Another hard fought draw

I seem to have this habit of drawing against other Imperial Guard!

I had a 1,500 point game against Richard (Jangalak) from the Dark Sphere forums today at the London Plaza Veteran's Night. Dawn of War, Annihilation, and drew five kill points apiece.

I was using my January ToS list, which I won't repeat here as its only a few blog posts back.

We both failed to fully engage our forces - with a number of his mechanised squads ending up too far from anywhere to get fully engaged, and my big blob squad did nothing but sit in a corner firing Autocannons all game.

This was, I think, partially due to the my flank being very low on cover, which with two guard armies facing each other, leads to a lot of ineffective, cautious sniping, with neither side wanting to risk breaking cover. A brutal close ranged fire fight, followed by a cavalry charge, took place on my right flank in among a few small buildings, resulting in the majority of the kill points.

Learning points:
* Psyker Battle Squads are horrific. They really help you ensure units are going to flee.
* Two Command HQs with less equipment may be an interesting build, to give you a second "Get Back in the Fight" option and more orders.
* A heavily equipped, multi use combined infantry squad is a waste of points if all it is doing is firing two autocannons.
* Work out routes of advance sooner. I had a log jam on the right flank which meant the Rough Riders did not get an opportunity to assault as early as they could have.

While I had a slight lead in kill points for much of the game, Richard did a very good job of pulling back to a draw, and there were several close points where it could have tipped to either of us on the final turn of the game (I passed some leadership rolls, he passed some cover saves)...

I got the impression that my long range firepower was a bit more effective than his, while his short range firepower had an edge on me - but in turn, the Rough Riders gave me a genuine edge in the assault phase.

Also, his army was gorgeous. Am now bullying him privately to give me a link to his painting blog so Sim can see, as I totally forgot to take photos at the time!