Out of my Comfort Zone Batrep: Stormraven High Jinks (pics)

[Prot]

This was... THE GAME!

So I did play Astra in this game. And I realize saying the list above is 'out of my comfort zone' sounds stupid. BUT in my defense I have grown addicted to Draigo. He's fun as heck and after watching Belial, Kranon, Sammael, etc fall to something like a stupid little ork with a claw so heavy he can barely lift it, is refreshing.

Also, since playing Ultramarines, I really did not have much love for the Stormraven as pods always filled the roll more efficiently (while potentially getting ObSec) and for the flyer part, I actually really enjoy using 1 or 2 Stormtalons.

SO we played Maelstrom with a house rule: Anything that could not be completed at the start of the game is immediately discarded for a free replacement card. We are deploying diagonally.

Early Game:

+I win the roll to go first, and I take it... I do get Gate on one Libby so he joins a Termie squad and deploys on table, very deep in my zone out of LOS. I also deploy the 2 NDKs, and the 6 man Interceptor squad.

I hold back the combat squaded Purifiers in the Stormraven, and the libby with 5 Termies that does not have Gate.

Oddly enough both Libbies got Vortex which was looking so good for this opponent.

+ My opponent deploys.... he has been playing Astra since 3rd, and really enjoys them. He's done really well with them, but he's trying a slightly different list for him. He actually pulls out my most hated device: The Deathstrike. I can tell you with my Dark Angels he has ended games in one shot with it. (after I came down with Belial and 15 Terminators, he got the shot off, it is an Apoc blast, and he deviated inbetween all 3 squads, killing 12 Termies... GG!)

He also had old standby's.... Pask w/Preferrred enemy in... the Punisher of course. And a Plasma Executioner with plasma side turrets. A command squad with a platoon of 3 lascannons, a 3 lascannon Sentinel squad, 30 conscripts with a priest. Another Chimera with Vets, a Scion Deep strike special weapon squad, and a Vendetta gun ship....oh and he had a Hydra tank in the back. (those things are actually really annoying... especially if you're eldar/crons).

(This is most of his deployment. As usual, hugging the back corner.)

Game Start:

+ So I see him deploy, and look at my tiny army on the table... wow. I do get my Termie squad in reserves on the table in turn 1! The stick their landing. I get an objective that requires a point on his side of the table which is held by ObSec units....

I shunt up the interceptors to challenge his Lascannon team hiding in a bush. I shunt up one Dreadknight, and jump up the second one towards the objective I need.

Here's where perhaps I get greedy. In the psychic phase, I chose the squad with gate at the back of the table to gate in, close enough to three enemy squads to use Cleansing Flame on what I am hoping is at least 2 of them. I calculate a 10" variable for error.... I roll 10" on scatter.... ouch.... landing my Deep Strike just inside of my other Termie squad which just arrived! I roll a 1 as a Mishap result... all dead! First blood for my opponent! AND I give him 390 points in turn 1!

My small army, just got a little smaller. I'm looking at all the crud on his side of the table... it's ugly.

(I misshap with the best of them. That hole in the centre is where they die.)

+ The Dreadknight ignore the failure of their brethren and press on. Incinerators, and Psycannons punch holes through vets, blow up a chimera, and kill 5 additional conscripts. This scores me a couple of points.

+ His turn he's got a lot of firepower, and he's laughing because really, I'm effectively playing about 1450 to his 1850... but his shooting does not go well.... thankfully I make a lot of Saves this turn. The Interceptors are shot about 3.2 billion times, and I only save half of the rolls. lol

+ He has objective cars that point to objectives on my side of the table... he elects to wait for reserves...

Turns 2-3:

+ My Stormraven doesn't come in. I manage to fend off an assault from his conscripts into my dreadknight (He had a priest and felt that with re-rolling to wound, and re-rolling all misses, he would have done more wounds... I fail one save though.) This might have been a big mistake for him.

+ The lascannons are having trouble getting a bead on me. I have to bounce one NDK back to my zone for a point, and to defend.... as I know he has some markers in my zone... sure enough some of his Deep Strikers come in from reserve, they snag a victor point from one marker. I know he wants the other one...I get the NDK in his way and flame them to smell bacon like bitz first.

