By the skin of my Deathwing

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

I played a game last Saturday that was truely a nail biter.  This isn't a BatRep because I can't give you the details for that and it's not really a tactics article either though there is some of that too.  Anyway, I ran a duel wing under Azrael.  Bascially 2 5 man assault DW w CMLs and a 5 man shooty DW w a PC, 2 full Ravenwing Attack Squadrons (running typhoons w HB and Attack bikes w/ MM), a unit of 5 RBK, and a command squad in a rhino.  My opponent ran an all drop pod Imperial Fist army with 2 Ironclads, a commmand squad, a storm talon, and a lot of tacticals (with melta).  We rolled Vanguard deployment and the Relic for the mission.  Against this guy in the past I've always let him go first when I had the choice b/c I wanted his pods down before my reserves came on.  This time, I decided to see how it worked when I went first plus I wanted to have moved my bikes before he got to shoot his melta stuff.  I kept the DW in reserve and slotted them for T2 arrival.  I combat squadded one RW unit and left the other intact to carry the relic.

 

I knew my bikes would be faster than him once he podded in and I intended to use that.  In my mind, I was willing to throw the terminators in his line of advance to force him to deal with them while the bikes retreated with the relic.  I also, hoped to make him think I was going to pull it back into my lines and thus get his initial drop which was the biggest back there when I was really going to move everything into his DZ where he had nothing deployed.

 

He deployed NOTHING as expected.  I scouted up on the Relic and then on my T1 picked it up and surrounded the midfield (kind of like a castle but it could be shot at from all sides so kind of not.  He droped his command squad, one Ironclad, and three 10 marines tactical squads.  In his first turn, he took out one of the three person RW combat squads (he really wanted my meltaguns dead), the rhino, an attack bike, and put a wound on another attack bike.  He had first blood (he always gets that since I have nothing to shoot at until he comes on the board).   At this point, I was rolling amazingly badly at my saves.  He now has linebreaker.  I have the Relic.

 

In my turn 2, I realize that my command squad is closest to his Ironclad and on foot.  He's got a tac squad and the Ironclad in my DZ and 2 tac squads and his command squad to my flank and/or between me and his DZ.  The command squad has one power fist in it which might hurt the dread, if I get lucky.  The tac squad is much squishier, but if I do that, I'm not getting away from the Dread.  I think about detaching Az so as to deny the Warlord point, but he still has 3 tactical squads, a Storm Talon, and another Ironclad to come in and Az all alone is an inviting target.  I decide to assault the tacticals and hope to win and then concolidate 6 inches further away from the Ironclad.  (In retrospect, I should have detached Az.)  That being the case, I think about bringing at least one thunderhammer Deathwing squad in to assault the Ironclad, but decide not to.  The Deathwing once on the board, is slow and the LC/TH/SS units have no ranged stuff except the CML.  I don't want to put them on the far side of my army and move away from them, taking them out of the battle.  I now want them to be the point of my spear on the side of my army where I am going to be advancing.  So all three of them come in (2 on homers).  Azrael and his squad move to line up their assault.  I position everything else to shoot at his command squad with its librarian and the chapter master with the eternal shield.  I move the lone surviving biker from the other three man squad and a typhoon so that the enemy apocathary is the closest model to them.  Shooting begins and I open up with my lone biker on his apocathary.  I hit, I wound.  He misses his save and then fails to feel no pain.  Next, I shoot some plasma talons at his squad, hitting his chapter master who fails all his saves and dies.  (He was opting not to Look Out Sir since his other guys got no saves against plasma.  I do more shooting and end up killing the whole command squad (though it took all my shooting).  I assault the tacticals who manage to kill one or two of my command squad with overwatch.  I then roll horribly and don't kill enough of the tacticals to make them flee or to kill them and consolidate.  I have now got the Relic and Kill the Warlord to his Linebreaker and First Blood.

