1850 tournament: Game 3 v. Vulkan

[Polythemus]

well i played in my first tournament. I will be posting all the games as I complete the reports, picture taking was sporadic so some games may not have the full spread of pics while others have been completed using vassal.

Game 1

Game 2

Game 3

 

Please let me know what you might have done differently and how I can improve tactically.

[Darkangeldentist]

Nice report, thanks for posting about this. 

 

Your list looks pretty fun and your own tactical assessment of mistakes you made cover a lot of good points. I am curious for a bit more info about your thoughts concerning fliers such the chaos hell drake which seemed to cause a fair amount of grief over the course of the game. I am interested to know how you feel about the list? You mentioned in the summary that you hadn't practiced with the list and several mistakes were made due to lack of familiarity with it but I am interested to know if there is anything you would change?

 

I also have a few comments/questions about the game and your tactical choices as well as a couple more questions about the list.

 

You never mentioned what power your librarian rolled for his psychic power or what impact he had during the game. I can only assume he didn't do much from that but the pictures do show he spent the game attached to the black knights. 

 

Looking at how you deployed I feel you could have caused a lot more problems for your opponent if you had been more cautious and kept back a bit more with the deathwing assault. There was no need to be in charge range of his units on the first turn. I probably would have put the ravenwing on the other flank to attack the chaos forces from the left hand flank. Whist this puts them closer to the chaos board edge it does make your opponent a little less able to direct fire at them from the helldrake when it comes on since it will likely fly past them. It also (and this is more useful) would have made it harder for your opponent to bring retaliation units to bear on them. His bunkered deployment took up a fair portion of his deployment zone but from your photos it was quite long and shallow. So attacking from the end of it would have meant supporting units would be further from the bikes.

 

You didn't mention what weapons the chaos lords took, I am guessing AP 2 weapons since they clove through your terminators quite quickly but I am curious. Especially since your description had Belial die in a single round of combat. (Ouch considering his improved survivability thanks to his iron halo.)

 

From the photos it looks like you deployed the marines in the huge area of ruins near the middle of the board and the devastators in the smaller ruin at the back in the corner. (Furthest from the chaos guys.) Did you ever find the devastators were out of range of anything or had poor lines of sight? It's a bit hard to tell from the photos but I know that range can actually become an issue once you start trying to shoot at things in opposite corners. I would have risked putting the devastators closer in the main area of ruins and the lascannon tactical unit towards on of the corners to grab one of those objectives. (Did the missions use mysterious objectives? I ask because one of the results grants the unit claiming it the skyfire rule and others are even more influential.)

 

Thanks again for posting about your games.

[Polythemus]

DaD - thanks for such an excellent reply!

This list can work well if the banner and RWGL are functioning, however it is difficult to keep the banner alive/impacting the game. Perhaps with more practice I could get better at this. One thing I did notice was that the RAS was minimially effective throughout the games. They were put in to handle armor since i used a similar list versus guard and got shreded so i wanted some insurance against that. I amost feel that a Nephilim might be just as effective and able to take on more threats, though i dont know if it can beat a helldrake.

 

The LIbrarian rolled for precognition, which if i had termie armor would have been boss, but on a bike not so great. Therefore i gave him prescience, which seemed to be the right call. as I could buff more units through out the game.

 

I DW assaulted on the first turn so that I could try and kill the large troop choice, and also claim the relic. This would have gotten me first blood, and a mobile objective. The chaos player essentially had two FA deathstars, the bikes with champion and Nurgle lord/bikers (WarLord) and the Khorne lord/spawn (Incidentally the Khorne juggernaut had the axe of blind fury, and the warlord on the bike had a lightning claw and a power fist.) Its the four chaos spawn who killed belial with 4xd6 str 5 attacks, plus rage and other special abilities. i think I had to make like 15 saves from them. it might have been better to drop them into the trees and try to get some protection that way, but that Khorne deathstar was set up to charge any unit that made a grab for the relic. since they are beasts they ignore terrain anyway.

