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| Just look at those legs. |
Flushed with victory from Round 1 we were drawn with Belgium. We were confident that we could get 2 points from them too which would have meant we might play one of the pre-tourney favourites like ze Germans or the Poles.
I wandered off to have a look at other armies including a stunning Harlequin-themed Dark Eldar army and give the Captain room to think about match-ups. I came back to see Guard and Grey Knights in front of me. I wasn't excited about Guard in Dawn of War but nor did I fancy the 2+ save horde of GK. My decision was made when the GK were given to our Nid player Cornflakes who assured us he had taken this kind of list in practice and knew what to do to crack it.
And this is where the importance of the match-up system came into being.
With the benefit of hindsight these were clearly a pair of bad match-ups that cost us the round: The Guard in Dawn of War would be able to roll up into my face and could bring greater numbers of anti-tank weapons to bear against my mech list while the Purifiers would simply throw out Cleansing Flames to beat the band. Had we swapped opponents then I could have sat back for a draw or sneaky win using LOS-blocking terrain (which Alex from the English team comments on here) against the GK bunkering up while the Nids went for the squishy parts of the Guard army to grab a win by multi-charging vehicles and dragging infantry into the gang-bang.
I should have insisted that Cornflakes was woefully unsuited for the task at hand and talking shite about his chances (5 Purifying Flames a turn > Stealershock), and the above set of matches would be better if things went tits-up, but it was too late and I had my own game to think about so I wandered over to where Maarten waited with his Guardsmen.
His list was:
Company Command Squad with 4 Melta in Chimera with Heavy Flamer
Company Command Squad with 4 Plasma in Chimera with Heavy Flamer
Plasma Vets in Chimera with Heavy Flamer
Plasma Vets in Chimera with Heavy Flamer
Melta Vets in Chimera with Heavy Flamer
Melta Vets in Chimera with Heavy Flamer
Melta Vets in Chimera with Heavy Flamer
Vendetta
Vendetta
Hydra
2 Hydras
Medusa with Closed Compartment
I had never fought a Medusa before but I figured that I'd just pound it with Missiles to silence the damn thing. Assuming the Fangs showed up early enough. Had I the first turn I would have rushed midfield and taken up positions behind the LOS-blocking Impassable to vehicles terrain and set myself for a GH Melta-rush onto objectives late in the game. The only thing was Maarten won the roll for 1st turn and took it. After much thought I figured that I'd do the usual anti-Guard tactic: Reserve. Everything.
Guard work best by shooting you to death. If there is nothing to shoot for 2 turns they've lost the use of up to 40% of their firepower (40% assuming a 5 turn game) allowing my stuff to remain mobile and potentially do last-turn objective grabbing/denying with my units and to keep his silenced by shooting vehicles as mine arrived.
Plus, I had several units with Melta and Chimeras hate that shit: with a 33% chance of making the vehicles explode on a Pen I had a higher chance of torching the bodies inside potentially forcing more Pinning and Morale tests on the Guard squads which might lock them down or send them running from an objective (the Ultramarines) late in the game.
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| Trundle, trundle, trundle goes the gunwall. |
The Guard all show up and roll out like Autobots.
Turn 2
The Guard take up position and smoke en masse.
Some of my stuff arrives and I elect to pack as many Long Fangs as I can into my left-hand corner in a ruin and park 2 Razors near the objective so that if one goes pop there's another for any Troops to hide in. Then one really annoying thing happened. Actually, two things: both Scout units showed up. I was hoping that at least one would hang back so that they'd get to target a stunned/immobile Chimera and take out it and the squad stuck inside in one turn thus removing a Troops choice late on, but no.
Instead one unit threw themselves at a Chimera and with 2 Meltas, 5 Kraks and Melta Bombs they managed to stun it (preventing the guys inside from getting out) while the others bagged a Hydra and shook the other from the big Hydra unit. The Razors managed to Immobilise a Chimera, Immobilise and Weapon Destroy a Vendetta and shake the other one. Not a terrible turn overall but I knew I'd lose things in the reprisal.
