Victory Pointless

Another 500-point-each 2v2 game for the slow-grow campaign, again running the custom scenario but this time breaking the rule that reserves were banned (so that the Genestealer player could use half of their special rules).

The Forces:

Alpha Legion: Lord, Chosen, Cultists, Legionaries, Obliterators

Necrons: Hexmark Destroyer, Technomancer, Warriors, Doomstalker, Tombblades

Black Legion: Lord, Chosen, Cultists, Havoc’s, Venomcrawler

Genestealer Cults: Biophagus, Reductus Saboteur, Aberrants, 2 x Neophytes

Turn 1

Our opponents got first turn.  The Havocs scored some hits on the Doomstalker but it still stood on half wounds.  The Venomcrawler wiped out the Tombblades.  The two squads of Neophytes popped out of Deep Strike and mowed down all but one of (my) Chosen.  

We then retaliated.  One squad of Neophytes went down to shooting from the Necron Warriors, Cultists and Hexmark, the other was wiped out in melee by the Lord and surviving Chosen and cultists.  However, both Neophyte squads rolled to come back, so no real damage was done.

The Doomstalker took aim at the Havocs… and then had to aim somewhere else as Dark Obscuration made them untargetable. As a consolation prize it took out the Venomcrawler in one hit.  The Obliterators teleported in and opened fire but only did minor chip damage to the Aberrants.

Turn 2

Both armies continued to circle around the field, neither quite daring to take the objective just yet.  The Havoc lascannons finished off the Doomstalker, but not much more damage was done.  My Lord, Chosen and Cultists charged into the Aberrants and my Lord charged up his Ultra Mega Power Combo… which basically just bounced straight off the Aberrants, who it turns out are incredibly tough.  They then hit back and squashed the remaining Chosen and the Lord.  The cultists actually managed a little better, sneaking in a few wounds while the Aberrants were busy pounding the marines into the dirt.

Turn 3

Some suspiciously familiar-looking Neophytes popped back up in our backfield and took down most of the Necron Warriors (though a few did resurrect).  The Black Legion Chosen charged into the Hexmark, braving a hail of overwatch fire and taking him down, then consolidating into the warriors.  The Saboteur finally edged onto the central objective, taking the point.

The warriors fell back, but couldn’t then do much.  The Alpha Legionaries charged into the mid-ground, cutting down the Saboteur and taking the point, but were reduced to two members in the process (-2 from Saboteur bombs, -1 from the Champion’s overcharged plasma pistol blowing up).

Turn 4

Combined shooting took out the remaining warriors and Legionaries and the Aberrants moved onto the point.  The Technomancer fell, was resurrected and then cut down again by the Chosen.  By the time it got to our turn only the Obliterators were left, massively outnumbered and a long way from the objective, so at this point we conceded.

Final Result: 36 – 86, Black Legion & Genestealer Cults Victory!

Post-Mortem

This is my third time playing the LWG custom scenario and to be honest by this point I’m pretty desperate to play any other mission.  That said, I think this was the most fun game of it I’ve had so far.  Previous comments on balance still apply, and we broke it still further ourselves by flicking on the ‘Reserves’ switch (turns out the organisers know what they’re doing when they banned that for this phase).  But, whereas the last two games felt like foregone conclusions this one did have a few moments where it felt like the balance might have shifted one way or the other.

I have also by now learned not to expect a knife-edge balanced hyper-competitive contest and treat it more as a chance to throw some dice, meet some new people and mess about with plastic soldiers for a while.  The attitude shift may have helped.  That said, I think there are still a few useful takeaway lessons for this game, especially regarding Genestealer Cults, which I’d never played against before.  Absolutely everything about them came as a horrible surprise, which I suppose is thematic.

Lessons learned:

• I underestimated the Neophytes.  I had them pegged as weedy cultist-equivalents who wouldn’t be much of a threat.  But, they popped up out of nowhere 9” away and wiped out most of my main heavy-hitting melee squad with Seismic cannons and grenades.  I should have taken them more seriously and used Infernal Rites to hopefully keep an extra Chosen or two alive.  While there wasn’t a huge amount else I could have done differently here it does hit home that Reserves can be a seriously dangerous tool in the wrong hands and when we get to larger-point-total games I’m thinking of investing in some more cheap Cultist or Nurglings for screening purposes.
• To add insult to injury to the above once we wiped both units they then just popped straight back into reserves again.  In hindsight we may have been better off just killing most of the squads and leaving one or two alive to prevent respawning the whole squad.  I dunno.  I’m not sure I’m a big fan of this mechanic.  Respawning guys is cool, but this precise version of it feels very gamey.
• I underestimated the Aberrants, specifically their durability.  The Obliterators barely scratched them and even the Lord + Chosen mega-combo did essentially nothing.  T6, 3 wounds, 5+ Invuln, 4+ FNP, -1 to wound is a pretty hard combo to get through, it turns out.  Of course the above error compounded this; had a few more of the Chosen survived it may have been a bit more even, but I suspect they would still have struggled.
• The biggest mistake we made (or rather, I made, since I play Chaos and should’ve seen it coming) was target selection.  Our agreed plan in turn 1 was that the Doomstalker would take care of the Havocs while the Obliterators teleported in and took out the Venomcrawler.  However, the Doomstalker ended up being unable to shoot the Havocs thanks to the Dark Obscuration stratagem and had to switch target to the Venomcrawler, which it destroyed as a nice consolation prize.  However, this left the Obliterators without a particularly useful target and in a position that was fairly useless.  If we (I) had spotted this ahead of time, we could’ve switched to have the Obliterators come down on the other side of the board and take out the Havocs first of all.  This way the Obliterators would have been in a better position and the Doomstalker probably would’ve survived the next round and remained a major threat.  Still, this was well-played by our opponent and my main take-away is that I ought to have some Mark of Nurgle units so I can pull this same trick myself.