Deathwatch Second Outing
So this time I was up against... well, this...
We were playing spearhead, in mission Retrieval.
I finished setting up first, and was poised to take the first turn. My opponent decided to try to seize... "let me just find that weighted dice" he joked.
"Ah, but now you've said that, we now won't believe you if you do seize" I joke back.
He rolls... a 6.
"erm..."
"Right" I say, still in jest "Roll it again to prove it isn't weighted"
Ha ha ha a good laugh is had by all, as he picks up the dice, casts it down the table... and rolls another 6.
"No no, it's not really"
Grabs dice, rolls again, gets a third 6. "SERIOUSLY?!?!"
"I didn't think you had weighted dice... I do NOW..."
Eventually, the dice started rolling other numbers, so we counted it as a seize, and he got to go first. He proceeded to decimate my forward shooting squad, just three survivors, who promptly teleported back out of range of the onslaught - hell, he was coming to me anyway, might as well stand back and soak it up now.
His forgefeinds proved brutally effective, although I wasn't helped by losing my stormshields ridiculously early. His terminators charged in and decimated one of the assault squads, but I spent command points to avoid losing first blood, which I took myself by killing the sorcerer - he'd already severely wounded himself with a miscast that smited 6 of my other shooting unit, so my firepower was severely curtailed from turn 2 onwards. I was left with watch master and assault squads trying valiantly to hold the centre against abaddon, terminators, forge fiends and chaos marines.
The watch master took abaddon out in combat after he'd received quite the peppering from my Corvus on a flypast. I had the survivors of the shooting units on an objective high in a building trying to blow up the forgefiends that were laying down fire into their position. The watch master was trying to finish off the terminator sergeant, and potentially reclaim an objective. At the end of turn 5, Rich was narrowly winning... I had fb, wl, lb, and one objective. He had 2 obj and a unit in LB. Unfortunately turn 6 he took out my terminators on the high objective. Losing me three points and my only realistic hope of killing his linebreaking forgefiends. The watchmaster being finished off in combat meant I was down to just a corvus and therefore legally tabled.
Overall, still a steep learning curve to switch from horde to elite army. At least I remembered my cluster launchers and auspex etc this time. It's just I've had two games now and been seized on both times. The first time got me a khorne army 12"+ closer. The second game lost me about 20% of my shooting, and several enemy units a hell of a lot closer. I'll feel a lot happier to give an assessment of how the army is doing if I can get at least one turn to go to plan. I know no plan survives contact with the enemy but, y'know, one turn might if you go first. Give me that one chance and lets see how we do from there...
Have a game lined up against elder next week, so at least I'll finally be battling xenos... plus they don't have a codex yet so hopefully we'll be on a more level playing field :P
We were playing spearhead, in mission Retrieval.
I finished setting up first, and was poised to take the first turn. My opponent decided to try to seize... "let me just find that weighted dice" he joked.
"Ah, but now you've said that, we now won't believe you if you do seize" I joke back.
He rolls... a 6.
"erm..."
"Right" I say, still in jest "Roll it again to prove it isn't weighted"
Ha ha ha a good laugh is had by all, as he picks up the dice, casts it down the table... and rolls another 6.
"No no, it's not really"
Grabs dice, rolls again, gets a third 6. "SERIOUSLY?!?!"
"I didn't think you had weighted dice... I do NOW..."
Eventually, the dice started rolling other numbers, so we counted it as a seize, and he got to go first. He proceeded to decimate my forward shooting squad, just three survivors, who promptly teleported back out of range of the onslaught - hell, he was coming to me anyway, might as well stand back and soak it up now.
His forgefeinds proved brutally effective, although I wasn't helped by losing my stormshields ridiculously early. His terminators charged in and decimated one of the assault squads, but I spent command points to avoid losing first blood, which I took myself by killing the sorcerer - he'd already severely wounded himself with a miscast that smited 6 of my other shooting unit, so my firepower was severely curtailed from turn 2 onwards. I was left with watch master and assault squads trying valiantly to hold the centre against abaddon, terminators, forge fiends and chaos marines.
The watch master took abaddon out in combat after he'd received quite the peppering from my Corvus on a flypast. I had the survivors of the shooting units on an objective high in a building trying to blow up the forgefiends that were laying down fire into their position. The watch master was trying to finish off the terminator sergeant, and potentially reclaim an objective. At the end of turn 5, Rich was narrowly winning... I had fb, wl, lb, and one objective. He had 2 obj and a unit in LB. Unfortunately turn 6 he took out my terminators on the high objective. Losing me three points and my only realistic hope of killing his linebreaking forgefiends. The watchmaster being finished off in combat meant I was down to just a corvus and therefore legally tabled.
Overall, still a steep learning curve to switch from horde to elite army. At least I remembered my cluster launchers and auspex etc this time. It's just I've had two games now and been seized on both times. The first time got me a khorne army 12"+ closer. The second game lost me about 20% of my shooting, and several enemy units a hell of a lot closer. I'll feel a lot happier to give an assessment of how the army is doing if I can get at least one turn to go to plan. I know no plan survives contact with the enemy but, y'know, one turn might if you go first. Give me that one chance and lets see how we do from there...
Have a game lined up against elder next week, so at least I'll finally be battling xenos... plus they don't have a codex yet so hopefully we'll be on a more level playing field :P
To lose the initiative twice in as many games is such bad luck. And you have to watch out for Rich and his weighted dice, he's done the multiple-6-shennanigans on me before as well haha!
ReplyDeleteDo you have any ideas on how you might change the list yet? Or are you gonna field it a few more times and work on how you play it? Sometimes people try to alter too much at once and wonder why nothing ever works.
Yeah I figured with how small the army is one of the few advantages I have is I should go first like 5 games out of 6... still waiting to test that theory :P
DeleteMy first turn against Neil was pretty effective, I took out a knight, unfortunately by then the khorne stuff was already within charge range. If he hadn't seized, i'd have shot the rhinos. Killed the knight turn 2. Then focused on the khorne stuff.
I'm gonna stick with the list at least a few more outings. If anything I want this to be the core of the army, and add to it, as several of us think we can play larger games at the club - a lot of places are now moving to 2k games from their old 1500, as the games are faster. We always played 2k anyway. Rich and I played out 6 turns and were done by half 9, we could potentially have fit a second game in. So once everyone is familiar with the game, I can try new things by adding to the list, rather than changing...
Sounds like a good idea. And I think bigger games are possible as well. As I've only been playing down my previous local GW store, the games are slower on busy days due to distractions.
DeleteMost games I played were 2v2 to get as many involved at once, and often with a young or inexperienced gamer in tow. The largest and longest game I had was a 2v2 150 power level (total per team), which is about 3000pts. That took 4.5 hours from gathering the players, setting up and then finishing the last turn on turn 5.
The quickest I had was 50 power level/1000pts against a very experienced gamer. We rattled through the turns, and I was tabled on Turn 4 in 45 minutes.
In a proper club, I'd like to be playing 150PL/3000pts. You can get so many goodies in then, along with a nice amount of Troops choices. Otherwise I find I'm sacrificing a Tactical squad for something fancy, and that's difficult for me because I do love basic Tac squads.