 

In his T2, he gets his Storm Talon and one tactical squad.  He positions his Ironclad to hit the guy with the power fist when he charges.  The 'Talon shoots at a speeder but it jinks.  Almost everything else shoots at one of my assault erminator squads, killing it.  He tries to shoot the shooty terminators, but fails to get through their armor.  The Dread assaults.  Azreal kills all the remaining tacticals, but the dread kills the power fist.  Azrael is fearless so he can't leave the combat even though no one there can get through AV13.  It is now a question of how long Az's 4++ can hold off the Ironclad (and ite it up).

 

In my T3 I move towards his DZ and shoot up two or three more of his tactical sqads and pretty much kill them, though one dies to the RWK's assault.  I manage to hold off the Ironclad.  In his T3 he gets his last tactical but the second Ironclad remains in reserve.  He's now podding into his own DZ trying to block my advance.  He manages to shoot the crap out of the RBK since he's now had two truns of them showing how dangerous they are and the dread manages to kill the apocathary.  He also shoots a shooty terminator I think.

 

In T4, I shoot some more of his guys and the remanents of the RBK, the surviving attack bike, and the single survivor from the 3 man biker combat squad assault one of his units.  They kill a couple and he holds.  I also manage to assault and kill another tac squad between my shooty terminators, my surviving assault terminator (with lightning claws) and the bikers with the relic.  The dread fails to kill either Azrael or the Champion who are the only survivors from the command squad at this point.

 

In his T4, the Ironclad drops in essentially right on his back line.  (He risked a serious chance of a mishap because he came in a 5 inch gap between the table edge and the building the shooty terminaotrs, the relic (carried by a 4 man bike squad) and the LC terminator were all in.  His Storm Talon goes into hover so as to be able to shoot at my terminators rather than overfly everything.  The Ironclad opens up with its heavy flamer and kills 2 terminators but they shrug off the meltagun.  The Storm Talon and the stormbolters from all the pods kill three of the bikers and the LC terminator.  I'm down to 2 terminators, a speeder, and biker back there facing the Ironclad.  I have a wounded attack bike, and an RBK tied up in assault against a 5 or six man tac squad.  He has his Storm Talon and his other Ironclad too.  The latter is very much out of the fight.  I hit and run my RBK and the attack bike out of the assault, and roll some good distance moving towards the relic.  The only things I have to hurt the Ironclad in HtH is the single terminator's powerfist.  Other than that, I have 1 RBK with a plasma talon, 1 attack bike with multi-melta, and one typhoon.

 

In T5, I just manage to get in melta range of the Ironclad and the Storm Talon with my assault bike and my RBK.  I have to decide which is my priority target.  I think it is the Ironclad because it is harder to hurt.  I open fire with my multi-melta and penetrate... immobilized.  That's very good because now it can't charge me - it has to shoot me.  That means the power fist terminator is not quite as critical.  I shoot at the dread with my Typhoon and get another pen.  It's now only going to be shooting with snap shots.  I've got one more set of shots with the plasma talon.  Do I shoot the dread knowing I need 6's to glance.  I decide not to.  Instead, I shoot a pod.  I shake it as well, but that's all.  In my assault phase, the terminators assault the Storn Talon and smash it.

 

In his T5, the dread fails to hit, but the pods' storm bolters kill the powerfist terminator and one of the bikers.  I am now down to 1 attack biker, 1 terminator sergeant with a power sword and the Relic, 1 RBK, and 1 Typhoon.  The enemy has an immobilized Ironclad blocking my way, 5 tacticals with a meltagun who are coming as fast as they can after the bikers who hit and ran them, an undamaged Ironclad way on the other side of the table, and about 7 drop pods potentially in range.  He has Warlord, First Blood, and Linebreaker.  I have Linbreaker, Warlord, and the Relic.

 

The game continues though night descends.

 

In T6, the terminator and the bikes all move away from as many drop pods as they can.  My attack bike kills the dreadnought and the Typhoon kills a pod.  He shoots all kinds of pod-based storm bolters and the bolters from his tac squad at the terminator but fails to kill it.  Points unchanged.

