Konor Week 1: Prot's Astramis Mega-miniBatrep (some pics)

[Prot]

Game 1 started rough:

I took a typical list but I did not want to use Guilliman, so I used Calgar.

The list had done well for me in the past, but I faced a fast moving Tzeentch list... very typical. Fateweaver, LoC, horror Spam, and the changeling to give -1 to hit all Tzeentch Daemons within 9".

So this renders all my high AP relatively useless... nothing I could do about, but going first gave me a good look at how hard it is to punch through those daemons and larger chaos models with 4 up invulns and a 'hard to hit' aura.

Here was my set up..... this game didn't go too far though, and I'm pretty sure that's a good thing.

We ended up calling the game as the Astramis battle was about to start....

A super quick overview:

Imperium is defending. We had way too many Imperial players. Chaos and Xenos had to double up on points and the Imperium players kept having to reduce theirs til we were down to 1K each. I think more players wanted to play unfortunately they were all imperial and it was already a little lopsided. We had one marine player on the other side with 'black primaris' to help chaos and he was comfortable playing either side.

- I set up a firebase with another Ultramarines player (silver). Using the Lt. aura and Calgar proved quite deadly.

- It was pure mayhem, lots of fun. We had one guy who brought a massive flyer detachment. He won our 'warlord' but I have to be honest I was a little disappointed..He had some amazing models but his big flying fortess went down in one turn. This actually changed the out come of the game imo.

- Chaos had to get into our zone (24" out). Imperium stole the initiative and there was some audible moaning as Imperium went to work.

- Our firebase was good, but even at 1,000 points Calgar is a bit tough to make functional, plus I gave one of our players 50 of my points for his flyers to make it legal....

- Tyranids were darn fast, and so are the Tzeentch flying daemons. Zombies and a Nurgle DP (giving Warp Time to zombies) came at us pretty fast. Our fire power volume was very good but it kept us too occupied, and we couldn't focus down larger threats.

- The big bomber came in and it did amazingly little. The owning player admitted horrible rolling. When he was picking out targets we discussed where best to fire everything (this is T2) and on paper it sounded VERY destructive.... and it was potentially very destructive but sometimes the dice just don't care. :)

- His other flyers were immediately attacked by Nid flying creatures. Me and the other Ultra player took a few of them down (or just finished them off) and gave him some breathing room but the flyer wing was heavily focused down.

- In the turn it came out, the big flyer was brought down by a metric ton of Helblaster fire eventually. (I always thought he did fly it too close to the heavy fire power but I think he was hoping he'd wipe more of it out).

- Our flanks were heavily overloaded as they obviously tried to avoid our firebase.

- On the far left of the table Magnus was roaring in. A lot was going on here, and Astra was dishing out a lot but also taking a lot... losing tanks to Magnus.

- Ravenguard rolled in and waited for Magnus to finish a tank, it looked REALLY touch and go for a while. I think the Ravenguard player was very confident rolling in with Shrike and all these dudes, but he rolled horridly in the first turn. Magnus interrupted and split his attacks, nearly killing Shrike, and a few marines. The Ravenguard would take him down though.

- In the upper left corner the big nid Bug would go down, and I deep striked some Inceptors into that deep corner and took down a squad of Lascannons.

- Back to the center I could see our right flank collapsing so I suggested we start rolling to the left to reinforce the Ravenguard/Astra. The Astra/flyers on my right side were slowly losing the battle to Chaos bikers, Primaris (chaos) and Nids. I tried to reinforce it but it was time to pull back...

- A slow retreat was in order. Nids went down, but so did this flyer, and a lot of the Astra was a little too close to the Chaos lines for my liking...

- We did get a good deal of killpoints. The Center Zombie rush did reach me, but they were all wiped, but the Helblasters rapid fired into Typhus causing a bunch of overcharged wounds but he saved every one of them! So close to another warlord kill, but it would have to wait a turn. (I wanted to see if he could reach me, because we did kill the Nurgle DP and it would be a Typhus VS. Calgar stand off which I was looking forward to.)

- Unfortunately the third turn would be our last, and I'd never get a shot at Typhus in CC.

Since the Imperium needed to get kill points we were stuck at ~20 Kill points. All the Chaos side did was 'advance' (knowing it was going to be last turn with the store closing) and Chaos pulled out a win by getting ~26 units into our zone.

I think we needed one more turn, but then again Chaos was starting to breach our lines in close combat where things can go sideways. I did note they had a great deal of models with 1-2 wounds left which would have been huge for us in T4.

It was a really fun game, and you can never take these things too seriously. The point is getting your stuff painted, scored, and having a some fun rolling dice. The game went off really well the only problem being the gluttony of Imperial players makes it very hard to even the numbers up.

I am considering flopping sides for the rest of the campaign... but my Redemptors just came in! lol

Great time was had by all. I hope you guys managed to get some games in... personally I feel gamed out as I had 3 games and this multi hour game this weekend. :)