Yes! Playing this year's tournament on home turf, the full pick of armies to hand, the terrible splendour of my icy bog terrain to bewilder and upset my opponents with whilst their puny southern constitutions struggled with the pure scandinavian cold. How could I possibly lose?
Spoiler: I found a way.
My army selection, an Imperial Soup made of Stormtrooper Scions and Inquisitors, is listed elsewhere. I'm sure it could have been bulkier and tougher, but I wanted the double detachment for the extra command points. That Tempestor Prime could recycle and steal as well, so I could be hurling grenades and shouting Vengeance for Cadia all game long!
In general, the plan was to keep the big unit back along with the Tauroxes, then deep strike the smaller infantry units in to pick off isolated units or grab objectives. The Inquisitors could fly about in the Valkyrie and try and hack up commanders or beat up fire support as needed.
Would that I had written this plan down somewhere and attempted to stick to it. In practice, it all went a bit south...
Vs Tyranids
First up, I'd nobly allowed General Bubonicus, this year's GuestBooter, first pick of the home armies. Wisely, he took the Tyranids, and that seemed to be about half the battle.
Hive Fleet Kraken really moves like the clappers. I'd deployed mostly down one side, leaving a lone inquisitor and his warband to hold the other side. The Tyranids had enough to swamp both sides comfortably. Turn one saw the left flank immediately struggle with a first turn charge by Genestealers and the Tyrant, who flapped down from on high to assault the Gatling Taurox, shrugging off the enormous weight of firepower I could hurl out with the Defensive Gunners strategem.
After that, I never really recovered. My first turn shooting was a massive whiff, merely scraping the Tyrant a bit more and merely taking down a pitiful handful of Genestealers. Bubonicus was on fire with his dodge saves, and really I had nowhere to run. The Tyrant ate the Valkyrie, the Inquisitors fought themselves to a stand-still, knee-deep in 'Stealers, and I got tabled straight off the corners of my own deployment zone by the end of the fourth turn.
The best moment was the help I got from my daughter, who was watching one of the last rounds. Attempting to wipe out the Tyranid Warriors with short range plasma fire, I declared overcharge and offered her the four dice. She got four ones, so looks like she's inherited my dice genes.
The speed and fury of the Tyranids was pretty impressive. I'll bear them in mind next time I'm collecting an army.
Vs Nurgle Daemons
From this, I went straight up against General Kas's Plaguebearer swarm. I've faced them before, or a similar list at least, but that was as the much shootier T'au. Could my white van man pack take down a Great Unclean One?
The battlefield here featured the big frozen castle. I got first turn and slapped my general along with the big scions unit down in the middle, holding an objective and relying on the speedbump of the big walls to give me a couple of turns to thin the daemon hoard out. At the same time, I sent the melta squad after the Daemon Prince, holding back with tanks and Valkyrie to start bleeding the Great Unclean One.
Alas, this latter blob was deploying from the warp, and popped in a turn later to try and charge the gatling Taurox. Vengeance for Cadia! I yelled, along with Defensive Gunners! And despite being better against infantry, the little van who could picked five wounds off the big-bellied baddie. Who then failed his charge, so that was nice.
Alas, at the same time my defensive position in the centre got overwhelmed. I'd underestimated the speed of the boosted Plaguebearers, and they rerolled their charge into my men. Who held, but barely. The Valkyrie was being eyed up by the Daemon Prince, who was at least already hurt from the melta squad, and I started thinking about rapid reployment.
The battle in the middle obviously went in favour of the tough daemons, but it left them rather alone. I'd scuttled off to the corners of the field with what I had left, and spent the rest of the game firing when I could see the yellows of their eyes.
The Daemon Prince got sniped by more Defensive Vengeance for Cadia fun, and the Great Unclean One got so beaten up in close combat by a cooperative charge from all my psykers that it got stressed, rolled Perils of the Warp when it tried to regenerate, and exploded, killing two of my chaps in the process! But this left me with precious little against a huge and virtually impregnable Daemon unit bunkered down in the middle, whilst also being behind on Victory Points. We called it after turn 5 - daylight was short, and I was very unlikely to table my way to a win at this stage.
Vs Death Guard
Amidst the twists and turns of the ruined streets table, I faced the Death Guard with the Deadlock mission. This was going to be a bugger - from turn three onwards, all strategem costs would double, and my shooting was pretty reliant on these for max effectiveness. At least General Leofa would have the same problem.
Luck kicked me in the nuts early, handing Leofa a big score of fairly easy VPs in turn one, including a massive 4 VPs for seizing an empty objective with his deep striking general. At least this left him isolated and alone on one flank, where he proved too slow to do much else. At the same time, I could only score from stuff already underneath huge, bubonic piles of zombie infantry.
Elsewhere, I castled the big squad into the centre via the Valkyrie, picked off a Plague Marine squad with Inquisitors and plasma fire and then got into scrappy firefights with the Nurgle light vehicles.
True to their nature, the Death Guard were relentless and slow. By the end of turn three, we were already over time. Both our armies were fairly scuffed, although neither had taken anything that could be called a lethal blow, but we were playing 14 VPs to my 3, after all my objectives had been either out of reach or swarmed by Pox Walkers. Outside chance? I might have tabled them, I still had the big gun squad, the Valkyrie and both Inquisitors. But I'd lost the Tempestor to sniper drool from some hideous pus cannon and my Tauroxes had been eaten by the Blighthauler, so killing everything would have been a miracle.
Once again, I declared. I'd have liked to fight this one out, it would have been interesting, but there simply wasn't time if I wanted to get my last battle in. Picking off the rest of that disgustingly resilient army would have been an impressive feat! And as ever, Leofa's cautious care had put him in a strong position with good battlefield control that had put him so far ahead on VPs.
Vs Thousand Sons
Now, here was the cliffhanger. I knew I was going to come last by this point, nobody else had been able to match my flawless record of loss.
So the last match, as far as we reckoned it at that time, was going to decide who would win the tourney. Because if Stylus's Tzeentchians beat me, he'd have the points and victories for overall triumph. If I beat him, the Tyranids would take it, and seeing as I was secretly rooting for them all along, I quite wanted to see that happen.
So this was to be my last stand, my last hope for glory, my last best hope.
Tune in to see how it went!
No comments:
Post a Comment