40K Campaign , The Group Stage

[jackhoneysett]

Jack vs Peter in group 1.

Peter won on turn 7 (we decided my unit was out of a table quarter by millimetres! So a win by 1 TQ to nil!)

I scored 3kps, Peter scored 9.

[Sascha1706]

First game against Steve, played cleanse mission, won 2:0, and 10:2 kill points to me.

Took a big gamble with my turn one deepstrike, but his Longfangs (2 Plasmacannons, 1 Plasmagun, 2 Missilelaunchers, 1 Multimelta, 5 Lascannons, killed 2 Terminators ) and Drop Pod (scattering 12") pretty much fluffed and he did not have very good dice throughout the rest of the game.

Case in point: My Venerable Dreadnought scoring 9 wounds against his Greyhunters after deepstriking next to them, killing 7...  (Never mind the dread then took his sweet time ((5 rounds of CC???)) to kill a squad of longfangs...)

Should have been closer...

[Sascha1706]

Second game against Seb, recon mission.

Lost 3:2, but kill points 9:4 to me, so I get my (arguably well deserved ) victory point.

A very close, hard fought battle that was above all a hell lot of fun and I think it's been a long time since I got that excited about every single dice roll and felt that good about a game despite actually losing...

The game had some really memorable moments (Terminators hiding under balconies, a Boltpistol shot immobilising my VENDread, who then just refused to die to lascannons for the rest of the game, a Razorback blowing up, catching pretty much my ENTIRE army in the blast radius or a Devastator squad running downstairs to fire their pistols and preparing to jump from said balcony through a window to assault my Terminators... )

Will follow up with a more detailed battle report tomorrow...

[fatolaf]

My final game of the group was against Steven and his wolves in a Recon mission.

By the end of turn one, things looked bad for me as I had lost 5/6 of my wraiths in CC vs bolt pistol wielding grey hunters and my little troop units were cornered by his termies who had come down in the Drop pod and has survived a shed load of shooting..
Also my Stalker had its Heavy Guass Cannon blown off leaving it looking a bit useless..

However never underestimate the Necron Characters as my Overlord took out a troop unit and razorback by himself after his Barge had been shot out from under him.
My destroyer lord finished off the last Hunters (losing the last Wraith in the process) and then escorted the Wolf lord off the table whilst taking out both units of Long fangs (hugging the board edge) by himself.
My Scarabs held up a unit of troops long enough (after eating their Razorback) so that my Lord then managed to get them turn 6, or else it could have been a draw with 2 units each in the opposite deployment zones.
As it was he ate them and I won 2-o on the mission, with Steven earning 1 TP after killing over half my Kill points, 9 to my 10...

leaving me on 2 wins and 2 losses, but with a nice KP stack, so maybe a good chance of making top 3 of the group and reaching the knock out stages...

And crucially gives me a chance to rewrite my less than optimal list

[jackhoneysett]

I've had 2 excellent and very close games so far, I'm very much enjoying gettting into this 40k malarky!

The first against Lee started badly for me, as his Nids weathered my shooting fairly unscathed and reached my lines. Then I desperately assaulted the Swarmlord (left on 1 wound) with my Avatar, failed to kill him, and the Swarmlord snipped his head off in return 

Lee then kindly decided to blow up the Swarmlord with a Perils of the Warp on the next turn though 
My elites all died in CC, leaving just my guardians who had legged it into his DZ (we were playing cleanse), and his genestealers who outflanked straight into my DZ and hid in a building. Lee was winning by 3 units to 2, but at this point the Wraithlord ran out of things to fight and walked back towards the genestealers, double flamethrowers cleared out enough genestealers for me to 'steal' the win in the last turn...! (sorry...)

-----

Last night against Peter, we played Cleanse. Peter deployed half his army right in the far corner, with the rest deepstriking.
I started running at him madly, with the Avatar and Wraithlord up front, and my tanks going flat out and making obscene numbers of cover saves. Like, 9 in a row levels of obscene. After almost reaching his army I decided he had too much firepower (2 units of Obliterators, Landraider, Defiler, Terminators...) and no troops worth chasing in that corner, so I backpedalled and concentrated on his deepstriking stuff.

Fire Dragons failed to melt a unit of terminators, and in the end did just as much damage with the butts of their meltaguns in an assault! Bonkers. A flying Sorceror caused havoc by killing a whole unit of bikes and most of the Fire Dragons, refusing to die in return, which clogged up that board quarter. My Falcon did a heroic flat out run into Peter's board quarter, and survived a Landraider, Defiler and Obliterators shots and assaults to contest his quarter 

So it came down to the off-diagonals: my dark reapers were fighting some marines in one, but at the end of the marathan 7 turns we measured and they were within millimetres of the centre line! In the end we decided they were just out, giving Peter one board quarter and the win! Another pretty close exciting game.

[fatolaf]

I thought I would just post the rules for the next stage of the campaign..

The top 2 of each group will go into a group of death, with a 5th Wildcard place going to the winner of the play off game between the two 3rd placed players in each group.