+ My Stormraven comes in! It has had enough of the Pask command squadron of tanks blasting me to bitz.... but I need to get rid of the flak tank first, and unload into it with the twin Assault Cannons... it requires missile shots to finish off. Potms fires off the MM at the rear of Pask's tank.... I get a pen on the rear armour but we agree I am above a forest line giving him enough for a 25% cover save of 5+... he makes it! D'oh. This could have been a stellar turning point.

+ His other reserves fail to come in. He has one psyker I forgot about giving Prescience to the lascannon sentinels... I keep denying it.... Nevertheless he uses his lascannon sentinels to attempt to take down the Stormraven.

+ the NDK is free of the assaulters with assistance of my remaining Terminators. One of the NDK's goes down to a ton of Pask rending shots from the Punisher...I just can't save them all and the odd thing is with the current assaults going on and all my dead units, he only has that as a shooting target! So it took a LOT of firepower.

+ he is finally grabbing points, but I have a stellar 4 point turn by finally grabbing a 2 point objective, and succesfully casting 3 psychic powers for a point.... Then he gets the Deathstrike off... still with only one target, the Deathstrike deviates and gets 2 Terminators pulverised.

+ I have 3 termies left, and the Libby. I've had enough of the tanks and plasma, and I set off a vortex!. It gets a bullseye over his plasma executioner and I get 3 Hullpoints! Boom! I can feel Pask wetting his pants now...

+ the Stormraven hovers, 2 Purifier squads get out. I get off 2 casts of Cleansing Flame. His psyker is hiding behind Pask's tank which is.... right in front of me. The Psyker can't deny Cleansing Flame and incinerates for his failure.

Cleansing Flame, combined from both squads kills 5 guys on a hill, takes a hull point off the rear armour of Pasks tank, and kills 2 Lascannon sentinels by taking off 4 Hullpoints. I assault Pask's Tank and it takes a Purifier hammer in the tailpipe for a Warlord kill.

+ The tables have officially turned. His Vendetta automatically comes in. He fires away at the second NDK which is badly wounded.... But we forget... the Vortex has to move! We roll 2D6, it comes off the wreckage of the Plasma tank, and lands on 2 of my Terminators! Killing them both, leaving just my Libby alive! Wow... that hurt.

+ the Stormraven goes back to flightmode, and almost takes down the vendetta which Jinks. My Librarian sets off hammer hand, rushes the command Platoon Chimera and smashes the hull with his Stave + Hammerhand. The command squad fails a pin check, giving me another Maelstrom point.

END GAME:

+ This game is total destruction... except the stars of the game, the Purifiers. They march on to the pinned command squad and roast them. The other 5 grab an objective. My opponent does get 2 more points with his hovering Vendetta, but he then concedes as that's all he's got left. Before he calls it, he points his Vendetta at my Librarian who takes a lascannon to the face and give up Warlord.

+ It was a super close game, about 10 to 8. We're both fairly destroyed, but Grey Knights pull it off with some last turn heroics from the mid game Stormraven and Purifiers.

NOTES:

+ Oddly enough the Purifiers coming in turn 3 was best. Playing Maelstrom he couldn't afford to sit back, and he had to move something... this gave my Purifiers a small opening to disembark, and multi Cleanse, multi assault. We both agreed this was the game turning event. Because in total...

+ I gave my opponent about 550 pts between my Misshap and my Vortex scatter! It was fun. I had to laugh when I blew my guys up because I knew better than to hand around the Vortex, but I was forced to press forward because he would have shot me to death otherwise. Vortex is fun... but unpredictable.

Thanks for reading!

[Zembar]

Purifiers kick some serious behind once you get them where they need to be. If they got deep strike or PTs I would marry them.

 

Great battle report!

[varchilde]

Great report Prot. Thanks for sharing.

[Prot]

Purifiers kick some serious behind once you get them where they need to be. If they got deep strike or PTs I would marry them.

 

Great battle report!

