Ok, thought i'd set up a separate thread for game results. Vexingly my phone was set to video rather than picture, so i don't have anything from the two games i played against Mark last night
I'll see if i can flesh it out reasonably well though.
Game 1: Steel Legion vs Dark Eldar.
Deployment saw Steel Legion doing the usual, two objectives as close to the centre as possible, and Mark had one on each flank reasonably close to the centre as well. One of mine became a webway however, giving Mark a pretty good position to be assaulting from.
Steel Legion won the rolloff, and sent a full 6bp from manticores against a wych unit and vessel of pain. The wyches broke, and the vessel was fine, however had 2 BM's. I then retained with a warhound, doubled up and shot it (no macro) to break it. Mark responded with his cruiser, damaging the Regimental HQ, putting some BM's on rough riders, and breaking a shadowsword and killing a baneblade with the pinpoint. That cruiser is brutal. Guard then failed to activate a few times, while mark came forward sniping a few bits where he could. After some more failed activations from the guard, Mark then decided to try an assault on my flank, with the second warhound and mech infantry not having activated yet. Kabal goes in, Warhound manages 3 hits and kills to no damage back thanks to shields, and breaks the kabal. Mark also forgot to put a portal down. We then got down to some manouvering, with Mark marching his last Kabal onto an objective way out on the flank on my side, and as i was betting on making progress in the center i marched the mech infantry over to an objective and within 30cm of his two broken units. The turn ends with the warhound doubling and trying to break another kabal in a crossfire, and fails miserably.
At the end of the turn, i held 2 objectives in my half of 2 points, mark held 1 of mine and his blitz for a 1 point swing to him. Rallying saw the wyches back in the game, but the vessel still broken. Happily the shadowsword also rallied.
Turn 2, and mark went first. The unbroken vessel tried to have a go at the warhound and fluffed entirely, and then he tried to assault it again, this time with the kabal i'd shot the turn before. This went as well as the first try, with more silly luck on my side seeing him fend off his assailants again. He then wandered off and broke the wyches again like a boss. Mark snipes at the unactivated warhound (which then promptly fails to activate of course), but is a bit surprised when i moved the mech infantry over the portal to block him in, keeping his bts locked inside. I manage to break the other vessel of pain, and the footslogging infantry co with hydra and griffons finally decides to activate, and goes and sits in some ruins near objectives, while the rough riders give me a better screen between my bts and the portal, and near an objective. Mark did break the warhound, and he went for a rest in a wood.
At the end of turn 2 mark still held his blitz and the objective in my half for 3 points, and i had 2 in his half, plus 2 in my own for 6, putting it to a swing of 2 for me. The Vessels i think both rallied, although Mark had ran one miles off to the side. A few other bits did as well, but it was pretty slim pickings in the middle now. The mighty warhound of win also rallied, facing the blitz guard.
Turn 3, and mark went first again. The vessel redeemed itself by clearing off sufficient guard from the portal so that the archon and co could jump out and smash the bejesus out of them, and i responded by smashing the unit on his Blitz with a sustain from the warhound. After plinking at the hydra battery i failed to marshal activate and instead broke them, leaving a way in to air assault reasonably safely, and mark decided to try the infantry co in the middle in ruins. He then fluffed the dice and bounced hard, losing both the slavebringer and the wyches. Meanwhile i contested the objective the incubi now held with the shadowsword (who had to march to get there sadly), while the other warhound made a run at the blitz. My Regimental HQ stayed on blitz guard, and the manticores tried to hammer the incubi but failed to really have much of an impact, killing i think 1.
At the end of the turn, mark still held onto the one objective in my half, while i had 4 points, putting me on a swing of 4. Rallying didn't go spectacularly well, and we both had limited resources going into turn 4.
Mark went first, and managed to take out the roughriders with a vessel of pain, and then broke the shadowsword with his incubi (vessel supporting). The warhound on the blitz failed to activate but i did manage to rally and hold it, using the manticore to break the dregs going off to support it. The rest of the turn was pretty much just feeble sniping on both sides and trying to hold onto objectives, and it finished with Mark having 3 points for an objective in my half and one in his, while i had his blitz, an objective in his half, and 2 of my own for 8 points, pushing it up a further 5 points, putting the final result at a 9 point swing to me.
This was a really fun game, although i think if Mark had managed to be a bit luckier on his assaults the guard would have been in real trouble. The objective in the corner gave me real trouble, as i couldn't really spare a unit to go deal with it, and a Kabal still needs some reasonable attention to take down, especially when it's in cover. As such i decided to ignore it and try and focus on the centre. This went reasonably well, although i was hugely lucky with one of the warhounds, which just demolished all of Mark's plans. Steel legion did ironically have some issues holding on to some objectives as some of the smaller units just got vaporised, and with a unit only being able to contest or capture 1 objective each, the big mech units couldn't just gobble up all the objectives on their own, while the DE actually had a decent amount of board presence, even if a unit could evaporate when things went sideways for them.