Alright, first, let's get some lists up.
Here's mine:
Wolf Lord w/ Thunderwolf Mount, Saga of the Bear, Runic Armor, Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield, Wolf Tail Talisman, Wolf Tooth Necklace
Wolf Lord w/ Thunderwolf Mount, Saga of Majesty, Runic Armor, Wolf Claw, Storm Shield, Wolf Tooth Necklace
Rune Priest w/ Jaws of the World Wolf, Murderous Hurricane
3x Wolf Guard w/ 3x Power Fists, 3x Combi-meltas
9x Grey Hunters w/ Wolf Standard, Rhino (Wolf Guard goes here)
9x Grey Hunters w/ Wolf Standard, Rhino (Wolf Guard goes here)
8x Grey Hunters w/ Wolf Standard, Rhino (Wolf Guard + Rune Priest go here)
4x Thunderwolf Cavalry w/ 2x Storm Shields, Thunder Hammer, Melta Bombs (one has both SS and TH)
6x Long Fangs w/ 5x Missile Launchers
6x Long Fangs w/ 5x Missile Launchers
6x Long Fangs w/ 5x Missile Launchers
Now here's Dukes (copied from his own blog):
Grandmaster: Halberd, Rad, blind and Psycho grenades. 3 skulls.
- Librarian: Warding stave, Shrouding, Sanctuary, quicksilver, Might of Titan, Warp Rift, Vortex
- 4 Paladins: 1- MC sword,S.B. 2- sword,S.B. 3-Banner, S.B. 4. Hammer, S.B.
- Land Raider Redemmer w/ Psybolt Ammo
- Strike Squad: 10 men, 2 psycannon, 1 halberd, 1 Hammer, Razorback w/ hvy Bolter & psybolt ammo
- Strike Squad: SAME
- Strike Squad: 5 men, 1 psycannon, 1 halberd, 1 hammer, razorback w/ psybolt hvy bolter
- Psiflemen dread.
- Psiflemen dread.
So, it seemed a little like a hybrid of the 'old school' Double-Raider w/ Grand Master list combined with the 'new school' Psyfleman dreadnoughts/Psycannon spam/Psybacks. A little of the old, a little of the new, kind of cool. :)
The Mission:
We rolled up Dawn of War with Capture and Control. He won the roll to go first, and decided to take first turn. I was happy enough with that, since I generally like to go second in objective missions. Gonna have to change the way I think for when I start playing with my Dark Eldar consistently though- I'll almost always want first turn with them. Anyways, he didn't deploy anything, and I deployed my Bear Lord up 8", so the rest of the Wolfstar could walk on and gain the extra few inches of movement.
Pre-game thoughts:
I knew that the PaladinStar was going to be a rough matchup for my Wolfstar- my multi-wound guys would be hard pressed to take out guys with potentially I10, making me into T4, psychotroke grenades, force weapons, etc. Just a bad matchup for the Wolfstar. However, I knew that if I could isolate that squad, kill most of it with the Wolfstar, and then clean up the rest, my Grey Hunters + Longfangs would hold the advantage against the rest of his army.
I generally want a crazy cluster in the middle with my wolves, even against power weapon spam, so I put my objective directly across from his.
You'll see my own deployment after his first turn, since DoW deployment is generally pretty boring.
Grey Knights Turn 1:
He came onto the table, ready to shoot at me. You'll see that his Strike Squads had combat squadded into a 'Combat Friendly' squad and a 'Shooting Friendly' squad. The Psycannons sat on his objective.
He failed to see my Bear Lord (not a huge surprise at all) and gave me the turn.
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| You'll notice that he kept everything on the left flank. I wanted the same thing- we really only used half of the board throughout the game. Which is usually a benefit to my army :-p |
I walked onto the board, then ran to get my guys into better position. Smoke popped on my rhinos seemed wise. I wanted my Rune Priest in range of his 'too-buff' Librarian.
