Sunday, May 23, 2010

Hard Boyz: Round 1 - Game 2

Well this is much belated but here is a quick run down of my second game at the first round of Hard Boyz. With round 2 coming up this weekend and a few hours finally free from work I thought Id post up these pics of one of the least expected tournament armies: Horde Marines.



Man that is a lot of marines. 101 to be exact. 1 Librarian. 10 Assault terminators all with thunderhammers. 10 regular Terminators 2 with missile launchers. 60 Tactical Marines only 1 squad had a powerfist. And 20 devastator marines. As you can see his deployment picture above it was a spearhead game. And he filled out most of his quarter. He combat squaded everything other then the 2 terminator squads. The assault terminators were in the right of the picture behind a thin screen of regular marines. The devastators were on the upper floors of the building with the ranged terminators on the bottom floor.In what was probably a poor decision I decided to fight infantry with infantry. In hindsight he didnt have an overwhelming amount of quality anti-tank fire, I was more scared of his volume of missile fire and it may have cost me some points.

Well I landed both units of sternguard on the right facing off against his assault terminators. A tactical squad landed to their left and above that landed Vulkan and another tactical squad. And in perhaps a bit of beautiful foresight... but more than anything some lucky mistake I landed the master of the forge and the last tactical squad high up in his deployment area.

The sternguard unloaded everything including the kitchen sink on the assault terminators and killed 7 of them. Shooting from everyone else killed maybe 7-10 other scattered marines. He ended up having to take 5 morale checks and wouldnt you know it the only squad to fail was the terminators. And here is where the fortuitous placement of that last pod came into play, because the terminators fled directly toward it and therefore were not able to regroup their next turn and so eventually fled their way off of the board.

Nothing really moved from this point in the game. It just became a few rolling assaults with marines unable to kill each other. Eventually his other terminator squad made it out of the building and assaulted my sternguard and were also cut down.

On turn 3 my two venerable dreadnoughts came in and helped finish off the terminators giving me the bulk of my victory points 860 between those 2 squads. And between a few half points earned from several killed combat squads I was able to eek out a minor victory... and was a measly 30 points shy of the major victory.

Now if you have been paying attention you may have noticed that I only described up until the 3rd turn. Thats not a misprint, we only played 3 turns, I didnt even get all my reserves in. Now this is where my decision to drop the sternguard in on turn 1 may have been a mistake. Not only are they worth more victory points for my opponent to earn, but they also have more ability on the drop to shoot units down, while the dreadnoughts could have earned me more points in assault.

The decision didnt cost me too badly, I ended round 2 in second place and was only a few points out of first. And when I tabled a chaos marine player in round 3 the day was mine.

I have a few shots of some practice games with my friend that I will try to post up soon as well, and my friend eric is coming with me to round 2 this weekend and hopefully with his help I will have a lot more pictures of those games then I did in round 1.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Hard Boyz: Round 1

So I already posted my list... now lets get to the much belated battle reports.

In game 1 I was matched up against the Imperial Guard. He had 2 20 man combined units with commissars. A few heavy weapons teams. A few groups of veterans in chimeras. 2 Demolishers with plasma sponsons and an an Executioner with extra plamsa as well. He also had Creed and a unit of deepstriking stormtroopers, and a hell hound.

Game was 5 loot counters and a modified diagonal deployment. Here in this first picture you can see his set up. He had first turn. I deployed nothing as everything was in drop pods. He chose to simply sit pat and wait for my arrival, and sadly for him forgot to pop smoke on his vehicles.


Here you can see my turn 1 drops. With 9 pods total I get 5 of them on turn 1. I placed both units of sternguard in the upper right middle, with an Ironclad Dreadnought in between them. My two Venerable Dreadnoughts dropped in on the left to deal with the two Demolisher tanks on that side.
Here is a side shot showing my turn 1 carnage. I blew up a chimera and my heavy flamers said goodbye to the veterans inside. I also vaporized an auto cannon heavy weapons team and the executioner. My Ironclad only managed to stun the hell hound and the venerables only immobilized one of the demolishers. With one of the Dreadnoughts failing to hit with a re-rollable 2+.
As is the theme with many of my games... and especially with the truncated time table of playing 2500 pt games in 2 and a half hours it was about here that I forgot about my camera.

During his turn 2 he killed off several sternguard. Shook my Ironclad, and shook one of the venerables.

On my turn 2 I got all of my tactical marines in from reserve as well as Vulkan and the master of the forge who were accompanying two of the squads. With a little help from nearby stormbolters Vulkan and his boys flamed down a 20 man squad of guard in the center of the board. The master of the forge and his dual flamer squad did in another heavy weapons team as well as a platoon command squad. The venerable dreadnoughts split up in the hopes of nabbing both demolisher tanks... however one got hung up on some terrain while the other finished the job. The melta tactical squad came roaring in, in front of the hell hound and chimera in the upper left of the table, and failed to finish off their target. However assaulting sternguard vets with fists and krak grenades removed both tanks and had the embarked veterans spilling out onto the battle field. The Ironclad rumbled into combat with a melta packing command squad and ran the poor fools down. It was about this time that my opponent started telling me that he was in trouble.

