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If you have been reading other Ard Boyz posts on this blog, you may already know that I played at Dragon's Keep in Provo, Utah for the first Ard Boyz tournament.
This is my first attempt at a battle report and hopefully it can give some insight on multiple things including list building, tactics and whatnot. Obviously any mistakes I make are made on purpose to prove some point because I'm the perfect tactician ;).
For those who don't know the first mission in there Ard Boyz here's the run down:
It's a generic 12" setup on the long table edges. There are 5 objectives, one is placed in the center and two are placed by the players in their own deployment zone and cannot be within 6" of the table edge or 12" of another objective. To get the full points for a Massacre you need to control more objectives than your opponent and also have more Kill Points. The first round is night fight and the game lasts 6 turns.
My opponent was Thomas, you can see him on the left and he brought his Voodoo doctor Bill who you can see on the right.
Here's the list he ran:
3x Land Raider w/ extra armor and HK missile
1x Land Raider Redeemer with multimelta
2x 6 man assault termi squads with TH / SS
1x 5 man assault termi squad with TH / SS
2x 10 marines with melta and multimelta in a rhino with an HK missile
1x 8 marines with nothing special
Chaplain with terminator armor and some random stuff I can't remember
Here's the List I ran:
CCS with 3 meltas and an Astropath in a chimera with a hull HF
2x Veteran squads with 3 meltas in a Chimera with hull HF and dozer blade
2x IST squads with 2 meltas
Hellhound with hull Multimelta and dozer blade
2x squads of 3x Vendettas
2x squads of 2x Leman Russes with hull HF
1x squad of 2x Leman Russes with hull Lascannon
Thomas won the roll and decided to go first.
Here is a picture of Thomas' deployment:
On the far right is the LR Redeemer which contained the 5 man termi squad and the Chaplain. The next LR to the left contained one of the 6 man terminator squads and the one on the far left had the remaining terminator squad. The rhino in the center had the basic 8 man marine squad and the land raider and remaining rhino both had the remaining tactical squads in them.
You can see the objectives outlined in Red and his troops are outlined in blue for reference.
So having seen his deployment my plan was to deploy on the left side to quickly disable the far left land raider and force the far right land raiders to come at me. My plan was to use the battlecannons on my 6 leman russes to quickly kill the rhinos and troops inside of them and cripple his ability to capture objectives.
Here you can see my deployment:
The person in red on the left is me posing with my Vendetta Wall. On the picture you can see both my vendetta squads preparing to scout move.
There is a squad of Leman Russes off picture on the left hugging the edge of the terrain with a Vet chimera hiding behind them. The hope was that he would come be tempted to come at my LRs and I could sacrifice the squad of vets to strand that termi squad with chaplain across the board. If he chose to ignore them and rush for my objectives (which i placed 12" from each other int he center of my deployment), I could drive the Leman Russes forward and blow away troops.
The LR squad with the lascannons was placed on the far right side of the picture and the other LR squad can be seen near the center. The remaining vet squad and ccs were waiting behind the building to jump out when needed. The hellhound is near them ready to rush forward and start causing havoc. I was willing to sacrifice both vet squads to cripple the LR because I was confident my 6 battlecannons could deal with a few rhinos and marines.
This picture better shows my deployment, the Vendetta squad scouted forward exactly 12" from the Land Raider to drop the IST in one of them on the Lander Raider and block movement on his next turn. The other Vendetta squad just repositioned slightly to be as far as possible to the left.
Here is the damage done during Thomas' first turn. He drove the LRR on the far right directly forward and his shots bounced off my LR squad. He opted to only drive his rhinos slightly forward and pop off some HK shots. The other 3 LR decided to just stand there and take shots at me. He rolled high enough for all of his squads to see me through the night fight. He then proceeded to wreck all 3 of my Vendettas who scouted forward. My fancy photoshop work should help show where things moved and what died.
