Post Game Analysis

Whew! That was an exciting game right up until the very end. I think the score doesn't refelct how close it felt , with a single decisive combat shattering the backbone of my army. That said, I was very lucky most of the way and at any time if my luck had run out I would of been broken. Looking back I made some serious tactical errors:

1) Pushing up my Gyrocopters into harm's way. Every game I have done this I have lost it early.

2) Underestimating the ability of firefights, especially carefully placed clipping firefights to break and destroy big units.

In turn 2, I should of pulled back slightly and concentrated all my fire on the central hordes in the 'killing zone'. continually firing at the Dactylis wasn't needed.

In turn 3 I should not have worried about the trygon/bezerkers first. Instead, activating fist a sustained fire from both my BTS and my Overlords (which were within 15cm!) could of smashed apart the central nid swarm and bought me another turn of killing. The Bezerkers were just a distraction.

Points in my favour
+1 Had a good army list for killing nids
+1 Decent castling strategy
+1 Got lucky where I needed it for the first two turns

Points against
-2 Jim is an excellent tactician, and knows exactly how to pick perfect assaults
-1 Gave away my Gyros
-2 Poor positioning/activation of my Overlords and BTS lost them and the game.


I've already noted that assaults, and especially how to defend against clipping assaults is my biggest weakness in the game. I have to learn how to initiate and defend again them. If I played again, I would still probably lose, but be able to give away less freebies!

On to Round Two (Will post tomorrow)

Mate fantastic report keep up the good work and I look forward to finally facing the tall challenge of the squats

Elesaurio’s Squats.

So this was the first game of CA15 and was against the army I was dreading. It was supposed to be a random draw, but it didn’t seem so random that I got slotted against the army I was telling the TO I didn’t want to play. Don’t get me wrong Elesaurio got my vote for the best sportsman of the tourney – hes a great guy and good looking to boot. But I was not looking forward to all of the Blast Template weapons. In actual fact, it was probably fortuitous that I played the squats first rather than after my 9th schooner like I had to for the last game of the day…

So, this was only my second time playing squats and the 6th game using my nids. I didn’t really have a plan of attack other than swarm until I cant swarm no more. His castle deployment was a huge concern for me because he had so many supporting units that would whale on any of my units if they tried to assault.


I was conscious of two things to begin with:

1. There will be lots of indirect and shooting, so spread out.

2. He will send some tunnellers onto my blitz so I needed to maintain a reserve.


Things I learnt:

1. There was more shooting than I expected.

2. Squats can be the king of FF!

Elesaurio took a deliberately weaker list, I think to ease people back into squats, but also to show a more acceptable army build. It was still a nasty build.


Strengths. An acceptable level of shooting and FF from this army. Their big guns are expensive and relatively weak if they can be shot at or engaged. I was stumped about how I was going to break into his defences without getting turned into a fleshy pink pulp.

Weaknesses. Relatively limited mobility. But this is made up for by gyros and tunnellers and bikes (not present in this list.) but I certainly had greater mass manoeuvre units.

Overall I think Elesaurio played a great game and I look forward to our rematch. But I think he made 2 errors which cost him the game.

1. Exposing his gyrocopters early allowed me to remove them in from the game in turn 2. They would have been very handy in the late game for securing objectives and preventing my aslt swarms from targeting his warrior unit.

2. Bringing his overlords forward and intermingling them with his huge warrior formation. This allowed me to prep and then launch a devastating clipping assault onto his BTS with very little risk to my swarms. If I hadn’t have been able to do that they were about to shoot my face off.

A great game against a great player. Glad Id limited it to three beers before the third turn. Cant wait for your third opportunity for revenge Elesurio!

Oh and yes. It was a 4-0 win to me, but could have very easily been a 4-0 win to the squats. It was and felt a very close game.
Thanks again Elesaurio!

Oh great. Now the whole world can see how you beat me again!

