Infantry/artillery list and brief BR vs UM

[Galron]

Played my Praetorians over the weekend, mostly as a reason to unwrap my codex.

I used Sharpshooters and bombadiers

I fielded:

cadian field marshell with Strategic Command(or whatever the 5+ to get CP strats back is called)

2 platoon command squads with ordinance officers, medic, vox, and a missile launcher

 9 infantry squads with plasma, lascannon, vox, plasma-pistol on sgt

 

3 Tempestus with plasma, volleygun, plasma pistol

2 Bombast Guns

 

2 Sentinels with lascannons, hunter killer missiles, chainsaw

 

Collossus bombard

Hydra

2 heavy weapons squads with mortars

3 Earthshaker carriages

 

He had a mass of 5 man or smaller squads. 2 intercessors, assault, heavy with bolter weapons, 2 hellblasters(both heavy and assault) bladeguard, Vitrix, Tigerious, chaplain, Marnius calgar, a captain, impulsor, executioner, stormraven.

-He doesnt use his stormraven like I do in my marine army. I find it a great upgunned drop pod for bringing in sternguard and devs for key target destruction. He just brings it in to shoot things which I find inefficient. But whatever.

 

We played Storm of War just to do something different which we both enjoyed more than actually picking secondaries and having to husband CP. I hope this is still useful in 10th.

 

I set most of my infantry squads in 3 groups up along the deployment line with the artillery along the back and mortars protected behind a building next to a command squad. The earthshakers and bombasts were also within range of the command squads. He set up all over the place hiding in or behind buildings. No matter where he set the executioner up, there were multiple lascannons in LOS. 

 

My T1: I moved most of my infantry squads forward. I dont think I achieved any of the secondaries and should have kept the one which was essentially old Grind them Down, but I am Guard with infantry, when does guard ever take Grind? My shooting phase has lascannon after lascannon hitting the executioner with the Take Aim order. Big badda-boom. Yeah the exceutioner tied how many models I actually killed doing 5MW to the Vitrix, 6 to the hellblasters, 5 to intercessors, 2 to the captain. I then mortared the last wound off the vitrix and dropped the wounded intercessors down to 1 dude with 1 wound. He trans and -1Ap'd the heavy intercessors when I hit them with earthshakers and in total I dropped them to 3 guys with one with 1 wound. I also dropped the other intercessor squad to 1 guy who failed morale. Weirdly I hit and wounded his impulsor with 3 lascannons and he made the invul save each time. His 1 T1: He tried to recover the initiative and started moving guys forward. His shooting took out bits and pieces of different squads. His bladeguard was set to charge one of the infantry squads gunning for the center of the board. Charged, was overwatched with no deaths, failed his charge twice. I made all morale checks with 1s.

 

My T2: I got good secondaries this time and achieved all of them. I think raise banners, Retrieve data and something else. I moved my sentinel on the left onto the no mans land objective on the left, a weakened squad onto the no mans land in the middle, and another onto the no mans land on the right. I used an inordinate amount of fire to kill the one dude alive on the intercessor squad contesting my sentinel for that no mans land objective. I mortared his Captain to death. Earthshakered, bombast, and Collossus'd the blade guard to death and dropped the Heavy intercessors down to 1 guy. His T2: He moved marneus and Tigerious into the center. Finally brought his assault intercessors , hell blasters and another intercessor squad + chaplain out of cover. He killed a fair bit of guys. Storm raven came in and killed a squad and did 2 damage to the Colossus and 6 to the hydra with the heavy hellblasters. Hydra did intercept for a grand total of 2 damage. He did 2 damage to himself with the plasma cannons.  His assaults on the right with no roll lower than 11 killed a complete squad(yay). Marneus killed my weakened squad in the center with ease but left his standing in the center. 

 

My T3: Here is where I learned how criminally undercosted Marneus is. I brought my tempestus in near but on his home objective with the goal of taking out the two remaining rapid hellblasters. He didnt auspex scan due to CP. It took alot but we took out the stormraven who exploded but nothing was within 6" of the base. Then I learned about Marneus  after hitting him with a lascannon. Shot went through despite the Tigerious buff and his invul. Yay, rolled a 6 for damage! Boom... and found out he halves damage.... So after every other gun in  range fires and failed to kill him, I have to commit a fully buffed up battery of Earthshakers to finish the job. Apparently one of my infantry squads was ticked and managed to kill 4 out of 5 of his intercessors. I then kill out the assault intercessors knocking him off that objective. I also killed 3 out of five hellblasters. I assault the chaplain with two full squads of infantry and do 1 wound. He killed 4 or 5 guys. I do however completely surround him. His T3: He does the Breakout strat(first time I have ever seen it used) and killed one dude. I counter with the strat that lets me roll to do mortals on someone falling back and do one mortal wound despite having 13 guys rolling. He moves his remaining hellblasters and impulsor up. They kill the sentinel who explodes killing a guardsman, shooting kills one of the two squads. He then charges with everything and manages to kill all but the sergeant who did manage a 1 for morale. I forget what Tiggy does but it doesnt do much whatever it was.

 

My T4: I fall back with that sergeant.  Shooting kills Tiggy who isnt near as impressive as Marny. Now I shoot every lascannon I have at the Impulsor. It cant happen four times right? Yeah, it did. Impulsor blows up and finishes the game for me killing both hellblasters, the chaplain, the lone intercessor and the brave remaining sergeant.

 

His list wasnt anywhere near optimized obviously, he is a newer player I have been trying to coach a bit. He finally bit the bullet and bought an apothecary after the game who will replace his captain.  He has always relied on his hellblasters for ranged fire so I tended to always target them first. He is a very fun opponent and takes everything really well. I have been trying to get him to play more aggressively against me. But losing all that stuff in a catastrophic explosion in the first turn pretty much handicapped him and kind of told me which way this game was going to go. I just found it amusing that every vehicle that died exploded. 

 

Overall I was really impressed with the earthshakers. Wow. Bombast guns were worthless overall. I might upgrade to Heavy Lasers or the other one to keep it in theme. Not that any of this matters since the game changes so shortly. Maybe I will try a mech infantry force next time.