catalyst2 | Battle #17

Tonight was 1500 points vs Shawn and Eddie's combines Tyranid/Ork army. It was Capture and Control mission with Spearhead deployment.

Embarrassingly, this was basically over by the end of Turn 1 really and here's why. I got to shoot first and managed to hit all three of his most forward-laying units with the Thunderfire using the Subterranean ammo. They were all stuck for the next turn. The Whirlwind dropped a round on his largest gaunt unit and killed 14. The snipers killed off all but one of his Orks who were sitting on his objective. The Land Speeders killed off another large unit of gaunts. The Razorbacks killed off their warriors. Three Ork units ran and their entire centre was choked up by their Thunderfire-d Ork/Tyranid units. Over on the right, their 4 Deff Koptas became one as a result of my favourite unit, the Drop Pod Dreadnought, this week with assault cannon and CCW with storm bolter. Their first turn, almost their entire army was stuck because of the choke point around the terrain. What little shooting they could manage was was completely ineffective.

Turn two was basically a repeat of turn one - I shot and shot and shot and almost everything I hit died. Neither their Carnifex nor their Hive Tyrant could move because of the need to stay in range of their other units. I wiped out two more units of Orks, two more units of gaunts, all at the cost of my Dreadnought's CCW arm - my sole casualty so far whereas half their army was gone.

Turn three - their deepstriking Ravener unit died in the Warp but their two Genestealer units came on from reserve - all assaulting units with no shooting ability so they could only come on and sit waiting ......

Turn 4 - I killed all of those Genestealers, the Carnifex and their last unit of warriors. His Ork Nobz did mange to kill my Dreadnought, my sole casualty of the entire night.

Turn 5 - my Whirlwind continued its amazing run. They had large unit of 14 Boyz away down the back who could still get to the objective if they moved and then ran at least 2 inches so he could still salvage a draw. The Whirlwind wiped the unit out to a man (Ork?) and that was the last of his scoring units, everything else either dead or running.

Final result: Win to me by one objective to 0.

What I learned this week:
1) When every single roll of the dice goes right, it takes some of the pleasure out of the game. Even if they didn't realise it, at the end of Turn 1 they were done for, largely as a result of the choke point caused by the large units that had been hit by the Thunderfire's subterranean round. This ended up feeling not very satisfying because it was just a shooting gallery for me after that.
2) Related to the above, the Thunderfire causes mayhem in horde armies
3) Also related to 1) above, the Whirlwind causes death and destruction in horde armies
4) Also related to 1) above, assault cannons make a hell of a mess of Carnifexes and Ork Nobz
5) I think that I am almost always going to take 10 sniper scouts / Whirlwind / Predator Annihilator / 3 Land Speeder Tornadoes as the core of my army - all of them seem to perform consistently against almost all opponents.

My W-L-D record is now 12-5-0