New lists can be submitted before the draw is done and will be at the same points level. This list will then be used for the rest of the campaign...

The players in the group of death must all play each other once and the final group places decide the overall winner of the campaign.

Missions will be different and confirmed once the group is drawn..

The bottom 2 players in both groups will team up with their fellow 'group' loser and play a doubles game vs the other group partnership for the ultimate 'spoon off' decider...

[jackhoneysett]

I want to be in the spoon-off now! Might throw my last two games... 

[Angelus Mortifer]

Soooo, my third game of the group was against Sasha's Deathwing of Death. All that 2+/5++, half arriving first turn (potentially), and my initial feeling at the beginning was.... "Oh crap!" I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded that DAs don't get the Drop Pod Assault rule like other Marines, so at least I wouldn't have to face that as well first turn, but even so this was going to be a tough match-up.

Recon

I deployed first in a nice box formation with what I hoped was a fairly solid firebase and a bit of manouverability thrown in. I pushed out on my first turn to deny space for his Termies to land too close to my lines, and in time-honoured tradition 3 squads of moody Angels landed with pretty much pin-point accuracy. I know these buggers have been practicing this tactic for over 10,000 years but seriously, I've never seen Sasha fail a scatter roll. Cue point blank lead death to the face...

After the smoke had cleared I had lost only 3 Marines (possibly 4) and my sphincter relaxed ever so slightly  My turn then to reciprocate the favour with some ranged duelling, which managed to wipe one squad out and severely maul a second, so I was quite pleased at the outcome. To be fair to Sash, his Termies had obviously copied my Dread from the game against Stevo, as the number for the day was again "1!!!". The rest of my mobile elements disengaged and withdrew using cover, whilst also setting up a fire screen to mask their withdrawal (...trying to sound like a competent general when really I was still just bricking it  )

Not wanting to miss out on all the fun, Sasha's reserve rolls for the remainder of his units were sublime, and the rest of them showed up Turn 2 to get stuck in... "Oh crap 2!!"

The flow of the battle was then set. My Jump Packers made a long bolt to his DZ (strategic withdrawal NOT running away!), with one squad basically jumping from one corner to the opposite top corner over multiple turns to join the survivors. The rest of my force was there to try and dish out the punishment as best it could. Frustratingly, Sash's poor luck on his 2-ups got much better, which meant that he smashed into my firebase like a constipated turd in a sock, and the end result was not pretty. Luckily, the blood of my Marines matches their armour, so it looked more like a bunch of them were lying down taking a nap, rather than lying there just dead.

Up to the top of Turn 3 it was finely poised, with both of us looking at having three scoring units each in the opponent's DZ, so it was all down to who could whittle away one squad to tip the balance. Sasha was after two Jump Packers left from a 5-man combat squad, and he was comically surprised when he realised he couldn't target them as they had run behind a ruin with no LOS. For me, I had to get rid of three Termies from his third squad, and promptly fired everything at them time and time again. Slowly their numbers fell but it took a mammoth effort to dislodge the final one. Eventually though, he went down under a hail of fire, tipping the game in my favour.

We ended up going the full 7 Turns, so that just meant Kill Points, which Sash admirably clocked up. Well deserved consolation and he was right to point out that a draw would have been an honourable outcome for us both. Really close game again, with highs and lows, and full-on craziness at times  . Another fun match-up and I'm glad I'm getting some wickedly fun games in before the curtain sets on 5th Ed.

[jackhoneysett]

A draw vs Sasa tonight - 1 troop in each DZ on the recon mission.
Sasa scored 6kps, I scored 3.

[milodotnet]

Thanks for the game Jack, sorry if it was a bit painful with all the night fighting and wraiths 

Jack had some shodding luck at the start the game failing tons of saves and losing a wraithlord really early, followed shortly afterwards by the avatar, whilst two turns of night fighting and no searchlights or acute senses made it really hard to retaliate.

I suspected the jetbikes would be a problem in this mission and eventhough my overlord managed to swat a few of them out the sky, however another unit managed to dash into the bottom right corner, unmolested.

My silly annihilation barges once again blew up whenever anything so much as looked at them, whist Jacks tanks were impervious to any form of weaponry. This seems to be a trend with them, but I think their shootyness for the points is still pretty decent.

Otherwise I managed to stack on flank really heavily and slowly march my troops towards Jack's deployment zone. Somehow a unit of doomed wraiths managed to survive shooting from bladestorming Dire Avengers and guided reapers  (wound allocation cheese and 3 up invulnerable saves I guess  )

One of the biggest worries I had (the 10 banshees) luckily didn't make it out of their transport the whole game. At one stage the landed amongst the necron lines but I duly surrounded it with wraiths and immortals, so they had evacute the landing zone as it was to hot to disembark 

Still, even though I had dice superiority most of the game, Jack did make the all important 'end the pain on turn 5 roll' which prevented the last few warriors that tripped over dead eldar bodies (rolling a 1 on their run distance) from making their way into the deployment zone to steal the win :)

Still a good game, and Jack was a great opponent, although I did feel his pain at some stages