After a two month wait the Hambali 501st Regiment finally got a chance to fight against the Inquisitorial Expedition Force Arrakia, their arch-nemesis. No other army has so consistently handed the Jokers their rear-end back to them.
The game was a standard 1500 point Capture and Control with a Spearhead Deployment. I rolled highest for first turn and deployed my armor units. The Jokers brought a Basilisk, two Leman Russ tanks, a Hellhound, and a Bane Wolf. I was anxious to use the Wolf because the chemical weapon is the ultimate Marine killer and also sports a multi-melta.
I also had four Vet squads in Chimeras. First and Second Squad had the standard Chimelta configuration with First holding Ghan, my Primaris Psyker. Third Squad was loaded with flamers and had a heavy flamer mounted on the hull. This one is a crowd pleaser, but I knew it wouldn't do much except piss off the Grey Knights. The Fourth Squad was the Chiplasma boys.
The tactic behind my list was to not only protect the scoring units, but to also give the other player something to shoot at besides the units that are important to me. When looking at this list, you see three different elements - the armor, the fast attack, and the troops. If you don't respond to the fast attack, they will hurt you.
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| Just another line of targets |
I figured that I would run the Bane Wolf up with its hull mounted multi-melta and pop the Land Raider. If it missed, then I wasn't going to waste any more time with it. I've spent many games trying, and failing, to remove Land Raiders. I've learned to just ignore them and take the beating they dish out. I planned to have everyone else will aim everything at his troops to prevent him from scoring.
Normally I would put everything on the board. However, I knew Brian would sacrifice everything to remove my scoring units - even if it cost him his entire army. With a Land Raider, three dreadnoughts, and God Himself only knows how many Psycannons in his list, he had enough to respond to my armored list. So I kept first, second, and forth squads in reserve and threw the flamer squad out there just to see how much he would sacrifice to remove them.
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| Grey Knight's Deployment |
He rolled to seize the initiative and, of course, won. Brian is not only good at tactics, he also sacrifices a cat a day to the Dice Gods. This should be added to
The Brian Tactica: When Brian doesn't roll exactly what he wants, then he didn't want it to begin with.
So in the first turn Brian managed to stun the Hellhound, blow up Squad Three's Chimera and pin them, blow up my Bane Wolf and keep it a battle-virgin, and remove a couple of men standing in the crater that use to be a Chimera.
All I managed to do was take out two Grey Knights with a Basilisk shot.
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| Craters, craters everywhere |
It was at this time that I started to think that I was, again, going to get my rear handed to me.
Brian only had two troop units hiding behind a wall near his objective. His third Grey Knight squad was dedicated to come in by Deep Striking, making them an Elite unit. It couldn't score, but it could contest.
He wasn't looking to win by taking both objectives. He was going to win by holding one and contesting the other.
The Grey Knight fast attack squad came in on turn two. Grey Knights and armored vehicles don't mix well together. Their weapons turn into S6 tank-busters in close combat. I've lost many pieces of armor in past games to his Knights multi-attacking tanks that were too close to each other. I kept everything but the Basilisk moving just so he couldn't instant-hit them when he assaulted.
The squad came in about six inches from my objective and right in the middle of my armor. I backed the Leman Russ' away in different directions to force him to chose only one to attack if he survived, then blasted him back into the warp.
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| The last standing Grey Knight |
The shot from the Russ didn't scatter, which was great because if it had I would have probably hit the Basilisk or the other tank. No cover from this shot, but one survives as I roll a 1 on the to-hit chart.
His Callidus Assassin arrived and took out all but one of the remains of Third Squad. That poor trooper tried to run, but didn't have a chance when she assaulted.
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| Hellhound rushes Land Raider, Hellhound loses |
I moved the Hellhound up as a distraction in an attempt to get in the way of the Land Raider's lascannons. The Land Raider popped the turret flamer off with ease.
And that is when Sgt Barnes arrived. If you have seen Tom Berenger's performance in Platoon, then you know who Sgt Barnes is. In the IG world, he's Sgt Marbo.
He showed up near the Grey Knights who were set up to reinforce the objective holders and performed his job wonderfully. The BS5 stat line allows for some mistakes when throwing a demo charge. It did scatter, but only an inch. Almost all of the Grey Knights were destroyed in the blast.
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| Sgt Barnes arrives to save the day |
Sure, he promptly died from the storm bolters in the next turn, but he couldn't have done his job any better.
Second and Forth Squads came in and I started running Forth up toward the Grey Knight's objective and Second toward my own. The assassin immobilized Second Squad's Chimera and they all shot at her, not hitting anything but air.
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| A single Grey Knight can do a lot of damage |
The single Grey Knight still in my deployment zone easily took out the Basilisk in a close combat attack. That hurt since the Basilisk was doing such a good job whittling down the Grey Knights at the other end of the board. It was slow work - their Shrouding ability causing the indirect fire to scatter all over the place, but it was working. Now the Bassey was destroyed.
By turn three we were looking up our house rules for tied games. We knew the results would come down to victory points - how much of the army we destroyed.
One of my Leman Russ' took out the remains of the Grey Knights by his objective, leaving him with only one Grey Knight on his objective and one near mine. He positioned his Knight and his Land Raider in such a way to prevent line of sight.
First Squad with Ghan the Psyker came into play. His 2D6 psychic attacks fizzled out due to the Knight's Aegis ability. Nobody else in the Chimera could hit him. The Callidus Assassin shook up Second Squad's Chimera, and they disembarked and finally shot her down.
One of the dreadnoughts took out Forth Squad's Chimera and they disembarked in a sloppy manner. I didn't ensure all of the plasma gunners had line of sight to the pair of Dreads as I was concerned about just keeping them alive. The next turn, the single man who did have line of sight shot and promptly killed himself as the plasma gun overheated.
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| Fourth Squad prepared to get into the line of fire |
The Grey Knight near my objective was finally shot down by Ghan and I was able to cleanly take the objective. My two tanks kept shooting at the Land Raider, positioning the template to cover the only remaining Grey Knight on his objective, but he kept making his cover save.
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| The single scoring model is hidden in there somewhere |
Finally, at the end of turn five, he failed a cover save from the tank's cannon. With no scoring units left and unable to reach my objective with anything to contest it, the game was called in my favor.
The board was a mess. He took out three Chimeras, a Hellhound, a Bane Wolf, a Basilisk and a squad of men. All I managed to do was take out three Grey Knight squads, immobilize a Dreadnought, and take one lascannon off a Land Raider. It was by far the most brutal game I've ever played.
I've read in the forums that the Daemonhunter codex doesn't allow for enough choices to respond to a heavily armored list. Brian proved that complaint completely wrong as he took out more than half of my armor - and did most of the damage within three turns.
A great game is when you have no idea who will win until the absolute end. And this was a great game.
.JPG)
