Battle Report - 15/04/10 - Andy's perspective

In my typical style I was pondering lists all week and had a sudden crisis of faith in my Blood Angels list so I decided to swap back to a good old familiar Lysander list for Thursday’s game against Gav:

Lysander – 200
Librarian – 100
Null Zone, Machine Curse

Ironclad Dreadnought – 180
Heavy Flamer, Meltagun; Drop Pod
Sternguard – 250
(8) 3x Combi Melta; Drop Pod
Terminator Squad – 240
(5) Cyclone Missile Launcher, 2x Chain Fist

Tactical Squad A – 240
(10) Meltagun, Plasma Cannon, Power Fist; Drop Pod
Tactical Squad B – 215
(10) Flamer, Lascannon; Rhino
Tactical Squad C – 145
(5) Power Weapon; Razorback

Land Speeder Typhoon – 90
Heavy Bolter, Typhoon Missile Launcher
Land Speeder Typhoon – 90
Heavy Bolter, Typhoon Missile Launcher

Total – 1750

We rolled up Seize Ground with Spearhead Deployment, 4 objectives. Gav won the roll off and made me deploy and go first.

My “alpha strike” intentions played out as well as I had hoped, I targeted what I perceived to be his major threats (his two Predators) and took them both out first turn with my drop podding Ironclad and Sternguard. Shock and Awe tactics certainly looked to have gotten him demoralised but he should have taken heart in the fact that it took 4 crack missiles to immobilise his Lascannon Razorback and I missed his Land Raider with Machine Curse, these were the first indication that my luck was about to change.

Gav’s first turn started positively, he began whittling away at my Sternguard unit, blew up my Ironclad with a couple of well placed speeder melta shots and took out the Librarian’s Rhino with his Land Raider’s Multimelta. Sadly his Dreadnought’s charge into my Sternguard unit ended in clobbering time for Lysander and he saw it off in short order. Things were looking good but the Landraider was looming large on my left flank and with pretty much all of my melta power gone I was going to have a hard time dealing with it.

At the top of the second my Drop Podding Tactical Squad came in and I made a huge mistake in deploying them on the left flank to reinforce my librarian’s tactical squad, now sans Rhino. If I had just popped them on top of an objective on the right flank they may have been able to hold out … The squad’s meltagun did, however, pop the Assault Cannon Razorback and the Sternguard rolled amazingly well and polished off the squad inside in a flurry of AP3 bolter fire. The Librarian’s Squad backed away from the approaching Land Raider and again failed to hit with the Machine Curse, this wasn’t looking good.

Gav actually had very little left on the board that was actually mobile at this point, the Land Speeders continued to whittle away Lysander’s Sternguard but the real action was about to unfold on the left flank. The Land Raider rolled up 12” and out popped 14 Blood Claws, a Wolf Priest and Ragnar Blackmain. The resulting multi-assault wiped out 16 marines, two complete squads with wounds to spare. Special note should go to the brave Tactical Squad Sergeant with a Powerfist who did manage to retaliate with a wound of his own before dying to combat resolution wounds. A 6” consolidation move towards my lines was the last thing I needed but at least I would have a turn of shooting to try and make the unit more manageable.

The concentrated firepower of two Land Speeder Typhoons, a Razorback 5 Terminators and a combat squad did little to thin the horde of rabid Blood Claws closing on my lines so I thought throwing my Terminators into assault and denying them their furious charge would be a good idea. Sadly Ragnar was up to something like 11 attacks and his Frost blade made short work of the Terminator squad. Again my Sergeant did get to at least swing but the remaining Blood Claws finished him off in some style, leaving them free to continue their charge. If I had my time again I would have just move the terminators or, even better, a vehicle in the way to block their advance, slowing them and limiting the damage they could do in the next assault phase.

At this point the game was pretty much over, Lysander took another turn to finish off the Grey Hunter squad, who decided to leave their immobilised Razorback and try and get some shots on him. He then began the long slog back towards my board edge which was where the action was! Ragnar was busy running amuck in my back lines ably assisted by the Wolf Scouts who finally turned the map the right way up and came in on turn 4. together they wiped out a combat squad and their Razorback and immobilised and destroyed both weapons on the remaining Land Speeder. I was down to Lysander and 3 Drop Pods with only 2 working Stormbolters.

On turn 5 Lysander was moving to within charge range but Ragnar’s squad move to intercept him and took him down in a hail of bolt pistol fire, however this moved them out of range of any objectives. With my uncanny ability to roll low I pulled out a 2 which ended the game as a draw but frankly it had been a total blood bath and Ragnar had seen out the day with a fair proportion of his Blood Claws still standing so the wolves had done themselves proud, one for the sagas I reckon.

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Looking back on the game I think I really hurt myself with a couple of bad targeting decisions, and the placement of my reserved Drop Pod was a complete brain-fart. Gav did well to recover from a devastating first turn but recover he did and in quite some style. A lot of the buzz on the forum warns against the hammer/point-sink unit but on the evidence today, Ragnar+Wolf Priest+Blood Claws+Land Raider = a lot of dead anything. I suppose that If I’d played against the unit differently, such as dropping the Ironclad to take it out first turn or if my Machine Curses had hit it might have been a different story, but there’s no denying that Land Raiders bearing any king of payload similar to that cannot just be ignored in favour of “playing the mission”, they are game changers.


-- Posting on the go.

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