Gaelcon Game 4: Dave-ja Vu.

Deja Vu was out so I had this with my computer.

Note: I travelled up to Dublin with the missus for the weekend and had her camera for day one but she went a-touristing and visiting friends so she took it with her. Hence, I'll try to use something with Paint instead.

Dave and his Space Wolves. Again. Draw mission/Pitched Battle.

This was my fault. I arrived late (had to get breakfast as I had the flu the night before and was starving) and saw myself drawn with Dave. We went down to try to change it as we play every 2nd week but there was nothing that could be done as there was a difference between our points and the next ones. We got on with it anyway.





I'll try to keep this short and sweet as it looked like a Draw right from the start. We had one objective each parked in either corner of the board and simply shot at each other.

I was wary of his TWC and Long Fangs so when he elected to go first I was delighted. He packed almost everything into a corner - Long Fangs on a hill, the Rhinos behind it and TWC and Bjorn slightly further forward.Behind another hill. He did place one squad of Long Fangs further to his right in a crater that looked rather exposed.

I placed 2 Rhino squads behind terrain out of LOS while the Wolf Lord and puppies was pushed as far forward as possible without being too much of a target. The Long Fangs hugged my table edge so that Dave wouldn't be able to push his Grey Hunters anywhere near my objective as their Rhinos would be crushed by my Missiles. I didn't bother putting anything on my right as I didn't know if I could take his stuff head on. I did have a pair of Rhinos and Speeders in reserve while the Scouts OBEL'ing could come on and cause Havoc in his lines. Hopefully.

You'll notice the Red Markers are objectives nicely parked in a corner. This was going to be a draw where we would batter each other and I could feed him cheap units while I ground down his expensive stuff so I could swing the points my way.

If it isn't obvious already:
TWL is the Wolf Lord and Puppies
L is the Lord on his own
R is a Rhino with Grey Hunters inside
LF is a Long Fangs squad
S is Scouts
Speed are the Speeders

Dave's stuff is the grey-coloured boxes.
Its the same as above apart from
B being Bjorn
TWC refers to Thunderwolves

All of the Dark Grey squares are Buildings, the Light Green circles are Trees, the Dark Green ovals are hills, the Brown thing is a Crater and the Brown, Blue and Green Line thing is a Swamp.

Turn 1
Dave moved forward slightly. The squad of Fangs on my left killed a few Long Fangs while the others were out of range (as I had expected).

The Lord shuffled forward slightly, careful not to have his doggies expose themselves to the TWC and risk being easy kills in combat while while everything settled in. My Fangs managed to kill all but the Pack Leader and Lascannon in the closest Long Fang Squad.

Turn 2
Hightlight the above and press Ctrl + C, then Ctrl + V. If you change the last sentence to wiping out the Fangs nearest me you have the only change.

Turn 3
Bjorn plodded forward to line a shot up on the Fenrisian Wolves and they were now also in range of the nearest Long Fangs and all died.

My Scouts showed up and ran straight for the Long Fangs nearest the right-hand board edge while trying to simultaneously tag a Rhino. They bagged the Rhino with Krak Grenades while the Power Fist Wolf Guard wiped out the Fangs.

Turn 4
The Scouts are kicked to death. His Rhinos push forward as do the TWC.

My reserves arrive. The Speeders and both Rhinos make for his objective while the Lord moves forward to start putting pressure on him as he only has a single Heavy Weapon squad left.

I open up with my guns and manage to put a pile of Wounds on the TWC with my Missiles, Lightning and Speeders Meltas.

Turn 5
Bjorn moves up to confront the the Rhino on my left by the Swamp while the TWC move up to charge the Speeders. The Fangs wreck one and immobilise the other Speeder while Lightning bags on my Rhinos. The Rhino on my right is subjected to Melta fire and the Grey Hunter squad is charged and mauled by their equivalents.

Bjorn fires his Plasma Cannon at my Grey Hunters now in the Swamp and doesn't kill any. Neither do the TWC reach them even with 2D6" doubled. They make it into the Speeder though (they were called as primary assault target) and mangled it. I now have a dilemma: do I get rid of the 350 point TWC or risk turning Bjorn into an objective. In the end I went for the TWC as I didn't have enough models to risk rushing Bjorn's corpse and the Lord was too far away to help out.

In my turn I finished off the TWC and tore off Bjorn's Plasma Cannon before Immobilising him. I didn't risk firing anything else at him as Dave still have 2 Grey Hunter squads nearby while I had a paltry 5 Marines.

The game ended after that with as predicted, a Draw the result. It ended 10-10 as Dave had managed to bag 2 big squads of Grey Hunters, the Scouts and the Speeders to balance out his TWC, Long Fangs and damaged Bjorn.

3 Turns of Wolf-on-Wolf action.

If you look at the map you'll see where the units ended up. It summaries 3 turns of action (thankfully not the guy from Gladiators) with the Lord (L) and Bjorn's (B) final positions given as well as where my Reserves ended up before being stopped. It also highlights where the Scouts came in and did damage before being eaten.

It was a nice relaxed start to Sunday and I was happy with my performance after the game from the day before.

I did promise short and sweet didn't I?

Game 5 up soon.