Turn 3
Both Scout units are mown down. Idiots. Maarten pushed his vehicles into midfield and starting shooting at Razors and did a few minor results on the Razors while some more Long Fangs fall over but not enough to get rid of all my missiles.
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| That's a lot of stuff still alive. |
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| The Razors start arriving. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. |
With most of my army on the table Maarten can now bring his firepower to bear and he takes out a pair of Razors and pins one GH squad while other Razors were silenced . Not good.
At least I was able to Immobilise the Chimera that was cockblocking the tanks behind it, keeping them away from the objectives while an Immobilised Chimera in Maarten's back lines was finally cracked open and the one on the right was stunned again with my shooting before I took out the Immobilised cockblocking Chimera in combat and having Immobilised the one behind it with missile fire I was able to ensure they wouldn't be able to get near the centre. The only thing was I had some of my GH units in the open and they would take a pounding.
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| Grey Hunters rescucing Ultramarines? Sounds about right. |
The GH units outside their tanks were all targeted with volumes of fire that reduced them to 2, 1 and 1 respectively while a unit of Guardsmen and a Command Squad had waddled onto an objective in the centre and posed a problem. That was in addition to all the fecking tanks and units floating about grabbing objectives or poised to contest them.
Thankfully none of my units fled and I threw my GH straight into the Vets on my objective and remembered to park a Razor full of Troops on an objective. I had the option of charging into the Command Squad behind them but I reckoned that asking a solitary Grey Hunter to tackle all of those guys was a bridge too far, especially with the risk that if I lost the combat I would allow them to consolidate onto the objective and risk losing if the game ended.
My shooting took out the Medusa's cannon and a Chimera while my combat saw my rampaging Grey Hunters tear through the Guardsmen and set up to be shot in turn 6 if there was one, although he had a squad near enough to the objective so that he was might be contesting. I needed the game to go on and when Joe (our Chaos player) floated past I asked him to roll - I had rolled for his game to continue earlier when he needed it and I had the feeling he'd return the favour. He did and the game went on.
Turn 6
Remember those 4 GH lads that mangled the Vets? They were all shot to shit leaving me with just 2 Troops units: one on an objective in my deployment zone and another hiding in a Razorback. The Guard shooting is confined to short-ranged anti-infantry fire and they can do nothing to the Razor to stop it moving in my turn but they do all they can to get the win by congalining all over their half of the board while one squad having backed off to take themselves out of assault range if things went pear-shaped in the shooting phase ran near my central objective but rolled poorly and we're unsure if they're able to contest just yet.
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| You don't win friends with Salad... |
We roll and the game finishes. Counting up it's a 10-10 draw and the round is also a draw for the Team. At least we should avoid some of the top tier teams with our win/Draw record but we're drawn with Sweden and our VC Paul tells us we're in for an education as these are dark horses for the title and very, very good players all.
I really enjoyed the read being from Northern Ireland we didn't to too badly ourselves this year with Johnny and the guys
ReplyDeleteI have also added you to my own blog at http://uniteallaction.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteYe didn't actually and I was chatting to a few of the team about how things were going. I was fully expecting to be facing one of ye in the final round when the Norweigans headed off early (I'll save my comments on that for another time) and I was gunning for revenge against Dave McCurdy and his BA even though that match-up wouldn't have been the best for the team.
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting. I'll be sure to sign up to your place aswell.
Yeah, choosing the GK list was a major error on my part. I read his list, saw the three purifier squads and completely forgot that they could combat squad. But it was actually the sheer numbers of psycannons that bogged my troops down. The genestealers ended up skulking in cover, weathering fire and waiting for late game charges onto his objectives. I also suspect that I subconsciously wanted to beat a GK list after being horribly robbed by a GK player in the previous round.