Great report, nids are a bugger even with a barrage heavy list as it's hard to kill anything that actually matters. Really interested to see how the double overlord fares.

One thing in a little unclear about. You say that you've got 18 battle canons. I count 14 (12 for overlords and 2 for upgraded gyros) am I missing something?

_________________

Nope, you successfully used your spotter function to note that I had written in the wrong number

I doubt that! I would have to play a lot harder to get that win!

Easy.
1. If you had chosen to retain with your bts you would have wiped my only viable aslt swarm.
2. The aslt res was even when i engaged. If you had won the roll off it would have deleted that aslt swarm and you would have been able to advance to hold the other 2 objectives and then shot the other swarm that was about to go and eat your bezerkers.

The way i see it, it came down to a single dice roll.

Some awesome reporting, must get my own squat army together and give it a whirl.

_________________
http://hordesofthings.blogspot.co.nz/

Great reporting so far dude, love the annotations through the reports. Looking forward to playing agsint the Squats as well in the future!

Nice report and commentary!
Thanks for going to the trouble. Looking forward to the rest!
Sweet looking army too!

_________________
.'.
http://ragged-they-kill.blogspot.com.au/

You say that but I could count back at least three of four 'hinge points' (the lictor engagement, the gene stealers, the Trygon) where although I had a slight advantage, a lost would of been devastating for me.

You could summarise the engagements as rolling on a chart:

Roll a D6
3-6 Squats win, and the Tyranids loose D3 Termigaunts
1-2 Tyranids win and 1000 points of Squats are broken and run down.

You only had to be lucky once, I had to be lucky every time.

And THATS HOW FIGHTING AGAINST NIDS SHOULD BE! It was why each fight was so thrilling as I couldn't afford to lose

GAME TWO:
Elsaurios’s Squats (Thurgrimm Stronghold V1.5) Vs Adam's Biel-Tan Craftworld v4.2

Now here's two things I considered about building my list, pre tourney.

1) I have a particular dislike for the space elves. At last year's Castle Assault I first discovered just how slippery the Eldar are; dancing in and out of cover, utilizing the 3++ holofield rule to great effect. Everytime I treid a particular strategy they would pull out yet another special rule that negated that plan:

Me: "Ah ha ha! You would require three activations in a row to get out of this trap"
Eldar player: "Actually we can totally do that"

I was brutally taken to pieces in all the games I played against them. I vowed "never again" and with this in mind designed a Squat list that was decidedly anti-Eldar. Indirect Fire, Ignore Cover and Pop-up Attacks. Sure it is a fun list anyway, but it's especially good against Eldar.

2) In the early days of list preparation, I knew i could only afford one of the big Squat cubical war machines; Land train, Colossus, Cyclops. Everyone in my local group and their mums* told me to take the TK (D6+1) Cyclops. I bucked the trend thinking that "Not everyone will overdose on Titans"

And here I was matched up against the biggest titan in the tourney.

Let's see how it turns out



VAMPIRE RAIDER [200]

ASPECT WARRIOR WARHOST [400]
4 Fire Dragon, Exarch, Autarch, 4 Striking Scorpion

SWORDS OF VAUL TROUPE [310]
4 Fire Prism, Fire Storm

PHANTOM TITAN [750]

SWORDS OF VAUL TROUPE [265]
3 Falcon, Fire Storm, Fire Prism

AVATAR [0]

GUARDIAN WARHOST [150]
Farseer, 7 Guardians

ENGINE OF VAUL TROUPE [250]
Scorpion

VOID SPINNER [275]
Void Spinner

RANGER TROUPE [100]
4 Ranger

RANGER TROUPE [100]
4 Ranger

WINDRIDER TROUPE [200]
5 Jetbikes, Vyper



It's worth noting that at this point, both players are sitting at the bottom table. If either of us want any chance at the podium we have to win, and win big.

*All of the mums of the Newcastle Legion's players are lovely women. Very respectable. No matter what might get said in a sledge over the tabletop.