Prot's Quickie Batrep: White Scars vs. Votann (Pics)

[Prot]

First off I have limited time, but I since I took some pictures I thought I could just run down my last game quickly.

 

Unfortunately I do not have my models entirely painted, and had to proxy some of the Aggressors, but the list looked something like this:

-Khan

-LT.

-Libby

-Chappy on Bike

- Apothecary

- Incursors / - Assault Intercessors

- 5 Aggressors

- 5 Bladeguard

- Warsuit

- 3 Outriders

- 2 ATV's (MM)

- Thunderstrike (?) Speeder

- Eliminators with Lasfusil 

- Repulsor (!)

- 3 Eradicators (vanilla)

 

We played Secure missing artifacts. I couldn't tell you the entirety of the Votann list, but I know he 'held back' as he was not using Berzker type units, and had only 2 of their Terminator equivalents. Still the whole army (as usual) felt like an 'anti marine' force. (Tons of AP-2, S5+ , 2 D)

 

I should apologize here because as usual I completely forgot to take a picture of the entire table top from top down. 

 

Anyway, we played the angled deployment of Secure Missing Artefacts. The White Scars went first. We play with fairly heavy terrain so in theory about 75-80% of an army can be hidden, if not at least in some protective terrain. My Secondaries were the White Scars one (Have to kill something after charging it... much harder than the Wolves one.) Oath, and Engage on All Fronts.

 

Some of my deployment:

Below: My corner hiding the Repulsor/Speeder.

 

 

Below: My mid table obscurring ruin is packing a lot of models.

 

 

I didn't want turn 1, since the fire lanes were so tight and armies hidden. I did get a little aggressive with my Warsuit, so at least he would be able to shoot, but other than Litanies, there was little else to do.

 

 

My T1 I move out to middle with the bikers, and I 'tease' the Incursors (Behind crates at center off picture).

 

The shooting I do with the Warsuit is through a building at his troops. This does put the Warsuit in danger, and the minus 1 damage, and Void armour makes shooting the troops in cover nearly useless, but I wanted to see if it was worth baiting him out. Essentially I advanced the rest of the army. 

His Turn 1 does see him come in and nearly shoot up the Warsuit, but the 'termie' equivalents take the bait and run up destroy the Warsuit.

Bit Turn 1 moment is probably the Incursors at mid that "blew smoke" and hit Transhuman on Turn 1 for 2 CP that definitely saved them.  

 

I find against Votann that Transhuman feels virtually useless so I prefer to use it early (before I have 2-3 "Grudge" tokens on units.) I felt lucky to have 4 Incursors still alive. 

 

Turn 2 I manage to get full Primary scoring, but I'm pushing it and have to engage the Votann or risk getting blown off the board. 

 

Turn 2: 

 

Above: I reinforce mid with the ATV's and take melta shots at his heavy tank. Which did very little. My Speeder would also pop some lascannons into it, but at the end I maybe took it down to half wounds. 

 

The mid was well reinforced. The Aggressors advance to where the Warsuit had just been destroyed. The Aggressors shot everything at his troops deeper in a ruin, but with cover + Void armour the damage was a joke. The Bladeguard followed the Aggressors into an assault on the 'termie equivalent' to jointly kill ALL but 1 model which did not break to moral and I tri-pointed the model to prevent him from shooting my aggressors/bladeguard. VERY lucky on this move.

 

 

 

Above, another huge moment. I advanced the Outriders after bringing one back from the dead, and assaulted his heavy tank, and caused him some real issues here. (This is beside the ruin that all of the Aggressors/Bladeguard are in. This caused him some serious scoring issues.

 

A bigger move I made was in the lower right side of the table: The Assault Intercessors (7 with hammer) got out, advanced for 1, I CP rerolled it for a 6. Moved 12" (Plus the disembark) and my Chaplain got off the aura adding to advance/charges and he was sitting there with the Eradicators waiting for the Assault Intercessors. I made that charge as well deep into his zone tying up 3 of his bikers, and a 10 man squad, stealing his objective.

 

The problem was I couldn't damage his army. No rerolls of damage/to wound allowed. 

 

BUT in this Assault Intercessor move I managed to kill enough that I could entirely wrap him with the consolidation move preventing him from falling back. This lead to another crazy situation where he just failed moral but only 2 models were left, preventing him from shooting this squad as well.

