Battle Report, Slow Grow League Week 7: 1,000 pts vs Space Marines

Another week, another battle. This time facing some Space Marines. I was pretty tired after work, and did manage to make a pretty big mistake in deployment.

You may notice I pretty much totally failed to actually deploy my Veterans, instead just piling them up in a heap. Whoops!

As well as the Razorbacks, there was also a small squad of Devastators up in the ruins, with some Tactical Marines on the ground floor.

My opponent had managed to draw Invisibility with his Librarian, which led to a five minute rules discussion before we even started. He also managed to roll "Skyfire Nexus" for all three of the objectives on his side of the table - clearly this flyer heavy force was keen to deny these locations to their opponents.

The Razorback raced out to grab an early objective...

And managed to get itself immobilised on the crater. Still, it did its job, scoring a point for the Marines!

Perhaps in punishment for my failure to deploy them properly, the Marine commander's Warlord trait pinned my Veterans.

The Razorback did not survive the experience of sitting out in the open against a Guard army.

Enter the Stormraven - and this is not the worst I was expecting! Still, the new Firestorm Redoubt was seriously discouraging my opponent from wandering around on my left flank.

Here you can see a tiny half inch of a Stormraven from my Firestorm Redoubt...

And here's the final movement position - flying with millimetres to spare behind the building so the Redoubt couldn't open fire. Still, they're Space Marines, ridiculous super human feats are entirely reasonable.

The Marines in the ruins, though, were pretty much down to a heavy bolter carrying Marine due to the fire from the brave Guardsmen!

And numbers were beginning to thin in the centre ruin too!

Uh oh.

The Fire Raptor is a lethal menace, and something I was really worried about.

Although the Firestorm Redoubt proved why my opponent was nervous about it, managing to graze it and mess up the majority of it's targeting computers for a turn.

Although despite that, it managed to take out the command Chimera.

The command squad scrambled onto the roof as a nearby squad took out the surviving Tactical Marine so they could open up with Skyfire - but to no avail!

The Stormraven and the Fire Raptor converged on the infantry squads, both dropping into hover mode to confuse the Firestorm Redoubt. Pretty much everyone got wiped out in a turn over here!

Now targetting the nearest unit (as all the flyers weren't zooming), a single Scout got the unfortunate job of waving his camo cloak around like a bull fighter in front of the automated targetting systems of the Redoubt, successfully drawing all their fire to him.

With nothing left but the bunker, the Marines closed in to take it out, but it managed to survive - although the game still ended with a solid win for the Space Marines!

I'm definitely impressed with the Firestorm Redoubt from this experience. It's pricey, but a serious challenge to anyone who hasn't planned for AV14. Of course, it's over-costed if your opponent doesn't have much in the way of a flying problems, but in this situation, for this game, it was just about perfect.

Was I Sisyphus in a previous life?

My wife is a wonderful person, and the other week, while I was getting ready for "Dakka on Bakka", she offered to help out with getting stuff done. Full of optimism about the Firestorm Redoubt, I asked if she'd mind doing a little work on my Beastmen...

She did this in a single evening in front of the telly. Well, she did the other one as well, but that will be explained in a moment. She then also ended up fixing my botched attempt at the Firestorm Redoubt in time for the tournament as well.

Here's the ninth chap. Sim's one 'failing' was assuming I'd actually stuck these kitbashes together properly in the first place, and the pick ax this guy is carrying came off while she was painting him. For the sake of doing it properly, I've now drilled through his hand, and into the pick ax, and pinned the blasted thing. I just need to trim the wire and add the bottom end of the haft back on now.

I've also started work on the first of my Squats, who'll be being someone's henchman soon. The apparently odd colour choice is because I'm trying to pay tribute to some of the old Squat League colours - the basing will get washed and highlighted and weathered until it looks a bit more gritty and realistic, but I'm currently pleased it doesn't look terrible - although I need to be careful not to make his gloves look like Marigold Washing Up Gloves!