 

The game goes on.

 

In T7, I reversed the RBK towards the oncoming tacticals.  The assault bike and the terminator (still with the Relic) move away from the pods some more.  The Typhoon tries to take out another pod and fails.  The lone RBK shoots one tactical and then assault.  On overwatch, the meltagun hits and wounds, but the RBK jinks and ties up the tacticals in an assault which no one wins.  In his T2, the melee continues to have no winners and he fires all the drop pods still in range at the terminator.  I have to make three saves.  I do.  Game ends.  I win 5 - 3.

 

Wow, that was a close game.  I had awful saves in T1 and T4 (I thought it was over after T4), but he had awful saves in T2, losing his command squad.  I was able to take out his second Ironclad when I really needed to though I wish it had come in sooner because I was running out of things to kill it with and board space to get away from it.  The game still came down to my making saves with my terminator in Turns 6 and 7 though.  And since I rolled some 2's, the fact it was a terminator who could carry the relic really mattered.  The RBK really did their jobs, and in fact, during lunch break, my opponent commmented that he always forgets just how hard that unit is.  I'm not sure the Storm Talon made up its points.

 

Tactically, I liked being able to scout up on the Relic but having nothing to shoot at in T1 really bites.  And I knew I was going to give up first blood, but I wanted the bikes to have moved.  I'm still not sure that was the right choice.  The idea of moving everything away from him and capitalizing on my speed and his slowness really worked well, though his ability to drop in front of me mitigated a lot of it.  Still, the movement also allowed me to take the game to his DZ.  He didn't really bite on the idea that I was going back to mine and I ended up trading him Linebreaker for Linebreaker.  On the other hand, if I had fallen back towards my DZ, I'd have probably still given up linebreaker and not gotten it back.  That wouldn't have mattered in the end though because the relic + the warlord point still wins, unless the fact that by doing what I did, I basically took his first ironclad out of play would have made a difference.  Losing Azrael sucked and I don't think he;ll be in a rhino again.  Maybe a drop pod.

 

Anyway, hope this was enteraining and if you have any tactical opr strategic observations, please feel free to kick them in a response.

 

 

[AngelVeto]

From reading this, the one thing that stood out was your jink save against the overwatching melta gun. You cannot take cover saves against overwatch fire... The rest seemed like a really good match. I've always wanted to play an all drop pod army, as it's a rather fluffy space marine list.

[march10k]

Ravenwing look like WIN when playing the relic...Great survivability, the ability to grab the rock and run with it, and scout to get there first.  Of course, against a DS-based list, it rarely matters how fast you are, they can still land something on your head and shoot you down, but it's still among the best ways to play the relic.

[Master Avoghai]

From reading this, the one thing that stood out was your jink save against the overwatching melta gun. You cannot take cover saves against overwatch fire... The rest seemed like a really good match. I've always wanted to play an all drop pod army, as it's a rather fluffy space marine list.

P21 it states that the overwatching shoots use the same rules as for normal shooting including cover.

 

 

I think that you were actually right to get the 1st turn. That way you were able to scout + turbo boost at turn 1 so that you get close to the relic AND can claim for a 4+ jink save.

 

The only thing I'd say is that :

 

Hammernators are no more the way to go in v6. I prefer taking 4SB and one TH/SS (on the CML in case my opponent manage to place a plasma gun close to him)

I always keep the AB in reserve and outflank it. It protects it from an easy 1st blood point and allow me to put a scoring unit in the enemy's DZ. It's always a pain for the opponent to be force to deal with a 65pts unit in his DZ that is mobile and with a serious AT firepower...

[[TA]Typher]

Did you know that you can move the relic on turn one? Well you can. Deploy your bikes so they can reach the relic in the movement phase. You take possesion of it at the END of the movement phase, them turbo boost 6 inches in the shooting phase. The rules state that you can't move

More that 6" inches with the relic and states that you can't "run". It says nothing about turbo boosting.

 

It's cheap, but legal.