 

The objectives were mysterious but relying on 1/6 of chance for a skyfire nexus was never gonna get me a victory.

 

Helldrake was something i had never faced before. It is tough to deal with. i made the decision when i sent the libby off with the black knights to not shoot at it and focus on killing troops instead. my AA was the devastators and the BK, but using such good unit so inefficiently was pretty galling so i tried to just ignore the hell drake. the nephillim may actually be able to do something against it but it certainly is a huge threat that you cant just ignore. I was hoping more termies would survive ensuring me a better chance against it, but i think i tried to win the game too "quickly." Its probably due to a lack of sophistication on my part, need to practice more and learn what this army can and cant do.

 

Devastators actually performed above average in this game. they were positioned to have line of sight and fire coverage to 3/4 of the board. they could contest all of the objectives except the one in the chaos corner. they killed more than their share of plague marines.

[Tiger9gamer]

May I suggest a mortis dread with TL lascannons. if it stands still, it has skyfire and interceptor. I tried the autocannon one and it works wonders for me!

[Polythemus]

FW units were not useable at this tourney but if they were i would take a contemptor mortis with dual kheres. As it stands that option wasn't availible to me.

[Polythemus]

Game 2 is now posted.

[Fenric]

May I suggest a mortis dread with TL lascannons. if it stands still, it has skyfire and interceptor. I tried the autocannon one and it works wonders for me!

Any idea where the rules are for the mortis dread? My gaming group are ok with forgeworld stuff and it really fills the gaps of anti air fire for my upcomming DA army and my Space puppies army(yes I do realise the irony ;) ) All the rules are the FW stuff are so spread out over many very expensive books.

[Darkangeldentist]

Hmm...beasts may ignore terrain but it will still reduce their initiative to one unless they have assault grenades. I know the lord would have them but I doubt the beasts do and grenades are one of the few things that apply on a model by model basis. Also even with fleet to give better odds all units assault the same 2D6" meaning you can influence how units engage and long charges are risky even if they work.

 

I am surprised the spawn got Belial though, chaos characters have to challenge and I would have certainly done so with him anyway. His odds against a chaos lord may not be the best but they are solid for a round at least.

 

Nice report of the second game by the way. Particularly good are your run downs of what you think were the turning points of the game and what you would have done differently. Also helpful that you took so many photos, makes it very easy to follow things.

[cielaq]

I believe the current rules for Mortis are here:

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Imperial_Armour_Books/IMPERIAL_ARMOUR_AERONAUTICA.html

[Polythemus]

Hmm...beasts may ignore terrain but it will still reduce their initiative to one unless they have assault grenades. I know the lord would have them but I doubt the beasts do and grenades are one of the few things that apply on a model by model basis. Also even with fleet to give better odds all units assault the same 2D6" meaning you can influence how units engage and long charges are risky even if they work.

 

This is a great point. Thinking about your first post i feel it may have wiser to actually let my opponent come to the relic and for me to just assault him once he got it. that way i could have held back a bit more as you sugguested and not been charged in the first turn.

 

I am surprised the spawn got Belial though, chaos characters have to challenge and I would have certainly done so with him anyway. His odds against a chaos lord may not be the best but they are solid for a round at least.

 

The thinking here was that belial could absorb wounds from the spawn (turns out he absorbed too many) which would keep the fists alive to be able to swing. Hopefully putting some wounds on the spawn. I challenged with the sarge to try and keep the juggernaut at bay with two plus saves and be able to slice through his T4 power armored self. ( i think actually my opponent may have played this wrong by hitting on 3s since he started with ws 5 but gets dropped to ws 4 when using the axe. will have to check the list i took a photo of.) after the initial round i would do a heroic intervention or the sarge would just die so i wouldnt have to take all those wounds on the squad. It obviously didnt work out, maybe my logic was flawed especially considering the axe is ap 2. One way to improve the chances here would have been to have the sarge armed with a TH/SS that way the challenge might have been more survivable.

