This Time I Earned It

Farmpunk and I went down to the South Store last Sunday. The turnout was good enough that we both had to wait for tables to clear before we could play. That store does get crowded.

I had been hoping to play Red Eye's Eldar, as I felt like I hadn't gotten to play him at his best during 'Ard Boyz. Farmpunk and others have told me that he's usually a very hard player to beat, yet I'd massacred him somewhat easily. Perhapes, I thought, my first turn of shooting had frazzled him. I'd managed to take out two-thirds of his AT threats before his Wave Serpents and Fire Prisms had even gotten to move. So, I thought, things might have been different if he had gone first instead of me.

Unfortunately, Redeye was too busy square-basing with his Dwarves to come play 40K. But BlueMoon, the 'Ard Boyz #2 was eager for a match with me. He'd come in 2nd place using his Plague Marines list, but tonight he wanted to try me with his Eldar in preparation for the semi-finals. So we decided on 1850 points with a D3 to determine the mission based on the 3 'Ard Boyz scenarios we played during the tourney. As luck would have it, we rolled up the third mission with BlueMoon going first. Heh, it seemed I would get the "what if" test vs. Eldar that I wanted after all.

My army was pretty similar to my 'Ard Boyz list. This time, I decided to see how a 10-strong unit of Stormies would do, since Marrius was talking it up recently.

HQ
215 Company Command Squad w/3 x Plasma, GLauncher, Astro, Fleet, Chimera

Elites
65 Sly Marbo
165 10 Stormtroopers

Troops
155 Veteran Squad w/3 x Melta, Chimera
155 Veteran Squad w/3 x Melta, Chimera
155 Veteran Squad w/3 x Melta, Chimera
155 Veteran Squad w/3 x Melta, Chimera

Fast Attack
150 3 Sentinels w/Lascannons
145 Hellhound w/Hull Multi-Melta
145 Hellhound w/Hull Multi-Melta

Heavy Support
180 Leman Russ Demolisher w/Hull Lascannon
165 Leman Russ Battle Tank w/Hull Lascannon

I believe BlueMoon was running something like the following:

4 Wave Serpents
1 x Seer Council
1 x Fire Dragons
2 x Aspect Warriors
Jet Bike Squad

He didn't have any bright lances, but he had plenty of S6 weapons that could pop my armor from behind.

Turn one, he moves all his Wave Serpents flat out and into my lines. During my shooting I manage to knock out the Wave Serpent containing his Seer Council, who promptly charge my tanks in turn 2. I made a mistake here by not spreading my tanks out before he charged them. He was therefore able to get multi-charges on me and pop both my command Chimera and a troop Chimera with the Seer Council. The Fire Dragons charged my Russ and killed it, while one of his Wave Serpents shot up my command squad and ran it off the board.

Fortunately for me, all of my reserves came on during turn 2. Not Marbo though, as I had forgotten to even get him out of the miniatures case. It wasn't until later when we were adding up kill points that I realized I'd never deployed him. :(

The battle got really bloody at this point. I shot up Eldrad and the Seer Council with a Hellhound and the Demolisher, killing all but one non-Eldrad model and running *him* off the board. The other Hellhound plus the Stormies killed off the Fire Dragons, but not before they killed the Demolisher too. My remaining Chimelta Vets then started slugging it out point blank with his transports.

In the end, I won a very bloody Major Victory with the near objective claimed by 2 Chimeras and the other contested with both a headless Hellhound and the Sentinel Squadron. BlueMoon edged me out on Kill Points, but that would only have mattered if he had pulled a draw. If we had been playing for the top spot in 'Ard Boyz, I'd still have come out in first place, though I would have been only a battle point or two in the lead instead of 5-6. :)

Random Musings:

1) Stormies are better in 5-man squads with meltas.

I won't deny that a 10-man Stormtrooper squad is a very survivable objective-contester. But that's all they're really good at. Mine couldn't manage to knock out a Wave Serpent with Krak Grenades. And when I played Marrius tonight, his stormies likewise couldn't manage to knock out a Hellhound.

So, I'm going to stick with the 5-man AT teams. That way I'm not left standing in the middle of the field going "Um, now what?" like I was against Blackshirt.

2) Sentinels still rock.

In the game I played with Marrius tonight, I was wishing I'd had them. We were playing Capture and Control with a standard deployment. The extra Chimelta I took instead of the Sentinels wasn't nearly as useful as an outflanking unit would have been in either pulling him off his objective or threatening his Lascannon/Missile Launcher Squads. As it was, we pulled a draw since I couldn't shift him off his objective and he couldn't get his infantry anywhere near mine.

3) My CCS needs meltas more than plasmas in small games.

I usually take plasma guns in my CCS to help protect my backfield from deep strikers and to pummel Termies or MCs. But when playing Marrius and his shooty infantry guard, I really needed another AT unit instead. The CCS should have been rushing across the field to help kill tanks and/or flame the platoon he had on his objective. But instead I had them sitting in mid-field cover for most of the game because they couldn't hurt his Russes. So in small games, I'm going to have to go with the meltas.