Prot's Quickie Batrep: AdMech vs Dark Angels 2K (Pics)

[Prot]

Hey guys,

A quick batrep I want to do up for my last AdMech game.

The Game:

Maelstrom: One of the Chapter Approved missions where you have to draw 3 cards, and you must complete them before the beginning of your next turn or they are discarded. This makes movement a real key element of the mission I find. And it's not something my Admech are awesome at... too much sand in the joints.

My List:

- As you can see I opted for a Knight. I was tired of having pace dictated to me by my opponents. I feel it's one of my least favourite parts of Admech. In the past I had used a lot of Jazz Hands priests to counter that and fight for some of my own board control, along with Sicarian Infiltrators. Today I went with the beef option: Knight Crusader, pretty loaded.

-Cawl

-Dominus

-Tech Priest

2 x Rangers with Arquebus

1 x 10 Vanguard with 2 x Plasma Cavaliers, taser dude.(had the points)

Dunecrawler

Dunecrawler

2 Kastelan Robots with Phospher Blasters

Datasmith

2 x dragoons

5 Sicarian Infiltrators (not show above).

Knight Crusader: Avenger/Ironstorm Missiles,/ Battle Cannon / Very large feet.

Dark Angels:

- Mostly a very, very shooty list:

- Azrael

Lt.

- 5 Helblasters

- Pred Annihilator

- 3 x Ven Dread: dual las/missiles

- 2 x 10 Tacticals with special weapons

- 5 scouts w/Shotguns

- Dev squad Plasma/Las

- Squad of BlackKnights w/plasmatalons

- Dark Talon (really good flyer for the points)

The Dark Angel player just came off a great win against a soupy chaos/renegade list with a lot of shooty/forgeworld units so I didn't know what to expect. He has a LOT of high quality shooting, all with re-rolls thanks to Azrael, and the infantry is getting a 4++ invuln from him as well.

Deployment:

+++ We are playing corner to corner, and I get lucky with first turn. I always deploy to go second so I had my Knight outside of 48" of his Lascannons. In this picture I had finished my movement.

- My cards were bad, but I had 'kill a character'. If you can see I set up my Arquebus' for a crossfire on Azrael. He couldn't hide from both, and I had first turn so both got to shoot at Azrael, and I managed to take a few wounds off.

- I felt this would be a short, violent game because we both had the potential to rip a lot of armour apart. I got VERY lucky and my Dunecrawlers both had 3 shots, and ripped through his Flyer netting me first blood.

- The advancement of the Vanguard left them sitting at mid, but my other card gave me an easy objective squatting in the middle. The Knight did very little. I decided to poke at some Dreads, and one is left with one wound, but other than that I decided to go after the Devastator squad because of the high damage potential of the Las/plasma there, and really the Knight is kitted for anti Infantry. Kastelans plink some infantry, but can't touch all that armour so are fairly ineffective.

- Also I go up with my Dragoons, and infiltrate my Sicarians.... I lay down "Wrath of Mars" and get 3 Mortal wounds on the Black Knights, and 4 normal wounds which he saves.... not a great return, but I take it. I fail all charges.

- I manage to take a 2-0 lead.

Dark Angels:

- He's down a Flyer, and 5 of his Devs, and I think I got one dread, and a good piece of the Black Knights. So he juggles the Pred, and starts firing back, but his army list is largely static... this is new to me as I typically am avoiding close contact with my opponents, but I'm happy to see he's content in his zone. However, it's built that way so the shooting starts....

- Even with all the remaining Las, he ignores the Knight (I don't think it was a huge threat to him) and he goes after the Dunecrawlers. Sure enough I make some darn good invulns, and he gets unlucky on wound rolls. Yet with weight of dice I do take a pile of wounds on one Dunecrawler.... down to 3 wounds!

+ Sicarians survive overwatch, and the Dunecrawler is charged.

- Not shown: the bikes charged the Dragoons and kill one. It's okay.... I still have one and he laces into the remaining two bikes along with the Sicarians and I get really lucky here.

- He manages a few points, but he's starting to feel the results of my very lucky first turn....

