven't seen them return...
ReplyDeleteI believe the consensus is that since the Riptide has the option of taking drones, which would no longer make it a single model, that IC's can indeed join a Riptide. I believe most of the players in our area interpret and play it that way as well so no one ever questioned it.
DeleteAs for biker armies, I have been seeing a lot of them lately. In fact, games 2 and 3 had a lot of bikers as well. In all of my games against them I have been fielding Tau or Eldar. Maybe I'll get lucky and face them with my Chaos army one of these days!