catalyst2 | Battle #21 (Reply)

Tonight was 1000 points against Dave's Marines but he took a rather strange list just because that was all he had been painting today. Result was that he had about 600 points of terminators, a devastator squad and just one combat squad of marines with one scout squad (shotguns).

The battle was pitched battle deployment with seize ground mission with three objectives. I was fairly happy with that as I had two tactical squads, one shotgun scout squad, one 5-man assault squad, three Land Speeders and a Predator. He went first and put all but one squad of terminators and his scout squad on the table. I put everything on the table bar the scouts and the assault marines - I've never used deep strike with assault marines before but I decided to have a go for a change. Turn one was fairly uneventful except for the fact that the assault cannons on the Speeders got two terminators and the Predator missed everything, even with twin-linking!

Second turn and his scouts came in right next to the Speeders. They shot and stunned one whilst his terminators didn't make it on. The Speeders took out another two terminators - I didn't move them to get those shots in range and just assumed the scouts would assault the next turn and kill them off. His terminators ended up a bit in the middle of nowhere and didn't fire very effectively.

Turn three - his scouts didn't assault the Speeders so the Speeders fired and killed 7 of the ten in the squad. His Thunder hammer assault terminators turned up about three inches from my Predator (which couldn't shoot this turn anyway) and so I ran back 12 inches. This would leave my tactical squad on the objective in a vulnerable position next turn so I fired almost everything I could at them and managed to kill just one. My assault marines turned up and landed about fifteen inches from his combat squad and his devastators.

Turn three - all of my tactical squad on the objective died bar the sergeant who did manage to kill one terminator before the sergeant broke and ran. The funny thing was that this actually gave me the victory because the Predator killed one terminator whilst the second tactical squad killed the other two. My assault marines survived a round of shooting from both the the combat squad and the devastator squad. Their resulting assault killed that combat squad off so that objective was lost to him. He suddenly realised that his only troop choice left was the scouts on the other wing - he could only win if they were on an objective. I shot the Speeders at the terminators and killed another two.

Turn four - his scouts shot at the Speeders again and managed to destroy one assault cannon and stun one. The Predator took out another terminator whilst the assault marines took out his captain - but at the cost of three dead. The assault squad now had only the sergeant alive along with the chaplain. My scouts came on, but on the "wrong side" so I ran them , getting six inches.

Turn five meant that he had to gamble and bring his scouts out of their cover and run for the objective which he duly did. At this point he was winning. I fired my Speeders at the scouts, realising that, if the game went another turn, his terminators would assault the Speeders and kill them. I killed his scouts so that objective was denied to him. I ran the remaining sergeant from the first tactical squad plus the whole second squad to my objective. My shotgun scouts were still a long way from the action so I ran them again, getting another 6 - in two turns they had moved 24 inches! I rolled for sixth turn and rolled a 5 so it was on.

Turn six and my Speeders did indeed die at the hands of his terminators. The devastator squad killed the chaplain and assault squad sergeant. The shotgun scouts caught the devastators out with their fast move and, despite missing every shot, the scouts' assault killed them all off.

Result was a win for me by one objective to nil, with one objective not held by anyone and the third contested by the lone devastator to my six scouts.

What I learned today:
1) I really do like my shotgun scouts - I even got the Cadian heads off Sean today so I can finish them off and get them painted.
2) Speeders rock, they really do. They spent the whole battle picking off terminators in addition to killing seven scouts in a singe turn. Because of their sheer volume of fire, even 2+ saves eventually run out.
3) Tactical squads get a bad press, but used the right way, can be quite effective.

My W-L-D record is now 16-5-0.