 

Yea I can see why you say that. Subtle model paint job change, big implications though. I think if they would have come in on turn 2, I wouldn't have been as succesful... seriously.

 

 

Great report Prot. Thanks for sharing.

 

Thank you for reading it.

[Arufel87]

Once again a stellar report. Do you see yourself making purifiers a permanent addition?

[Reclusiarch Darius]

Very nice man. And yeah, it's a judgement call about when to dump your cargo out of the Raven. You made the right call and it paid off massively. 

[Prot]

Once again a stellar report. Do you see yourself making purifiers a permanent addition?

 

Thank you... Purifiers were so good in this game. I literally thought in turn 3 just saying, 'hey I'll concede and let's try to get another game in.' I had squat on the table between my misshap into the warp and my vortex boomerang. I feel the harder I throw that thing, the faster it comes back!

 

So I was cautiously trying to kite his tanks, almost dead, pulling him off his back line, then these guys come in, and just rake him. I mean the beautiful thing about the Stormraven is that the opponent can't react to them coming out. I know it would be the same in a Landraider, but still this is cheaper, and comes with a darn good armament. 

 

It's really expensive, but it's definitely staying in the list for a while. I have to keep it for a while... they saved the day. Titan will hear about these dudes! (unless the Librarian fudges it and pretends his Vortex did all the work. lol )

 

Very nice man. And yeah, it's a judgement call about when to dump your cargo out of the Raven. You made the right call and it paid off massively. 

 

Thank you. A little bit of luck and a lot of desperation goes a long way!

[Aethernitas]

Just came to say that your Vortexes.. Vortexi...whatever the plural is - yours are scary. Everytime I read one of your batreps those vortex templates just wreck face left and right :D

[Grand Master Caloth]

I believe it's Vortices, like the plural of codex is codices.

 

Wicked game tho, would've loved to have been an observer on this one! Well played

[SyNidus]

Love the batrep, love the game! Thank you for being the brave soul to test it out. I've been thinking about running it too but I'm not sure about a few things.

 

1. How did you find the list's mobility compared to your usual shunt list?

2. How is the anti-tank in this list?

3. Do you have any tips for someone contemplating this list?

[Prot]

I believe it's Vortices, like the plural of codex is codices.

Wicked game tho, would've loved to have been an observer on this one! Well played

- I can hardly watch my own games. lol

Yea it was so weird this one, because after I really pooched myself with the misshap I thought GG. But the fat lady hadn't sung yet.

Just came to say that your Vortexes.. Vortexi...whatever the plural is - yours are scary. Everytime I read one of your batreps those vortex templates just wreck face left and right

- Strange but true. I think every game in the last 3 weeks(?) I've rolled up Vortex. There's always a situation where I think... what the heck, I'm going for it... and like I said I'm sure my Vortexes? Vortexi? Vortices? Are set to 'boomerang' mode.

Love the batrep, love the game! Thank you for being the brave soul to test it out. I've been thinking about running it too but I'm not sure about a few things.

1. How did you find the list's mobility compared to your usual shunt list?

2. How is the anti-tank in this list?

3. Do you have any tips for someone contemplating this list?

1. No issues what so ever with mobility *but rolling at least one Gate on the 2 libbies was HUGE. The bigger problem for me was numbers on the table vs. such a shoot opponent with nearly full LoS on the that table (I often had cover, but with nearly 5++ across the models, who cares?). The lack of models allowed him fire focus really well. I had to use intervening terrain as much as possible.

2. Anti-tank felt almost entirely up to Hammer Handed Staves, Termie Hammers, and the 2 NDKs. Not good, not bad. If you can get into one tank and wack it, it's like domino's though.... they're often together right. :)

3. Tips? I'd say number one is get into them for a long fight in close combat for protection. TRY to plan to wipe them out in their turn (or Gate). Tip 2: Use the terminators to 'sucker' or 'lure' the movement pattern of the shooty opponent (Astra). This mild manipulation allows valuable placement of the Stormraven payload. (He moved to get better fire arc's on my Termies. In doing so, he left a nice wedge for me to get behind, and once I was in there with Purifiers he could not recover from that mistake.

Thank you for reading!