 

Nice report of the second game by the way. Particularly good are your run downs of what you think were the turning points of the game and what you would have done differently. Also helpful that you took so many photos, makes it very easy to follow things.

 

That game was really fun. I was actually really proud of my effort in this one, but i benefited from a lot of good charge rolls and armor pen rolls. Its too bad i lost track of the kill points, otherwise i might have made some different decisions. But this is why we play these games...

 

Out of curiosity i am wondering about the utility of the 4man RAS outfitted with plasmagun x2 and MMAB versus nephillim. Obviously one is 15 pts more, but the utility of the nephillim may be greater since it can take on air units. Its worth considering.

[Darkangeldentist]

I don't have any experience with either of the DA fliers but my enthusiasm to try them out has been weak to say the least. I can see some definite benefits to them, the nephalim when armed with a twin lascannon is a pretty solid anti-air threat with the missiles being disappointing but not useless support for tackling enemy fliers. The cost does look very high on paper though and the popularity of defence lines with quad guns make it's survivability questionable as well. I may well trial one as some point but currently I prefer to stick to the bikes. As I said at the beginning though, I haven't used any of the DA fliers yet.

 

Personally I would stick with the bikers as they can contest objectives and threaten quite effectively. I would consider changing the plasma guns down to meltaguns as the more focused anti-tank role also forces you to play them more aggressively which provides opponents more threats at once to worry about. It also saves 10pts which can go wherever but I'd probably look at a combi-weapon for the sergeant (I believe he can take them) to add to the firepower you can chuck out. As a first turn throwaway it's a neat option as after that one special shot you can just leave that basic sergeant at the front to act as the first bullet catcher. A callous tactic but useful.

 

In regards to the tactics of accepting challenges and your first game, since chaos characters must issue them and if they win the challenge get to roll on their gifts of the gods table. Ok, it's funny when they turn into spawn but most of the results are beneficial in some way. Some are outright ridiculous so my aim is always to attempt to win them. I would have accepted with Belial against the khorne lord for sure in the first game. Several reasons for this, first is that Belial has a decent chance of not only surviving a round of combat but also maybe killing the lord outright thanks to flesh bane and master-crafting. Plus he would have better weapons skill thanks to the axe of blind fury. The next reason is that since the axe is AP 2 your sergeant was extremely unlikely to survive to even strike and would be giving the chaos lord a roll on that mutation/boon table. Lastly is simply because putting Belial in a challenge is the choice most likely to result in somebody surviving the combat to pin the spawn in place for a counter-charge in the following turn. Spawn are obnoxious thanks to T5 and multiple wounds. Belial on the receiving end of a charge will be lucky to kill even one so has only modest chance of lessening the number of attacks coming at him and his unit. (Ok, since the chaos lord had a daemon weapon there was a decent chance of a similar boatload of attacks coming his way. However even with 10 attacks he is on average only getting about 5 hits and about 3 wounds so Belial should suffer only one or two.) Over the course of two round Belial is very likely to take down any 3-4 wound characters that only have a 3+ armour save or worse. The combination of neutralising probably the most potent component of his spawn mob and one of his HQ choices you would have significantly weakened his combat power and made your own significantly greater by comparison. 

 

Challenges provide an interesting new aspect to combats, calculating when and how to risk characters to challenges makes for some odd fights. It can seriously blunt a charge if suddenly everyone but the sergeant is sat on the sidelines cheering/twiddling their appendages etc... or if your outclassed librarian has to hide at the back just so you can get the basic bods in to take advantage of the extra attacks from charging (and rerolls from a psychic power perhaps?). There are several ways of viewing and benefiting from them. One is to simply reduce the potential losses from a particularly nasty enemy character. You can also use a challenge to ensure your best quality attacks make it to your opponent's character. (Very handy when fighting a sergeant with a powerfist/axe when your guy has a sword.) Most influentially though is using a challenge to tie up an enemy unit(s) in a combat that would otherwise be over quickly due to weight of attacks. So even a character with few attacks but high survivability (such as Belial with thunder hammer and storm shield) can drag out a fight for several rounds because your opponent cannot kill you. The only benefit the extra models have in this instance are re-rolls for the side outnumbering and that can have either little or great effect depending on the nature of the attacks. Had you accepted with Belial and we assumed (as is fairly likely) that he survived two rounds of combat that resulted in the mutual death of him and the chaos lord on juggernaut you could have decided more freely about how to tackle the spawn, either sending in a charging unit hopefully crush them or ignoring them and hoping that Belial would survive he fight with the chaos lord and tie them in combat into the chaos player's next turn. (Where granted Belial would almost certainly fallen to weight of attacks but without the lord to generate low AP attacks their threat is significantly reduced.

 

I fear I have waffled a bit in my rather long worded explanation but I hope I have communicated thoroughly the various reasons and considerations regarding challenges and characters. 

[Polythemus]

Some nice points in there and a good lesson on tactics regarding fighting csm in challenges. The nephillim is a tough sell for me too. I have the means to proxy it, so its not a problem model wise. I just know i saw only limited success with the bikes, since folks seldom take mech. The nephillim can fill the same role and avoid being hit with small arms. The main prob is its limited utility versus the dragon, which can wipe out a demi tact squad in one turn. If the nephillim were equiped with 2 las canons (as opposed to twin linked) or better missles which hopefull they will faq then it would have the potential to live up to its point cost its very difficult to just know units are gonna die and not be able to do anyhting about it. The neph is only gonna be able to get one chance to shoot it pergame so it needs to be able to kill the thing. Vendetta is the only real option there.

As for the bikes i actually think they have maximum utility with the current weapons load because the weapon ranges synergize better and plasma still gives you a good chance to glance vehicles. They are a bit pricier than melta but i think they are just as good, with the added benefit of being able to give a bit extra anti infantry punch.

[Dark_Master]

I believe the current rules for Mortis are here:

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Warhammer-40000/Imperial_Armour_Books/IMPERIAL_ARMOUR_AERONAUTICA.html

This only has the contemptor Mortis.

 

Regular Mortis are available in PDF updates on the forgeworld website, do a search and they'll be linked on this site somewhere.

 

DM

 

Edit - there you go

 

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/s/Smupdate.pdf

 

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/v/vehicle6thupdates.pdf

[Polythemus]

Game 3 has been posted

[elphilo]

Game 3 has been posted

Nice report. I feel you on that mental fatigue. My first tournament was earlier this year and by the time I got to game 3 I was already done. It didn't help it was against Necron and I was playing the old codex. So before I had a temper tantrum I conceded to my opponent. So yeah, it wears on you. One just needs to, as you said, keep the caffine close and keep it jovial

And yeah, Space Marines aren't fearless. When playing them you have to remember that, its easy to forget because we have so many fearless stuff while they don't. It reminds me in one game I played against SM, we had our hammernator squads dueling it out and I lost by a wound. He looked at me and said moral? I shot him a look and said fearless? He then was upset because his guys didn't get fearless. I had completely forgotten about that doh!

[Polythemus]

Its understandable that regular marines arent fearless but vulkan?! I am glad you understood where i was coming from with the fatigue standpoint. As i said in the batrep there were a combination of factors but im quite sure fatigue was a pretty huge one.

 

As for the approach vs a gunline, how do other people deal with vulkan, i see in the battle tracker that there was a victory versus salamanders so clearly other people know how to do it. When i was fighting this last battle i was unsure how to procede since my list is really designed to alpha strike and there were only limited areas to strike in since it was hammer and anvil. Plus as i just demonstrated deep striking into all those guns was suicidal and belial is probably gonna need to go hang out in the bacta tank for a full year after that massacre. should i just walk the termies up the board and try to utilize my range advantage? Should i not deepstrike til turn two? Out flank the black knights but start the libby on the board? What would you do, this is one where the main thing i learned is that driving straight into the gunline is not a good strategy. I also think the flamer while fun made me a bit too bold in my descision making. So i either need to be brave enough not to use it or need to swap it out for something with more range.

