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Fighting
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Events and Battle Reports Counter Offensive 8: Battle
Summaries, Part 2 by Kenton Kilgore After a full day of brutality at Dream Wizards, several of us members of the Millenium Gate forum retired to Jungle Guide Patrick Eibel’s abode for the customary CO megabattle, which we decided would be Chaos Space Marines vs. Sisters of Battle/Imperial Guard.
Fearful Symmetry Set-up. Representing the Sisters were Ken Lacy and Bryan Layton, each with 1000 points, much of it in Immolators and Exorcists. Jen Burdoo had 1000 points of Imperial Guard, most of it in the same tanks she used in our battle. Pat brought 1500 points of his Wolf Brothers: a Chaos Lord on a Juggernaut, lots of Berzerkers, a Havoc Squad, and Rhinos full of Chaos Space Marines. I summoned the list I mentioned earlier.
Pat deploying his
forces The scenario was “Pillage” out of the Battle Missions book, where, basically, you had to plop guys on top of objectives and the longer they stayed there, the more points one racked up. The side with the most points would win the game. Both sides started with HQs and some Troops in quarter deployment, with everything else in reserves, and off we went. What happened? Pat had been burnt (sorry) by Ken’s Immolator-heavy list last year, but I wasn’t too pressed. While Pat sent some Berzerkers down the left side of our table edge to grab objectives, we threw Rhinos full of Chaos drones in the face of the Sisters/IG coalition.
Pat’s Wolf Lord and
Berzerkers, with Varman
Kumar tagging along, make for a nearby bunker Loyalist shooting broke down two Rhinos, but the Fearful Symmetry were close enough to summon the Lesser Rakshasas (aka Lesser Daemons), and the tigermen hack-n-slashed their way through the Guardsmen while Chaos Marines overran the Goody Two-Shoe lines and engaged Sisters. Heavy-weapon fire from the Bronze Tygers (Defilers) and the Havoc Squad chewed up Immolators. Meanwhile, Pat’s Chaos Lord squatted on the first objective and started raking in the cash.
Firing smoke
launchers as they hurtle forward, transports belonging to the Fearful
Symmetry and Wolf Brothers start to ruin the Imperials’ day,
especially as how those green tanks in the background were in reserve and not actually
in play Bloodied but unbowed, the Imperials fought back, sending more and more Immolators, as well as fire from Exorcists and Retributors. My Greater Rakshasas (Possessed Marines) had rolled up the [sarcasm] awesome [/sarcasm] “Scout” ability before the game, so they and their Rhino outflanked—on the wrong side of the table, naturally. Across the board, the Berzerkers and Varman Kumar (my Chaos Sorcerer) traded first gunfire, then blows, with Bryan’s Canoness and Retributors for possession of another objective.
While the Chaos
Lord in the foreground holds and loots an objective, the Wolf Brothers and
Fearful Symmetry (with summoned
daemon allies) hack up Guardsmen, blast open Immolators, and chop down
Sisters Several turns went by, with the Loyals eventually wearing down the Renegades as the latter slogged through the wreckage of all the many destroyed Immolators (if I recall, we took out all of Ken’s). The game hinged on me being able to keep my Possessed Marines atop an objective, but massed shooting blasted them away and the good guys won, 10 points to 8.
Pat got some Chosen
behind some of Jen and Bryan’s tanks, but the Imperials had mech reinforcements aplenty Post-game
analysis. Again, another close
loss that I do not feel bad about. Ken
describes his Sisters as an “I keeeeeel you!”-type army, built to kick ass, and
my guys (with assistance from Pat’s Wolf Brothers, of course), went
toe-to-toe with them. What made me
feel even better was that we were using the dominatrix Witch Hunter codex
rules for Sisters, not the spayed White Dwarf version. I wish that the Possessed Marines had
rolled up something—anything—rather than “Scout,” but that’s what the die had
demanded. Ah, well.
Bronze Tygers (proxied Defilers) and
Wolf Brother Havocs provided the heavy support for Team Renegade
Kurindans Set-up. I played this game on Sunday, August 21, against a local player named Peter. We rolled for mission and deployment and came up with Capture and Control with Dawn of War. A mission where Nids start off the board and have to waddle on, crossing the table through a storm of gunfire? Turbo! What could possibly make that worse? How about stupid deployment? I foolishly plunked down my Hive Tyrant and two broods of Hormagaunts about halfway up the table instead of keeping them off, and thus with the rest of my army. Everyone see how this is going to turn out?