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| Move move move! As a sidenote, I figured whatever rhino got popped first, that squad would sit on my objective. |
He shuffled around, and shot some at me. It killed a few Longfangs on the left, but not much else. I mostly made my few cover saves I needed, and the things that got through weren't of much notice.
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| Nearly everything had a 4+ cover save, except for a single Dreadnought. Scary, since 4+ becomes 3+ with GKs. |
I moved up again. Since almost everything had popped smoke, I shot at his Dreadnought without cover, and killed it. Then I targeted his Strikes on the hill with Frags, and killed a couple. Hit a lot, but rolled a bunch of fail for wounds. He lost a few, but passed his Ld. 8, to my chagrin.
Not much else. He's in a tricky situation: either he charges my Wolfstar without support from the rest of his army, or he lets me charge his line next turn. If I do charge in, the Wolfstar will surely die, but it will also keep the fight on his side of the table for long enough that I'll be able to force a draw at worst, and likely a win for myself. It's how I do Capture and Control vs. gunlines, generally. :-p
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| Heh, killed a dreadnought. Hate them! Notice my Grey Hunters in position to support my Wolfstar. Also notice I kept the wolfstar out of assault range for his Strikes in the Razor there- I had a 4" run that would have gotten them in. Don't want to give him more combat solutions though. |
He decided to commit- not much he could do, if he wanted to keep it up. So, the PaladinStar got out of the Redeemer, and were poised to charge the Wolfstar.
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| Heh, it'll be epic, right? |
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| This is the wolfstar after taking one up the chute. And then I rolled an '11' for leadership. |
Awesome, 800 points, gone, with nothing to show for it. Heh. Epic anticlimax, right?
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| Oh yeah, he did so well shooting the star, that he also immobilized/weapon destroyed my middle rhino. Lol. |
Well, now I was forced to deal with the Paladins the hard way. The Grey Hunters, who were being reserved for Strike Squad/cleanup Paladin duty, were forced to do something about his full-strength Paladins.
So, I disembarked everyone, ready to charge in.
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| Surrounded!! |
In assault, I killed the GM, though with his 4 attacks, he killed 4 Grey Hunters. I should add that I barely barely killed him- I whiffed all over the place :-p
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| And then I put the guys into a 'redeemer template unfriendly' pattern. Lol. |
He pivoted his Land Raider, and got two 5-man Strikes ready to assault my Grey Hunters. Kind of the duty I had set for my Grey Hunters to do to him, had the Wolfstar lived. Role reversal for the Fail!
In shooting, he killed a ton of Grey Hunters. Lots and lots of them died. You'll see in the picture, lol. He also popped my mobile rhino on the far right. Yikes!
He had killed so many of my guys in one squad that one of his Strikes were no longer within assault range, but he got the charge off with his other 5-man squad. In assault, the Strikes failed to kill the Rune Priest squad, but killed most of them. In return, I was able to kill off a couple of them. He even remembered to use the Psyk-out grenades on my Rune Priest, haha. Well done, I'm sure I would have forgotten had it been me!
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| The genocide of Grey Hunters has begun... |
Well, I moved my biggest squad into the immobile rhino on the right, to shoot at the Land Raider with it's meltas, and for protection from the Flamestorm genocide... The other Grey Hunters got ready to help my Rune Priest squad out.
In shooting, I was able to kill all but the Hammer in the exposed Strike Squad. My melta mega-whiffed on his Land Raider, and just like that, I knew I had virtually zero hope to actually win. Can't stop me from trying though :-p
I was able to kill off his remaining Strikes, and consolidated into what I hoped was an unfriendly pattern against his Redeemer cannon. I knew it wasn't though, haha.
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| Lol, well. Let's see what happens next. |
He moved his lone hammer-dude up into his Redeemer, then moved over to hold my objective with the Redeemer. Other stuff shuffled around a bit.
In shooting, he was able to destroy both depleted squads of Grey Hunters. Sad Face :( He also stunned my lone remaining mobile rhino, so I'd be unable to contest his objective this turn.
