Quote: (dptdexys @ Jan. 16 2010, 16:31 )
Just a query on the placement of scouts.
Why didn't the IG player use the Rough Riders and Sentinels (maybe even the Storm troopers if nescesary ) to attempt to screen all of his army from the incoming drop pods.
He could have forced any deathwind attacks away from his main force and left most of his/her forces unscathed.
I know theirs nothing that can stop the Orbital Barrage but good scout placement can render a drop heavy force to being almost useless in the initial drop.
Since I was the IG player, now is as appropriate a time as any to speak up on this forum, I guess.
The short answer on the scouts is that I guessed wrongly about Dave's drop pod placement.
To explain, I had garrisoned 1050 points (three inf coys), and was mainly concerned with protecting them. I had guessed (wrongly) that Dave would try and land closer to the non-blitz objectives, so I tried using my scouts ZoC to screen the more fragile infantry. As it turned out, I think my army could have survived this blunder had the storm troopers not been so unlucky (they were one of my only formations that were both maneuverable and had some punch) - to my surprise the manticores survived the first turn and were able to shoot (albeit weakly), Dave's termies seemed to share the same luck as my stormtroopers, and my supreme commander formation was virtually untouched (IIRC) by the drop.
Hindsight being 20/20, I might've put the the vultures and the valkyries in front of my SC and manticore formation (and distribute the hydras amongst the formations rather than going for that extra activation, which was useless btw, if anyone had any doubts). However, I also had to worry about providing too juicy a target for the bombardment. Bad enough one of my maneuver formations was under (macro) gun as it was; I had to consider that the orbital bombardment might catch multiple formations. As about a third of my force was garrisoned and another third (SC, manticores, hydras) were in the deployment zone, its debatable where the "main" force actually was. I am leaving the scouts out of this calculation of course.
As to the Raven Guard list in general, I didn't see any problems from the adversary perspective. Dave's ability to re-roll the drops helped him, but didn't completely negate bad luck, which is how it should be. The planetfalling landspeeders also seemed reasonable, although those things are ALWAYS annoying when I face them. In any case, the moral victory is in the books as those manticores would've made all the difference... which emoticon to choose? I guess I'll go with this one:
