There's another saying the I discovered when my Deamonhunters fought against a Dark Angel force: "All battle plans go to hell when your terminators don't teleport in until turn four."
It was a simple 1,500 point match. We rolled to play Capture and Control with the Dawn of War deployment. The DoW deployment is, in my view, the most difficult since it leaves the fun part of your army scrambling at the table edge on turn one.
My opponent claimed he never won a game, which, to me, raised a red flag. I thought he was going to trample me.
All I had was a Brother-Captain with a retinue, three squads of Grey Knights, two dreads, an inquisitor and Callidus assassin. This combination included seven psycannons, two missle launchers and plasma cannons on the dreads, and a bunch of storm bolters.
When Deathklaat started unloading his army I almost passed out. A Rhino, Predator, Whirlwind, Vindicator, some termies, a Chaplain, a couple of tactical squads with flamers and missile launchers, and a freakin' Land Raider Cruisader. For those who play DH, you know his LRC was all but untouchable by me.
I knew I was going to be outnumbered, but he just kept pulling out model after model after model. How he squeezed a LRC into his list I'll never know.
My plan was simple - sit back on turn one, reach out and touch him with the psycannons, and wait for the termies and the assassin to come in to play with him. Turn one went pretty much to plan. He pot-shot one of my GK with a missile and I hosed him down with Psycannon shots.
Turn two brought my assassin right in front of his Chaplain. The nueral shredder template covered him and the LRC he was in front of and I discovered another DH nerfed rule. Against a vehicle I am suppose to roll a D3 against the Glancing Hit table. Fifth edition has no Glancing Hit table and I wasn't about to make up substitute rules mid-game, so we ignored any possible damage to the LRC. During the assault she managed to take one wound off the Chaplain.
Up until this game, every time I used the Callidus I kept making the same mistake - assaulting through cover. I haven't read anywhere to avoid this and when I get caught up in the prospect of assaulting I usually forget simple nuances of the rules. When you assault in cover, you lose your initiative. I've lost her many times by simply not being able to attack first. This time, however, she was in the open.
In Deathklaat's turn, he brought his termies up to join the assault. I had a good role and she disengaged from the assault, leaving the termies and chaplain in line for another assault.
In the next turn she killed all but one of the termies between the shredder and assault. The lone termie failed the morale test and fell back to about a centimeter from the table edge. When he tried to assault again, she disengaged again. Then she took fire from a tactical squad with a flamer and the chaplain and somehow survived. It finally took the LRC Hurricane Bolters to kill her.
I'd marry that women if she didn't die in every game I played.
We both forgot about the "And They Shall Know No Fear" rule and he rolled to regroup his termie and failed. So the lone termie left the table.
The chaplain was removed from a dead-on missile launcher shot that brought on instant death.
At this point I should point out the dice-gods had it out for Deathklaat. I mean we all have our pile of "exiled dice" through the game that we refuse to throw anymore, but this guy just wasn't throwing anything good. The game would have been much different if it wasn't for the dice-god's punishment.
On the rest of the board, my psycannons took out the Rhino, Predator and the Whirlwind. For all those DH players that like to keep their squads assaulty - I cannot stress enough that going pysc heavy and taking out armor is the way to go.
The Vindicator took a shot at me but scattered to wide. That would have been a game-changing moment. The question I asked when it finally rounded the corner was "Is that big hole on the front of the Rhino-looking thing a gun?" Oh, yeah, it's a gun. It's a huge gun sitting on top of paper tank. My dread took it out.
My termies finally came in on turn four. Their job was to walk across the field, past the burning Predator, and take his objective that was being held by a tactical squad. By this point, I knew he couldn't even contest my objective, so it should have been a nice and shiny win. They took out the remains of a tactical squad and moved on the next turn toward the objective.
By then, I had a squad of GK moving to support them, another squad moving around a building and taking aim at a tactical squad that was attempting to move over a hill, and the third squad with the inquisitor was sitting on my objective. The dreads were in a position to support everyone.
It was then that I started to wonder why he hadn't moved the LRC. When I play higher point games with my LRC, it's the spearhead, right out there in the open. After his termies were removed, he didn't move the LRC from the original six inches from the table edge. Throughout the game I glanced at it, but knowing it was unlikely that I could hurt it I was grateful he didn't bring it into play.
I don't know if not moving his LRC throughout the game was a tactical error or his plan the entire time, but he moved the darn thing right in front of my termies on turn five. He smacked it right up against his destroyed Predator and totally blocked my path. There was now a good 14 - 18 inches between any of my squads and the objective on turn five.
On turn six we rolled a two and the game was over. It was a draw - neither of us could even contest the other's objective.
The ability of DH's to shoot and move, mixed with the awesome power of the psycannon, did put an ole' fashion whoopin' on Deathklaat. But the game would have been much different had he been able to roll better. What made the game so great for me was that near the end I tasted victory, but with one simple move he left me completely stunned. It was like a chess opponent pulling a check-mate when you least expected it. For some reason, I didn't pay attention to the big pink elephant in the room (or, in this case, the big LRC that was going to block my path).
.JPG)
.JPG)
