Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Ordo Ineptus Escalation Tournament - 400 points

I'm going to try to do some short Battle Reports of the four great games played this past weekend. As usual, I failed to take any notes, pictures, or anything, so working off my feeble memory. Please forgive any errors, they're not intentional, just blame my age.



The tournament was four games, with the first at 400 points, second at 600, then 800, and finally 1000. You could not take things out of your list as you went to later games, but could only add new things. I'd posted my lists last week, but had a not-so-small error at 800 & 1000 points...I'd put Splinter Cannons in units of 5 Warriors...a no-no, as 10 men are required. To compensate, I changed things around a tweak to get the Haemonculous upgraded to Ancient in the last game.

My 400 point list was:

-A Haemonculous with a Liquifier Gun

-3 Bloodbride Hekatrix (one upgrade to Syren with Agonizer, one with Razorflails) in a Venom with Splinter Cannon upgrade

-5 Kabalite Warriors (one with a Blaster) in a Raider with Flickerfield

-3 Reaver Jetbikes (one with Heatlance)


For the first game I was paired against Space Wolves. When I saw his list I was very worried....especially since this mission was straight-up Kill Points. He had two units of 10 Grey Hunters each with two Melta Guns, and a Lone Wolf with two Wolves (and I think just two CCW, nothing fancy). No way to get more than 3 kill points from him, and that only if I managed to not have to kill the Lone Wolf...tricky!

He won the roll to go first, and chose a side that gave nice cover:

The middle of the table was dominated by a giant wooded hill. I was pleased to see the two squads so far apart from each other. With no ranged weaponry to speak of, I thought I could focus on one squad, while dancing away from the Wolf, and hopefully finishing off the second squad while not losing more than two points.

My opponent went first, just running the Lone Wolves towards the middle (starting a trend that lasted all game...really poor run-rolls!). He had nothing with more than 24" range, so no shooting.

On my first turn, I just inched forward enough to get within 24" so I could start the splinter bombardment. The Reavers moved up behind the hill out of line-of-sight, and sharpened their blade-vanes. Splinter-cannon fire did some light damage to the Grey Hunters.

His second turn was similar to the first. The Lone Wolves ran (slowly) towards the middle, while single-shot bolter fire proved ineffective vs. the vehicles.

On my second turn the Reavers flew over the Grey Hunters, while the Venom and Raider moved up allowing the passengers to shoot. Many Grey Hunters died to the barrage.


His second squad started moving to support, and the Lone Wolves kept up their trek towards the hill. Rapid Fire bolters and melta took down one of the Reaver bikes, though the other two were not upset at all.

While the Splinter barrage was doing well, the Wyches were impatient and wanted to participate. The fire barrage continued, and the Wyches got out and closed in to finish the Marines up close and personal. I don't remember exactly how this assault worked out, but I lost a wych, and I think the only marine survivor failed fearless armor saves. The Dark Lance on the Raider took a pot-shot at the other Hunter squad, picking one of them off at nearly maximum range.

The Lone Wolves ran around the 'south' side of the hill, while the hunters ran around the 'north', I think trying to not give me anyplace good to evade. The Lone Wolves broke their slow-run streak and actually covered some ground. I believe a few rapid-fire bolters went at the Reavers, but no effect.

I was torn here...I was up 1-0, and could just run like a girl and try to not lose anything else...but that would make for a boring lame game! Besides....we wanted some trophies to take back to Commorragh...entertainment, you see!

So the Reavers moved forward and put some shots on the Grey Hunters, then moved in to the ruins in the Assault phase. The Warriors moved flat-out to get away from the very angry-looking Lone Wolves, while the Wyches got back on their Venom, which put some fire on the Grey Hunters.

The Wolves closed in on the Kabalite forces, with bolter fire taking down another Reaver...the last survivor was not impressed with their marksmanship, and decided to stay around for awhile.

Again I considered just running away, but I couldn't go like that, so moved in to kill the other Grey Hunters...

Every gun that could bear put fire on them, while the last two Wyches along with the Haemonculous jumped out to finish off those that survived the torrent of fire. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to kill them all (hard to get through all that Power Armour!), leaving me very exposed and vulnerable to going down on points when the Lone Wolves jumped in!

Crunch-time, and the dice-gods favored me. The Lone Wolves jumped in, but failed to get through the Wych's dodge & feel-no-pain. The Bloodbride Syren went crazy with her Agonizer, finishing off the whole Hunter squad.

This left me in a very tasty position, as I was up 2-0, the Haemonculous was out of melee, and the surviving Wych could die to save time for the rest of the force. I pointed out that although we had no idea what turn it was at the time (I'm horrible at keeping track!), all I had to do was get the Haemonculous on the Venom (which was close enough to do) and just fly away until the game ended.

This got me the win, with 2 kill points to his 1!

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