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So I'm off for another game shortly and just wanted to get this up before I get too back logged with pictures.... This was a really strange game for me. My opponent was Dark Angels and he's new to the game within the last year and doesn't have everything he'd like to bring to a game yet. I will say as preamble I should confess I helped him with tactics where I thought it was critical, but his list was surprisingly... functional. Perhaps that is the best admech type description I could use. :) Sorry but this is all from memory, which like Cawl's is sometimes swapped out for more useful memories such as.... where did I park my Dunecrawler? His list: - Belial - tons of Termies. Mostly 5 man squads with assault cannons. - 3 full tactical squads, usually with mixed weaponry like Missile launcher + special weapon, all in Rhino's - Librarian w/ Adversion (whatever it's called the ol' DA power that makes you -1 to hit something within 24" of him.) - Captain. - Vindicator - Dread with fist/twin Las. Adeptus Mechanicus of the mighty red sands of Mars: - Brigade: - 2 Tech Dominus, 1 Engineseer - 6 x 5 or 6 Vanguard/Rangers. A few Arquebus' etc. Some Plasma Cavaliers sprinkled in. - 3 Onager Dunecrawlers. 2 with Neutrons, 1 with Icarus. - 2 Kastelan's with shooty fists - 1 Datasmith -5 Sicaran infiltrators - 5 Corpuscarii Electro Jazz Hands! - 2 individual Ironstrider Ballastarii with twin cognis Autocannons - 3 Sydonian Dragoons with cattle prods The Game: Red Rock vs the Black Rock. Sand vs Secrets, etc etc... - Maelstrom: We get the mission where you start with one objective card, and can draw up a card in subsequent turns for as many objective markers as you control. This is always hard for my AdMech, as we prefer controlling... code over inanimate things on the battlefield! - Deployment: - Admech deployment features killy stuff around the aura, with defensive positioning on the outskirts by Vanguard/Rangers to prevent uninvited Terminator party crashers. - Dark Angels put rhino's on flanks, and the meat of his shooting is dead center. The Vindicator, Dread and HQ's advance. I know he wants to get his Termies into my board edge but as the Dark Angel player realizes I've spaced things with no way he can do this... so he reconsiders his options and plops all Termies down to my left flank. - He draws a card he can complete, and he gets First Blood and takes the early lead.... His first turn shooting is obviously plinking away at my Vanguard. It is only Stormbolter fire but it is quite a bit of it! Thankfully Shroupsalm is in effect and although he gets first blood I still have some Skitarii left on the flank. His first blood actually game from downing an Ironstrider. - Admech turn is a card I can't complete. He's already owning the middle of the board and the left flank is in serious danger.I elect to keep the Infiltrators in reserve due to unfavourable positioning in his zone. - I change the protocol on the Kastelans successfully, but the middle is decidedly owned by DA and there are two large imperial cylinders that literally block off all LoS. As a side note the Libby cast Averson on my forward squad of Vanguard making them -1 to hit. - Admech start firing back on Terminators while cautiously advancing, but it is quite bad... very bad. A few scattering of wounds. No points for Mars this turn. - Dark Angels advance and capitalize on Mars' lack of CC units and hunker down in the middle of the city preparing for a close quarter fire fight. - Dark Angels draw up 3 cards and some are quite doable. He gets some very handy objectives near his zone, and most of the objective markers he placed are mid field. This works very much to his advantage has he is drawing the right cards to advance and sit on those objectives. Mars is forced to advance. - The Terminators shoot up a lot of Vanguard, The Dominus orders a retreat, and units 'reverse advance' to create a gap, trying to lure the Terimnators into range of the Kastelans. - Dark Angels cast Aversion on the Kastelans this time... which really hurts... and confuses Mars. How is a robot depreciated in efficiency by the warp magic???? Does not compute...! Anyway, I realize the Dark Angels are trying to pinch me in. I have no answer for the Termies in CC, but he is taking the bait on the running Vanguard.... still he draws good cards on