[Blank05]

when i played against the salamanders I used my alpha strike list as well. vulkan was run with sternguard and died at the hands of belial in a challenge and was the last casualty of the game. my knigts held off his men to give belial and vulkan room.

[Darkangeldentist]

A good report again and my sympathies towards the side-effects of fatigue and crankiness. One of the less well preached pieces of game etiquette if to have a quick chat about scenery to make sure you are both agreed what is what before deployment so that arguments and misunderstandings are less likely. Also stops any temptation to exploit any variable pieces where harsher or leaner interpretations can drastically effect how a game will transpire.

 

From your description and the matchup this is one game where I would have deployed one of the terminator squads, probably the command squad and outflanked with both the ravenwing and black knights. As you mentioned, the set up narrowed the options for outflanking but a lot of his ranged firepower was 24" with only the thunder fire cannon, scouts and quad gun being better. In hammer and anvil games I have found it much easier to take advantage of longer ranged weapons thanks to the deeper deployment zone. The reason for deploying the command squad is because your marines will get the benefit from the feel no pain banner and you have an extra pair of missiles to fire at his transports and speeders right from the start. With the slight extra resilience from the banner and the little bit of extra firepower to tackle his vehicles this part of your army could have done fairly well holding out against his fire power once it got close enough. 

 

Black knights in this kind of game can be deal breakers but they have to get into range to do their work and when going second, outflanking is the best way of doing that. The narrower deployment actually helps ensure you will be in range whatever side you arrive on and their firepower is excellent against a huge range of targets. They are also no slouches in combat and sheer weight of attacks can see them comfortably punch through whole squads of basic marines for only a few losses. (The attrition hurts though.) With them and the ravenwing hopefully arriving at the same time (turn two ideally) it also makes sense to have the deathwing assault also timed to arrive on turn two. If all of them arrive at the same time then your opponent has a lot to worry about and that is after it's had it chance to decimate them.

 

This kind of gamble is a bit risky against a regular long range gun line but Vulkan lists tend to be heavily focused on short to mid-ranged firepower to take advantage of his chapter tactics. (Ridiculous as they are.) So by deploying further back, limiting his lines of sight if possible and focusing fire on those easier kills with your own longer ranged options you should do ok on the early attrition battle since you negate so much of his army.

 

It wasn't really clear from your report so I'll mention it, Vulkan and his army do not have the option to choose to fail morale tests, they can roll too high and fail them normally but his 'chapter tactics' of twin-linking and master crafting stuff replaces the normal one. It wasn't clear from your report if he failed morale from shooting to deny combat or after an assault leaving you exposed to get shot so the odds on that morale check were also unknown. 

 

Thanks for posting these reports and letting us share in your gaming experiences.

 

[Edit: In regards to your questions about terminator squad load out. I would stick with the heavy flamer, you've got the multiple units and Belial makes placement obscenely nasty but place it in a hammer and storm shield unit. They go into the teeth of the enemy anyway and the heavy flamer provides more than enough firepower to make the squad's impact effective. With Belial in the unit you also still have a storm bolter (assuming you were using his traditional weapons) to make use of split fire, roasting one unit and then assaulting another by shooting it with the storm bolter. The storm bolters I would place in the command squad, it's expensive anyway and due to the banner's large area of effect I feel it's the unit most likely to want to deploy instead of deep striking so the storm bolters would fit in well in that instance.]

[Polythemus]

Both times were failed morale checks after assault. I'm gonna be honest though, i was mentally drained enough that, while i never lost my temper, the numbers of units decimated by the end of turn 2 pretty much broke my spirit. I played the game politely, and really swallowed my tongue as the match wore on because with the game being so clearly his the faster i lost the faster i could get away. Sometimes one has to be pragmatic about these things. Nevertheless the game is always played using true line of sight, this much has always been clear in the rule book. If you cant actually see a model's body you cant shoot it (exception being indirect fire rules, and hive guard).

