Alan's Tournament Diary

[Agent0range]

Game 2 vs Rob Brown’s IG (Echoes of War – 3 objectives across the central line with Dawn of War deployment)

Going into this one, I was again overconfident. I saw his list was mostly vehicles with Pask in a punisher and a punisher squadmade, 3 units of vets with melta in Chimeras, a Shadowsword and a hydra. As long as I could get across the table quickly and into CC I should have been able to multi assault and wreck face with all those AV10 on the rear vehicles. However, we were playing on planet bowlingball and I ended up stuck on the side with essentially no cover whatsoever. That’s not a problem, but what is a problem for my army is not having decent cover in the middle to hop between. It was essentially an open field and he had all the cover on my side. C’est la vie.

So, he wins the roll to deploy first but opts to let me do it, which I’m happy to do. I need to get my star protected with psychic powers and start running forward. In this game, I got Endurance and Sanctuary which was critical for me.
So turn 1, I move forward full and run most of my stuff. I need to get into CC in turn 2 and can’t be caught in the open for long. I power up the star, putting Endurance and Sanctuary on the star. Horrors stay behind the one piece of cover on my side which is LOS blocking. I put invis on the star rather than the knight, confident that the knight “should” be okay as long as it isn’t 6’d out by the Shadowsword. My plan was to get the knight into CC with Pask and his buddy, flip them over with the knight, and if it lasts longer than that then it’s a bonus. However, my overconfidence was my downfall. Pask rolls forward and proceeds to wreck the knight. With his gatling cannon and multi melta sponsons, he does about 5 rends and then a glance with the MM. I fail all my 4+ saves, and two of the rends do 3 hull points each, so Pask breezed through the Knight. It explodes and catches a dog.

Damn.

In my turn I realise I can’t make the charge to Pask without suffering the full firepower of his army, so I run behind a large LOS building in his deployment zone. He was a full 24” away, so the odds of getting into CC were low. I was hoping to bait him to come towards me with Pask to get some shots off, and left a dog on the edge to bait him towards me. With him closing the gap for me (even by 6”) I could then pounce. He didn’t fall for it, we had a bit of a standoff in turn 2, while my cultists were running forward towards the central line. His shadowsword fired his volcano cannon at my cultists (lol) and killed one or two.

Turn 3 I was desperate and ready for a gamble. I planned to get invis on my star, leave Be’lakor behind the LOS blocking building, then move my star forwards, and gate across to the other side of the table, out of Pask’s range, and behind the Shaowsword, where the only thing nearby was one squad of vets with metlas in a Chimera. I could then start opening them up with some assaults, and while they were distracted, Be’lakor could then pounce on Pask and hopefully wreck him.

So I move my star out (but not the full 12”) as I’m confident I’ll get Gate off. I power up the star, get Invis, Endurance and Sanctuary. Go for Gate and get it with three dice. With his 4 dispell dice, he gets 3 6’s…..*****! So my star (whilst invisible) gets stuck in the open.

The star proceeds to tank fire from his whole army, and I lose a wound on a dog. The Shadowsword couldn’t fire because I was invisible, so shot at cultists again (lol).

Next turn I assault Pask and his squadron with my star. I tried a 9” charge with Be’lakor who’s now popped out from behind the building to join in and help assault Pask. He fails his charge so he’s hanging about in the open. I should have also multi assaulted the remaining vets and Primaris Pskyer in the building too but I wanted to ensure Pasks demise. The Herald and the Stave sorcerer came up trumps, stepping forward and wrecking both vehicles with ease.

With this being turn 3/4, he starts moving his vets to the objectives. One of the objectives now disappears, and it’s the one on the far side where I had no units, so bonus for me. We now only had the middle one and the one I had units near. He deepstrikes his Scions in and starts shooting up the cultists that have survived two rounds of Volcano cannon D strikes and are near the objective, and starts dismounting his vets from his chimeras in the centre. My face starts to light up with all that squishy stuff to assault. The shadowsword fires his StrD shot at Be’lakor, getting a direct hit with no scatter, and then rolls a 6 D result. Goodnight Be’lakor. He also manages to fire a snapshot lascannon from the Shadowsword that hits and blows up my Heldrake in the air. Fantastic!

In my turn 4, I start multi-assaulting all the stuff in the middle of the table, wrecking chimeras, and deleting squads of guardsmen with ease. I continue to tank loads of fire (even without invis) using Look out Sir (from Sorcerer and Herald), 4+ Invul and 4+ FnP. 2 wound flesh hounds can take a beating.

He’s moving his stuff in desperately to the middle and manages to shoot up the last of my cultists on my objective, and the bloodletters that had deepstruck in on Turn 2 and were hiding with the star behind the building in his deployment zone for line breaker. I abandoned line breaker, running towards the objective as it’s worth a lot more. In my turn I multi-assault everything again in the middle, killing the last Chimera and squad, that are left so it’s only the Shadowsword and hydra left. I get a 1” consolidation, and I’d hoped for more so I could have wagon wheeled the middle objective and surrounded it with bodies but I only had two hounds between him and the objective. In his turn5, he opted to just move the Shadowsword in, thinking it was close enough to contest the middle, and shot the last of my bloodletters up with his Vendetta so I only had the middle objective. At the end of the game, we had to call a judge to decide distance. I was saying that the Shadowsword was more than 3” away (as he’s got to stay 1” away from me). In the end the judge called it in my favour with a quarter of an inch. I’ve got the length where it counts ladies

My first win, a narrow one but 5-1 to me.

Lessons Learnt
- Don’t underestimate “lesser” codexes. IG can still put out a punch when they need to even though he had suboptimal units like the Shadowsword. Pask can do work!
- The Knight isn’t as hardy as I think it is by itself in the open, and invis on the knight in Turn 1 would have almost guaranteed he made it into their line. He probably would have then just fired everything into the star, but with Endurance and Sanctuary and some LOS shenanigans they can take a lot of fire (as I found out in turn 4/5 when I didn’t have Be’lakor.
- Never be over-confident and have a backup plan. When I moved the star out from behind the building to gate out, I should have moved my full 12”. That way, even if I didn’t get Gate I could have attempted a long charge and maybe got it.
- I should have just pushed the star straight at Pask and not wasted a turn hiding trying to bait him. The star (when powered up) can tank all that fire for days and I was rolling 4+ invulns and 4+ FnP like a boss.