Friday 27 June 2014

Blog Wars 7 1850pt battle report - nids vs Grey Knights/Inquisition

James Lamb was my last opponent who admitted from the very beginning he was going to lose this battle. His Grey Knight/Inquisition relied heavily on Jokaero for his troops, or something weird. Essentially he didn't have anything to hold an objective without them being mulched immediately after. I'm pretty sure you can go about this mission forcing 'contestion'  and with Chimera's Land Raiders and Dreadnoughts in his force that could have been an option

Psychic Powers
Winged Tyrant HQTervigon CC HQTervigon Plain TrZoanthope
Warp BlastDominionCatalystDominion
Onslaught

Warp Blast

The low down:
  • Three objectives, evenly spaced 1VP per objective controlled per player turn
  • Dawn of War
  • I lost deployment.
  • Warlord Trait - Mindeater - Deathleaper
  • Night fighting turn one
Having done well against PeteB in this mission I knew the first thing to do was get as close to those objectives as possible, one advantage to Tervigon's spawning is you get that potential 18" range to secure them.

With Deathleaper also scoring this game I positioned him between the two objectives [left and centre] so I could cover either option depending on which units got good run moves.


While the Nephropid and Termagants aimed for the right and centre objectives.


Despite the cover saves the Nephropid took 5 wounds from all of the Grey Knights.


And then the last wound popped off it, thankfully not too many died in the backlash, about 5 but it was still First Blood lost although no other VPs were scored..


I managed to secure two of the objectives, thanks to the Great Maw spawning out on top of one. I think the Flyrant wrecked the Chimera on the left.


The remaining gaunt blob headed for the third objective but their run move fell short leaving me with 2 VPs that turn.


Biovores missed the Vindicaire Assassin hiding in the trees but had spore mines to assault him in future turns,


This must be a couple of turns on because I think that's Coteaz [the strange monkey on the left] and pretty much all his retinue is not there. I think they'd suffered a whole lot from the Flyrant and Carnifex. I had hoped the Mawloc would have turned up to capitalise on their placement but no joy.


The Flyrantswooped off to the left but I also managed to pop his second Chimera, possibly with the Quad Gun.


His Land Raider turned it's attention to the Flyrant.


And it must have suffered a fiery end.


My Mawloc arrived but I deep struck him underneath his monkey units - [Dreadnoughts]. I killed one and had room to deploy.


Coteaz was kille dby some shooting for Slay the Warlord. All the while I'm racking up VPs as I now have all the objectives, I missed out on 3 in the first turn, 1 in my first turn and another 1 in James's second turn but since then it's 3 per turn.


While my Tervigon assaults the remaining Dreadnought the Carnifex gets to grips with the Land Raider and it's Hammer of Wrath penetrates


And blows it up.


The Vindicaire Assassin has joined the fight with the Tervigon and my gaunts protect the objective.


The Mawloc finishes off the remaining Dreadnought and any other monkeys hiding while the gaunts conga line to Line Breaker, just in case the Mawloc failed to dispatch it's targets.


So all that's left is the Great Maw facing the Vindicaire Assassin. We're at turn 4 or top of turn 3 at this stage. If James is tabled the game ends, no more VPs, if it carries on then I get more points. The Vindicaire has a 4+ save and can't seem to damage the Tervigon. I start to Smash the Assassin to reduce my attacks, one hits.


and this is my Wound roll, we continue for another round of combat and I get another 3VPs


I Smash again, but this is my 'to hit' roll, another 3VPs


When I do manage to wound the Assassin passes his Invulnerable save and eventually we reach the end of turn 5 and the Assassin remains alive.