I expected my opponent to drive quickly at me so the termies could get out and devour my army, so this lack of movement was pretty surprising. I moved the Hellhound forward and gave it cover from the right side of the field using the downed Vendetta. The Chimera ran behind the building as to not be brought down. The IST's from the wrecked Vendetta moved back towards the building and closer to the objective. My Vendettas moved forward slightly so I could actually get a shot off through the night fight. I managed to totally fail all might night fight rolls and did nothing with shooting.
His LRR decided to move only 6" and take shots from the MM and the AC at my Leman Russes. The two center LR only moved forward 6" and took shots with their LC at my Land Raiders (taking out one battlecannon and my remaining Vendetta Squad, destroying two lascannons from 1.
My Vendettas moved up slightly to give my Leman Russes on the left room to move into a position where I could target the Rhino hiding in the building on the objective. They failed to do anything.
The CCS moved up behind the trees to punch a hole in any Land Raiders that decided to move forward if he ever planned to. It popped smoke. The Vendettas shot at the leftmost Land Raider managing to destroy the right lascannon. Both the center squad of russes and the right squad shot at the rhino that rushed up the center. I managed to stun it. The rightmost Vet squad moved a bit to the left to get in better position to hit whichever LR zoomed forward, it also popped smoke.
The Hellhound got in half range of the LR its pointing at and missed.
Sorry about the horrible blur on this picture. He moved his Redeemer forward 12" this turn but for some reason that eludes me, he didn't charge me with the termis inside of it (maybe he took the advice of "don't get out of your transport" to heart). It fired and did nothing with the multimelta.
The other two LR both moved 6" and turned toward my Vendettas in an attempt to take them down. The rhino which I stunned had extra armor and quickly moved back out of danger. The Land Raider proceeded to destroy 1 more Vendettas.
The pictures are somewhat overlapping because I forgot to take one.
On my turn I moved the Hellhound over to the other LR because I wanted to make sure and have a 12" move to be hit on 6's. Everything else stood still. I shot the hellhound and immobilized the LR. My LR on the right moved forward to block the LRR and to get a side shot on the retreating rhino. I managed to destroy its weapon ,whoopee. The Vendetta lascannons once again bounced off of the Land Raider.
My vets on the right decided to get the fuck out of there since everything I have is failing to actually do damage and the survival of my troops is looking bleak. The other Vet squad rushes forward next to the CCS.
The LRR decided to go through terrain and ignore my Russes. The other Land Raider moved forward 6" and took a las shot at my Russ squad doing nothing. The leftmost LR fired at my Vendettas and managed to take another one down. The middle LR did shot one shot at the Vendetta and one at the Hellhound, it failed to do anything.
In this picture you can see my LR moving another 6" forward to get close to the opponents objective and to take more shots at that seemingly invulnerable rhino.
Lots of Action in this picture. I moved my hellhound 12" again waiting for him to finally get out of that LR and charge. I fired at the LR and shook it. The CCS moved to point blank range of the LR and unloaded its cargo who then used Bring it Down to fire 3 meltas at the Land Raider, I once again failed to do anything, stunned, shaken, shaken, grats me.
The left Vet squad moved forward to hopefully jump the LR holding troops and the other Vet squad moved back to safety. The Russes in the center moved forward to shoot the rhino... again. I shot both Leman Russ squads and by some miracle I managed to immobilize it again finally getting me my first kill of the game, the troops pile out. Once again the Russes on my left side failed to do anything to that rhino hiding in the building and my Vendetta bounced off the Land Raider in the center again.
Turn 5
On his turn, Thomas finally unloaded his termis in the immobilized LR and charged my Hellhound, managing to shake it. The troops who got blown out their rhino moved and then ran onto the objective. The troop containing LR moved forward onto the objective. The LRR moved off the hill and shot at my Chimera, doing nothing. The LR that I failed to melta to death unleashed its termis who promptly destroyed my CCS and the Chimera and consolidated into the trees.
The IST squad you see moving on the bottom left got out last turn but I don't want to go back and photo-shop it in.
