The typing and image resizing is killing me!

......aaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd the Guard got the drop.


"What's that coming over the hill, is it a mech co? It's a mech co...."
The Storm troopers streamed in, unloaded enough BP to level Birmingham, and destroyed the Kult of Speed. The mech coy then retained and engaged my warband, with the troopers in support. The warband got soundly battered and legged it.




Trying to regain some control of the situation, I tried to sent in some fightas on a 2+, only for them to fail.
Supreme commander reroll? Another fail...


"Here we go again..."
Nat, being his normal sympathetic self, then proceded to use his baneblades to ruthlessly engage and break my other mech warband who legged it into a nearby wood.


Advantage well and truly Guard...


"Fix banonets lads, we're gonna have a firefight with those skorchas..."
Nat was on a roll at this stage and then used his Guard Inf Coy to engage a Blitz Brig, intermingling the KoS behind them who had carelessly strayed 3mm too close to the Blitz Brig.
Thankfully the countercharge of the KoS brought them into range, and they were able to swing the combat in my favour.




Spotting a chance to be (uncharacteristicly) cunning, I swung my stompamob round in front of Nats baneblades before firing on the two Shadowswords lurking in the background. Each had a single BM on them, so even without doing any damage I was able to break both of them through the amount of BMs placed for 6BP.




The previously careless KoS then swung round t'other side of the wood to engage the baneblades with the support of the stompamob. An impressive set of dice saw 4 points of damage done, destroying one and damaging the other. Combat Res saw the last remaining one carved apart like a tin of value range tuna.



Time began to get short, so wasn't able to take many more photos.

I landed my Landa next to Nats' blitz, and in the process hosed down the SC and his chimera to secure BTS, Blitz and 2 in opps half (assuming he survived turn three).

3-0 up, advantage was now the Orks...

Turn 3.

I needed to make the result stick, and Nat needed to contest as much as possible with his remaining activations to reduce the deficit.

The storm troopers were Nat's 'ace in the hole' as they have the manoeuvrability to threaten most objectives, so I sent some fightas after them and managed to bring down two of the Valkyries to hamper their speed.

Nat strung his Mech Coy out between one of his objectives and one of mine, contesting both.

I tried to use my stompamob to fire on Nats’ rough riders, who at this stage were the only formation remaining who could threaten my hold on his blitz. Failing the 2+ initiative test wasn’t part of the plan though.
Supreme commander reroll? Another fail... AGAIN. Grrrrgh!

Nats Tbolts came in and fired on the grounded Landa. Four shots…. Three hits…. I had to make two of the three 5+ RA saves for the can to remain on the ground. Three fails first time round….. followed by three fails the second time round! Boom, no more Landa…

All of a sudden, 3-0 became 1-0. Something had to be done!

I ran (well, marched…) a warband up to recontest the blitz.

The Storm troopers made the most of their scout ability to march and, despite have the formation being on foot, they were able to reach far enough to contest my blitz. Drat.

Nat was closing the gap rapidly, I was now 3-2 up. (blitz, BTS, T&H vs T&H and blitz)

I interposed a KoS between the blitz and the lurking rough riders, ready for the inevitable ‘charge of the light brigade’…
It came, and the rough riders gave the KoS a good shoeing (hoofing?), and in the process contested their own blitz – turning 3-2 into 2-1 in Nats favour. Double Drat.



By this point we were down to the last activation of the game. The guy running the store was chivvying us along with regular time updates and gathered for the finale. It all came down to a single roll. If I could activate my last mech warband and march them back to my own blitz, I could contest it and deny Nat two objectives.

The die was cast……

And failed!

The guard had stolen the day!

Full credit to Nat who played an extremely good final turn, making each of his activations really count.
I was pleased with the extra threat posed by the faster formations, although having a lack of natural blitz guard is something that I’ll need to address.

Got another game in against Nat on Thursday just gone.

This was Nats list, same as our last encounter:-

Incompertus, 3000 POINTS
Steel Legion (Epic UK v301209)
==================================================

REGIMENTAL HQ [550]
Supreme Commander, 12 Infantry, 7 Chimera, Hydra

MECHANISED INFANTRY COMPANY [400]
Commander, 12 Infantry, 7 Chimera

SUPER-HEAVY TANK COMPANY [500]
3 Baneblade

INFANTRY COMPANY [250]
Commander, 12 Infantry

STORM TROOPER PLATOON [350]
8 Storm Troopers, Valkyrie Transport

ROUGH RIDER PLATOON [150]
6 Rough Riders

ARTILLERY BATTERY [250]
3 Basilisks

SUPER-HEAVY TANK PLATOON [200]
Baneblade

SUPER-HEAVY TANK PLATOON [200]
Baneblade

THUNDERBOLT FIGHTERS [150]
2 Thunderbolts




I ran a slightly tweaked list as I tried to refine the list I'm planning on taking to OW. Dropped a KoS and replaced them with a Gunzmob so that I had something that could guard my own blitz. And they are painted, which also goes in their favour given the looming deadline....!

