ARMY OF THE WEEK: Batrep: 5/11 Darkside Games Team Event

Chris and took a ride down to Darkside for their team tournament that they hold about 3-4 times a year. We put together a good list that pending on better luck of the dice and more time to finish two games we may have done better in the long haul. We went with the them of Fire and Ice. Salamanders and Space Wolves. Brothers of fire and ice. Chris provided both armies as he had both already fully painted while my Space Wolves are still in progress.

Chris (Space Wolves):

2 Rune Priests (Both had Living Lighting, one had Tempest's Wrath and the other had Murderous Hurricane)
3 Wolf Guard with Power Fists and Combi Meltas
3 Squads of Grey Hunters with Rhinos, melta gun and power weapon. Two squads was 8 man and one was 9 man.
Two Long Fang Packs x6 with 5 Missiles
Landspeeder with the Typhoon Launcher and Multi Melta

My List (Salamanders):

Vulcan
2 Tactical Squads with flamers, multi melta and Rhino. Sgt had a power fist.
Attack Bike with Multi Melta
5 Terminators with TH/SH with Land Raider
Thunderfire Cannon

Game 1 was VS Adam x2 (yes both names was Adam) IG and Space Wolves

Their lists:

1 Rune Priest
1 Pack Leader with Thunderwolf with two wolves in tow, lighting claw, storm shield, other add ons
Full mixed Thunderwolf Calv..
1 Razorback with TL Lascannons with small squad of Grey Hunters inside.
1 Grey Hunter Squad inside a Rhino with meltas, Wulfin and power weapons.
Cmnd Squad with Master of Ordnance, Master of Fleet, Camo Cloaks, Lascannon, other weapons.
2-3 Vet Squads with Chimeras, with plasma or melta, lascannon in each
3 Griffins
2 Hydra Flak Guns
Vendetta

Overall a nice looking army. Both was owned by one of the Adams that is a regular player in the area. The other guy was a bit newish to the hobby and for the most part the other Adam was running both lists most of the time (mainly the more complex aspects of the Space Wolf list). One model was missing from a base (broken and was pending repair) and a Vendetta was missing lascannons, the army was "what you see".

The Mission was 5 Objectives spread out almost in a circle of sorts. 3 near our side, 2 near theirs. We won the roll off and the game was on a city fight table. We used the Techmarine to upgrade one ruin to a 3+ cover for the Thunderfire and one Long Fang squad. We had also elected to go first due to their large volume of firepower we was facing.

The game didn't really progress beyond turn 3 from what I recall. The first round the shooting was ours, no real assaults. The second turn the shooting went in their favor the key point was the Land Raider taking a hit with the Master of Ordnance and a Lascannon making it immobile and later a lascannon hit blew it up and killed 2 terminators. This set a tone for the game at this point, bad luck. The Thunderwolves went into Vulcan and held. Bad dice again on the hammers (yes with master craft) and some damm good saves just didn't cut the mustard. We tried to assault but instead cost the rest of the terminators and forced one squad of Salamanders (combat squad with multi melta) to flee the fight and Vulcan escaped also after the terminators was slain leaving the Space Wolves to hold out against their brothers. The clock ran down and the game was called on turn 3 with Vulcan and a squad fleeing. They had pulled taking two objectives last minute and kept us from the other two. One thing that did kill the game was having to pull the rules and look up a few rules issues we had that came up. This eats time and I hate to have a game continue while I am looking something up as I like to be aware of what was going on.

Rules I recall we did look up (for readers that want tips or to avoid pitfalls in the future):

Emergency Disembark forces the unit doing so to be unable to do anything for that turn. A turn being both sides having their round.
Indirect Fire against targets in ruins only hits the top level of a ruin. So, if your opponent has indirect fire, stay off the top level.
Independent Characters and consolidate in combat. Here we had Pack Leader that had to consolidate first to the combat. The sticky thing was he was stuck in the back of the combat and sat that round out. By the Rules, you should move the IC first to get into HTH, then other models. Now GW has went back in the main FAQ and said other models MAY BE MOVED to allow an IC to get into base to base. The problem was: just Vulcan was left and Thunderwolves have the large base. Already one was in clear base to base. Models had been moved already and made it hard to retrace where each model was and if the IC could have made it or not due to a) the large base sizes and b) having to move at least one or two models towards base contact first to engage Vulcan. Plus, from what I read once your in base to base, you don't move. This means you don't slide over to make room for another model if it can't fit, but have to work with the space that is already there.We finally just let it slide as it was impossible to unravel the old position of each model and this ate a serious amount of time from the game sadly. I suggest that in these cases take your time and make sure things are clear, yea it will take a bit of time but less than what we lost.
Master of Ordance, only scatters 3d6 if he misses on an arrow. Didn't seem so bad now for 30 points. (I never used the MOO, so I learned something there. Never tried him before. I may now.)

