Captn Dees is back to share game 5 from his GT winning performance at the Feast of Blades 40K Open! As always, check out the Tactics Corner for more great bat reps, articles and reviews!
Game 5- Crusade, Hammer and Anvil
On to game 5, now my 3rd game on table 1 with the other last undefeated player Ed and his host of Daemon Flying Monstrous Creatures!
Great Unclean One, Psy Lvl 2, Greater Reward, Exalted Reward
Fateweaver
10 Plaguebearers
10 Plaguebearers
10 Plaguebearers
10 Plaguebearers
Daemon Prince, Nurgle, Wings, Armor, Lvl 3, 2x Greater Rewards
Daemon Prince, Nurgle, Wings, Armor, Lvl 3, 2x Greater Rewards
Daemon Prince (CSM), Wings, Armor, Lvl 3, Black Mace
10 Cultists
Another amazing looking army and easy to see why it has gone 4-0 to get to game 5. He’s got a better paint score but I’ve got more victory points than him so this game can make or break best overall as well as best general!
Now by this point I’ve gotten a bit lazy on the picture taking. Or I could try t play it off like I was completely focused on the game, which is pretty true now that I think about it. Either way that’s the only picture you get once again, so sadly you have to imagine how it looked. Worse off much of this game is a blur to me.
One of the hardest parts of playing Daemons is it is basically near impossible for the opposing player to really understand what the hell is flying around out there. Daemon players have to have a complete accounting system each game to keep track of all the spell and gifts each guy has. A lot of time they make mistakes and forget things, so how is an opponent supposed to keep track? In the end you just hope everything is legit and go for it, and in this game it was fine. Yet that makes it hard to play against and even harder to recall exactly what happened in the game! I don’t blame the players for this, but GW really slowed down the game with this dex.
Still let me try to give a bit of an account of how this game went because it was probably the most fascinating game I played.
First he ended up getting to chose to go first or second so he GAVE me first turn. That always throws me for a loop. I put my scouts and Thunderfires on one objective in fortified ruins and lined the bikes on my line. He then sets up the GUO in front of his 3 DPs with Fateweaver behind them all sitting in the ruins. Of course it is night fighting so everybody is going to be basically getting a 2+ save. The PBs will deepstrike and the cultists will walk on the board.
But it is too tempting to not hope the orbital bombardment can get lucky and one shot one of the DP (or all of them)! So I prescience and scoot the bikes up with scout and turn 1 to the 17.5″ mark or so and drop the OB. It scatters a lot so I reroll. This time it still scatters but clips the GUO and one DP. To the surprise of nobody he makes both 2+ saves. Rats!
My flamer squad and one other Grav squad I knew would be out of range, so rather than get to close to the FMCs I trubo boost them up the right side to head down toward his deployment.
I drop the rest of my Gravs and MM into the far left DP and actually manage two wounds. So not a great start but I figure every wound will help in this game.
Now the problem on his turn his he starts going off with his FMC. I think almost everyone had endurance, I don’t think there was any Iron Arm but there were two or 3 psychic shrieks which is really bad for my army! The Guo comes forward and two DPs fly toward my main brick of bikes. I make a few good saves from shooting but I pull off handfuls of bikes to Psychic shriek netting him first blood. Fatey and his other DP go over to my two bike squads and do a few wounds.
My turn 2 and I get one Storm Talon on the board. I drop him by the two advanced DPs and figure I’ll just pour everything into the wounded guy and try to kill one off. Sadly he makes every save and every grounding test (did uses Fatey’s dice at least). The squad that had turbo boosted scoots further to his deployment and takes some shots that do nothing.
His turn 2 and I think he gets two PB squad in now. One squad scatters poorly and I get to put way in my back corner so it is pretty much out of the game. The other lands right next to my scouts and Thunderfire.
I think one his two DPs dance around my bikes killing even more, and he endurances one of his wounds back (and would later gain the other back as well). I think fatey decided to vector and start advancing to my ‘home base’ and the other DP killed even more bikes.
At this point I’m not feeling very strong on the game. I’ve probably lost 1/3-1/2 my army and everything is feeling a little ineffective. After a moment of ‘well fuck’ I decide to just go with it and have fun and try to laugh at the shape my army is in and just have fun. It took a lot to pull myself out but I wanted the game to be fun.
So I get my last Storm Talon turn 3 and figure I’ll put both on Fatey but he makes all his saves and grounding. I decided to start racing what bikes I had left around his guo and over to his DP on my right flank. The thunderfires obliterated the PBs near to them so that is my first real damage of the game.