Incompertus, 2995 POINTS
Ghazgkhull Thraka's War Horde (Epic UK v100909)
==================================================

MEKBOY STOMPAMOB [475]
3 Stompa, Supa Stompa

WARBAND [375]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, 3 Battlewagon, 2 Flakwagon

WARBAND [375]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, 3 Battlewagon, 2 Flakwagon

WARBAND [270]
2 Nobz, 6 Boyz, 2 Grotz, 2 Nobz

LANDA [200]

KULT OF SPEED [200]
4 Buggy, 4 Skorcha

BLITZ BRIGADE (BIG) [300]
Oddboy, 3 Flakwagon, 5 Gunwagon

BLITZ BRIGADE (BIG) [300]
Oddboy, 3 Flakwagon, 5 Gunwagon

MEKBOY GUNMOB [200]
6 Big Gunz, Oddboy

FIGHTA SQUADRON [150]
3 Fighta Bomba

FIGHTA SQUADRON [150]
3 Fighta Bomba



I'll keep it brief as I'm knackered (and I'm trying to forget the game ;-) )

Turn 1 sees Nat go first (he has an uncanny knack of doing this against me!) and he starts focusing on my BTS. Drops some shields and then starts smartly concentrating on the softer stuff, killing the Stompas and breaking the formation through weight of BMs. This proved to be a smart move as they never rallied.

Knowing his TBs were on CAP, I brought my Landa on, but only flying part way onto the table to force Nat to run through my flak bubbles if he wanted to have a pop at me. Being savvy about his approach, Nat minimised the amount of flak he expsoed himself to on the way in and had a pop at the Landa.
Two hits scored. One saved. Rolll for critical...

... and it's a 6! Landa and all on board warband comes crashing down in a flaming ruin!

Losing about a third of my army halfway through the first turn wasn't part of the battleplan so I starting playing a bit more cautiously than normal as I couldn't afford to lose anymore detachments.

Nat started sweeping forwards and setting himself up to finish me off in the second turn. Stormtroopers behind my lines and his Mech Coy in my face left several detachments threatened and my Blitz looking very vunerable.
Turn starts with his Mech Coy engaging a BlitzBrig intermingled with my BTS. Thankfully I had a lot of supporting fire I could call on and was able to edge the engagement.
That allowed me to jump on his Stormtroopers with a Mech Warband and make the survivors scuttle off behind a wood to lick their wounds.

Meanwhile I was trying to knock down his SHTs as they were constantly posing a threat. However try as I might, I could not hit any of them with my Zzap guns. At one point I sustained with my Gunzmob, and despite only needing a 2+ to hit with my Zzap gun, failed.

I pushed forward, engaging where I could, contesting as much as possible and was threatening Nats blitz but ultimately did not have enough bodies to force the issue. Nat played tight without exposing himself to any risks and was able to wrap up a 2-0 (TSNP and DTF) victory in turn 4.

Will follow this post up with some pics later...

My thoughts after this game were along the lines of an over reilance on single Zzap guns seems to let me down. Have started tinkering with my list to bring some more FF threat in, at the expense of some of the Zzap firepower.

So, two games in the last fornight against Nat, and two losses. Not good for morale - back to the drawing board!

Deployment







"and if you look out the right hand windows you'll see two incoming Thunderbolts. Oh. Crap!"

Turn 2 promises to get messy....




"if we sit here and miss everything, maybe no one will bother us..."


Cat and mouse. My Supa stompa tries to stay alive...

Awsome.

I for one am enjoying your games log.

But may I ask, what are those upside down black bin things ?

In one of the photo's they look like hive stacks !

Hi Dogtrooper,

Thanks. I'm starting to realise that I lose more than I win, but hey....

The upside down black bin things? You know what, I'm not sure! I think that there are just that; upside down black bins!
They double up well as stools. (and I bet they are cheaper for the store to buy too... )

In fact - while I think about it - I'm sure they do use a couple as ACTUAL bins....!

Cheers

Reedar

LOL

Heya, thanks for doing the reports, they look good.

