White Templars vs. Grey Knights 1500 pts.

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

I'll start out by saying this wasn't much of a game and at the end of 7 turns I had tabled my opponent. Partly this was the fact he kept wandering away from the table in the middle of things like my turn so I don't think he was paying much attention. Partly, I think it was his army build. Mostly though I think it was his deployment and his subsequent tactics.

 

As a matter of convention, when I say left or right, I always mean MY left and right. When I speak of someone's objectives, I mean the objectives that person placed. This is not going to be a blow by blow because, honestly, that would be rather pointless and offer little value to people who study battle reports. My primary purpose for posting this is to elicit comments from people, especially about anything I could have done better. (Typically, I try to deconstruct a battle to see what went right and wrong and why as well as to try to learn from it. That was very hard here.) I'm not too familiar with Grey Knights and I didn't count all his guys so my estimates and what I call things may be a bit off.

 

My list was what is currently my standard 1500 point list and consisted of:

* Librarian Grammaticus (Warlord) in terminator armor with a force stave and a storm shield

* Tactical Squad I (10 men) with a plasmagun and a lascannon

* Tactical Squad IV (10 men) with a plasmagun and a missile launcher

* Scout Squad VIII (6 men) with a missile launcher and Sgt. Castle (Telion)

* Terminator Squad III (5 men) with an assault cannon and chainfist

* Sternguard Squad V (10 men) with 2 combi-meltas and a power fist

* A Land Speeder Typhoon from Squadron II

* Brother Veritas the Dreadnought with extra armor

* Brother Zeus and his Thunderfire Cannon

 

He fielded:

* 2 Paladins (fielded as 1 unit in case he could have done otherwise) with some kind of Brotherhood Banner.

* A squad of about 7 Gray Knight Marines who all had force weapons and something that let them autopass the check for instant kill. (troops)

* A squad of about 10 Gray Knight Marines one of whome had a demon hammer. (troops)

* A unit of 5 or 6 terminators with another of those banners and a demon hammer. (troops)

* 2 Inquisitors (fielded individually and one was his Warlord)

* 12 cultists(?) geared for CC

* 12 cultists geared for shooting

 

We rolled the Crusade (4 objectives), Dawn of War, and he got to pick his side and who deployed first. He chose to go second. My warlord trait was Tenacity and his let him choose nightfight on the first turn; neither affected the game. My psychic powers were Endurance and Warp Speed; neither of them ever mattered. He place his objectives out of my line of sight in ruins in his far rear corners, both left and right. I placed mine in the open, right in front of my DZ on my left, making sure they were three inches away from any cover. I was running a gun line and I wanted him to walk into the open to get to my objectives and then to have to stand on them taking shots. It never occurred to me that he might not get to them - Gray Knights are assaulty right? I also figured with all that instant death and terminators he had, I wanted to avoid close combat with him, even with my terminators and librarian.

 

I noted three things about his force that I thought I could take advantage of, however. First and foremost, he had only three troops choices and only one of them might be able to combat squad (if Grey Knights can even do that) while there were four objectives. I planned to squad since it was not a kill point game which would give me 5 troop choices to cover four objectives. Further if he charged a five man halfsquad, he would probably destroy it, allowing me to shoot at him on my next turn. Second, he had no transports though he did have deep strike with his terminators. He'd have to walk everywhere he went with a lot of his army, giving me time to shoot if I was set up to take advantage of that. Finally, he had nothing with a range beyond 24" so that would limit his ability to return fire. I already knew I was likely to only be focusing on three objectives anyway, but this meant if I killed one or two of his troop choices it should be very, very hard for him to win.

 

I need to describe the terrain at this point. There was a big ruin in the center of the table, probably 10-12" on a side. I had a stone wall and two small ruins (6" on a side) on my left. One of the ruins was all the way in my DZ and one was catty-corner to it but mostly in no-man's-land. Across from this (still on my left), there was a multi-story ruin in no-man's-land and then he had another ruin and a hill in his DZ. That ruin held one of his objectives. On my right, I had a 2 level ruined tower and a hill, both in my DZ, and he had a large ruin and a hill in his DZ with the ruin back in the corner. He had placed his other objective in that ruin. My objectives, as I mentioned before had been placed in no-man's-land on my left. One was 3.5 inches from both small ruins and the other was up 3.5 inches from the large central ruin where his army had no line of site to it, but mine would have an open field of fire. I wanted to use my objectives to draw him into my concentrated fire power, hopefully weakening him enough that when he assaulted, I could survive it. I planned to place 4 of my troop units around the objectives so that they could try to grab them on T5. I figured, if he didn't come in on them and wanted to duel it out with guns, I was more than happy to accept that contest because I'd probably win. To win, he had to come at me aggressively and I wanted to deplete him as much as possible when he did. the terrain gave me fairly broad fields of fire as he had picked the side with more cover. On my right I had a large open area in front of my hill and tower, but he could hide behind his ruins and I had trouble seeing around the large ruin. On my left, I had LOS clear back to his back left corner and a nice wide open alley about 18" wide down the side of the large center terrain to the middle of his backfield. I'm going to be calling this The Alley.