my right side, and starts to advance a Rhino with squad to claim one in his zone getting 3 objective markers, and earning D3 points. He's now got a healthy lead of 1111 to 0. That's binary for... I'm getting my ass kicked! ++ Counter measures are made. The Dominus takes control of the Dragoons and warns the Skitarii of the long term plans. This means direct confrontation with the misguided space men of the wrong rock. ++ - Admech have a decent draw but where I am hoping for 'kill' type objectives instead I get 'grab stuff deep in your opponent's zone' type of cards which Admech LOVE to do. (that's Martian Sarcasm btw). - One objective is up my right flank. Another is to have something in my opponent's zone. The Dominus calculates a plan to kill two birds with one stone... prevent the Rhino squad from taking a 'Defend' point, and score the objective instead, while grabbing a point for being in his zone; the brings out the Infiltrators, as well as moving up the Dragoons, and Vanguard. - On the left flank protocols have set in and the trap is set, terminators are in Kastelan range. I heal up two Onagers, and commit the entire double shooting of the Kastelans, and remaining Vanguard into the Terminators, BUT with Aversion still affecting the Kastelans this is a tough turn for me... the Termies with two wounds are still falling but nearly as fast as I need... - The infiltrators do terrible in shooting. The middle is still a mosh pit I can't seem to crack. The Dunecrawlers have been really mediocre to this point. The Vindicator and Dread are still picking away at my heavies but my ability to repair keeps everything going. I do score a point and I'm on the board. ++ Terminators are drawn in to the killing grounds, but the "Aversion'd" Kastelans have technical issues. And the 'bait' Skitarii aren't too happy about it.++ Mid to Late Game: - Although I'm on the board, it's become apparent the game is going poorly for me. Dark Angels have me pinched in on the left flank. Mars tries to hold the middle ground while facing the mounting thread at Mid Table..... - Dark Angels now draw a few objectives that are based on the MID table objective which he is sitting on. Some of these I can't do anything about, but one of them is 'Defend' so Angels have to keep that for consecutive turns. - He starts to put a greater dent into my Dunecrawlers but I keep reminding him to focus fire because my repairs out pace his wound rate. He FINALLY fails Averson. This gives the Kastelans a chance to clear the malware, and reboot quickly! - Dark Angels advance termies closer, and take down a few more vanguard, and damage my last Ironstrider which is taking pot shots at them. He also drew an objective near his right flank Rhino, I have to prevent it... - He scores for mid table, and my Sicarian Infiltrators are hit hard (I could not charge them last turn to get the point for being in his zone). But somehow I pass the armour saves. With his point scored, he's now up by 5-1. - The Datasmith resets the Kastelans and they double fire on the Terminators again, this time with full ballistic skill. This (finally) Kills a great deal of them, the Deathwing are forced to drop their Assault Cannons, Belial and a few heavy handed termies still live, they plod forward... - I grabbed a few decent cards in this turn, and had to push the right side, BUT to make matters worse (or more interesting depending on who you are) I draw the same mid field objective he has been sitting on because he needs 'Defend'. Ouch. I get another card specific to Admech: Do a full repair on something and score a point.. this I can do, But I need to use a Strategem to perform a double repair on a Dunecrawler, but a point is scored. - The Jazz hands turn the corner, and shoot up his mid field stuff... .I use 'Wrath of Mars' but it's terrible... I feel like I did something wrong, and I did.. .(more on that later). ++ Electrolysis-Priests offer free hair removal; Dark Angels refuse the service...