My initial plan was to take an Ulani army, sadly I couldn't find my shadowswords. So marines it was. Expanding the Salamanders takes too long as my painting is too slow, so a quickly painted Ultramarine force it was. The decision to go with three lots of terminators was largely based on painting 4 stands was better than tacticals, hunter and razorback.
General tourney point - the terrain on table 1 was pretty awful. Very little cover, not much around the edges and quite hard (for my warhounds at least) to cover hop forward (to good firing positions turn 1
) or for that matter much cover to hide in generally. Though ideally suited to Gavins drop army there wasn't much help for anyone else, though that probably helped me as it discouraged me from going forward!
Mayhaps as well as a different opponent each round, tournies should endevor to give people a different table each round?
Tactical + Librarian + Hunter + Razorback (Las)
Terminators + Chaplain
Terminators + Chaplain
Terminators
Predator (Annihilators) + Hunter
Landspeeders
Scouts + Razorback (Hvy Bolter)
Landing Craft
Thunderhawk
Warhound
Warhound
Warhound
Thunderbolts
Thunderbolts
Overall plan was to do some sort of clever air assaults and teleports and pick up with the thunderhawk. However this never happened as things either died or the thunderhawk couldn't get to them. It morphed into feed the opposition warhounds and terminators to keep them in their corner and slowly wear them down towards a point where their armies were strung out and out of position and the last lot of terminators plus any survivors could take their blitz and the odd take and hold.
The terminators suffered withering casualties, sometimes achieving nothing more than getting shot up or assaulted to death. However they really tied up large numbers of formations for a turn or more. The warhounds did the same, all to often dying before firing plasma or missing when they did, even broken ones got put in positions to encourage formations to divert from attack routes or hold postions to come and kill them. The landspeeders failed a lot of dangerous terrain rolls, even when moving cautiously, and generally died pretty fast bar playing Joe where they hung on tenaciously. The landing craft was sterling, died a few times but otherwise was a suitably lumbering behmouth. The thunderhawk often went down in flames, but otherwise harrassed people. The predators were pretty poor in each game, often having to hide for a while before popping out to do damage. And yes, the librarian in the tacticals was a big mistake, they never air assaulted into positions to support terminators and would have been better getting a couple of razorbacks, a chaplain for defence or anything else bar a dreadnought really.
It was interesting to note up to a quarter of the army did not very much bar hide and their always seemed to be a formation of terminators left on turn 3 or even turn 4 to teleport, so the army often had not much to do.
Chris Steels wonderful air cavalry
Fantastic looking, even with the out of scale skimmers (I've been in Chinocks that mount 2 miniguns and a GPMP, carry I think over 50 men on short hops (I think up to 12 tons of cargo on equally short hops) and they are big compared to them). Corners filled up his army deployment zone and things were pretty crowded.
Chris had a fair bit of bad luck, I think a poor load of commissars as well. We had some odd assault results with both sides winning where they shouldn't but essentially Chris was kept bottled up and steadily degraded. His bombers got shot down by my thunderbolts who were gleefully risking his point blank defensive fire for more shots and making 6+ saves - up until the last turn when a lone marauder downed both the planes in a squadron. Still such risk taking shut down his airforce in short order.
My first turn was notable - teleported in a formation of terminators on his flank with no blast markers. Won initiative and put my thunderbolts on cap. Then passed to a baffled Chris. I had simply forgotten about the terminators. Later that turn I said I was out of activations and was convinced until Chris pointed out the third of my army on my side of the table I had simply forgotten about. (Not as bad as forgetting about my great gargant in one turney for almost 2 turns.)
It was an interesting army. I would have gone disrupt barrage mad rather than have the smattering of lascannon and garrissoned everything as forward as possible and try and win (or lose) turn 1.
Richard Laking
Corners again against the steel legion. Richard was very unfortunate here in an assault on a bm'ed formation of terminators intermingled with a broken land speeder. The broken steel legion formation they were next to was closer than the attackers, and the terminators promptly charged them, going from no blast markers to having more than the space marines. Even so it took 2 rounds of combat and 16 passed saves (4 needing an invulnerable save from the chaplain) before he emerged victorious, slaughtering a horrendus number of guard in the process. The odds were a bit harsh (0.00057 or 57/100000 I think) and Richard suffered a fair bit of poor luck to eventually lose to my outmanouvered marines.
Steve Gullick
Steve had a nicely painted alternative to the black legion, trying to prove not all the EpicUk varient lists are as bad as the Dark Angels one. I think this was the only game which wasn't corners?
Steve correctly anticipated I would shun the ruins on the far right for my army depite the objectives being near them and intead set up directly in front of my chair. His barrage then landed on top of my bts tactical formation crippling it. They later I beleive all died. I must confess to not remembering how the game went after this other than it being a tough fight with a lot of careful actions taking place. I think what helped ultimately was a lot of the action taking place ont he wrong parts of the board for Steves troops allowing me to snatch a win.
Joe Jephson
Corners. I dread playing Eldar but here joe seemed to worry a bit to much about my warhounds and his plan seemed to change from deployment in which the objectives were placed on opposite corners, to the game where the Eldar army made a big run along the top edge towards one of them. His activations were awful and this combined with me being able to focus on isolated formations meant I won the draw despite being horribly out of position nowhere near his objectives with my ultimately quite slow force. Joe was repeatably confounded by my land speeders that seemingly could not all die nor fail to rally, indeed I think they may have criticalled his Avatar as well. Then all the fails (5?6?7?) to activate meant incoming fire was slack and I never had to pay for my mistakes.
Simon Jenkins
Corners. The game against the ulani tank regiment just went badly from turn one, before if you include rolling for 12 commissars. On turn 1 a pristine unblast markered terminator formation charged, only to all die against a 6+1 hydra strong tank formation with not a single loss to the tanks. What was supposed to be a master stroke putting a BM on the bts from supporting a failed assault and would then be defended by only 1 hydra against my landing craft packed full of terminators failed uterly and I had no real back up plan. My objective placement of all three close together was rather foolish, I should have put them in opposite corners. Now the slow tanks had no problem defending stuff and my assaults continued to bounce off. Sacrifices like landing the thunderhawk in front of overwatching sniper tanks to draw their fire, would be followed by failing to active the landing craft to come and get the blitz. The last ditch effort on turn 4 failed with the loss of the initiative. The tanks rightfully won the draw, despite failing to rally anything. Indeed it was rather close at 175 points difference!
Mark Hargrave
Corners. I was dreading playing Marks sodding Warlock titan. My cunning plan was to fly in the landing craft and using some terminators get a crossfire on it, except the terminators kept dying. Instead I pretty much hid throughout the game, throwing warhounds in on the flanks trying to mess up the eldar and liberally spreading blast markers around to cause stuff to break. Eventually the Eldar became spread out enough for me to get their blitz, hitting the aspect formation guarding it with a landing craft, thunderhawk (crossfire), two sets of thunderbolts and a terminator formation that teleported in on turn 4. Still the rest of my army was evaporating fast, with only a scout formation confounding the eldar getting take and hold and spread out over two feet. All Mark had to do was activate his swooping hawks to engage them on a 3+ (a plucky single surviving bm'ed land speeder had bombed up on a suicide mission to bm the swooping hawks) with the SC re-roll to deny me the game and win on victory points. Of course he failed and that was it.
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