Boarding Actions: Seeing Double: Space Marines v Space Marines

This was a pair of games played at the London Wargaming Guild‘s Let’s Play Boarding Actions event.

Forces:

Space Marines (Me) – Shield of the Void: Judiciar, 5 Terminators, 3 Bladeguard, 5 Intercessors, 5 Jump Pack Assault Intercessors

Space Marines (Opponent) – Shield of the Void: Jump Pack Captain, Judiciar, 5 Assault Intercessors, 5 Intercessors, 5 Vanguard Veterans, 3 Aggressors

The Mission:

Divide and Slaughter

Game 1

Deployment – my Terminators and his Aggressors started locked in the cupboard together.

We spent the first two turns being pretty cagey and it wasn’t until turn 3 that any actual fighting happened.

In the middle, the Terminators charged into the Aggressors and after a bit of a brawl came out victorious.

On the right flank I dithered, not wanting to be carved up by Judicier-empowered Assault Marines, but was ultimately overrun.

Having won the cage match, the surviving Terminators were free to come out.

They blew the hatch and charged the Captain, but left him alive on one wound.

They were then themselves charged by the Vanguard Vets, who left one on one wound. He tried to escape, but only ended up blocking the corridor to the Bladeguard who were coming to his rescue, got caught and was cut down for the 10 points that swung the game.

Result: (Other) Space Marines win, 45-40

Game 2

Since we still had time we decided to re-rack and go again.

I again placed my Terminators in the Cupboard of Love, this time vs Vanguard Vets.

We were both a lot more aggressive this time around. My terminators rolled hot and managed to finish off the Vanguard Vets in turn one, letting them escape and launch a surprise assault on the Aggressors. It was a fight that lasted most of the rest of the game and looked like it was going the Terminators’ way until the final Aggressor rolled hot and managed to take out the last two Terminators, before being finished off by my Jump Pack Assault squad.

On the right side of the board I took early casualties, but managed to snipe out the enemy Judiciar, letting my own Judiciar, Bladeguard and Intercessors charge in and mop up.

At the end of the game only my forces remained. (I know it’s hard to tell the forces apart in these photos, so you’ll have to take my word on this one.)

Result: (My) Space Marines win, 45-25

Post-Mortem

It was interesting playing such a close mirror match (and especially playing it twice). Being so evenly matched it meant we had to both work hard to eke out whatever small advantage we could.
Having Terminators is a big advantage on this mission, since sticking them in the middle almost guarantees 20 points there. The downside is that, at a full third of my points, it meant I was comparatively understrength outside the central chamber and I couldn’t afford to have them just run away and hide afterwards, risking handing my opponent 10 points for killing them (which was in fact the case in both games). Probably still worth it overall, I just needed to support them better once they got out rather than relying on them to tank everything.
In the first game I wasn’t aggressive enough early on. My plan was to win the central grudge match and then just try to equalise the objective scoring, so I was playing defensively. However the best defense is a good offense, and doing this allowed my right flank to get overrun and left my Bladeguard and Judiciar sat on their bums on an objective all game. My main adaptation in the second game was to flip this deployment to have this combo on the harder-to-defend right flank and then play less cagily, especially with regard to opening doors.
My other big mistakes were Boarding-Actions-specific positional things. At the end of the first game my plan was to fall back with the surviving Terminator and then have the Bladeguard charge past to shield him from the pursuing Vanguard Vets, but forgot that in Boarding Actions even friendly models block movement, so the Bladeguard ended up not being able to get around him. In the second my Terminators were fighting the Aggressors through a doorway, which formed a chokepoint which meant only two Termies could fight at a time and I essentially got Thermopylae’d. Aggressor power fists are a bit better than Terminator power fists by virtue of being twin-linked and so in a 2v2 the Termies consistently came off a little bit worse.
Our Judiciars only got to use their Fights First ability once across the two games, so from that point of view they weren’t all that directly impactful, but I think they had massive value as a deterrent to charging. A large part of our early caginess in game 1 could be traced to this. I think they’re a good combo with the defensive army rule and they’re probably the marine character that gets nerfed the least in Boarding Actions.

Victory Pointless