[AngelVeto]

Well damn, why did I think you couldn't take cover saves on over watch? I'll have to check that out when I get home, thanks for that.

[Isiah]

Awesome batrep that isn't a batrep ;).

 

Seriously the number of times a lone surviving DW brother has lived to claim or contest an objective has never ceased to amaze me. It's what they're designed for don't you know <_<.

 

Just goes to show how a well played multiwing and greenwing list can do. The mix of units and special abilities being stronger than the sum of its parts.

 

It was a great read - thanks for posting.

 

Cheers

I

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

I realized I could move 6" with it every phase, but I didn't think of turbo boosting it.  I should have.

 

I also felt the biker's toughness also offset the bolter drill.He seemed to routinely hit with 17 or 18 out of twenty shots, but then he had to roll 5's to wound.  One turn there, he shot a lot of drop pod storm bolters at the RW squad with the relic.  He killed 2 of 6 (granted the pods don't have bolter drill). 

 

We're both still experimenting with our lists.  I'm trying to figure out how to work Azrael in better because I need both the Ravenwing and Deathwing to be scoring.

 

He's trying to work out the best composition for his pods.  This time he was going for maximum scoring units.  Previously, he has run a couple 10 man Sternguard in the place of some of the tacticals.  He felt he really missed the Sternguard, but we both noted that for this kind of mission, having more scoring units really didn't help him.  If we had been playing the Scouring, it could have been much more beneficial to have those scoring units.

 

I ran assault terminators because those are the models I have.  I'm working on more shooty ones.  Actually, for the last month, I've been painting some DWK, next are some RBK and then maybe the shooting terminators.  Since I average about 5 models every 1.5 months, it's slow going.  The squad I've been thining about is a pair of TH/SS (one with CML), 1 PF/SB, 1 CF/SB, and 1 LC.  It still doesn't optimize the first turn shooting, but it seems like a good all-rounder to assault almost anything.  I also could swap out the CF/SB for a CF/PC and drop the CML.  I kind of want the two storm shields for a couple reasons: Often I have incoming AT fire from two directions and I like the redundancy.  Likewise, I like the killyness of the LCs, especially if I can mix it up with a dev squad or some tacticals.  The assault squads I ran Saturday were 2 TH/SS and 3 LC with a CML but this is really almost too killy.  The thing I'd drop is the PW/SB sergeants.

 

As an aside, does anyone know if there is a rule for mashing through the wall of a ruin.  I could swear I've seen one, but we could not find it.

[Brother Moridius]

Thanks for sharing the batrep, was a good read. Couple of questions/notes, is your opponent able to have nothing on the field? i thought that you could only put half the army in reserve in 6th. And for the drop pod in the narrow space, those always move over dont they, so he didnt have any chance of a mishap unless there was literally no room for it. Either way congratulations on the close win! those are are always more fun in the end

[NCSUWolf]

sweet write-up first off. The power of a lone survivor knows no bounds!

 

Id keep Azzy with the cmnd squad for now but maneuver them so, if the need/opportunity arises, you can jump him to a termi sqad. 4++ on non-SS termies isnt anything to sneeze at and neither is Azzy's cc ability (though that does leave the cmnd squad a bit more vulnerable so I wouldnt recommend it unless you saw the banner not lasting either from incomming fire or an imminent assault).

 

As to your question about charging through a ruin wall, it's treated like any difficult terrain: 3d6, drop the highest, swing at I1(unless you have assault grenades or othwise ignore terrain I.e. wraiths, beasts, etc)

[Interrogator Stobz]

Great Batrep!!!

I had a similar game vs Tau where only Azzy, a lone DW termie holding the Relic hid inside a Landraider turns 5 and 6 while the Tau wiped every other model I had off the table. Love AV14 once the right enemy units have been destroyed or neutralised.

 

Just thought I'd add: You can't drop the PS/SB DW Sgt, he is stuck with that loadout due to a crap FAQ wording.

 

More batreps please...