It was a pretty one sided game, score wise. I ended up with 25VPs, plus Slay the Warlord and Line Breaker. James got First Blood and Slay the Warlord - Deathleaper meeting some ignominious end I can't even remember so 27-2. Alex, the Blog Wars event organiser had talked about the potential for games to be drawn out and where possible if you're going to table someone not to delay the inevitable to get the VPs. I suppose you could say switching to Smash attacks was doing that, but the options  were:
  • 3 Attacks, hitting on 5, wounding on 3 with a 4+ save on 2 wounds
  • 2 Attacks, hitting on 5, wounding on 2 with a 4+ save, insta-kill with 1 wound
Now I'm not going to work out the maths but I actually think I may have a better chance of killing him with Smash than without. I've one less chance to hit but greater chance to kill, outright too. In the end the Assassin deserved to survive, he was awesome. The result pushed me to 12th out of 38, not bad really although I did come 4th in November, wow, I forgot how close I came. Still maybe I can pick it up again later in the yearr.

6 comments:

  1. Honestly, I found myself skipping over this post when I saw it was still a 6th edition batrep. How long until I get to see how you're fairing in the new edition?

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    1. I managed three 7th Edition games leading up to the tournament. They weren't true reports though and certain aspects were less relevant in my mind - scoring units, because 2 of the games were kill points but they may fill in you in on how I faired/feel about 7th:
      http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/tuesday-nights-alright-for-fighting-7th.html
      http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/yet-moar-tuesday-nights-all-right-for.html

      Sadly, the tournament was fixed at 6th, not sure when my next game is going to be but I'll try and make sure it's a proper report, instead you get 2nd Edition Blood Bowl this very day! Now that is treat...

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    2. Yeah, I read those two earlier (just didn't think to comment). MOAR MOAR MOAR!

      Your experiences (at least those thus far documented) seem relatively similar to mine. I'm two games in and undefeated, but that's such a small pool, and things just fell my way for a number of reasons that had nothing to do with my army/lists.

      I still feel the codex is weak, but I'm coming around on dakka-based flyrants.

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    3. Flyrants are considerably more durabl, we lose their versatility when swapping flight modes to assault but I think I can live with that if he lives longer. Many times I decided to assault with it it ended badly so this may well discourage me from making that mistake. The great thing I read the other day is that the gorunding test only happens at the end of the shooting phase so that's even less chance of it being hit on snap fire, no fall down and then everyone shoots him up on the ground.

      I'm hoping to try a couple of Dakkafex to see how they perform but it's amazing how few troops I end up with in a 1500pt army. Sure, everything is scoring now, so it's less of an issue but it's quite a difference to how I used to have my lists. I'm not even contemplating Crones and Harpies as they're too expensive in real money terms, I'd like one but not high on my want list.

      There's so much I want to try to see how it does but invariably I look at their points coast and just decide on something tried, tested and trusted and then usually end up with 20pts left over and the only thing I can think of for that is a Spore Mine Cluster!

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  2. Hmm, seems like they need to figure some way to score a tabling better. I would say you should get a max score for a tabling to allow armies like all death company a chance

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    1. Tabling has been a matter of debate regarding Blog Wars. The organiser decided at BW6 to rule that tabling would not guarantee maximum VPs for the sole reason that the tournament is supposed to be fun and bring uber death stars greared at tabling your opponent was not in the spirit of the event.

      I know that may look a bit odd when written down but Alex was of the opinnion there are plenty of events that do have that option and if that's what people want then those were the events they should attend. In this case he was adamant on what it should be. Unfortunately a situation did happen at BW6 where someone disputed this rule, regardless of it being quite clear in the events pack.

      The fallout and the debate that followed prompted Alex to be crystal clear that tabling was not a route to maximum points and the only way to do that was to 'play to the mission', so to speak. He also stated he didn't want people to 'commit suicide' in a no-win situation to deny the winning army the possibility to score points/reposition to capture objectives and equally those who were winning convincingly not to have a long drawn out finish to scrounge those extra VPs.

      My concern was whether I had done that, whether switching to the less chance to hit was in fact prolonging my scoring opportunity. The fact is I had greater chance of ending the game quickly, putting the Vinidcaire out of his misery, with the route I took.

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