 

As for the sugguestion on the load out I think you may be right about having the flamer with the cc troops. With belial in their as well they can really cause some destruction especially if there are other ways to avoid scatter with the other squads.

 

The other personal rule of thumb i try to follow is be generous with your opponents and they will be generous with you. While there are lines that can get crossed at times with this line of thinking, it falls on the optomistic side of personal relations, and means that even though you may lose the game you may gain a friend, and that is what competition within the scope of this game is really about in my opinion.

[CitadelArmyGuy]

So many thoughts! I have been searching for days now to provide feedback and advice--- Real life has been so busy. I promise I've got some idea for ya! Hopefully tomorrow I'll get some time.

 

Before I go though, I want to give awesome props for the excellent battle writeups. A great service to the community, I'm sure there's lots to be gleaned from the battles when they're written up with this level of detail combined with analysis.

[Polythemus]

Cheers man! I appreciate all the help i can get.

[Master Avoghai]

 

1.) I think i may have assaulted after outflanking with my bikes. bad polythemus!

Nothing to regret here during Game 2...

 

You're not allowed to charge the turn you've outflanked ;-)

[Polythemus]

As a follow up to these battlereports i wanted to share this. While bunkered down in boston during the recent manhunt for suspicious characters, i tried to play a game versus myself on vassal using the same terrain setup as game three vs the salamanders list with the exception being using DaDentists sugguestion to start the command squad on the table on the roof of the building with devs and plas cannon tacts, as well as moving the black knights to the side of the large building so they could not be seen by the thunderfire cannon.

 

While we all know that playing against your self can have serious flaws in bias and tactical problems, i feel this was a good excercise. The tactical squad and devastors on the building were able to with stand a great deal of firepower inspite of being the primary targets of fire, due to the fnp banner. I played the corner hill as blocking LOS and got lucky with a deepstrike in that corner but on the whole the plan worked very well. Allowing DA to take out an entire flank on my turn 1 (lascannon kills techmarine on thunderfire, devs, splitfiring assault cannon and cyclones explode rhino and landspeeder, and plasma talons erase the sternguard inside of the rhino) and winning the kill points mission and the scouring mission outright. Probably helped that i got perfect timing for a libby power.

 

I also tried using the nephillim in place of the RAS squad and the results were fairly poor. I used the lascannon version as i think this is the version i would use during an actual game. All it was able to do was take a hull point off a rhino and kill 2 marines. It was shot down on turn 5. Will need a few more games before finalizing an opinion.

 

I think the take away here is that as has been mentioned before protecting the black knights is of paramount importance. Even if they cant charge on the first turn, they can swing the game for you on turns 2-4 if you protect them early.

[CitadelArmyGuy]

I do think playing yourself is a worthwhile endeavor--- about 5 years ago I did the same thing, I was in-training at a post where there wasn't a gaming store within 50miles and stuck there for 4 months. 5 years ago I certainly did not know about Vassal so I played myself and I too found the exercise quite surprising. Even 5 years later I still remember how a 10-man Jump Assault Squad beat 5 Terminators in melee without taking a single casualty. Lol @ aberrations.

 

At any rate, I've kept waiting for a big block of time to knock all my feedback out at once. I realized I should just go one game at a time in small bits, its probably more feasible. I'm more intrigued by this batrep thread than I have been about others in quite awhile due to the work we did tweaking your list Polythemus.

[CitadelArmyGuy]

OK sweet a nice clear Sunday I can get some good analysis in! Starting at Game1:

So the opponent's CSM list seems too small--- I rewrote it in AB and am coming up on only 1748pts for that CSM list, even with Flakk missiles added to the Havocs and 2 PG to the Nurglebikes... so I guess there's some wargear that didn't kick in to play or was worth remembering. However, here are the pre-game thoughts I would have been thinking:

Opponent List Analysis:

• Major Threats to Your List
  • Heldrake kill MEQ, Avg ~6 models per turn (Vector+Flamer) from T2+ (meaning 6x4-6 turns = 24-36 kills, but only 8-12 targets maximum)
  • JuggerLord will kill TEQ, even with SS
  • Plays The Relic amazingly, because Juggerlord can clear that Relic and prevent you from grabbing it early (if ever).
• Enemy Weaknesses
  • Very low long-range shooting
  • Scoring Units are slow (although dude got majorly lucky rolling the 'Infiltrate' warlord trait)

So observing the above points, there are a few things that can be done to mitigate his advantages and capitalize on his weaknesses. Here is what I would recommend:

• Go second. In this game absolutely you should have gone 2nd, and here is why: +He has little long range shooting so you won't take much damage +You get to see his deployment +You can counter-deploy +He cannot counter-deploy on you +You see his first turn of movement (allowing him to get 'out of position') +You can DWA on Turn2 so that actually you get 2 turns of watching him get 'out of position' +You get to have the last actions before Game End (Contesting Objs, killing Relic holder)
• Use DWA to arrive on Turn2 (even if forced to go first). This allows plenty of time for the game to shape itself, and also you can choose 'weak spots' where there is no AP2 nearby.
• Use Scout in this instance to Outflank both bike Units. This allows multiple avenues of approach and supports living longer and if going second, will allow you to avoid his Heldrake's location as best as possible.

For your Turn1, your DWA was far too aggressive, but you recognized it and so have other commentors in this thread so moving on...lol. Since you can count on the Heldrake eventually clearing your MEQ from the table, keeping your TEQ alive should have been top priority. Also, your backfield deployment was not optimal-- the only shooting threat to your Tacs+Devs was the Heldrake and some Havoc MLs. If you had gone second you could have deployed out of range of the Havocs, and since the Heldrake Ignores Cover you should have gone with full-spread formations instead of clumping up to be in the cover like you did. Also, deploying along edges of the table will reduce or eliminate taking Vector Stike damage.

Additionally, you had a multi-level ruin in your DZ, you should always put half of a Dev on bottom floor and half on top floor to mitigate Heldrake hits-- you should space them on floors and by distance, so that the first attack they take kills 3 but there should be 1 on top floor and 1 on bottom floor remaining, so that next turn he can only take 1 more hit. And as I mentioned the Tacticals should have been maximum-spread along your back-edge so that they cannot be Vector Striked and will only take 4 Heldrake flamer hits. The split-floor deployment comboed with full-spread deployment together meant it would have taken 6 turns for the Heldrake to kill all your Tacticals and Devs.

 

As far as the actual mission, I feel bad because I didn't know the missions were going to be Adepticon-style when we were workshopping your list. Knowing that every mission is going to be dual-objective absolutely means list writing has to be drastically changed. For example, you never get any relief by saying "well at least my list plays Kill Points really well" because all the missions are double-tier. I would have certainly advocated a few changes in light of that.

 

As far as actually winning this Mission: because the tourny was pre-FAQ, your DWA didn't count towards Reserve limit so I would have only deployed 2 Tacs and the Devs. Such a bare-bones deployment (coupled with going 2nd) would have looked super-enticing to the Juggerlord and Nurglebikes, they would have raced fowards to clear you out--- however, those units are "already dead" (ie living on borrowed time), because Heldrake will get them. However, your opponent probably won't be thinking that way and instead runs everything forward out of position. He has 4 scoring Units and there are 4 Objectives, so that means he'll likely leave his backfield on the empty side--- then I would have DWA on Turn 2 but do it in HIS backfield, so that now his Havocs and Cultists are unprotected. You can claim HIS backfield objective, then use Bikes to Outflank, deal damage and go for an endgame contesting. That way you'll end up with a Tie straight down the middle-- He'll have Relic, you'll have Objectives, you both have Linebreaker and neither will have Warlord-- you would win off First Blood by using Belials' HF+SB unit to kill the Cultists.

 

Does the above paragraph work well? No, but its the best thing I can think of. The CSM player has plenty of AP2, but it is all short-ranged. Also, Heldrake is just such a punk haha. It would definitely boil down to execution, and how experienced or inexperienced your opponent is.