I have to say, you dont give yourself enough credit, im always scrabbling against you, and I dont think I would be half as successful without your zap crews liking the pretty patterns that result when shooting the sky

Last game as an example, I broke Bertha/BTS who never rallied, and fluked the landa kill, so was ~1000 points up for the majority of the game, yet I was still scrabbling around to make it stick. As shown by the objectives I took, TSNP/DTF, you contained me pretty well, I wasnt able to push forward, and had to use shadowswords to snipe battlewagons to edge that formation back across halfway. You played very well. I look forward to another game.

GL at OW.

Played Jons drop Iyanden list last night.

Typically brutal game as always. Turn 1 saw some cagey posturing; me trying to push up while attempting to hit and break his small formations of grav tanks, while Jon concentrated on knocking out some of my AA and the mech elements of the Orks.


Orks ready to come out to play...

The business end of the turn came with a pair of wraith guard filled vampires landing on my blitz and eating the mech warband guarding it.

"Ready. Aim. Obliterate."

His SC/BRS wraith guard formation came in and broke t'ther mech warband.


In retaliation I sent my landa mob after his BTS as they were looking a bit lonely all out in the open with no friends nearby and my LoS fortunately positioned to offer some supporting fire....
Lots of dice were thrown, and when the dice had settled the Orks had won the combat by a big margin, but their fearless ability prevented the WG from being wiped out.

Turn 2
More of the same. The Eldar not broken pushed up the table and threatened various objectives, one lot of WG embedded themselves in some buildings by my blitz, while the other lot beat up my Supa Stompa mob.
In response I parked my landa on Jons blitz in the hope that he would somehow survive T3.
The Vampires mostly circled the battlefield taking aerial photos and refusing to do anything useful.

Turn 3
My warband which the landa had dropped off on T1 was close enough to engage the broken WG BTS and finally killed them.
My Supa Stompa which had amazingly rallied got roasted by WG in a firefight, and I managed to break the falcon formation which had races up the flank and captured one on Jons objectives in my half.

As things stood we were tied at 2-2 with Blitz and BTS each.
Jon brought in his vampires to try and remove my landa.
The first failed to blow it up, while the second landed to contest the blitz. To do so he had to land within AA range of the landa, sadly I rolled a low number of shots and the vampire lived.

Results 2-1 to Jon.

Lessons learnt? I think i made things hard for myself by stretching myself out despite knowing I was playing a drop list.
Next time, less gung-ho and wait for the Eldar to come to me...

Got a game in last week against a new epic opponent, JW.
He's an experienced war gamer, but new to epic and still getting to grips with his marines.

Here's jw's codex marines


The thin red line. Marines lined up play.


Causing trouble in the neighbourhood. Orks ready to get stuck in.




JW started aggressively, teleporting one set of his termies in at the end of my right flank.



He then won the imitative and tore into one of my mech warbands. The fight went two round and, when the dust had settled the mech boyz were down to three units and the marines two.
Boyz ran off, marines stood about waiting for a thunderbus.

Having established that JW had two BTS units (both sets of termies) I took the chance to jump on the damaged lot who were stood around at the bus stop menacing old ladies.
Skorchas piled in and polished them off, for the loss of a couple of their number.



Riled at this destruction of one of their bus stops, the second thawk screamed down, disgorged its marines and swiftly extracted revenge by beating up the skorchas. The sole survivor fled back towards its own blitz.
I did managed to take two stands out between the skorchas and nearby supporting fire from a warband.

The rest of the turn was fairly uneventful, with each of us getting ready for T2.

More to follow.

Second set of termies, post skorcha fisticuffs.


Playing hide and seek. No one can remember who was meant to be doing the actual 'seeking'...

Turn two saw both armies rip into each other.

JWs predators advanced and targeted my zzap brigade, poor dice saw me only lose a couple though.

Top of following picture shows my forces grouping up ready to launch an assault.
JWs whirlwinds had other ideas though. Whooops....!



I was a able to prep an assault with my warband and then engage with the blitz brig.
This saw 3 of the predators destroyed and the survivor withdraw.




Marines start consolidating around the two T&H objectives I'm after.
Even my gunzmob started pushing up on them!


My mech warband previously broken by the tonne of ordinance dropped on its head actually rallied in the end phase...

Final turn began.

Marines lacked the mobility now to threaten many objectives in my half, but were denying me everything in theirs.







I doubled my supastompa mob round to sit between the two T&H objectives, then, during the rest of the turn, engaged the marines nearby calling on Big Berthas supporting fire.

Thankfully i was able to break/wipe them out and close out the turn for a 2-0 win (BTS and T&H).

A good fun game against a new opponent. Chatted with JW after and offered some hints on how to get some more benefit from some aspects of his army, particular the termies/thawks.

Looking forward to clashing swords again JW!