Admech Turn 2:

- Admittedly this is a big turn for me. The canticles result in me being in cover, and having ONE Dark bike stuck in close combat with my Dunecrawler the other Canticle is the one where I roll and on a 6 cause a mortal wound... I tell my opponent Cawl will NOT adjust this number because I wish to troll him and kill his last wound on his last bike in this cheesy manner.... I roll a 6!!! The Bike is dead and my opponent can only roll his eyes at my cheesy luck.

- The Knight positions for a ton of firepower and takes the Helblasters down to 2 models, but it took a lot of firepower through that 4++ save bubble.

- The Vanguard clean up the Devs, and his flanks are now heavily severed. His movement is hampered by this giving me a lot of freedom of movement for Maelstrom cards which I take advantage of and score a couple of points.

- The Kastelans change protocols from Aegis to Protector (but that won't take effect until T3). However they do kill some scouts... they were a bit disappointing this game.

- The Dreadnoughts have to go and the Cawl combination with the Neutron Laser Dunecrawlers is devastating this turn taking a Dread and the Predator out.

- At this point my Sicarians are closing in on his green wing bubble wrap, and the Dunecrawler is on fire.... I have a stellar roll with my special Bolter and Chainsword dice:

+ 6's mean +2 hits each! +

= This roll puts down a lot of the bubble wrap so for turn 3 this leaves Azrael exposed.....

+ Cawl looks on longingly at his lovely creation... the Hellblaster plasma gun. He asks the Knight to retrieve one for his personal collection.... +

- In Dark Angels turn 3 I lose a slightly repaired Dunecrawler but it takes everything he has left.... Azrael comes out of the back lines to clock my last Dragoon.

- At this point the Dark Angels concede. It was hard fought but I think this game was decided turn 1. We both had very destructive lists, and my opening salvo put him at too big a disadvantage. With no real assault threat this gave me a lot of room and he didn't have the foot print to push me back.

- The Knight was a good... 546 points I believe. He was quite mediocre. I don't think he earned his points back... I'm pretty sure of that. Cawl was good, not sure if he was so good to be 'auto include' in this type of list, but again I think the fact a Dark Angel list was trying to outshoot me helped me although those Helblasters with the Dark Angels' Strategem do 3 damage. I had to take them out early.

Thanks for checking this out!

[Charlo]

Nice rep as always mate.

 

In terms of the Knight, did you think it did enough in terms of tank firepower/ prevent movement/ anything else other than raw killing power?

 

Lance Dragoons seem just so bloody good... SO good. I need some.

[Prot]

Thank you.

 

The Knight didn't kill near enough for its points. But to be truthful one of the main reasons I brought him was to challenge masses of infantry trying to assault my gunlines. My Cawl Wall always suffers from that so I thought the Knight would be a good change to try. I never know who I'm playing before the game, so in this case it wasn't a great choice.

[synthaside]

Morning Prot, glad to see you doing well, I've played against the heavy weapons castle of Dark angels myself, did he not have the horrible -1 to hit flier ( Darkshroud)
That thing combined with the 4+ save really ruined my day when I fought them, admittedly this was before the FAQ change on Azreal's 4+ save no longer buffing vehicles.


Personally, I see cawl and a knight as a bit of a mismatched combo if im going to splash around 1/4 of my points on cawl a buffing unit which while is a bit tasty at range 12, is basically going to sit in my back lines  and make all my Shooty stuff  " better" , As such If im taking him I want to make the most of him, taking units that really benefit from canticles and the to hit re-roll , Breachers , Destroyers  kastalans , Onagers  and Rangers with Big Ass sniper rifles ;-)  

The knight gets neither benefit, as he doesn't get canticles unless you pay for it with CP and  to get your points back on a knight he really should be charging up the table  using that big movement and stomping on units  ,  He has no role sitting next to cawl  as he  does not, have the " mars keyword"  so doesn't get any re-rolls from cawl.

I think this is a bit of a missed synergy from our List, it makes the knights feel like they aren't actually part of our forces and discourages me using them, I will also admit I find the knights lacklustre bull magnets and a bit too pricey to take in most games.

I just don't get the feeling they can kill off 500 points of stuff  in the same way as 3 more Onagers or 500 points of anything else in our list could do.