 

With this in mind, I set up my foreces entirely in the left half of my DZ, mostly in a 'U' around the two objectives in my area. I deployed the troop units in cover with the terminators out in front of them (since the termies got FNP within 3" of the objective). I had one halfsquad of Sternguard and one half squad of tacticals ready to run up the left edge to try to create crossfire. The right end of my line consisted of the dreadnought poised to run up next to the big central ruin and engage any incoming assault troops before they hit my line. Behind the dread and lined up on the stone wall was the half squad of tacticals with the lascannon. My right flank was another tactical halfsquad made to look like it might dash for my opponent's objective on the right but really just a flank guard. This put two tactical halfsquads within movement range of each of my objectives. I parked my Typhoon in the back left corner of my DZ as fire support and my Thunderfire on the left of my lascannon halfsquad, both with good fields of fire. I debated putting the scouts on the tower ruin on my right to snipe, but decided against it because I did not want to divide my force. Instead, I stuck them in reserve, figuring they could come in from the side and make a show of threatening his objectives. This might cause him to have to reverse one of those walking assault units to come back and deal with them. I intended to hold my two objectives and play for the secondary objectives. Depending on the situation, the scouts would either be throw aways or they would be there to contest/take an objective. I planned to give him the objective in the right (my right) rear of his DZ.

 

He placed his 7 Gray Knights in reserve along with one of his cultists squads which he explained were just bubble wrap for his inquisitors. Oddly though neither inquisitor was placed in reserve. I have no idea why because neither could deep strike and all reserving them did was mean that they had to start walking from his back DZ line later in the game than the rest of his army. Maybe, I thought, he planned to have the Gray Knights walk on to one of his objectives late game. He then placed his larger Gray Knight squad on the objective in his DZ on my right. He placed his terminators, his paladins and his Warlord with a bubble wrap squad centrally. Of these the paladins were left most in the mouth of The Alley on his side with the terminators about 6" behind and to the right of them and his HQ about 6" to the right of the terminators - putting them behind the large central ruin (He was, I think, afraid of the Thunderfire). He placed his solo inquisitor in hiding on top of his objective on my left. I note that he ha now had no troops units anywhere near his left objective (though he did have a unit in reserve). His main force was at the mouth of the alley, but not up on his deployment line. Likewise, his largest troop unit was isolated on the right, far behind his DZ line. IMO, he lost the game right here.

 

He tried to steal the initiative and failed.

 

In T1 I advanced up the left edge to invest the other small ruin and set up my crossfire. My terminators advanced to stand in front of the objective (and get within range of his paladins). The dreadnought moved up next to the central ruin along with the other Sternguard halfsquad. The Typhoon shuffled around just enough to get a jink save. My T1 shooting wasn't too great; I killed one paladin with a Lascannon, wounded the other one with everything else, and killed about 7 of the Warlord's bubble wrap with the Thunderfire which, to his dismay, could see his squad through the ruin's windows. He advanced his forces across his line with the paladins starting up The Alley with the terminators 6" behind them. The Warlord and his remaining bubblewrap cultists moved to hide better behind the central ruin which drifted them towards my right side slightly. At the end of my T1 we remembered we had mysterious objectives. Mine were, from left to right, re-rolling ones to shoot and skyfire. His were sabotage and re-rolling ones to shoot. This did two things - it made it so my large fire base at my end of The Alley was re-rolling 1's and made him decide to move his solo HQ off his left objective. In T2, I killed his other paladin (first blood) and two or three of his terminators along with more of his bubble wrap. At this point, I was doing well enough with shooting that I was keeping him out of assault range. He got both his reserves on T2 and did something I simply cannot explain. He brought his other bubble wrap squad in to mate up with his solo inquisitor sitting on his objective to my left and his Gray Knights onto the board in the center of his DZ near his end of The Alley. I can only speculate that he was avoiding the sabatoged objective. He advanced everything, did some shooting, killed a couple guys.