No assault this turn, oddly enough. Not sure why that's odd, heh.
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| At this point in the game, he controls both objectives. |
Well, I had one chance to draw the game, so I took it. The remaining 6 Grey Hunters got out of their immobilized Rhino, and got ready to shoot/assault the Land Raider (assault so they could contest my objective.
In shooting, I used frag missiles to kill all but 1 Striker, who was too far away from the objective to contest it. At this point, I had a SLIM SLIM shot at winning the game, if my melta could kill his Raider, and I could assault his lone Hammer dude, and consolidate onto my objective.
However, I again mega-whiffed with my melta, and was forced to assault the Raider to get into contest range.
So, at this point, I contest one objective, and neither of us controls his other one. It's a tie game, if the game ends here.
We rolled a '5' and it kept going. Damn!
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| Here I am, holding on with my nails. You can't really see the Grey Hunters who assaulted his Land Raider. I'm easily within 3" of my objective though. |
He mops me up, essentially. His redeemer cannon killed all of my Grey Hunters. His lone Psyfleman immobilized my rhino on the left. I still had some slim slim hopes, but mostly they don't exist.
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| Heh, he owns my objective. Also, he apparently killed a bunch of my Longfangs on the right, who fled. |
Well, I moved some longfangs up to contest my own objective. My one and only (slim slim slim) hope, is to remobilize my rhino on the left, hope for turn 7, and contest his objective with it on Turn 7, if the rhino isn't destroyed or worse.
In shooting, I failed to remobilize it, and in spite, I shot everything into his last Psyfleman, and exploded it. This of course meant nothing, and we called it there.
Results: 2-0 win for the Grey Knights!!
Well, sometimes you just have games like this. Having the wolfstar is a lot of eggs in one basket, and whereas this time it wasn't really in my peril from Duke's shooting, I rolled poorly, and they ran off the table. That's just how it goes sometimes. We were robbed an epic combat because of that, and it made the game pretty lop-sided. I was happy to keep the game as competitive as I did.
Give him credit though, the Duke took what the game offered him, and didn't take any chances. He did what it took to close the game out, and got the win. I felt I played it the best I could have, but in the end, it was a fun game, where I had a chance to win the whole thing going into turn 5 (albeit a very small chance)!
As an aside we afterward rolled to see what would have happened in the ensuing combat. Though it stretched like 5 rounds, the Wolfstar would have eventually (barely) won, though of course in game-terms, the Grey Knights and Grey Hunters would have charged in far before those rounds were up, causing a huge Cluster. So, the game would have looked pretty different. Alas. Sorry to get your hopes up :-p
Man of the Match (Wolves):
Gotta give this one to my Longfangs- they consistently pulled through for me, and kept me in this (lopsided) game as far as they could.
Man of the Match (GK's):
Well, I normally don't do one for my opponent, but this time I want to give a shout out to the Redeemer. This game is an example of why a Redeemer is in general much better than a Crusader. It barbequed my poor Grey Hunters off the board, and made it impossible for me to hold my own objective.
Other than that, I think my Master of Power Armor must have been paid off by the Grey Knights beforehand, giving me plastic (haha) armor instead, since I was failing so many saves :-p
It was a really fun game though, great opponent, and I would love to get a rematch in to get my revenge!
Guess that's it. Hope you liked it. It was fun, go check out his battle report now, and see his point of view!
Thoughts? Complaints about the anticlimactic nature of this report? Shout 'em out :)
2 comments:
Great bat rep! I love seeing the battle from the other guy's point of view.
I know I said my strike squad on the objective was my man of the match, but that redemmer was pretty epic!
I can't wait till we can do another one with dark eldar.
Duke
Well it looks like Space Wolves finally have met an army that can give them a real challenge. Wolf Star breaking off the table is just really bad dice mojo - nothing you can really do to prevent that - it happens and it sucks. You still played one hell of a game in my opinion and that's what really counts.
I'm looking forward to reading the batrep for the rematch. Keep rocking it bro.
G
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