Counter Offensive 3: Dark Eldar
I hadn’t played my Ozone Scorpions in months (since the Iron Halo Tournament, also at Dream Wizards), so I was keen on using them again. All the DE battles I fought at CO3 were with 2000 points.

Ozone Scorpions vs. Blood Angels
This game was against 40K Master Mike Somerville and his “pre-Heresy” Blood Angels, who use the rules from Codex: Space Marines, not the old Codex: Blood Angels. Thus, no Black Rage, no Death Company, etc. Mike brought:

• Chapter Master and Command Squad
• Three 10-man Tactical Squads (one mounted in Rhino)
• Two 6-man Tactical Squads, mounted in Razorbacks
• Two Devastator Squads
• Three Land Speeders

Above: Mike Somerville. 
Ladies, I can get you his phone number

Our mission was an Omega-level “Seek and Destroy.” The Escalation rule required Mike to keep his vehicles off the table at the beginning of the game, but he still had plenty of boots on the ground. I deployed my Warrior Squads and kept everything else in the portal.

Mike went first, throwing the firepower of his Devastators and Tac Squad missile launchers at Squad #5, the fellows with the dark lances. My Death Twinkies were atop a bunker and I claimed a 3+ save, which frustrated Mike to no end, as he could only take out two of my guys. In my turn, the dark lances fired, killing two of his Devastators, while my other three Warrior Squads advanced through cover.

On Turn 2, a pair of Mike’s Speeders and a Razorback-mounted Tactical Squad came on. Marine shooting killed nine scrubs from Squad #7, forcing them to fall back. Two more Warriors from Squad #5 died, as did nine fellows from Squad #0. Fortunately, I had plenty more. On my turn, Squad #7 continued to fall back, the dark lance “sniper squad” shook a Land Speeder, and—most importantly—Squad #0 opened their webway portal.

Another Land Speeder and the Rhino-mounted Tac Squad came on at the start of Turn 3. Mike’s heavy weapons plinked off two more dudes each from Squads #0 and #5: as if Dark Eldar care! On my turn, two Taloses, the Warp Beasts, and all three Wych squads emerged and crashed into the Blood Angel line. Though my mass charge looked impressive (and did manage to destroy one Speeder and shake the other two), it was not nearly as effective as I would have liked: the Warp Beasts didn’t make it into close combat (as the battle line was too crowded) and the Wyches massively underperformed, killing all of three Marines. 

For the rest of the game, our remaining forces came on (my third Talos decided not to show up until Turn 5, thanks) and the battle was a long, slow grind. Marines, being seemingly hewn out of rock, do just fine in long, slow grinds, but Dark Eldar, seemingly molded from wet Kleenex, do not. Eventually, the Blood Angels wore down and pushed back the Ozone Scorpions, and thus endeth that. 

Outcome: Blood Angels win (1796 Victory Points to 1524 Victory Points)

Ozone Scorpions vs. the Warmonger Chapter
If you’re looking to read about a game with bare-knuckles, knife-edge, sock-boom-POW! action, you may want to go to the Necron batreps. This game turned out to be an odd Omega-level “Recon” against my pal Ken Lacy and his Warmonger Chapter, a “9th Company” Space Marine army that uses See, But Don’t Be Seen and Honor Your Wargear. Ergo, it had six Devastator Squads (with missile launchers and heavy bolters) and could infiltrate. 

I knew about the Dev Squads, having seen Ken shred other armies earlier in the day, but as I was setting up, I didn’t recall that Ken’s boys could infiltrate, too. Thus, Ken was able to set up about half of his force on my flank, with clear lines of fire. His Marines opened up on my four Warrior Squads, evaporating Squad #0 and killing two from Squad #5 straight from the get-go. I played in character, and had my Dark Eldar run like gutless cowards, trying to avoid the rain of fire from the Warmongers.

The next five turns were sort of hide-and-seek, with Ken taking potshots whenever he could (his Librarian’s Fury of the Ancients power was useful for this) and me trying to open a portal and lay low. On Turn 6, as night fell (per the Dusk and Dawn rule), my guys made a dash for Ken’s deployment zone. Though I managed to get several squads to the other side of the board, it was, of course, too little, too late.

Outcome: Warmongers win (1030 Victory Points to 646 Victory Points)

Ozone Scorpions vs. Sisters of Battle
If you don’t enjoy the game, why play? That’s what I should have asked an opponent whom we’ll call “Anonymous L,” or maybe just “AL” for short. One of the first things that “AL” told me was, “I’m sick of this game”—I’m assuming “AL” meant 40K in general, because we hadn’t even started deploying our forces. “AL” then went on to describe to me how much better Flames of War is than 40K; how “AL” had wanted to bring an Imperial Guard army but “the only way” to play IG was to tool up versus Marines and how that “sucked;” and “AL’s” displeasure that a lot of other players had also brought Sisters of Battle armies. 

Nevertheless, I attempted an Alpha-level “Recon” mission. “AL” brought a Canoness, Battle Sisters in Rhinos, and three Exorcists—“AL” tried to convince me that the three Exorcists were “too much,” but I said I had no objections. In hindsight, what I should have done was used the Exorcists as a pretext, picked up my models, and moved on. 

As we began the game, I learned that “AL” had peculiar ideas about several areas of the rules, always in “AL’s” favor, of course. My favorite was “AL’s” assertion that the physical edge of the battle mat that we were using was not the actual “board edge” for falling back purposes: as the mat was about 50" wide rather than a standard 48", the “board edge” should actually be an inch or so in. Which, by mere coincidence, meant that one of my squads that had been falling back was now destroyed, as the back of one Warrior’s base grazed this imaginary “board edge.” 

It was at that point, about mid-way through Turn 2, that I stopped arguing against “AL’s” rules-silliness, mentally excused myself from the game, and made only half-hearted efforts to continue playing. “AL” parked a Rhino atop my lone open webway portal and blocked the rest my army from coming on, but I honestly couldn’t care less: by then, I was willing to gnaw off a body part to escape this dreary, argumentative person. 

Outcome: Sisters of Battle win

Analysis
Going into CO3, I had worried about folks knowing my typical plan for the webway portals and taking counter-measures that would cost me the game. As mentioned in the introduction, what I did to counteract that was to give the portals to Sybarites (using my Haemonculus as nothing more than a decoy), and adding extra Warrior Squads as diversions.

While the tactic with the Haemonculus worked well (particularly in the game against Ken, who used Fury of the Ancients to zap poor Vulnayvya), the trick with the extra Warriors just provided my opponents with easy Victory Points. I had a bad tendency to toss the diversionary Warriors to the wolves while keeping the squads with the portals safely out of sight: given the choice of shooting the guys they could see or shooting nothing, my opponents wisely chose to shoot the guys they could see, and profited from it. Next time, I’ll go back to what worked so well for me at CO2 and the Iron Halo tourney. 

Additionally, I made some bad maneuvers in the game against Mike’s Blood Angels, and my Wyches completely whiffed when it came to crunch time. With Wyches, you either kill your target on the charge or on the second turn of hand-to-hand fighting: if they’re still dancing with the same enemy squad after that, they’re probably going to get ground down. 

Against Ken, I lost during deployment: everything after that was just playing out the string. But then, deployment has always been my biggest weakness. Let me offer a public “thank you” to Ken for some insightful suggestions he gave me during the game.

So, not a particularly good day at the office for the Ozone Scorpions, but two out of three games were fun and allowed me to hang out with good people, and there’s nothing sad about that. 
 
 

Related Pages 
Counter Offensive
Countdown to Counter Offensive 2
Counter Offensive 2

Posted September 2006
 

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