In retrospect, we may could have pulled a draw or even a win with some pending actions dependng. Chris was near enough one objective that he could have retaken one, giving us 2 and them 1. If the Thunderwolves stayed tied up (and Vulcan rallied and the combat squad rallied we could have held a third, Vulcan joins the squad and they sit near the objective holding another one. Even if the Thunderwolves went after them we would have two for the most part to their one. Time was the enemy for us in this game, the rules issues and time spent looking up stuff ate into what could have been another turn.

Second Game: William and Yuri (Orks and Black Templar) (yea weird mix)

Castellon with storm shield, terminator armor and power weapon with terminator squad of 5 with 3 lighting claws and 2 thunder hammers in a Land Raider Crusader.
Second Crusader with a 15 man squad of scouts and marines
Rhino with 8 man squad I think.
3 large blocks of orks about 90 in all, not sure about special weapons
battle wagon loaded with Mek with KFF and burna with burna squad
second burna squad with mega blasters

The Black Templar army was very well painted and had some great freehand work that was excellent. The orks was little more than some odd painted models with several in basic unprimered gray. Also, the orks was a bit far from "what you see" and was a major pain in the arse and was very confusing to know what was what. My techmarine was a setup with a standard servo arm, still that was the only thing not 100%, even so, those arms could have been folded into the backpack or bionics in the techmarine. "What you see, is what you get" has been a standard in tournaments including the one Yuri runs. I was surprised to see the Ork list built with things not modeled correctly. One or two things, I could be ok with like in the first game. I can understand a broken model and a Vendetta that has not been converted yet.

The mission was Capture and Control (one objective each) on an Ice Table. We took one side and setup a defensive corner with covering fire. They bunched everything up on one side and prepared to run towards us. Hold theirs and contest/take ours. This was perhaps the most painful game of the tournament. Yuri is a great guy but can sometimes be a bit too intense for games at times and his friend was sleep deprived and was a bit out of it which slowed the game down a bit. We made about 4 turns in all without huge losses to either or our side. At the end of the game due to time running out we was forced to call it. Sadly we had several rules issues again that ate huge blocks of time that robbed us of a possible turn. One that could have been critical. In theory we could have contested their objective with a speeder and perhaps a Rhino that moves 12", they deploy out 2" and a good run could put two units in their lines doing so. My terminators could have moved up and perhaps done a muli-charge on at least one Land Raider and the Battle Wagon. When the last 15 minutes came up, we ended up wasting time debating on doing another turn or not. Then it turned into theory hammer where Yuri wanted to try to resolve stuff with fast dice rolling. That doesn't cut it for me, without playing a full turn you can't factor everything in and would have been just a cheesy way to end the game.
That extra turn could have allowed us to contest and take ours back and hold it or if anything contest both and call a draw. It was obvious that Yuri was out to win and it seemed important to him to the point that I was ready to break out the aspirin and call it. I go to tournaments for fun not headaches.

Rules Pitfalls:

Lighting Claws are not rerollable Power Fists.
If you run Artillery explain it to your opponent if they never have played against it before. Only 3 codex books have Arty and is rarely used.
If there is an issue with LOS discuss it before you roll all the dice, resolve everything and then bring it up. This was a major time eater for a game.

Game 3: Forgot these guys names, they was both newer players with Salamanders and Grey Knights

The Marines was painted up about 90% in an interesting fashion, each had their own color, blue, green and red with matching drop pods (homemade ones) and the other side was a mix of Grey Knights and inducted Tzeench Terminators for Grey Knights. Not very "what you see" and was confusing at times but these guys was new and great players.

Their list was:

Drago
2 Units of Paladins with psycannons and Apothecary each.
Dreadknight with the sword upgrade.
Land Raider
Storm Raven (think it had assault cannons and heavy bolters with psycannon ammo)
Vulcan
3 Squads with flamer and multi-melta with drop pod and power fist on the Sgts.
2 Dreadnoughts (multi melta and lascannon)
2 Attack Bikes as a squadron with Multi-meltas.

