Equinox 40k - Rounds 4 & 5

Hi hi fatties!

I'm back with another couple of 40k reports from last weekends Equinox event, where I competed with my Orks.

So far I had gone 12-2, 15-0, 15-0 putting me first equal on battle points for the end of day 1. Still, the draw hadn't been easy, and I knew if I did well on day 2, the draw was only going to get harder and harder. We worked out that I would be playing Mark Buttle with his Tyranids in the morning. Mark on the other hand, had the ultimate draw in taking it easy. His first opponent had conceeded afte 2 and a half turns, he then played someone who had never played a tournament before and had to have dawn of war explained to him, before getting a bye for his third round.

Still, I felt I would be able to use this against him, he had effectively played 2 turns of 40k over the weekend so far, so if I could ramp the pressure up early, mistakes should happen at a fairly high rate.

Round 4:

Mission: Table Quarters, 1 Objective in the Centre*

Secondary Objective: Hold a building in your deployment zone with a troops choice

Deployment: Spearhead

Opponent: Mark Buttle (Tyranids)

Mark had:

Tervigon

3 Hive Guard

2 Hive Guard

10 Ymgarls

16 Hormagants - toxic sacs

16 Hormagants - toxic sacs

3 Shrikes - dual boneswords

7 or 8 Ravenors

14 Gargoyles

Trygon

Tyrgon - Prime

Those who have seen Marks Tyranids will understand the Broccolini reference, as their bases involve tree's that make them all look rather.... vegetarian.

Mark won the roll for deployment, and given that it was quarters, elected to go second. I chose a corner where I could get okay line of sight to MC's with my lootas, protecting most things from a Ymgarl attack, and he would have a large piece of impassible terrain down one edge of his quarter, allowing me to create a stop gap with a faster unit and block off any movement into that quarter.

Mark set up reasonably deep into his quarter, allowing himself a couple of turns of prep movement. With nowhere of use to go, the Ymgarls started on the table, and away we went.

Turn 1: I scouted the deffkoptas up to begin whittling the Ymgarls, who were out of LOS for most of my army, taking a few out of the unit.

The rest of the army shuffled forward, getting up levels in ruins to snub their noses at ravenors, while helping the lootas with some cheeky shots on a trygon, which in the end dealt 2 wounds.

His Turn 1: Marks Hive Guard took out the trukk, but the boyz inside stuck around. A perils on feel no pain saw the tervigon take a wound, while everything else shuffled forward behind a gargoyle screen.

My Turn 2: More whittling fire from kopters saw a few more Ymgarls dissapear. Another wound was stripped off the trygon, and the gargoyles were reduced to 3 models. The trukk boyz headed back towards my secondary objective building, as the unit holding it had to be worth more than 100 points, ruling out the grots.

His Turn 2: One of the hormagant units milled about in his building, looking to hold it. A quick spawn from the tervigon saw an average sized unit start moving up with the other hormagant unit along his left, the side with the large piece of LOS blocking impassible terrain that the remains of the Ymgarls were currently negotiating. The Ravenors hopped back into a piece of terrain, realising they had nothing of value they could hit until some people started taking elevators to the ground floor. The Trygons had one on each flank of his force, with the shrikes trying to support either one, sitting back in his deployment quarter.

My Turn 3: Mark had now separated his trygons by more than 18, and had them about that far away from the shrikes too, so I used the meganobs to delete the healthy trygon.

The Ymgarls were reduced to 2 stealers, and the other trygon was shot to 1 wound left.

His Turn 3: The 3 gargoyles formed a screen in front of the meganobs blocking their movement. The hormies on his left pulled along to the quarter mark, gaunts closing in behind them, while the ravenors had to gap it away from the meganobs or suffer their wrath, and sat them next to the unit of 3 hive guard, protected by the gargoyle screen. He then shot the battlewagon next to the gargoyles, which took one out in the explosion and they fled, removing the screen he'd just gone to all that effort to set up. The trygon on one wound was able to push forward into a squad of kans and destroyed it, assaulting with the 2 stealers.

My Turn 4: The meganobs got a healthy move and run, wiping out the ravenors and hive guard. A unit of boys pushed up on my right to block his advancement into the corner, assaulting to hold them there for a few turns, while the trygon was finished off along with the Ymargle stealers.

Unfortunately we were called for time, and had there been a turn 5, there would have been nothing Mark could have done to stop me from contesting his secondary objective. As such, I won the primary 3-0, and we drew on the secondary, making it 12-2.

Only picking up 12 points in this game now sat me 1 point behind Steve Davis with Mech Guard, who I would surely be playing next. The game was never really difficult, as it was against fast Tyranids who never decided to really leave their quarter. All threats were separated and allowed to be taken piecemeal, which is an... interesting choice.

With that we went straight into round 5, were sure enough, Steve and I had drawn each other! Steve's a great guy, who has been playing his Mech Guard aggressively all weekend, kicking ass and taking names. His army scares the Bejesus out of me, and this was going to be a very difficult game.