Proxied Trygon, proxied Tervigon, proxied Shrikes…hey,
where’s the Hive Tyrant? Oh, that’s right: he’s
already dead What happened? Well, what do you *think* happened? Peter took the first turn, brought on his army (loaded with tanks), and opened up on my soon-to-be-extinct Flyrant and Hormies, taking a mere two turns to knock out !Klrt and reduce both broods to a few measly scraps. He then went to work on my onrushing Gargoyles, Shrikes, and Trygon.
Ah, iddn’t dat cute? Here come Kenton’s little purple Lizardmen, trying to act like a real 40K army. Chumps. I did manage to get some Hormies, some Termagants, and even (eventually) my Tervigon into his infantry squads, and for a while it might look like I’d eke out a tie, as I had another batch of ‘gants holding down the objective on my side of the board. Then he sent a Chimera full of Vets, which I had no answer for, to flame said Termagants on my side of the board and roll on top of the objective, and that was basically that. And no, it wasn’t even *that* interesting: mainly, the whole game, Peter placed templates and rolled dice, and I pulled figures off the board. I actually felt bad for Peter, because if the game was monotonous for me (in the same sort of way that a chronic toothache can be tiresome), it must have been worse for him.
Lookee! Lizards go bye-bye! Wave bye-bye, craptastic
army played by lame-ass doofus! You go home now and cry! Post-game analysis. Where did this game go wrong? Let me count the ways: 1. “Stand-Back-and-Shoot
Army” vs. “Run-Across-the-Board-and-Get-into-Close-Combat Army.” World War I taught us that charging into a
storm of heavy weapon fire is never a good idea. Nids, as we all
know, do not have mech for transporting troops and
weathering said heavy weapons fire as they advance on the enemy. 2. Tanks vs. Tyranids.
Bugs (or, in my case, Lizards) have very few options for taking out
tanks, and Peter had 7 of them. 3. Bad list. Bringing a 275-point Hive Tyrant and a
210-point Trygon in a 1500-point list was too many
points invested in “big guys” that did nothing more than suck down wounds. 4. Dawn of War. The deployment that every Nid player enjoys: start at the back line instead of
somewhere on the board, so that your guys have even farther to go. Yay! 5. Deployment
stupidity. As mentioned, putting my Tyrant and the Hormies up the board was a bad idea. I hadn’t read the rules for Dawn of War closely,
and I had thought that Peter’s army would come on by the regular Reserves rules; i.e., in bite-sized
chunks instead of all at once. Instead
of being able to have !Klrt and the Trogs shrug off some gunfire and jump a few units at
once, what I got was my guys getting blasted with everything Peter’s IG had. I
should have started with nothing on the board, brought in all my guys at
once, and let Peter choose which Scary Monster he wanted to target first: the
Tyrant, the Trygon, or the Tervigon. As it was, I allowed him to ignore the last
two for the much closer, more immediate threat.
Proxied Tervigon and Termagants attempt to make this game
remotely interesting. They fail. Conclusion And thus endeth another Counter Offensive. While I only won one of the four games I played, I was pleased with how two of the losing armies did: the Kurindans, however, need to go back into the shop for more tinkering under the hood. During CO8, it became clear to me that I need to do a serious refresher on the basic rules of the game itself. While I remembered all the army-specific rules, I was unaware or unsure of several items, or remembered previous versions of a rule from an earlier edition. For example, I didn’t have a clue that jump infantry can run after making their 12” hop. I need to read, re-read, and re-re-read the main rules again so that I have a much better grasp on them before Pat and I crank up the Foul Deeds campaign (coming soon to an Equatorial Rainforest near you).
Finally, while I enjoyed myself greatly (well, not so much during the last game), I would have preferred that more people attended. For the first few Counter Offensives, turnout was great: for the past two years, only a handful of folks have shown up. I’ll work with Pat and Dream Wizards to see if we can’t entice more people to attend next year.
Bryan’s Death Guard
take on Peter’s Imperial Guard
Some of Jen’s
Guardsmen, converted to have boonie
hats
Pat’s Tyranids take on Ken’s Techno-Recidivists Counter Offensive 8 Related
Pages Posted September 2011 |
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Fighting
Tigers: Other
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