On his turn 3 his lone demolisher failed to chase off the dreadnoughts but did pull away to try and save itself from assault. His veteran squad shot down my Ironclad, putting another crater into the already littered field. His stormtroopers arrived and thankfully did not crash to their deaths because of their re-roll to scatter, and then dropped a venerable dreadnought.

On my half of the turn my remaining Ironclad landed next to the nice tight pile of stormtroopers and with a twin linked heavy flamer made quick work of the offending drop troops. Vulkan and his company burned away some more guardsmen, and the master of the forge worked his way into assault with Creed. My other tactical combat squads began fanning out closer to the objectives to ensure I had at least 4 before the game ended, by either wipeout or the end of turn 6. My remaining venerable dreadnought stunned the poor demolisher. The jaws of the assault were closing on the guard and they did not have very many units left.

On turn 4 the guard player had a lone squad hiding in the top of the building and his chimera with vets to the left of that same building. The vets got out to shoot down the master of the forge and his retinue. And the squad up above tried to drum up some victory points for the overall day bonus, by shooting down some expensive sternguard.

The master of the forge split off on his lonesome to flame the veterans. Vulkan also jumped off on his own to finish the men in the building. The venerable dreadnought dropped the demolisher at last.

Turn 5 saw his remaining chimera take the last wound from the master of the forge, which would cost me a bonus point in the end as we tied for number of Hq's killed due to my reckless endangerment of the poor chap.

In what would be the last phase of the game my venerable dreadnought assaulted and finished off the chimera sealing the wipeout and 2500 victory points. A full massacre as I held all of the objectives and all but one of the bonus points.

Looking around at the other tables before lunch there was only one army that I truly did not want to play at all that day, an all foot space marine horde, but as irony would have it that would be my next opponent. Oh well better to grab him in the victory points scenario then in the kill points one.

Ill try to get that report up tomorrow. Maybe Ill do up some box drawings to at least fill in the spaces where I have no pictures, If I make some for this battle Ill update this post as well.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Hard Boyz Tournament

In preparing for the Hard Boyz Tournament I had settled on using an upgraded version of Dreadnought Spam list and drop pod spam list that I had used at 1850pts a month or so ago.

Vulkan - 190

Master of the forge - powerweapon, - 115

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, meltagun, combi-melta, powerfist, drop pod - 245

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, meltagun, combi-melta, powerfist, drop pod - 245

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, flamer, combiflamer, powerfist, drop pod - 240

Dreadnought - Multimelta, drop pod - 140

Venerable Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Venerable Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, drop pod, locator beacon - 190

Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, drop pod, locator beacon - 190

Assault Squad - (7) flamer, thunder hammer, drop pod - 176

Vanguard Squad - (7) jump packs, relic blade w/ storm shield, thunder hammer, melta bomb, storm shield, 3 regular - 315

I tested the list against Lord Victor's Eldar list and it performed well enough. But then against my friend Alex's foot Imperial Guard list. In a few games using the newly released missions for the actual Hard Boyz event the list did not fare well. My infantry were overrun and though the Dreadnoughts proved hard for his guardsmen to deal with in combat the list was not particularly effective and I felt that it was also not necessarily meshing with my play style.

The vanguard had proven in tests that they were every bit as worthless as they had always looked to me. I thought about changing them to terminators. However this would only reinforce the idea that I was trying to play a drop pod assault army... which is precisely opposite the way I think of Marines, especially the
Drop pod variety.

So at midnight before the Hard Boys event I swapped my list.

Vulkan - 190

Master of the forge - 100

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, meltagun, combi-melta, powerfist, drop pod - 245

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, flamer, combiflamer, powerfist, drop pod - 240

Tactical Squad - Multimelta, flamer, combiflamer, powerfist, drop pod - 240

Dreadnought - Multimelta, drop pod - 140

Venerable Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Venerable Dreadnought - Multimelta, heavy flamer, extra armor, drop pod - 225

Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, drop pod - 180

Ironclad Dreadnought - heavy flamer, drop pod - 180

Sternguard - 4 combimelta, 2 heavy flamer, powerfist, drop pod - 350

Sternguard - 1 combimelta, 2 melta guns, powerfist, drop pod - 325

The sternguard are far more effective as drop pod units than anything else in the marine codex, due to the sheer volume and power of their short range firepower. Which means they are effective on the turn they arrive and due to their veteran status still durable in the counter assault scenarios that will likely occur. This change also gave me more boots on the ground and a much more flexible core that would be able to deal with large hordes that bog down the dreadnoughts in combat.

In the three games the next day the change did wonders. I took the top spot out of the 10-12 players that were at the event. Ill try to post some of the few pictures I got and do up some battle reports for the three games soon.