 

My reserves came in on T3 on the left, right where I wanted them. I placed them about 12 inches from his left objective towards my line, got a lucky snap shot and sniped his HQ which was fun. More importantly, I was in a position to get a scoring unit on that objective and he had no scoring units of his own so he could only contest. I continued to shoot up his terminators, killing them off, shot at his larger Grey Knight Squad killing one or two. He tried to shoot back killing 4 out of one of my Sternguard halfsquads. His Warlord hid behind the central ruin out of my LOS. For his T3-T4 he pretty much marched his reserved Gray Knight squad right up the alley inot the teeth of my fire like somehow what I had done to his paladins and his terminators who had tried that wouldn't happen to them. I gave him lascannons, krak missiles, assault cannons, plasmaguns, bolters, and storm bolters all the way and never got to within 18 inches of my line. He did manage to kill 2 guys from a tactical half-squad and 3 scouts though. But he never finished off any of their units, allowing my Sternguard singleton to assault his reserved bubblewrap unit which stopped it from shooting up the (scoring) scouts camped on his objective. His bubblewrap was then killed on my next turn when my terminators got into the assault. That left only his guys on his objective on my right and, at that point, I had the game already with three objectives, first blood, and linebreaker. But we kept rolling for the game to go on so I advanced my dread toward this squad full of S4 shooting. He charged the dread with his warlord and the dread killed it and kept going towards his objective. Meanwhile, my Typhoon, terminators, and Sternguard were running from my left ot the right as fast as they could, but they never got back into the fight. I killed some more guys with my dread until he decided to attempt an 8" assault on the dread. I over watched, and for the first time it actually did something with it. The multi-melta and the storm bolter all rolled 6's (3 sixes!). That killed 2 of his guys and made him fail the charge. On my turn, I moved in and charged him in such a way that his loan demon hammer guy was more than 3" from my dread. It took that turn and his turn, but the dread killed that squad, sustaining 2 glancing hits. That was the end of 7, he had no army, and the score was WT12; GK 0.

 

I didn't learn much, but I think my objective placement was well done as was my deployment. My favorite moments were sniping his HQ with Tellion and rolling 3 6's on overwatch with the dread. Another smart thing I did was attempt a charge with my terminators on the bubblewarp that had been harassing my scouts. I knew that my solo Sternguard who was 2 inches away from them was going to make his charge, but didn't want that one guy to take the overwatch. So I declared with the terminators (instead of running them closer to charge next round) and he took the bait, wasting his overwatch on 2+ armor saves to no effect. Then my Sternguard moved in. Otherwise, he lost by coming down The Alley piecemeal, just like I had wanted him to and like I had tried to lure him to. What I think he should have done, seeing how I was deployed was run EVERYTHING up the left edge which would have shielded him from a lot of my fire and tried to get it all into the assault at the same time. If he can squad out, he should have and parked only a minimum unit on one of his objective. He should have given up on the other one and bent hi entire army on taking both of mine. He also should have tried to avoid giving me an easy first blood.

 

Unfortunately, I don't see any glaring errors I made which makes learning hard. At one point, I started to shoot his bubblewarp near his objective on my left and realized I was only making it harder for my terminators to get the charge in, but that was minor. Indeed, they failed that charge as discussed above, but that did not end up mattering.

 

Edit: My Dreadnought was actually quite valuable in this game. He meltad a paladin, a terminator, several GK, and smashed the enemy warlord and a GK unit in CC. The thunderfire was valuable as usual, doing a number on the bubble wrap squads.

 

Anyway, I hope for more challenging games this coming weekend.

[silencer]

Hi Storm Dragon,

 

first, I appreciate that you wrote a battle report. Although I really enjoy reading them, I usually don't write them myself, and I know that it is a lot of work. However, yours is really hard to read. The paragraphs are very long. Moreover, there are no pics or maps that would illustrate the battlefield, the placement and the look of your armies. While this is up to everyone himself, it really makes it harder to follow the course of the battle. I really don't want to offend you, my comment is only meant to be constructive. So, take from it whatever pleases you.

 

I think you play a viable list, balanced and pretty standard. I would prefer somewhat more mobility, and I am kind of surprised that it did not show against the GKs. It is obvious that your opponent was not ready for you, either due to a lack of concentration or due to lacking skills. His list seems abysmall to me, and he did not react to your tactic. I am not even sure if he had one himself. Thus, you did a pretty good job exploiting his mistakes.

 

Just my 2 cents

 

M.