In this action packed picture, you can see my scramble to minimizing the losses. The Vendetta on the Left moves 12" to get in range of contesting an objective. The IST's both run closer to the objectives. The Vet squad near the center unloads and moves towards the objective while their Chimera valiantly forms its portion of the wall keeping his crap away from my objectives.
The Russes split up to form a barrier just small enough so the LR can't fit and the termis would have to go through terrain to get to me. The Vet squad on the table edge moves their chimera back to the semi-safe objective. The Leman Russes on the Right move up 6" and shoot down 7 of the 8 Marines remaining in the trees on the objective. The hellhound moves 18" right behind the LR in preparation to contest objectives on the last turn.
The Russ Squad on the Left fires into the rhino behind the building and manages to stun, immobilize, destroy its weapon and something else denoted by the 4th counter, ya... it's still alive. Here's a pic of its invincible glory:
So here comes the last turn, our last efforts to grab objectives and get as many Battle Points as possible:
His troops back in the building get out and destroy my Hellhound and the immobile LR takes out my last Vendetta. His two middle LR decided to try and take out my Russes. Inexplicably, the troop one moved off the objective so he no longer contested it. The LRR moves up 1" away from both my Russes (the dice denote the Russe's position) and close enough to contest the objective. The las LR take down one more of my Russes and shake the other one. The Termis in the trees charged the Chimera and took it out. Random H.bolter fire hit my IST's and i went to ground.
Heres my last turn and attempt to grab less of a loss. The LR moves out of the way (note its out of coherency with my other one which is totally cheating and I didn't notice until looking through these pics later) to give room for the Vets and stuff. Had I not been cheating they would have moved along the blue line.
The remaining mounted vets moved up 12" and unloaded in hopes I might take out the Raider and later hurt the guys inside (fat chance). The other Vets also moved forward 6" to get their meltaguns in range. A searing volley of 5 short range meltas go out to the Raider, 4 hit, 3 pen, it's still alive. The Russ on the far right side zooms forward 6+d6" and I manage to roll a 6 and get in range to contest that objective.
The far left Russes take shots at the now-unloaded marine squad and down all but 4 and they don't run away :(.
In the end, we each had 1 objective, the other 2 were contested and the middle one had no troops on it. It ended up in a minor victory (13) points for Thomas and a minor loss (7 pts) for me because we had equal objectives but he had more KP
POST GAME ANALYSIS:
Thomas is primarily a fantasy player and quickly admits that 40k is just not his game. This happens to be his first ever 40k win, I'm honored. That can be seen by some of his tactics. Had he ran forward from the start with all of his termis, he would have quickly torn through my army and gotten a massacre.
My inability to roll well at times was certainly proven in this game where the only vehicle destroyed was because I immobilized an already immobilized and weaponless RHINO. I had plenty of penetrating results but never managed to actually destroy any of the vehicles, it was rather irritating. I have to say im proud of myself for not freaking the fuck out when my luck is so horrible like I might otherwise.
At first I thought the scout Vendetta move may have been a mistake but it was only a mistake because Thomas opted to shoot me rather than move forward and crush me horirbly. I stand by the idea that the scout move is worthwhile if he had played his army more effectively. In the end a lot of events on both sides would have shifted the game around (me moving 12" with the Russ, him managing to kill 2 of my contesting vehicles, him moving off the center objective, different things not running away, etc.) which just goes to show how big a difference some things can make when it comes to a tournament. In fact, on his next game, Thomas went from a win to a loss on the last turn because two of his terminator squads ran off the table.
Overall I think my initial tactic was rather sound but not being able to roll statistically against his Land Raiders is what really destroyed my ability to pull out a massacre. Thomas was fun to play against and the one rules debate we had was resolved fairly quickly (can't go back and re-move stuff after you have moved on to other units), if you haven't figured it out by now, his brother Bill is a Voodoo Doctor because he "blessed" Thomas' dice at the beginning of the game and I'm sure he had some hand in my inability to kill vehicles.
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