Round 5:

Mission: 5 Objectives, 1 central, 1 in each far corner

Secondary Mission: Choose 5 Secret kill points

Deployment: Spearhead

Opponent: Steve Davis (Mech Guard)

Steve had:

Command Squad - 4 meltas, chimera

Command Squad - 4 meltas, chimera, -1 to your reserves modifier

Psyker Battle Squad - Chimera

Veterans - 3 melta guns, demolitions

Veterans - 3 melta guns, demolitions

Veterans - 3 Melta guns, Chimera

30 man blob squad - Commisar, 3 autocannons, 3 plasmaguns

Platoon Command Squad - Meltas, Chimera

Vendetta

Vendetta

2 Hydras

2 Hydras

1 Colossus - think it was the colossus, which ever one dishes out s6 ap3 no cover templates.

I won the roll for deployment and set up with a fairly central approach. I did however have some LOS blocking terrain to my left, so had my vehicles towards that side, in order to cut out half his firing lines and force him to be across the table from me with most things, instead of entirely in the corner.

Steve set up as much in his corner as he could get while maintaining decent LOS lines, and had his vendettas lined up to scout in opposite ways to get side battlewagon shots if possible. The entire line was then bubble wrapped in the 30 man blob squad.

I pushed my deffkoptas up with their scout to block the vendetta from pushing out to my right, as my left was covered by the terrain. Steve boosted one vendetta up to be right down my end of the board, staying 12 away, but not much more than 12. The other pulled back into his lines.

For secret kill points, these were done before the game began, and before deployment. As such, I chose the 3 platoon infantry squads, and knew I would have to deal to each vendetta, so chose those as well.

Steve chose the same units everyone choses against me for this kind of mission, trukk, trukkboyz, deffkoptas, battlewagon, grots.

Turn 1: Steve had pushed too close with his vendetta, and the trukk boyz went for it. I knew these would be 2 kill points for the secondary, but against mech guard I had to just focus on the primary and hope for the best on secondary. I couldnt afford to not use portions of my army against an opponent like Steve.

Meanwhile the deffkoptas pushed up, shooting and assaulting his blob squad on one extreme flank, so only a portion would be able to fight, while they would block his tanks from moving for a turn. Everything else advanced forward.

The lootas only shook the PSB chimera, but the trukkboyz came up large, with 1 hit on 6's the nob took out the vendetta, with the veterans inside failing their moral check from explosion casualties and fleeing. The deffkoptas did well in their assault, but as Steve wanted to kill them ASAP, he allocated a buzzsaw wound to the commisar, killing him, and they fled off the board, so I hunkered down in cover.

His Turn 1: Steve pushed a chimera with command squad up to issue an order to the fleeing veterans, and pulled the vendetta across a little to get 3 lascannon shots on the battlewagon, unfortunately in the front due to the LOS blocking building on my left.

The other command squad rushed forward and hopped out, hoping to melta the battlewagon, but looked like they may be out of extra dice range.

The deffkoptas came up huge with their coversaves, losing 3 koptas depsite a large chunk of his army shooting at them, only to then pass their moral check. Meanwhile the trukk was blown up, and the boyz sent packing by the veterans after a get back into the fight saw them able to pump some shots out on the boyz. The battlewagon went unscathed, after the command squad were indeed at long range, and lascannons vs armour 14 is french for fail.

Turn 2: The meganobs surged forward, their battlewagon going 13, their hop out going 2+a medium sized base, their fleet going 5 and their assault going 6 saw them crawling all over his lines.

The grots failed to show up, and everything else moved and ran forward to catch up to the meganobs, with some kans hitting the command squad that had just jumped out infront of everything. The deffkoptas had to stay where they were, as they had gone to ground.

In the assault, the meganobs collected all 4 hydras along with the other vendetta, while the command squad was sent packing by the kans.

The blasts from the hydras even took out all but 2 psykers from the battle squad, no longer protected by their chimera after hopping out and hiding behind it when it got shaken.

His Turn 2: Every melta gun that could fired at the meganobs, but between allocating hits to the warboss, average rolling on steves behalf, and great rolling on mine, I only lost 2 models out of 10 - not enough for a moral check, with the psyker battle squad left frowning in frustration in the back field.

The deffkoptas were finished off, and Steve had 4/5 of my units while I had all 5 of his. We called it there, as the next turn would see a mass mop up, collecting the last threat to the still reserved grots, as well as taking out almost all his remaining troops.

A really brutal and short game, I feel this could have gone drastically different for Steve with a few key changes. Making the most of blocking the battlewagon, spreading a bit more to protect against multi assaults, and using empty chimeras as a keep away wall would have gone a long way here towards wreaking havoc on my army, as well as not sacrificing a valk and the 30man squad quite so needlessly.

Still, Steves army was always going to struggle with the 60 foot boyz as long as I didnt use them for anything other than scoring. Keeping them spread really neuters that heavy support vehicle shelling them to death, and invalidates the 9bizillion heavy flamers on all the vehicles. When I use them to start assaulting tanks, they start to die in droves to those flamers.

This sat me on two 12's, and three 15's for a total of 69/75, with one round to go. The next highest person had 57, and with that I had drawn Doug Sainsbury, the winner of Battlecry recently, where we had dodged each other.

The next article to come will be round 6 with a wrap up, and then I can move onto some content I find far more interesting :D For future reports, I'm thinking of trying to mix a few photos of the actual game along with maps similar to the reports Jack is doing at the moment, what do you think?