And it looks like he's getting ready in time, because there appear to be some rivals turning up to oppose him! I found this on my mat when I got in from work this evening - another one of the Kickstarters I backed has delivered! This is by a chap called Jon Lawrence in the US, who runs a little company called Trench 2114 - either that, or that's his game. I'm kind of unclear. Anyhow, it had a modest goal, just made its target, and has delivered within a month of its target date. Perhaps I should be taking the concept of succeeding at modest goals to heart?

Battle Report, Slow Grow League Week 6: 750 pts vs Astra Militarum

Oh deary me, I'm late with my weekly battle report!

My scheduled opponent couldn't make the game, so I subbed in a game with the Commissar running the slow grow. He was also running an Astra Militarum force, but with a very different set of army selection choices to me - infantry squads with heavy weapons, a veteran squad with a Lascannon, Commissar Yarrick, and a much bigger Conscript squad - and no tanks!

So, firstly, no, I haven't bought a Skyshield Landing Pad. This was one of the store ones and we set it up in the middle, assuming a straight battle, then rolled the sideways deployment. I rolled the Warlord trait which grants Outflank, and sent the Veterans and the command squad in the Chimera off to reserves to do something sneaky.

The Lascannon in the veteran squad was a big contribution to the decision to reserve the Chimera. While it's got a solid armour value, it's a much more inviting target than the Russ, and has the extra benefit of forcing the short ranged squad inside to walk. The Veterans ended up behind the Aegis line on his right flank - aware of the risk of outflanking, he put his Aegis line into a circle at the end to protect them.

We were doing the tactical objectives mission where the number of cards you draw increases as the game goes on. I started off with a careful advance, making sure the Leman Russ stayed out of the way of the Lascannon until I had it neutralised.

A battle cannon shell hit the roof of a building, taking out the Heavy Bolter which was overlooking my advance.

On turn two, my Veterans arrived from outflank. You'll notice that I position them so the closest model was the Commissar, so he was going to be rolling a lot of "Look out Sir" checks.

With the Chimera, I stuffed up. I should have moved it on six and used the heavy flamer on the Veterans. As it was, I moved it on 12, leaving it with much reduced shooting.

The Veterans opened up very effectively, although the Fire Shield from his psyker had killed one of the flamers and the sergeant! I still had the demo charge, though, and it was brutally effective on the closely packed conscripts.

With the death of the Commissar, the leadership of the psyker wasn't enough to keep the conscripts on the field and they fled! This was pretty lucky for me as it meant the Veterans weren't going to be annihilated in response - there were still enough conscripts for weight of fire to be very damaging.

Fire from the roof of the building still reduced the hits, though.

The return fire on the Chimera was unlucky, leaving it only Shaken. Still, that meant the Heavy Flamer was getting another turn without firing.

Lacking the flamer, I decided to use my turn 3 to Tank Shock the Veterans to force them out of their Aegis line and into some fire lanes. Sadly for me, the Death or Glory was successful and immobilised the Chimera.

Still, the shooting left the platoon commander fleeing and Yarrick on a single wound.

The squad on the roof were finally cleared off with concentrated fire.

The Chimera, unsurprisingly, didn't last the following turn...

And Yarrick charged into combat.

A plucky Guardsman survived!

But chose, perhaps wisely, to flee.

Meanwhile, my squads converged on an objective I needed to score.

Fleeing into the open, my Guardsman had the unlucky situation of the Commissar drawing a mission card to wipe out an enemy unit in close combat. He rallied to face the Platoon Commander running him down...

To no avail, as he was cut down. Unfortunately for the Platoon Commander, he'd been left too far in the open to get back to his lines, and he was shot down in revenge in the following turn.

The Veterans claimed a stray objective, proving they were useful.

And a few of the conscripts bravely advanced off the landing pad to grab another objective I needed to score.

The Leman Russ had come forward to find more targets, and my concern about the Lascannon was proved correct - he was left immobilised from a long ranged shot!

While the conscripts who held the objective didn't make it, the game was over, with a win for me - the first win of the slow grow!

I was quite pleased with how this one went, with me only making a couple of tactical mistakes and generally getting my target priority right. While I claimed a lot of victory points towards the end, this is part of the mission design, and reflected how much of the board I was controlling compared to my opponent, now pushed back into a single corner.

Still, an excellent game, and I'm finally off "zero points"!