Objective Secured

Walking into game 3 I was dubious. I wrote a little about the War Convocation HERE and while still a little fuzzy in practice, was already well aware of what I was up for.

We were playing ‘drawhammer’ as it is locally known – 1 objective in each deployment zone, with vanguard strike as the deployment type.

So we have a Knight Paladin as the required knight, a single dragoon & dune crawler plus minimum units of rust stalkers, infiltrators, rangers and vanguard. Then we have 3 units of 3 battle servitors (arc rifles, grav cannons, plasma calivers) plus the Magos and a minimum unit of Robots. It’s not personally what I would run as the Convocation but it’s very good none the less.

I got a good mix of powers and chose Dark as the warlord trait chart for this game, getting Dance of Nightmares made Flesh – Enemy in base contact with the warlord roll an additional D6 for fear and morale tests – dubious in its usefulness at best.

We rolled off and Matt (a different Matt than this round!) got to choose the table edge. We had a fortress of redemption on the board as part of the terrain and it ran on a diagonal roughly in the centre of the board. Had I the choice, I would have selected the corner so that the fortress cut the table in half between us so as to maximise the cover I got. Matt wisely did the opposite and left me having less cover.

 

(Matt already in happy mode with the match up!)

Matt won the roll for deployment, deployed first and I failed to seize.

First turn saw the mechanicus mostly out of range though I did lose a starweaver and a single harlequin with its demise along with a couple of Dark Reapers to the knights battle cannon.

 

My harlequins advanced using as much cover as possible. The wraithguard embarked the bunker, trigger the hatch and placed it on the left hand side of the fortress – a mistake in hindsight. I get veil off on my mini star and invisibility on my 4 model unit. My guns do very little this turn, with enemy either out of LOS, out of range or simply saving the damage.

 

Turn 2 and the Knight is closing fast with rust stalkers supporting it. The infiltrators move over my escape hatch (curses) and the robots climb the fortress to gain cover. Faced with invisible or veiled harlequins, the knight tries it luck again on the dark reapers, only managing to kill 1 thanks to some good cover saves at my end. I have my void weaver immobilised by the dune crawler as well. I also lose the second of the star weavers to arc and all the harlequins after that to the weapons of the infiltrators.

 

I throw myself forward and look for charges. The 4 model squad charges the knight as does the solitaire. The ministar moves up ready to charge next turn. One of the death jesters breaks cover as I realise the S6 shuriken cannons will mess up the 2W stalkers and infiltrators. I kill most of the infiltrators with shuriken cannons and a haywire blast while the solitaire has his second hot streak for the day, leaving the knight on a single hull point. The troupe wiffs and gets stomped with just the troupe master living along with the solitaire.

Turn 3 and the mechanicus have started to close. The rust stalkers (only 3 of which are alive at this point) line up to charge the troupe master in combat with the knight and the dragoon finally breaks cover to line up a T4 charge. The dune crawler moves up to draw line of sight on the void weaver and the robots elect to kill the solo death jester as again, my ministar is protected by veil. The Jester dies as expected but I loose little else – the void weavers mirage launchers keeping it going 1 more turn. In combat, the solitaire kills the knight with his caress attacks and the blast wounds but does not kill the troupe master. The rust stalkers take a couple of wounds as well but none die. They do kill the troupe master after he finishes off one of their number.

My T3 and I advance the solitaire up to threaten the magos. The ministar lines up on the robots for a charge. The Void weaver lets rip on the infiltrators for the last time and finishes them with 2 bladestorm wounds. The Reapers kill the dragoon with ease. I charge the star in and engage the robots, wiping them out for no loss. The solitaire charges the magos and his 3 arc servitors and kills one of them while taking a wound in response. They hold.

 

Matts T4 would be his last, this game is taking time so we have little left. His dune crawler and all the servitors move up to engage the ministar up on the fortress battlements while the rust stalkers move to help the magos with the solitaire. The crawler also moves up to put more shots in. Shooting sees me loose about 4 of the ministar despite cover. This actually works out ok as they are now well out of charge range of the enemy. In combat the solitaire dies but crunches the rust stalkers wholesale before he goes down.

 

My T4 and we are down to the wire. The wraithguard finally get to use their hatch and exit it in range of the dune crawler which dies in a suitably cataclysmic way (like most things when 5 wraith cannons hit them!). The ministar charges the Magos unit while I put the odd wound on the remaining servitors with the reapers. My windriders claim my objective and pick up line breaker as I can’t contest his objective – with his vanguard stood on it I can’t get close enough as I don’t have the movement to clear them. It then occurs to me that while I could claim warlord and get a draw (1 objective each then line breaker for each of us, he gets first blood while I get warlord) if I can NOT kill the magos and have him hold then I can hit and run over him to contest the objective and give myself the win!

 

The troupe makes short work of the servitors but I take a couple of wounds in return and we end the combat with a LD8 test for the magos to hold. He fails of course and is swept with ease but it denies me the chance to cover the last 9 inches to the objective and the game ends in a draw.

 

All in all I think this went pretty well. I was surprised at how easy the solitaire handled the knight but I can’t help but think that was not the norm. The mini star performed well but the death jesters were again lacklustre – mostly as I forgot their death is not enough rule when they were killing rust stalkers and infiltrators – had I remembered and triggered it then I could have multi charged both with the ministar in T2 and potentially made an aggressive push to his objective T3.

With 1 win, 1 draw and 1 loss I am reasonably satisfied at this point. I am forming up thoughts on how I can make this work in the future and it looks promising. The match up for round 4 is announced and it’s a pure Chaos Space Marine army. ‘Awesome’ I think as I move to the table allocated. Then I see his army on the table ready to deploy…

It has hell drakes…

2 of them…