 

So although I couldn't score the White Scars secondary, the good news is I robbed him of primaries, and he was a little taken back by how aggressive my army was (I did give him a full break down and he's played my White Scars before. There were no 'gotcha' moments. I think he just didn't see a way that I would make 5 Assaults in turn 2. 

 

His scoring was bleak. He took some secondary where his guys could pan for gold or something silly and he scored it. I think he got 1 on the primary, and I would score Oaths, and 4 quarters this turn.

 

His Turn 2 he brought in a special character on the side that my Bladeguard/Aggressors were. He is a brutal character with a 3+D3 hammer! He also brought in his second 'termie' unit on my flank where the Eliminators were exposed. This would be tricky.

 

He failed his character assault, my Bladeguard/Aggressors mopped up the 'termie' unit, but I can't score it because the White Scars secondary is only if I charged that turn. Ugh. 

On the lower right his bikers and troops were dying to my Eradicators. He shot up my Speeder and that was gone. I also lost an ATV, and a half. (I Know I can't bring one back but I thought of healing the last one to 8 wounds but instead I opted to bring a missing Bladeguard back from the dead.)

 

 

My Turn 3 above: The Bladeguard (after finishing off a unit ) would charge into this unit with the Khan in tow giving them +1 to wound. These guys just came in from reserves and are notoriously tough to get rid of: T5, 2 wounds, but they hit hard, and are -1 Damage on top of Void armour!. I got lucky, the Bladeguard smoked them to a man, but BARELY. I mean right to the wound they all died. I finally get some points for White Scars secondary! (The turn 3 bladeguard charging ability meant the +1 damage white scars ability made my Bladeguard 3 damage, reduced to 2 damage, just enough to kill a model.)

 

The big one was in the center. I don't have a shot of it, but I advanced the Aggressors towards his hammer character that just arrived and I shot it nearly to death with the boltstorm gauntlets (Kind of funny since he has 2+/4+ and ALL damage is reduced to 1 on him so I didn't think I'd do a thing. ) So aggressors HAD to kill this guy on the charge, because I'm sure on the counter charge that character would outright kill the whole squad. But the Aggressors BARELY got lucky enough to kill him. It was T3, so although my Aggressors should have been 3 damage a fist, it was reduced to 1 and he failed just enough saves, netting me more White Scars points.

 

 

Then the Chaplain would assist above (not shown... I took the picture too soon) and kill off the last biker to get another White Scars secondary, capping me at 5 for the turn.)

 

This took him off the objective entirely.

 

We scored his turn 3, and then realized he would not be able to catch up. There was just no way. He had only 1 secondary point every turn to my nearly full scoring. My models started disappearing very FAST, but I had maxed most of my secondaries, and his T4 he would get rid of the Aggressors but they had tied up his tank, and HQ's again. So he just couldn't score.

 

So I can't remember the final score but after 4 it was official and it was a good 40 point differential, maybe more.

 

 

Conclusion:

 

- White Scars are in tough. This was hard, and at first I didn't take pictures because even my Chaos struggles VERY hard against this. I honestly think I made some crazy yolo charges that panned out. Also his units not quite dying (while very annoying) prevented him from destroying my most aggressive units. Still, this army, until turn 3 really can't damage much yet isn't resilient enough to hang around long.

 

- Stuff that worked: Khan ( fun but hate that he's on foot.. please GW, give us a bike model already), Bladeguard, but they work for everyone. -1 to hit power from the Psyker. VERY Big in this game at key moments. Chaplain - the true force that makes this whole thing work. Assault Intercessors. You know I keep wanting to pull them out, but they just are my favourite troop to be honest.... Incursors always do nothing, but usually score. That's their role in life, and I can't pull them either.

 

- Stuff that kind of works: Repulsor. I can't believe it but after the big points reduction I've probably used it in 3 or 4 games now and it still stinks. Lascannons kind of stink, and having this unit I think my opponent smartly ignored it. It did nothing all game (maybe 2-3 wounds off a vehicle.)  Aggressors. LOVE the idea of putting these in White Scars and advancing every turn but the shooting is almost a complete waste on anything above a guardsman and most of my opponents play tougher armies. The Thunderstrike speeder. It's fun, it's fast, it's made of paper and doesn't last. It almost always trades down.

 

- Stuff that stinks: ATV's. Still horrid. GW needs to do a LOT here to make this unit not stink. Outriders. Still such a mediocre unit. I've used these things a zillion times, I still think classic bikes are better. They REALLY need unique weaponry and more than chainsword options. 

