X-Legion - How did Atreides do?

In short, i was utterly, utterly average!

I came 21st out of 40, but incredibly, i had the second highest victory points difference of all players.  The only player higher was the eventual winner.  This says a lot to me, but i'll discuss that at the end, when you have heard some brief reports.

I also came second by a single vote in the best army vote.  I am incredibly proud of this, given the years of effort that has gone into its creation.  The guy who won thouroughly deserved it, with a beautiful tyranid army. 

Game 1 - Vens BA flamerback spam. DoW, 5 objectives.  Draw.




This was a total kicker.  We couldn't believe it, to be honest, and it threw my mental preperation right out of the window, which i honestly believe was bad for me in the second game.  In actual fact, in retrospect i am exceptionally pleased with my performance in this game.  it was dawn of war and ven had turn 1, this could have gone horribly badly for me, but i capitalised as well as i could on the failure of Vens hunter-killers in turn 1 and clawed out a draw.  If we had played turn 6, it would probably still have been a draw, and i cant even begin to foresee what turn 7 might have brought.  all in all, an enjoyable and tight game which i would have loved to play in any other circumstance.

Game 2 - Foot marines with Calgar.  Capture and Control, spearhead.  Loss. 

yes, i lost this game, and i lost it badly. my opponents army was, frankly, pretty sub par.  it had a hammer unit with Calgar, TH/SS termies, and a Libby with nul zone and the S10 blast, 3 units of 10 tacticals on foot, all with different heavy/special weapons and fists, 1 unit of 10 assault marines with 3 plasma pistols and a power fist, and 2 dreads, including a venerable one with a plasma cannon.  yes really folks. 

here are the excuses then.  firstly, this game was the only one in which i really made some errors.  i deployed my entire army a little bit incorrectly, for a start, and putting the vets in the vendettas was a mistake, because they needed to be on the ground to jump out and counter attack with demo charges.

secondly though, my opponent had truly obscene luck.  my own was fine, not too bad, not too great, but on the first turn, which predicable i lost, he destroyed 6 vehicles, including both vendettas.  bear in mind he only had six long range shots, two of which were plasma cannons, and all of which were hitting AV12, and all of which were in cover.

i couldn't recover from that, and played for a draw.  it ended with calgar, on two wounds, contesting my objective, and virtually all of my army wiped.

i went into game three, knowing it was kill points, feeling pretty demoralised.

Game 3 - Blood Angels jump troops/termies.  Kill points, pitched battle.  Loss.


my opponent's list was 2 libbies, 3 priests, a large blob of assault termies, and 4 ten man units of jump marines.  pretty scary stuff for me with my MSU. 

let me start by saying i lost this game by a single kill point, 7 to 6, and it was an amazing game.  i do not begrudge this loss one single bit.  awesome guy to play, and he never gave up, in the face of some pretty tragic luck at odd times.

he won the roll (again) but chose to let me go first.  here i made my only mistake and deployed in two defensive cordons surrounded by bubblewrap.  i should have deployed in a single cordon and limited his drop zones.  he then reserved everything, as i knew he would. 

my scout moves were great, with the demo vets riding in the chimeras and sitting in the centre of the board, ready to pounce on whatever came down.  he was so scared of these that he ran upon deep striking in instead of shooting with his meltaguns.  he had his first bad luck when a unit with libby came down into difficult terrain, killed 3 of its own, and ran away on LD10.  i harried it all the way off the board with my vendettas.  in subsequent turns 2 more of his assault squads would be chased off in this way, earning me 6 kill points.  he got about 600 points of my army, earning him 7 kill points.

this is the funny part.  at the end of turn 6 he had 1 TH/SS termie, 2 priests, and one libby left.  4 models, 4 kill points.

the game ended, and he won.

enough said really.

Game 4 - Dark Eldar.  not a very competitive army, details below.  dawn of war, capture and control.  Win.

i was damn miserable when i drew dark eldar and dawn of war with two objectives.  as it turned out, i almost wiped him on turns one and two, leaving me to mop up.  his infantry couldn't hurt tanks at all, so once all the crappy vehicles were dead, thanks multilasers and hydras, i could just take my own objective and contest his with a chimera for the win.  he had Vect and half a squad of wytches left. 

His army was fairly poor, by his own admission.  there were 4 raiders with wytches, Vect, 3 hemunculi (sp), and a few ravagers, reavers, and scourges. 

i felt reinvigorated by the win, until i saw what the next game would be.

Game 5 - Vanilla Marines.  bike army.  kill points, spearhead.  Draw.

Doesn't sound so bad, you'd think.  Until you saw the table we were on.  It was ALL line of sight blocking, 6" tall, 8" wide (approx) buildings.  additionally, these buildings covered around 50% of the surface of the board.  additionally, they counted as 'area terrain'.  bike, and tanks, could drive up onto them.

yes folks, fucking absurd.

it ended 2 all on turn 7 (!!!!!).  it was stupid, it was boring, and we were laughing the entire way through.  great opponent, absurd situation, neither of us willing to take the loss to make it into a good game.  we shook hands and vowed never to play on a table like that ever again.

Game 6 - Chaos Marines.  generic list.  5 objectives, pitched battle.  Win.

I ended the day on a high, wiping out my opponent, losing only 500 points, and taking all 5 objectives.  i played the same guy Ven played in game 5.  he is a regular opponent of mine, and a great guy to play.  he took the beating very well, not even commenting when i stole the initiative and proceeded to destroy all his transports and half his oblits. 

honestly, the rest of the game was a mop-up.

General Thoughts. 

1) In all but the second game, my army did exactly what it was supposed to.  Even game 3, with my infuriating but fun loss, it did everything i could have asked of it.  i wouldn't change it at all.

2) Alex asked how the storm troopers did.  answer, awesome.  the scout move is their most valuable ability.  it means i get cover on them from smoke, plus cover for 4 more tanks as they move in front of the gun line.  their AP3 guns and melta means they scare the crap out of small squads of marines as well.  I only outflanked vs the dark eldar, as the objectives were both on the far left, and i tied vect up with them all game, just by existing.  hugely underrated and very valuable unit.

3) As i said at the start, i had an amazing ratio of kill points in my favour.  even if i lost, i all but wiped out my opponent in every game except the second.  (the fifth doesn't count, as it was stupid and pointless).  this proves, as we all know, that my army kills stuff very well, i believe better than conventional guard builds.  shame that on his occasion, i couldn't capitalise in every game.

4) i still believe that rock units are crappy unless you play kill point games.  the Calgar one was effective only because i was an idiot (and also had half my shit blown up turn one :P).

5) i am starting to believe that every codex really does have a best general build, which is a shame, but i guess its inevitable.

6) if you got this far, congratulations.

7) i am far too tired to care about capital i's and spelling, so sod you all :D

 good night!

PS: 8) foot marines are still shit! lol