catalyst2 | Battle #15 (Reply)

Tonight was 2000 points against Sean's Imperial Guard again. We both wanted to try out very different armies so, even though we fought only two weeks ago, this was still going to be interesting. This was a Pitched Battle deployment with Seize Ground mission. There were three objective markers on the table, two close to me and one right over in Sean's deployment area.

Because I haven't had much success with terminators, I decided I would try some out tonight - ten assault (5 Lightning claw and 5 Thunder hammer) and five ordinary terminators. Because I used the drop Pod to deliver my dreadnought, the terminator Librarian's Gate of Infinity teleport the terminators and my Land Raider to ram home the assault terminators, by the end of turn one, all fifteen terminators were already in his lines. It was pretty much over when his shooting for turn one missed everything. On the other hand, my Whirlwind continued its incredibly accurate run and killed thirteen guardsmen, both squads of which broke and ran straight off the table.

Turn two and the terminator/assault terminator/Dreadnought combination wreaked havoc through his army - three more squads died and one Leman-Russ immobilised and weaponless. Out of desperation, he then charged both the Dreadnought and the Lightning Claw assault terminators. One squad of his squads died and another ran off the board. The Whirlwind scored another direct hit and took out half his stormtroopers - but they didn't run, just for once. His shooting was again very inaccurate and did nothing. 3+ invulnerable saves for the storm shields are a bastard!

Turn three and I made my first major error - for reasons know only to the Chaos Gods, I launched my lightning claw terminators at his second Leman-Russ and the Thunder Hammer ones at his guardsmen. Stupid and careless but fortunately it didn't really cost me - the Thunder hammers splattered the squad and the Lightning claws stunned the tank. Next turn they swapped over. I did the bastard now and swung the shooty terminators back over using the Librarian's Gate of Infinity again. This deleted (along with another perfectly accurate Whirlwind round, a Predator Annihilator and the HB/Storm bolter of a Razorback) one entire squad and half of a second. This pretty much wiped out the last significant block of troops he had left. His shooting was again stunningly inaccurate, his one and only "successful" shot from his third Leman Russ only managed to blow up his own stunned Leman Russ!

Turn 4 and I shot almost everything left on the table to smithereens. The Dreadnought accounted for the tail-end of his last squad in close combat and the Thunder Hammers accounted for the third and final Leman-Russ. His entire army was deleted at the end of the turn. I held two objectives with the third only having my non-scoring Dreadnought standing over it.

What I learned his week:
1) Terminators in close combat with Guard is just murder - with the lightning Claws' re-roll to wound, it was just a slaughter once I got in amongst them. If I hadn't been in Close combat before the end of turn one, he might have been able to turn a bit of massed forepower on them but that was exactly what I was avoiding.
2) Land Raider Crusader against Guard is also murderous - its massed firepower just mows them down.
3) I know that it must eventually change but the accuracy of the Whirlwind has been stunning for the last three weeks. I'm so glad that I gave it a really good paint job at last.

My W-L-D record is now 10-5-0