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Finally found someone in this godforsaken part of the world (Virginia, USA) that plays Epic. Or rather, that has an Epic army and was willing to give E:A a try.
First we had a 1000-point warm-up game, to show my opponent the rules and reacquaint myself with them.
Oh, boy, I needed that warm-up! There was me, thinking that as an ANSWER MOD I would know the rules well, despite the several-year gap in gaming. Oh, no! I've become so immersed in the niggly rules and finer details that the basic rules have become foggy. I was constantly flicking through the book, and phrases like "oh yeah, I forgot about leaders" or "something I should have mentioned before" kept coming out of my mouth.
Anyhow, in the warm-up game, my army got absolutely steamrollered by a Tank Company. Er, ouch. If I could have gotten my Grey Knight Terminators into base-to-base it might have gone better, but I just couldn't get within 15cms!
For the main event (3000 points), I had:
An Inquisitor Lord and retinue in Land Raiders and Rhinos
A Grey Knight Terminator Order (teleporting)
A Grey Knight Order in Thunderhawk
A GK Strike Cruiser
A Inquisitor and retinue aboard a Gun Cutter
A Storm Trooper detachment in chimeras
2 Warhounds
He had, from memory:
An infantry command HQ with supreme commander and lots of heavy weapon platoons
Another infantry company with two hydras
A tank company
Superheavy tank company (2 banes, 1 shadow)
Warhound
2 small artillery formations
At the start of the game he deployed and, despite some movement in the first two turns, essentially remained in a large phalanx formation. The core was the two infantry formations in long lines with the tank company behind them. The smaller formations were on his flanks.
I deployed my formations on the flanks and out of sight.
Turn one, I started moving my formations up. My stormtroopers moved up out of sight, but one of his artillery formations opened fire indirectly - blasting three chimeras open, killing four stands of stormtroopers inside and breaking my formation. Nice shooting!
I moved my Inquisitor Lord up near the cowering stormtroopers and he shuffled his formations around. My warhounds moved up to try and hit the infantry formation with the hydras. I managed to take out one, but then realised I'd left the titans open to fire from his shadowsword. Between the shadowsword, the tank company and the other artillery company, I lost one warhound and the other broke.
I then brought in my aircraft, just for strafing runs this turn. Had a minor heart attack as he caused two hits on my Thunderhawk and I only saved one - but he didn't get a critical (thank god!) and I took out a few infantry.
Turn two - no messing around now! I teleported in the Terminators, ready to take down his titan. Naturally, he won the strategy roll, and his tank company really put the hurt on them, killing two. He retained the initiative and broke the formation. I ran away, in the fashion of all the best knights.
My spacecraft came in, zapping his superheavies with pinpoint strikes, killing one and wounding another. Not - quite - enough to break him. He then responded by sticking them on overwatch. My stormtroopers, now rallied, doubled forward to get in range of the superheavies. His baneblade opened fire - ouch, those things sure carry some serious firepower! - but didn't quite break the formation. In return I fired my single multilaser - needing a 7+ to hit! - but just firing was enough to break them.
My surviving Warhound picked off an artillery battery, and my Inquisitor swooped in to blast the other artillery battery. I still couldn't find anywhere for my Grey Knights to assault. Any formation I assaulted would leave me in support range of gazillions of guard or tanks. I just made another strafing run.
Everybody rallied this turn, apart from the Superheavies (thank god) and the Grey Knights (damn!). I really could do with that Grand Master with his TK weapon!
Third turn. I pushed forward with my Inquisitor Lord, supported by the Inquisitor, to take on the Warhound. Didn't scratch the thing, and suffered much pain in return. The Inquisitors weren't having much success with their MW firefight attacks! The Inquisitor then tried it too, and also got beaten.
Then my opponent made his only mistakes. He didn't pulverise my stormtroopers, who were on one of his objectives. He used his infantry and titan to obliterate my (broken) Inquisitor and Inquisitor Lord formations. He moved his tank company off his blitzkrieg objective to tackle my titan. I swooped in with my thunderhawk and annihilated the one unbroken formation on his home objective.
Final score 3-0 to me (blitzkrieg, take and hold, hold the line).
A learning experience for my opponent - if he hadn't got carried away with trying to kill me, just by leaving his tank company put and throwing his titan across the board to take my blitzkrieg objective, he'd have had a draw, and been able to completely annihilate me next turn.
A great game, and I think I've got a proper E:A convert. Now it is only a matter of time before others start to wonder what they're missing out on!
It was a good game for my army too - they got their arses handed to them, and I only won due to stealing victory from under my opponent's nose - which helps reassure me that my list is reasonably balanced...
Sweet Emperor above, those Tank Companies are nasty. He says he's going to deploy two next time. I'm going to have to find something that can help me against them!
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) i lost no units, he did suport fire with a warhound but the Terminators made all the saves.