 

:D

stobz

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

 

As to your question about charging through a ruin wall, it's treated like any difficult terrain: 3d6, drop the highest, swing at I1(unless you have assault grenades or othwise ignore terrain I.e. wraiths, beasts, etc)

 

Do you have a BRB page for that rule?

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

Thanks for sharing the batrep, was a good read. Couple of questions/notes, is your opponent able to have nothing on the field? i thought that you could only put half the army in reserve in 6th. And for the drop pod in the narrow space, those always move over dont they, so he didnt have any chance of a mishap unless there was literally no room for it. Either way congratulations on the close win! those are are always more fun in the end

 

As I understand it:

 

When you are working up the half your army calculation, you don't count anything that HAS TO deploy in reserve.  In other words, you drop out anything that must deploy in reserves and then must put half of what's left on the table.  Drop pods have to deploy in reserve and cannot start on the table.  Thus if your whole army is in pods, it all HAS TO start in reserves and nothing starts on the table.  If even one thing had not been a flyer or a pod, it would have had to have started on the table.

 

Drop pods that go off the table do mishap I believe.  Dangerous terrain, enemy units, all that stops their movement without mishap.  But going off the table is a different.  Mind you, he plays his pods fairly aggressively and is not afraid to thread the needle, but this time he kind of had to do it.   I had gotten the relic away from him and behind cover.  He didn't have anything around to pick it up or even slow me down and at the time it was in the possession of 4 bikers with 4 terminators right next door.  He HAD to put the Ironclad where it could clock my movement away from his pods and his remaining tactical marines and that meant he had to drop about 2 inches from the table edge.

 

I'll try to do a proper battle report next time since everyone seems to enjoy this one so much.  I just never remember to take pictures at the end of every player's turn which I need to do for a proper report.

[NCSUWolf]

 

As to your question about charging through a ruin wall, it's treated like any difficult terrain: 3d6, drop the highest, swing at I1(unless you have assault grenades or othwise ignore terrain I.e. wraiths, beasts, etc)

 

Do you have a BRB page for that rule?

pg 22 "Charging Through Difficult Terrain"

"Roll the 3d6, drop the highest"

"If at least one model in the charging unit moves through difficult terrain as part of its charge move, all of the unit's models must attack at I1"

 

Pg 98/99

"All Ruins are difficult terrain..."

 

Walls, Doors, Ladders and Lateral Thinking

"Should troops be able to move through walls if there is no door? That's really down to what you and your opponent decide. It's perfectly acceptable to assume the combatants on both sides have brought plenty of cutting tools... (the tournament scene typically accepts that walls do NOT require a door or other opening explicitly to pass through as models represent things like Terminators and Power-Fists to deal with pesky obstacles)"

 

Pg 101 Ruins and Assaults

"a model is engaged in combat if it is in base contact with one or more enemy models, if it's within 2" of a friendly model in base, or if it's within 6" of a friendly model in base with one or more enemy model on a different level"

 

 

So, strictly speaking if your opponent/TO does not state that one can pass through ruin walls without entering a door/window/opening, then that's that. But the rules in the BRB do leave that up to the players/TO choice (the store I play at generally plays that you can and thus I was so used to it I didn't realize there was an option to do otherwise >.<)

 

 

 

 

Oh, on the topic of Drop-pods: Yes, if the entire army is using a drop-pod then the entire army must be in reserve through deployment (the Pod player doesn't auto lose unless they have no models on the table at the end of the GAME turn (not player turn))

 

And they auto mis-hap if they scatter off of the table edge but "Inertial Thrusters" allow them to avoid mis-haps if they scatter onto a building/unit(friendly or foe), forcing them to land as close as possible to the scattered location (i.e. 1" away from an enemy, against the nearest passable edge of a building, next to the outermost allied model of the unit they would have scattered onto).

[Brother Moridius]

Thanks for the clarifications brothers, always good to learn more about the rules.

 

I second Stobz, more batreps! and with pictures, everybody loves pictures