Wednesday 1 September 2010

New Month, New Army


WIP Sanguinary Priest...
This blogger needs your help! Don’t worry, I’ll come to it shortly…

I’ve been neglecting my Angels recently (for a couple of months!) in favour of a return to Space Wolves. I have seriously enjoyed the SW return, my armies are working incredibly well.

However, it is time to return to the sons of Sanguinius. The mech/tank Spear of Sanguinius has been a wicked performer for me, but I want to try the ‘other’ way to run Angels.


The general consensus is either mech or jump, with a couple of other funky builds in between such as Kirby’s Blood Rodeo, Sand-Wyrm’s Emo-Wing, my own Storm of Death

So, time to fully exploit Descent of Angels.

You can see the list I am running currently here in its army page (these are to be expanded slowly to contain pictures of all the units, group shots etc as well as tactics for use…but that’s a long term project)

I got in its first 2 games last night and managed to pull out a victory in both.

First was seize ground with 4 objectives, Spearhead. I fully reserved and went first (not by choice) and he played full reserve too (a mistake as even though he was Eldar, he was not playing Reserve Mechdar – he had no reserve manipulation at all).
By combat squadding 2 of the Assault squads I was able to load up the goodies into one squad and leave 2 sets of 5 marines on objectives in the backfield, whilst Honour Guard, Vanguard and the large 12 man Assault squad (Priest and Libbie) got stuck in with support from the combat squads.

Second was Capture and Control, Spearhead. I fully reserved, he set up on the table this time, and created a good deepstrike defence in his corner on his objective – No obvious gaps and no space to drop in other than on the outside edges of his set up where he wants me to.

It is worth pointing out at this time that the Eldar set up meant that at best, they could draw. My objective was on the other side of the table, out of range and sight for all his units and at least 4 turns of movement as the crow flies. 

So to the point of the blog post; I won this game and my objective was never under threat ( Its the small yellow smilie face in the top left of the picture. I think 1 plasma missile from a Wraithlord hit my 5 ASM at extreme range and dubious LOS…but failed to do anything).
I tied up his army with all of my units, the last of which fell in turn 5 when the game ended.
This was extremely bloody game, leaving me with just 5 ASM left on the table.

So here’s what I need – What would you do?


This is a picture of the Eldar set up.
The Eldar list is: 
Eldrad
Maugan Ra 
2 x 8 Harlequins all w. Kisses, Death Jester, Shadow Seer 
3 x 5 Rangers 
3 x EML, Scatter Laser, Dual Flamer Wraithlords 

I can handle it cool, but for all my knowledge of how to go about this game, I was momentarily flummoxed when facing this setup......

My plan was to create a semi circle ring at 18” from the Eldar lines, interspersed between terrain elements meaning the Harlies could only assault if they fleet 6”. So not likely. But this did mean that I was going to be in for assault on my terms in my turn. The VV were to smash into a Wraithlord (on extreme left) and remove it with S5 Power weapons and Lightning Claw…after the Honour Guard had stripped a couple of wounds with Melta fire.

This plan roughly stayed in place, although 2/3 of my army did not show up on Turn 2…damned DoA! So it was not as effective as I wanted and allowed him to focus fire on a smaller number of targets.

End of the day, I took a win. 
I stuck to the plan. 
But it was very bloody and extremely costly in marine blood.

How would you guys handle this situation?Could I have saved some precious Astartes blood from being spilt?

Let me know what you all think…

4 comments:

  1. yo, Andy P from GW cambridge here. as you know, i've played a BA JP army for years so this is the first time i've really felt quallified to comment on a blog post here. i think you faced my old army a few years ago with your wraithguard army.

    in the situation above, he has frankly miserable long range shooting. i guess he can hope to kill a maximum of 5 marines in cover with FNP a turn with shooting, if he is very lucky. even if you are in the open they wont kill many.

    therefore i'd have deployed entirely on the table, with the possible exception of any vanguard units.

    if you deep strike you get the following situation on turn 2:
    1. no guarantee of all your units showing up
    2. possibility of some units being out of position
    3. no possibility of charging due to deep strike

    if you deploy on the table its different:
    1. all the units you want are available
    2. if they are not in position it is your own fault, not the dice
    3. you can charge

    in short, if faced with an army with crappy firepower which is scared to move, deploy on the table.

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  2. Whats up brother? I was hoping for some vet JP advice from you!
    (Even if you are a guard WAAC-gamer these days (Queue Response: No I'm not, I lovingly created a guard army for years, they've got names and everything!) lol. joke)

    OK. So...looking again at the situation having read your comment Andy, I could easily have deployed centrally behind the centre ruin, first turn 'packed and ran across to the right in cover and had then turn 2 moved in for the kill with additional Vanguard support to tie stuff up.

    This would have limited the return fire as all the units would be shooting through cover and out of position for a counter charge in the Eldar turn.

    Hmmm, a much lighter loss of life on my part I think.
    As I said, it is not too bad to take on, but as an inexperienced 'packer, I was unsure what course of action was appropriate.

    Thanks man.

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  3. haha, you are pretty sharp to have noticed that comment on YTTH and connected it to me. no, sadly i cant deny i love to win, but there are only a few people who i feel i have to pull out all the stops for, you just happen to be one. i learned a hell of a lot more about my army when i drew with you a few weeks back than i have for about 6 months of seal clubbing.

    i do like the army you are using above, but it has several fundimental weaknesses which are inherant in all JP armies. the main ones are that its pretty easy to focus fire on you, and holding your own objectives is a pain in the ass. i am currently trialing a BA army with 2 squads of 4 ML devs and 3 units of vanguard with a couple of tactical squads, its working pretty well because everything is a different type of threat.

    by the way, i just found out they closed the battle bunker. what the fuck is that about?

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  4. Holding my own objectives could be a big problem. But what if I went with some lessons learnt from playing Wolves...mid field objective placement for seize ground, that way I do not have to leave any men behind, I'll just pack back after i've crushed face...or attempted to.
    A thought.
    Although for capture and control, leaving one five man unit behind is not a problem, as long as I can distract and occupy any aggressive forces from the other player, not allowing him to attack my base...

    Battle bunker in GW Cambridge closure = massive company fail.
    I have only been once over the summer holidays, before it closed, haven't been back since and won't be until its reopened.

    Reading between the lines it all comes down to failure on staff part and poor long term strategic decisions my mid-level managment - ASM. THe decision is based on Health and Safety and not having a staffer downstairs on Vets Night. As a result, the store fails it H&S checks, plus any staffer that pops downstairs cannot police the stock upstairs.
    The solution? Hire a part timer.
    Charge for use of the Bunker to pay for additional cleaning costs so that it does not in any way have a negative impact on the store performance.

    um, no actually. Lets close the Bunker, royally fuck off all regular, long term players and drive AWAY business.
    I spend a fucking fortune on these toy soldiers, but my expenditure has dropped, primarily due to me not being in the store and picking up all those impulse buys...and this is me, impulse buys are entire fucking armies...mulitply that by all the guys who play...yeah, you've lost more than you've saved on you P&L for the quarter.
    Dip shits.

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