[Vel'Cona]

I wonder if it's even possible for DA players to NOT take Azrael these days.  Seems like an auto-include unless they're doing some Deathwing/Ravenwing shenanigans.  Still, great batrep and I'm inclined to agree that IK just don't bring back their points like they did in their halcyon early release days (when noone could deal with them because AV was borked).

[Prot]

I completely agree guys.

 

Synth: Thanks, I agree there is a missed opportunity there in the codex with Knights a bit, especially with Cawl. And you're right, there is no inner synergy there with Cawl.

 

As both of you noted, the Knight does not, never has (in 8th) really worked for me as a solo unit (I here in "knight" lists when you have 3+ they work better, but I don't know first hand if that's true).

 

The thing is the Knight buys me real estate. Like I said in my batrep I don't know who I'm playing before hand, but one of my biggest challenges is Maelstrom and getting some board coverage that doesn't fade, or become utterly useless.

 

My thinking was the Knight is capable of getting ahead of my Cawl-Wall and meeting up with 30 Orks, or a wad of Genestealers, he can leave CC, and keep the rest of the army functioning. But as a whole, no he never came too close to earning his 450~ points back. :)

 

Cawl was in there because.... well because I just painted him and haven't included him in my latest lists. I love how he turned out. AdMech is such a challenge for me to make look interesting, so I'm particularly happy with how he turned out. I plan to field him as much as I can.

 

I'm so ready for the Warglaive.... I really REALLY hope these have Mechanicus keywords!

 

Thanks for reading the batrep.

[DanPesci]

Nice bat Rep,

 

Interesting to see how you fared now that Azrael doesn't give his 4++ to vehicles, the last 2 games against my mates darkangels he played this type of castle list....but it was pre codex and so all his preds/dreads ALSO had a 4++ inv which made things pretty tough going.

 

Being able to actually drop dreadnoughts/predators in one turn of shooting is going to be much easier going

[synthaside]

Personally I think Cawl is a great include, I love running him in games he makes my backfield compete with double firing ,lemon Russ’s (intentional) but so many players end up being mars gun line, but just sticking him with my 3 Onager and 2 dakka bots he makes his points back most games on canticles and re-rolls  .
 

I do agree we suck at moving up field, we could be so much more dynamic with a fast scouting unit such as a flier or a transport.  In my games if I were to run a knight he would need to be up in the middle of the field re-capturing objectives held by the opponents troops .

I hope the "diet" knight will bring us this ability at a discount rate ,  at the moment I’m trying to do this with dragoons  , infiltrators  and Vanguard spam but compared to Scout or units in actual transports , we really need a speed boost.

[synthaside]

@ Danpesci .... yeah there's nothing enjoyable  about,  Shooting 2 Neutron lasers, and an Icarus array at a target and not be able to actually put any damage on it
because of -1 to  hto hit and re-rollable 4+ saves  >.<  

[MithrilForge]

Great Batrep Prot,

Thanks for writing it up and the Pics are nice, ...Gee your army really looks great on the board, Cawl is stunning (as i probably have already said somewhere else  )

your knight looks awesomesauce too  did your opponent mention how he felt /reacted to the knight and how did it affect his tactical choices?...sometimes even though a unit doesn't make "it's Points Back" it still may tactically affect/impact the game...

i understand your reasoning for taking it even though technically it doesn't "Synergise"  with the rest ...we need to take calculated risks sometimes with unit choices   

 

have not played Dark angels in years...how were they?, i always had a soft spot for a marine gunline army from the old days.

 

Cheers, Mithril 

[Prot]

Thanks!

 

His list was deadly. The new Dark Angels firebase is extremely potent imo. It's better than what Ultra's can do for example (without Guilliman) on the cheap because of the extended use of recycling CP's, re-roll misses, and that 4++ bubble is insanely good, and... annoying!

 

He just took on a pretty beefy Chaos soup/renegade list so I really didn't know what to expect.

 

The Knight was okay, but I kept it way back to start because if he got first turn it was almost assuredly dead. I think when I got first turn, moved it up, and unloaded he immediately noted it was no threat compared to the Dunecrawlers. (and he noted he hates the Kastelans).

 

I think that was a smart move on his part. My luck was in tearing apart so much armour in T1. I had to do it though and risk the Helbasters, and Devs in the next turn. :)