Sunday, October 6, 2013

Two 1000 point lists -- Initial Impressions

So, the Bladestorm League has recently grown from 500 points to 1000 points, doubling the cap and allowing for a lot more customization of armies. The Planetary Empires rules also grant some additional point bonuses, but for week one all of the bonuses were waived by the participants.

The first list I tried out was a Blood Angels mixed army. It actually plays similar to Eldar with a Librarian taking Prescience and essentially 'guiding' some guys. There is some heavy support in there for Big Guns Never Tire, but no Fast Attack. It can provide a pretty hefty amount of scoring units, though, and most of them, if not all, will have Feel No Pain.


Librarian - 100

Tactical Squad - 170
x10
Flamer, ML

Assault Squad - 225
x10
x2 Meltaguns
Lightning Claw (Sarge)

Scouts - 75
x5 bp & ccw

Scouts - 75
x5 sniper rifles

Sanguinary priest - 75
x1 priest
jump pack

Sanguinary priest - 53
x1 priest
x1 storm bolter

Dreadnought - 105
bloodfist and multimelta

Dreadnought - 120
x2 twin-linked autocannon

total 998
models: 35
 My game was against Nick, the Bladestorm Tournament Champion from the week prior, and the game was against his Dark Eldar. His list was completely revised, witih a heavier focus on Warriors.
HQ
Archon: blaster, 75

Troops
Warriors x10: raider, splinter racks, night shield, 170
Warriors x10: raider, splinter racks, night shield, 170
Warriors x8: 72

Elites
Trueborn x4: x4 blasters, venom, night shield, splinter canon, 183

Heavy support
Jetfighter: flicker field, splinter cannon, 165
Jetfighter: flicker field, splinter canon, 165
Nick's list has a LOT of lances. We rolled for Night Fighting and it happened on turn one, which resulted in my autocannon dread being immobilized. My shots were pretty useless, so all of my guys ran forward (or into objective position) as best as possible. Turn two, he rolls his reserves and gets the whole rest of his army -- the Venom Deep Strikes near me, and both Jetfighters make their way onto the board.

I was spending the whole game struggling to hold two objectives from a lance onslaught. Despite his tanks being paper airplanes, nothing popped them except for the Assault Squad, who swatted the Venom down and had nearby Scout squads shoot the remaining trueborn to death. Unfortunately, the rest of the warriors, with spliter rack rerolls and more mobility than my remaining Marines, slowly picked apart my guys until I called the game. I had scored slay the warlord, but probably couldn't hold onto any objectives at the end of the game.

Not really sure how to improve this Blood Angel list. I think Vanguard Veterans would probably help a lot, though.

The next game I played was versus Mike's Ultramarines Bike-lord list. I played my Ulthwe Eldar, going for a type of list I played a lot during 5th edition. It was my first time fielding transports in 6th, even.
Farseer 100

Guardians x10 - 90
Guardians x10 - 90
Dire Avengers x10 - 130
Wave Serpent w SL - 120

Fire Dragons x5 - 110
Wave Serpent w SL - 120

Swooping Hawks x5 - 80

Wraithlord - 155

total 995
models: 42 (44 w/2 tanks)
I have some Storm Guardians (w/2 flamers) coming soon, and I'll shift this list to more of a Wraithwall-style soon, dropping the Wave Serpents entirely. At least, that's what I thought until I fielded the Wave Serpents. AV12 does quite well on its own, so I just went to town dispersing the shields the whole time for a ton of extra hits. I'd venture to say there's very little reason to take a Falcon these days.

Mike's list had me a little worried though. He didn't post it anywhere that I can see, but it consisted of Scouts in a Land Speeder Storm(?), Sternguard in a drop-pod, two five man tacticals with a missile launcher, a Razorback with some sort of small company command, and a Bike lord with two bikers and an attack bike.

Our deployment was Hammer and Anvil, and the mission was Purge the Alien. This is actually the first time I played a non-capture and control style mission since I started 6th edition. We haven't been playing the basic missions very much at all. I got the first turn, and of course it was night fighting. Guardians were placed in my backfield, one squad in cover, another squad kind of out in the open with the Farseer. I took out eight marines during my first shooting phase with the serpents -- damn these guys are powerful! -- but the lone missile launcher guys stand there, and I don't even finish off either of the squads. There is a big piece of difficult terrain in the center of the board -- easily more than 2'x2', and his Bikes have to skirt around the edge of the board to avoid dangerous terrain tests.

His turn one, his drop pod deploys Sternguard right next to my Guardians in cover. Using the Ignores Cover ammunition, he bolters them all off of the board, scoring first blood. Yikes. My second turn drops the hawks next to one of the lone ML guys, and kills him. The Serpent with the Dire Avengers advances towards the Razorback, and popping it, and dropping a lot of Dire Avengers out of the back. They spill out, battle focus and shoot most of the company command (save 2 or 3) off of the board. I move the other Guardians close to the Sternguard, then try to Battle focus to run+shoot them into range. I get a 1, fleet it for another 1, and only one guy gets to fire. I brought the other Serpent with the Fire Dragons down though, so I unload the Dragons and all the firepower onto the Sternguard, who go down. The Wraithlord, at this point, is messing with the Bikes.

Mike's second turn has him deploy scouts, outflanking, right behind those lazy Guardians. The Farseer is completely exposed as closest model, and over a lot of shooting, 7 of nine wounds are reallocated to nearby Guardians (they apparently love their warlord!) and the Farseer saves 2 wounds that make it through. The company command gets into it with the Dire Avengers, but the Dire Avengers have Counter-Attack now and fared pretty well on their own, mopping up the two guys. The Bikes charge the Wraithlord -- he kills the other bikers but the power fist lord takes him down. A last lone missile launcher guy charges the hawks. They wind up in drawn combat for the rest of the game.

My turn three, the Dragons take two hull points off of the drop pod due to lousy rolling. The serpents focus on the remaining Bike lord and take him out. The rest of the army tries to shoot at the Land Speeder and such, only taking off one hull point. Mike's scouts pour out, assaulting the Farseer's squad, tying them up in combat. At this point that's about all he has left, so we pretty much call the game. He had taken out two of my units, and scored first blood. I had slay the warlord, and had destroyed 7 of his units when we called it.

It was a fun game, and Wave Serpents are amazingly powerful. Mike's other list, which included a Land Raider and a big squad of super-tough dudes who tore through everything, did better, coming to a tie game (and a moral victory) for him versus Kyle's Orks.

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