I was playing against a lovely guy, he was fantastic fun to play and this was one of my favourite games of the event, playing against an Italian guy named Stefano and his Blood Angels and Grey Knight army.
It was an interesting list, and it worked quite well in the terrain. He had a Librarian with a Jump Pack, a squad of Sanguinary Guard with a Priest, 3 big squads of Assault Marines with Jump Packs, a squad of 10 Death Company in a Drop Pod with 2 infernos pistols, a Stormraven, 3 individual Attack Bikes with Multi-Meltas, and Coteaz with 10 Strike Marines with Psybolt Ammo and 2 Psycannons.
I chose the board side, and opted for the one with the biggest piece of terrain in it, and then he chose whether to go first or second, and opted for first.
He deployed all of his guys along the edge of his deployment zone, trying to get as close to me as possible, with his Strike Marines on my left. I then refused flanked him (wierd in Hammer and Anvil), concentrating on the right hand side of the board. leaving his Strike squad stranded to a degree.
The board itself is split into 2 sections really, there's a big LoS blocker in the centre, and on the left there was lots of cover, and on the right not so much. I went for the right as now I had more of a chance of taking him down with my Missiles before he hit my lines.
Now, as I discovered he was quite aggressive, not stupidly so, but not afraid of taking a risk. I discovered this when he discover a little space behind my Manticore, a space that I didn't even think about as I never considered that he'd drop a full Death Company squad behind my lines to take out the Manticore. At least 400pts right there. However, he was brave enough to do so, and it paid off. He didn't scatter, and the Manticore exploded.
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| Balls to the Wall |
At this point the game was pretty much done for me, he had moved around the LoS blocking terrain, meaning that he got into combat a turn later but intact. My Drop Pod came down, scattered into a terrible position, blocking LoS to him even more before the occupants, and finally the drop pod itself, were taken down by the Sanguinary Guard and an Attack Bike. The Death Company took a lot of Missiles, and then laid a Grey Hunter squad low in combat before finally succumbing to a second, whilst the final Grey Hunter pack took a Melta to the Drop Pod.
However, although the game wasn't going well, it still wasn't quite over. The Grey Hunters that had taken out the drop pod moved further up, and brought down a bike, they then curved around another piece of impassable terrain turn 5 and brought down another. My opponent charged the blob with 2 assault squads on turn 3, after a squad cut down a Lone Wolf, with overwatch killing a squad down to a single model. He was beaten down by Guardsmen before many of the blob were chopped apart by the full strength squad. The combat finished turn 4, with the blob victorious but with their numbers seriously depleted.
The remaining Lone Wolf then went absolutely crazy, charging into the Sanguinary Guard, even though he only had a single wound left, and over the course of the game beat up the Sanguinary Priest, all 5 of the Guard and the Librarian, recovering 4 points. The Long Fangs also bringing down the Stormraven with a number of shots.
The Rune Priest, Primaris Psyker, Grey Hunters and Lone Wolf then piled into the Strike Marines after the blob had managed to cut down Coteaz, and in that turn managed to kill the whole squad, with the game ending turn 6. I hadn't quite managed to table him though, as he had an Attack Bike left, and I know how many kill points I have in my army so I wasn't sure of the result.
In the end, he got points for: First Blood, Primaris Psyker, a living Lone Wolf, 2 Rhinos, a Drop Pod, 2 Packs of Grey Hunters, a Platoon Command Squad and the Manticore.
I got points for: Slay the Warlord, Sanguinary Guard, Sanguinary Priest, Drop Pod, Death Company, 2 squads of Assault Marines, Coteaz, Librarian, Strike Squad, Stormraven and 2 Attack Bikes.
I honestly believed that I had lost the game until my opponent said that he had lost the game. At which point I actually said, 'what? This game?' He had been counting as he'd gone along whilst I had just gone with the flow. I was counting at the beginning but neither of us really had anything to play for so we were really just having a laugh.
However, competitive players having a laugh is still, well, a competitive game, as competitive gamers enjoy being, well, competitive. But we weren't being competitive at the expense of fun, and that's what cost my opponent the game really, as he could just have hid. Yeah, I might have brought the blob and Lone Wolves over and it would still have been interesting.
Still, I really enjoyed the game and I know that my opponent won his last game, which he really deserved.
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