ReplyDeleteBut it wasn't the one-sided match that you think it to be. I still would have managed a win with kinder dice. Sacrificed one squad of stealers for the turn 5 win and sacrificed another squad for the turn 6 win. My last squad fluffed an assault on the final turn to deny me even a draw. If I had to play the game again, I'd play it exactly the same way.
Ah the belgians! I was busy getting my ass handed to me by their Dark Eldar at the time ... stupid venoms and their stupid 5+ invuln.
ReplyDeleteLove the blog by the way
Basilisk? So much for WYSIWYG...
ReplyDeleteIt's only been like, two weeks since I got back to this. Sorry lads, I've been ignoring the real world as I was playing Space Marine.
ReplyDelete@TKE: I didn't know what a Medusa looked like so I didn't mind. Plus, it didn't do much before I blew the gun off anyway. :D
@Mike: Cheers lad. I've got a few more reports to write up. How about you throw up some of yours somewhere?
@Newbreed: Don't people allege that Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?
It was a bad match-up that shouldn't have happened. You should have put your ego to one side, waited for revenge and thought more about the team's position by playing the Guard (Dawn of War so they lose at least one shooting phase and have to move toward your Stealers: yes, please); the rest of the team should have been more vocal about preventing said match-up but ultimately Floody should have seen that a potential 5 Purifying Flames will be expected to make shit of a Stealer-heavy list every time, not least because it largely nerfs their combat ability.
Having us swap opponents would have netted our team more points in that round. But then that's the benefit of hindsight.
@stormy Without a doubt, the pairings would have been better if reversed. Can't argue with that.
ReplyDeleteBut.... when you say the rest of the team should have been more vocal about preventing that match-up, I really have to point out that this specific set of match-ups were discussed by only two people. You and I. We were handed the two lists and asked to choose which we liked. We studied the lists. I asked if you were happy with the Guard. You replied in the affirmative. I said I was happy to go against the Grey Knights. We handed the lists back to the captain.
You were put against the Guard, two rounds later, I was sent against the Grey Knights.
I freely admit that I chose a poor match-up but the only person in a position to stop me was yourself. The captain and the rest of the team were off looking at tables/checking their own matchups.
Having the team be more vocal would be as simple as the two of us wandering off to a few other tables and getting input from the lads: Baz would have spotted the potential to combat squad the Purifiers faster than the pair of us, for example. As you point out there were two other match-ups made in-between ours where someone else could have been asked for advice.
ReplyDeleteI've already said I could have done more, but in the end the buck stopped with Floody's call as Captain. We can agree that there were better pairings available that round, which shows the importance of the match-up process which I highlighted at the start of my post.
Ah, by two rounds later, I mean the second round after yours. The matchup between us was Floody's own. So he had to do that match-up and then pick a table to play on. The choice of bids was delegated to us. I chose badly and I don't blame the captain for failing to catch my error. There's always going to be fog of war...games.
ReplyDeleteIt would be good to be able to grab team-wide opinions but you remember how it was. You got about two minutes to look over lists. Time devoted to ours is time taken from their own. Plus I convinced you, no reason why I wouldn't be able to Wormtongue anyone else who came along.
There's a host of factors that make organising your bids there and then dangerous. Hopefully, with Mike's various backroom staff, Team Ireland can work through the hundreds of combinations next year and have bid strategies for every team created in advance.
'Ah, by two rounds later, I mean the second round after yours. The matchup between us was Floody's own. So he had to do that match-up and then pick a table to play on. The choice of bids was delegated to us. I chose badly and I don't blame the captain for failing to catch my error.'
ReplyDeleteOk, thanks for clarifying that.
'Plus I convinced you, no reason why I wouldn't be able to Wormtongue anyone else who came along.'
You did, but I reckon that other people who had greater experience with either Nids or GK would have spotted something. Thinking about it now, Floody plays both. He had have his own things to worry about as you've already said.
'There's a host of factors that make organising your bids there and then dangerous. Hopefully, with Mike's various backroom staff, Team Ireland can work through the hundreds of combinations next year and have bid strategies for every team created in advance.'
I completely agree.