+++ - Jazz hands don't do too well here but it's my fault. It turns out I only fired half their shots, total missread of their rules on my part, even though I knew better... very strange, but oh well. As you can see he's loaded up at mid and AdMech is forced to flank. - Finally the Dunecrawlers hit solidly enough to take down the Dreadnaught, giving the rest of the army some breathing space to take on the mid table...if there's enough time, maybe I can salvage this mess? - My fight phase and the Dragoons bring out the cattle prods and smack down the 10 man Dark Angel tactical squad. The Sicarians unfortunately fail their charge into the characters that are supporting the mid table (just off camera above). This means I can't score anything at mid Table. - I do score a few though and I'm within reach of a few points of Dark Angels. END GAME: - Dark Angels score to go up to 7 points holding mid, He can't score points, but he still leads and this is turn 5. The game goes on... - Belial is too far out of reach but the remaining terminators rush an Icarus Dunecrawler. The Dunecrawler would retreat in my turn, and the Dominus combined with an Ironstrider would kill the last of them. Belial would retreat, denying me Slay the Warlord. - The mid table fails a few critical psychic tests. The Vinidicator moves up to prevent me from assaulting the last mid table characters. - Now in my turn I know I need good cards, and a chance to table him... but Belial is clearly out of sight. ++ Mars boldly goes where no Martian has gone before... towards characters at mid table ++ - Desperation time. I draw the card that forces me to get everything out of my deployment, and have no opponents in my zone. I draw mid table, and an objective I'm already sitting on! - This works well with the Dominus' plan to be aggressive at mid. The Kastelans are ordered to fire everything at the Vindicator and kill it. - Jazz hands try shooting again with 'Wrath of Mars'. This time I realize I undershot previously. Even though the squad isn't full strength, I get 4 mortal wounds on top of 6-7 more wounds and a tactical squad is vaped. - I get 'kill a character' by making him the closest unit to a squad of Rangers I advanced. - Dark Angels are nearly tabled, and I have the points in this final turn to put me over the edge. Techically the game should have continued to turn 7, however the cards I drew put me over the top and with only Belial, he could not prevent me from scoring. Admech pulls off a very, very, narrow final turn victory. Conclusions: - I make a point of having the tables with lots of obscuring terrain, but this was brutal. He got to camp pretty darn good at mid field. I'm glad I had the legs on the table to advance without fear of losing high cost units. - I screwed up with the Priests. That miss count almost cost me the game, but I liked them a lot. Fun unit with Wrath of Mars. - Arquebus'. I just cannot get these things to do anything to characters. My best use of them is against Rhino's.. .this seems to happen a lot. But I think people may write them off as vehicle killers but I like them to finish off vehicles. - Tacticals. At first glance I saw his list and thought... tacticals... very juicy for Admech to tear into. I couldn't believe how much trouble I had getting rid of them. Aversion on my Kastelans, turning a 4+ to hit into a 5+ really, really sucks. Having no Psychic defence continues to be an issue. - Terminators. Wow. It's not that I can't kill them, it's just that a lot of the stuff I can kill them with, also happens to be what I need for anti-vehicle, and with the Kastelans psychicly 'nerfed' I had a lot of problems there. - BTW it occured to me in about.. turn 3 that I forgot to deploy my second Dominus. lol But I did not end up deploying him at all. Just in case anyone noticed he was missing. This was a much closer game than I though it would be. It was well fought by the DA. Thanks for reading this!

So I've been struggling to keep Cawl in the list without killing the rest of the list. Most recently I've been using a Crusader Knight but Cawl really doesn't maximize that sort of unit very well. I've been trying to keep the command points up and that means 6 squads of troops. The elite/heavy portion of the list feels pretty flexible. But as far as troops I'm wondering what others are doing for the core? I've tried variants of Vanguard and Rangers. Sniper style, plasma etc. The Kataphrons are interesting, but I can't seem to get them firing on all cylinders. Perhaps CC Kastelans would make it safer to do so? But then the double shoot / Cawl Wall loses a lot of effectiveness... however if I'm honest, I rarely play that way, and typically only use 2 Kastelans. I'm curious what others are doing for a Cawl based Brigade core? Any thoughts?