Here is a report from the Imperial Fists vs. Knights game in the tournament Mrdiealot mentioned. Army lists and results from the tournament are available at
https://www.tournamentbuilder.org. The alternative scenario was used in the second match.
I really liked playing the scenario. I think adding more scenarios makes you build less extreme lists, and think a bit different. We both made many small mistakes that cost us both points in turn one, e.g. I left my Blitz unchallenged (which is what I usually do…). The scenario was a good fit for my Imperial Fist list, much more than it would have been for the Codex lists I use to play. I usually don’t have formations hanging around any of my defensive objectives…
I think the placement of objectives and army composition really was to my advantage in this game. I had placed my T&H objectives as close to the center line as possible and in areas with no cover available to Knights wanting to contest. The Knights spread their T&H as well, I guess to avoid the Fists building a bunker stronghold in the center. Over half of my army was garrisoned of my defensive T&H objectives while the Knights only had two units of Lancers garrisoned.
One of those Lancer units was massacred immediately when I won the initiative as my Scouts set up a crossfire where my Devastators could sustain on the Lancers, killing most of them. I had the activation advantage from the start and after some stalling I think the Knights felt forced to move up and defend their T&H objectives. The Paladin formations were split up far from each other and their advance also brought one of them in to assault range of my garrisoned Land speeders. Doubling up Assault Centurions and doing a clipping assault with Land Speeders, where the Knight could only countercharge towards the Centurions, crippled one of the Paladin formations severely. The knights then moved up the Barron formation to defend the T&H they just lost, taking them dangerously close to my main assault formations.
I focused all my assault formations on the right flank and pretty much ignored my left flank. Thunderfires and Scouts stalled the advancing Knights on my left, and actually managed to break the second Lancer formation with their disrupt fire early turn two as the Lancers had failed to remove BMs.
I won initiative turn two as well and immediately broke the Barron formation. Once you get past the Knights front line there are a lot of soft support targets to hunt down. By the end of turn two most of the Knights were dead or broken.
After I won initiative in turn three and broke a few rallied formations with shooting, the Knights had two activations left, one being a single Paladin. At this point it was pretty much game over…
I think the main factors that won me the game was:
- I managed to split up the Knight formations by placing the T&H objectives fairly wide. Divide and conquer!
- I pulled of assaults on Knight formations already in the middle of turn one because they had to move up to contest their defensive T&H objectives, which were close to my garrisons.
- Activation advantage, forcing the Knights to make the first move. This left them in exposed positions.
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Army Champion - Scions of Iron &
Iron Hands