The last round was kill points with Dawn of War. We won the roll off and after a debate we gave 1st turn to them. They had never played DOW before, so we explained all their options as to what they could deploy (if they wanted), 1st turn arrival, full reserve including deep strike and flanking. After talking with them it seems like their first two games was just a cluster and that the players that played with them may have helped them some but really took advantage of the newbie aspect and ran over them to achieve a win which was sad. (note this is based on our conversation with them, we don't know who they played or what armies, we really didn't ask but it sounded really minimal).

They didn't deploy, so we held all back first turn except the speeder. First turn, two pods crashed down, one near our line and one in theirs. Both had beacons on them. The rest of the army walked in while they waited for the Paladin squads, Drago, Dreadknight and the last Pod to arrive. The Dreads and bikes walked on, Land Raider and and the Raven took a flat out approach towards our lines after we explained all the skimmer options. Again, nobody explained that they could go flat out for a cover save.

We rolled in and the game was was a shooting match with waves crashing in every turn and his army closing in. It took 4 turns before the Raven finally was destroyed. First turn it was immobile and stunned. We kept stunning it every turn until 4 which promptly blew it up. It never fired a shot. The Land Raider raged on the other side doing little damage (blew up two Rhinos I think). We sent the Speeder after it but whiffed on the roll with the melta. I did blow up the pod in our lines first turn to avoid using the beacon near us. That forced them to land back in their lines and walk towards us. It was a gunfight back and forth. We won the game by scoring double over their kill points but those damm Paladins and Drago was left and so was the Land Raider. All of the Salamanders was gone except one drop pod. We did manage to slip one Grey Hunter squad into their lines to avoid a bonus for them.

Amazing enough when time was counting down, we finished 5 turns with new guys and helped them with the rules showing them stuff about their list, allowing them time to look up things and helping them in general with things. When I look back on the other two games, I was again shocked at how slow things progressed and was disappointed by those games even more. The guys had a blast with their last game and we all just had a great last game to blow off steam.

The army in review for both of us:

Rune Priests: Perhaps their worst showing ever. Bad dice rolls, failed psychic tests, rolling several 1's for living lighting was just painful setbacks.
Grey Hunters: Chris and I felt we could have been more aggressive, we played passive with them and was our counter strike squad to react to things like how you read Space Marines work. Don't commit all your forces until you see the battle unfold. Sadly, 2 out of 3 games wasn't enough time to let everything unfold where we would have wanted.
Long Fangs: Usually a top performer was again sub-par with their dice and luck.
Land Speeder: We gave the brick award to this. Chris may be using it in the future as a paperweight.
Vulcan: Was broken in game 1 and gave up a bonus point, he could have rallied if we had another turn. Game 2 he was a beast, he helped tear apart the IC in the Black Templars. If he had more time I feel he would have ripped that Wagon apart with his Relic Blade. Game 3 he ripped up his copy and the squad he was with. A basic Tactical and Vulcan vs Vulcan and Assault Terminators. Do the math on that one!
Thunderfire cannon: It died turn 1 but they knew how dangerous it was and took ALOT of shots before he died. Game 2, he got a few good shots into the Orks, then stayed in range of the Thunderfire and supported the others firing his Plasma Pistol and Flamer at the Terminators with everything else. Game 3 he did pretty good, he tore apart one Tactical squad and annoyed other squads with tons of shots. I think his dice luck was fading in turn 3.
Tactical Squads: Combat Squads worked for me for the most part and did their job fairly well for their cheap price.
Attack Bike: Game 1, he blew a multi-laser off a Chimera and died. Game 2, he fizzed again on a shot due to a KFF and died. Game 3, blew up the Pod and died. At least he kept the homer from being used close to us.
Land Raider: Game 1 died quickly by turn 2. Game 2 it was taken out by the Battlewagon with the Deathroller with a ram. Game 3 it survived being too far away from anything of threat. If I didn't need the damm thing for a transport I would not have used it. This was my brick.
Terminators: Well, failing 2 saves due to a exploding Land Raider sucked. Then being eaten by Thunderwolves wasn't fun. Game 2 was a beat down on the Templar's Terminators, another turn and I think I would have scrapped both his Raiders and the Wagon. Game 3 they just beat down a Marine Squad and Vulcan helping their own Vulcan out.