 

I still love the Scars, but every time I win with them it feels like total luck. Nevertheless a win is a win and it was fun to take them out again.

 

Thanks for checking it out.

 

 

 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Love to see the Leagues of Brokan man handled !! 

[Prot]

1 hour ago, BLACK BLΠFLY said:

Love to see the Leagues of Brokan man handled !! 

 

It was fun to do so.... but once this guy figures out his Votann, I'm in trouble. :)

 

[brother_b]

Guard are terrifying to me now with their shooting and tough vehicles, same with Votann.

 

No nid players in our group so no monsters. I’m not sure what they can do to make marines better. Seems like lore wise they should have the Votann abilities and higher AP or str bolsters. Maybe like custodes.

 

Also I feel marines have way too many “jobs” or weapons or units whatever. So much redundancy.

 

Also I’m not a fan of free weapons because it makes many load outs just obsolete. There’s no point NOT taking the best.

 

Thanks for the report and congrats on the win.

[Ulfast]

Great report and happy to see a win. Votann is hard to beat and most none iron hands struggle with them. But I think you show that WS can do good.

[Prot]

On 2/14/2023 at 2:10 AM, Ulfast said:

Great report and happy to see a win. Votann is hard to beat and most none iron hands struggle with them. But I think you show that WS can do good.

 

Thanks for the compliment, but I don't think showed much other than 'how to catch your opponent off guard'. lol

 

The first thing after the game he said was, 'wow, I had no idea you could tag me in 5 close combats in T2'. This was probably the single reason I won. I don't feel this army can hit as hard as Templars, Wolves, BA, DA, etc, etc. I could be wrong, but in this case if I would have played anything of that nature, then I would have had to play very differently. As it is, I'm not sure if I could beat Votann with Scars if they are a bit more aware of what I can hit in CC. 

[brother_b]

It’s a sad state when you need EVERYTHING to go right to have that chance. On the other hand you out played your opponent and won.

 

The real key is what will you do to shake things up next time you face one another?

[Prot]

17 hours ago, brother_b said:

It’s a sad state when you need EVERYTHING to go right to have that chance. On the other hand you out played your opponent and won.

 

The real key is what will you do to shake things up next time you face one another?

 

Good question. I need to find the points to do something impactful. I think right now that hammer/shield termies would be my next move, working off the chaplain aura to make those hard charges (Plus the 3D6 pick the highest strat). This probably means dumping the Repulsor, but it will have to be replaced with anther unit that can hold an objective reliably.

 

My next game definitely won't be Votann. (He's out of town), but we always mix it up by having random pairings so there's no list tailoring. So I have no idea what I'm facing next. :)

[brother_b]

Yeah I need something to hold objectives that’s why I considered heavy Intercessors. I’ve never used them before but considered them for an objective holding unit that could forward deploy a little.

 

Anti tank is tough for me I only have 3 eradicators but feel that bumping them to 5 or Taking another unit of 3 may help. As you stated the melts ATVs have been underwhelming.

 

I look forward to your next update.

[SanguinaryGuardsman]

Nice report.  

 

One thing I dislike about WS atm is how you want to take bikes but they are pretty bad.  Outrides do no damage and have no options, and regular bikes are a butt ugly 20 year old kit that has options that are kind of ok but nothing special.  All the free wargear made this problem worse since the best value on free gear is with heavy support.  

[Prot]

22 hours ago, brother_b said:

Yeah I need something to hold objectives that’s why I considered heavy Intercessors. I’ve never used them before but considered them for an objective holding unit that could forward deploy a little.

 

Anti tank is tough for me I only have 3 eradicators but feel that bumping them to 5 or Taking another unit of 3 may help. As you stated the melts ATVs have been underwhelming.

 

I look forward to your next update.

 

Thanks, I may play them tonight. I have a random pairing coming tonight so the 'probables' are Death Guard, Blood Angels, GSC, Dark Angels, and perhaps tonight could be Word Bearers.

 

18 hours ago, SanguinaryGuardsman said:

Nice report.  

 

One thing I dislike about WS atm is how you want to take bikes but they are pretty bad.  Outrides do no damage and have no options, and regular bikes are a butt ugly 20 year old kit that has options that are kind of ok but nothing special.  All the free wargear made this problem worse since the best value on free gear is with heavy support.  

 

Thank you. Absolutely. The new Primaris books look  nice, terrible on the table, and no options. The first born bikes are clearly better (and I do own them) but how badly does this army need new bike models right now? ;)

 

Khan on a BIKE please!?!?!