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

Thanks. I wish I had pictures, but I forgot to take any. We play these Tuesday night games at a local store and it's always a rush to get off work, eat, go there, and actually finish a game before closing time. In this case, I quite frankly, forgot to take any. I have a program that I downloaded which draws maps, but I'm not proficient with it yet (nor am I sure how I might put the images on B&C but I'm sure I can learn that.) It has a tendency to draw crazy arrows when I move units. I did use it with my White Tempars vs Blood Angels report on my blog. (EDIT. Nevermind. I just went to try to fix adjust those pictures and I think I accidentally deleted them. (explitive deleted)] You'll see I also have trouble with the terrain. The Read.Me says to take a picture of your terrain, crop out everything but the terrain, and then store the image for the program. Since I use store terrain, I have not really been able to do that. I'll see what I can do about this last report before I forget too much scenery.

 

I was also probably a bit verbose in my report. The only salient features of the battle that I could perceive were:

 

1) He only had 3 troop choices and I tried to capitalize on that;

 

2) I set up my objectives as a lure/trap for him to bring him in front of my guns and it seemed to work;

 

3) His deployment made no sense that I can see worsened by walking his forces one at a time straight into the fire of practically my whole force; and

 

4) My dread's awesome overwatch and the sniping of the Inquisitor.

 

I don't like to say it was an easy victory, but it really was. He lost in deployment if not army selection. I'm an old 3rd Ed. player who is trying to get back up to speed, and I should still be losing more than I win. I want to parse every battle thoroughly to see what the lessons are and that was very hard for me in this case. I think the Tenacity Warlord trait made me tie my terminators to my objective for too long. They should have been moving at least one round sooner. Likewise, my scouts were stationary too long because they had heavy weapons. I should have started my dreadnought moving towards the last objective sooner perhaps, but since I planned to ignore that one all game long, TACTICALLY I might have been ahead to pull back completely and just let him sit on it out of range of everything. That would still have won and been less risky.

 

About my army: It was originally going to be a drop pod force. I started painting it up a couple years ago in 5th but never got it on the table. Thus, it had no rhinos or tanks. I have 3 pods, but have not assembled or painted them. Likewise rhinos. It was supposed to be a more or less balanced force with a slight emphasis on shooting, but I think I'm short on close combat troops. I also think that once I get over 1500 points, I probably need another 10 man tactical squad and maybe some more scouts. I may switch the scouts running with Tellion to having bolters or assault weapons too. I like the way they change the board when they come on from the side, but everything they carry is heavy, and that means they snap shot when they come in. They also seem to want to maneuver once in, which results in more snap shots. Other than that, I'm looking at a second Thunderfire, another Typhoon in the squadron, and an attack bike squadron (with MM).

[Ming]

I too like battle reports, both to write and to read. I try to make sure that there is some lesson learned in the report, not just for the reader. They are fun.

 

I've done sketches of my battles (since I have no access to a mapping software), and the sketches easily portray whate happened on one drawing. Even with that, I have had comments to include pictures, coupons for store discounts, and movie newsreels of the battles. I just find I cannot satisfy everyone all the time.

 

It was interesting to see a report where both sides fought nearly entirely on foot. You had a major advantage in firepower and mobility. It certainly played in your favor. Congrats!

 

Regular dread or what was he "armed" with? My last game (vs bugs) the dread had the CCW plus heavy flamer and plasma cannon, did very well.

 

Proxy in some water bottles and try a large game with drop pods. Might be fun.

 

Ps - I dislike it when my game opponent stalks around the store and does not attend the game...it wastes my time and takes the fun out of the social aspects.

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

I too like battle reports, both to write and to read. I try to make sure that there is some lesson learned in the report, not just for the reader. They are fun.

 

I've done sketches of my battles (since I have no access to a mapping software), and the sketches easily portray whate happened on one drawing. Even with that, I have had comments to include pictures, coupons for store discounts, and movie newsreels of the battles. I just find I cannot satisfy everyone all the time.

 

It was interesting to see a report where both sides fought nearly entirely on foot. You had a major advantage in firepower and mobility. It certainly played in your favor. Congrats!

 

Regular dread or what was he "armed" with? My last game (vs bugs) the dread had the CCW plus heavy flamer and plasma cannon, did very well.

 

Proxy in some water bottles and try a large game with drop pods. Might be fun.

 

Ps - I dislike it when my game opponent stalks around the store and does not attend the game...it wastes my time and takes the fun out of the social aspects.

 

I made no changes to the dread's armament so MM and Storm Bolter.

 

The most annoying part was when he did it during my shooting phase. I'd roll to shoot, roll to wound, look up and he'd have wandered off. I had to go find him to bring him back for his saves. I'd start shooting with my next unit and by the time we got to his saves, he be off somewhere else again. I may play him once more with a caution that he needs to stay at the table. If he wanders off again... well I have better things to do then chase him around the store.