His turn 3 and I think two critical things happened: he forgot endurance on fatey and the grimoire failed on him. Fatey flies over to the scouts and he fries 4 of them and one leaps off a ruin but live and runs a bit off. One PB comes down in the general area. His DPs kill more bikes as the GUO lumbers around. The cultist walk on in one corner and
there is an objective closest to them but also my last remnants of bikes
are not far away either. I think at this point I have three depleted
troop squads left and a good part of the command squad.
My turn 4 and I figure now is the only time I’m ever going to get a shot at Fateweaver. It means putting one of my StormTalons in hover mode to get all the shots, but the gambit pays off and I kill him just barely netting me warlord. I will not receive a goose egg for this battle!
The Thunderfires again elminate the PB squad which is nice for me. My bikes shoot (and I think assault) his cultists to eliminate one more scoring unit and fall back a bit to the objective.
His turn 4 and his last PB squad lands by my Thunderfires but this time they are in my fortified ruins, doh!
Now Ed I think has to make his biggest decision of the game. Clearly my StormTalons and Thunderfires are the biggest threat to his PBs. If he gets rid of them he has basically secured that objective. The risk here is that if he spends a turn way down on my deployment zone he will not be zooming them back to where my bikes are hanging out to be effective until turn 6. The GUO has advanced a bit to far to go back toward one objective.
So he decides to leave one DP who is closest to the bikes to try to deal with them and sends two back toward my fliers, which he is able to put down pretty easily. Fatey vector strikes one Thunderfire Techmarine dead and shoots my last scout to squash that last scoring element in my deployment. So all I really have left is one Thunderfire by an objective with the PB about 6″ away. His Dp on the far edge kills one last bike squad, leaving me two scoring units left. One is a grav bike and Attack bike, the other is just one biker! I sitll have most of my command squad with all 3 Hqs however.
So my turn 5 and I’ve got some choices to make now. I think about sending my command squad down turbo boosting toward his PBs but they would likely be intercepted by DPs long before they made it to shooting range let alone charge range. So I decide to have my libby join up with the solo bike and ring my command squad the best I can around them. I’m hoping I can ground the DP and the Command squad can just assault, but failing that I want to leave my bike with ANYBODY to help him survive. I turbo boost my other unit toward the objective behind the GUO and just make range there. My thunderfire scatters a bit but does eliminate 3-4 of the closest PBs to the objective.
His turn 5 and his PBs move just enough to make it to the objective. Fatey kills the techmarine that was contesting. The Guo and 2 other DPs start moving back to his deployement.
His last DP manages to charge the libby and kill him in combat, then scrub biker fails his LD and flees off the board! Curses! Had he lived I could have hit and run off to… well I’m not sure what exactly… but curses all the same!
So as the game sits I still have one objective, linebreaker and warlord. He’s got one objective, linebreaker, and first blood.
He rolls and the game ends in a draw! To me this is a massive victory from the jaws of defeat.
Now Ed has been a great sport the whole time, and he had won his last game because of a very similar ‘needs to end on 5’ roll. So he wisely says ‘hey I would have rather have won last game and drawn this game than lost last game and won round 5.’ Which of course is totally true for an event like this where W/L/D is important because of how many points we score. A Draw is still 12 points to a Victory 18, while a loss is 6. So points wise he netted 30 points those two games as opposed to 24 for a win and loss.
With battle points we both end up 16-16, so my ‘lead’ over Ed for overall remains the same going into round 6 with both of us still technically undefeated.
Now I’ve thought about this game a lot since then trying to figure out what I could have done better. The fact that he kept all his creatures flying was a real problem, so I can’t counter that! If there were two things I might have tried differently it is the following:
1) Be more cautious turn 1. I could have easily scouted backward on my turn and just burned turn 1. Then I would guess he would fly forward with the 4 FMCs and I would hope to get the Storm Talons in and down one or two to pound them. Of course if he rolled just as well that would not have worked. Also it would have pinned me back more and he could have just deep striked all his PBs back on rear objectives. So by moving forward I did put preasure on him… but I’m not sure that was the right move.
2) I should have just put all my HQs with the solo troop and not counted on downing the prince. That would have made that unit infinitely more survivable. Had I downed the prince I could have charged witht the command squad I suppose. With a little luck he wouldn’t kill them all, or I could challenge with the apothecary maybe, and keep him stuck in combat for the win.
But hey it is game 5 and you don’t always make the best calls. Either way had the game gone on it was going to be a loss for me. As it was we both continued on undefeated, which means we both moved on to play a round 6 against a player with one loss.
Ed would go on to play my previous opponent Ken, and I remained on table 1 to face a really neat Imperial Fist/Blood Angel army!
Marines vs marines FTW!
Game 4- Emperor’s Will, Vanguard Strike
Game 4- Emperor’s Will, Vanguard Strike