Wednesday 7 December 2011

Arkham Autumn Annihilation round 5

So Game 5 the final chance for me to gain some more points to cover my terrible game 3, the fields tight points wise so hopefully I can gain a place or stay high. The matchups are generated and I'm playing another good friend Ray O'Kane, Grey knights. Why can't I play people I usually don't play cruel world.

The mission is:

Dawn of war, Primary Kill Points, Secondary Seize ground (3 counters across center line)

His list is:

Draigo,
Inq Karamazov
1 Vene Psyfleman dread
2 Psyflemen dread
10 paladins with assorted halberds, psycannons, hammers, apoth and banner etc.
1 paladin with hammer

Damn it, another low kill point army in a Kp mission!

Ray wins the roll off and goes first, deploying his paladins and Draigo on my far right side along the small table edge but has 1 lone paladin hidden behind the building on my left near his long table edge. In reply I deploy in my bottom left corner with 1 platoon at the half way line and Straken huddles in with them.

His turn 1, shuffles along the right edge, no shooting due to lovely LOS blocking dunes.

My turn 1 the other blob walks on and makes one massive cluster of men, I 'move move move' them further forward and out while the other blob begins advancing slightly forward and towards his long table edge.

Turn 2 and ray fires his orbital bombardment, killing 1 man... exciting stuff so far.


In my turn Al comes on, I want him on my left to kill the lone paladin hiding behind the big building near my men, and even with a reroll he wants the right hand side. Damn it this could cost me some kill points. So in the end I go for the option of netting some kill points while losing some of my own. The blob comes on right up against my long table edge 6 inches in keeping out of charge range of the paladins; meanwhile Al and the SWS come on in the gap right beside his dreadnoughts. Sadly it’s my best option as putting them by the blob means they'll be gutted by the paladin squad. Al's BID commands for both work and they frag the two dreads one being a wreck the other exploding and killing one SWS guy. 


Meanwhile the meltas in Al's blob are just in range of the paladins but Inq and Draigo soak/save the hits respectively. 


Turn 3 the Vene dread moves towards Al's squad and guns some down, he moves the paladins towards the blob but fails his difficult terrain test as one other guy could have got into base to base, I'm given a chance now and need to take full advantage of it.

In my turn 3 I move the left blobs blob and run Al's blob away from the paladins putting distance between my squad and them incase he wants HTH combat, meanwhile the further in blob on my left moves around again and assaults the lone paladin killing him in HTH while I can't hurt the dread in and it kills one making the squad flee but get wiped out.

Turn 4 he kills more of the SWs but they stay, continues advancing paladins after my blob and with shooting I allocate them to the guys at the back increasing the gap.

My turn 4 Al's blob moves and runs again further away, while the other 2 blobs continue moving forward slightly to take the middle objective.

His turn 5 he kills off the SWS with the dreads shots and combat, while the paladins put a few more wounds on Al's blob but a good few are saved.

During my turn 5 I move and run the blob again, nothing else can be done or shot due to the dune cover.


We roll the dice to continue and the game ends... wow that was a fast game, both Ray and myself couldn't believe it was turn 4 and the only reason we could believe it was me documenting the turns... very little happened bar the blob coming on the wrong flank making me have a real oh no moment, as I wanted them on the left to come on pop the lone paladin and then just sit back and win 1-0.

Kills were also very light, 2 dreads a lone paladin and a normal paladin for Ray, about 26 men for me (SWS, Al's command squad and rest from the big blob). A real let down feel of a game for the final round of a tourney we both agreed, it was standoffish and not very tactical due to the LOS blocking terrain we couldn't move or shoot each other.

In the end I won the Primary 3-2, took the secondary with 2-1 objs in my favour and the VP difference was minor to make it a straight up 16-4, but form the battle report you can see it wasn't as one sided sounding as the score gave it. 
Sorry for the lack of pictures, I didn't think watching guardsmen running away for 3 turns or slightly shuffling forward was worth a picture. I also forgot to get a pic of the combat vs. the lone paladin or Ray's HTH vs my SWS and Al's squad.


Blob Learning’s:

-While I would like to hope I could stand toe to toe with the paladins with 2 of my blobs if he’d advanced towards middle I wasn’t about to try with only the one giving up their kill point. Thus I’ve learnt its better to sometimes lee than to fight if not on my terms. The SWS and Al’s deaths were going to happen any way due to his position of men and how much space my blob needed to come on, so I felt sacrificing them for a Kp each on the dreads was worth the small risk 4 meltas in each squad with the twin link order chance wouldn’t succeed. Thankfully they did or I’d have huffed.

-The lascannons were a great deterrent with their lines of fire covering the middle objective and the ends of the dunes hopefully making it a tough decision if he should advance on the blobs taking some fire before the meltas got in range hopefully thinning the paladins out before the blobs smothered Draigo in HTH.

-Outflanking blobs can really help game plans, even if they come on the wrong side, but it’s a risk still even with the reroll.  

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