3++ Crew BatRep, Part II: The Battle!

Alright gang, here it is, the most excitingly awesome competitive funness slugfest the interwebz have ever seen.

Setup: Going second in DoW would start me off on my backfoot, for most of my anti-tank were my Fangs, who wouldn't be able to fire the turn they walked on, so I'd basically suffer a tun of his shooting before I could return in kind. GW took top, and so formulated my rough plan around using the terrain to bottleneck him around the bottom objective. Needless to say, my plan somehow reversed on me ans you'll see later in the game...

Turn 1:GW's rolled all his guys on, using each other to provide cover for each other. I started one of my GH squads behind the wrecked rhino right on the objective, putting me in an early lead from the get go over GW. I moved my second squad on and popped smoke, and had the third rhino move onto my far left to try and flank around the hill. I passed my LL test, but epic failed at the night fight roll for Odin so no shooting for me.

Turn 2:
I moved my TWC on the right up, to try and set up a flank movement on his LR. Initial plan for them was 2 fold: keep his speeders distracted from my main force and try and get a flank charge on either a LR or rhino. GW's shooting was on point and my rolls were full of fail, a common theme you'll see throughout this battle. By the end of turn 2 I had lost 2 rhinos, effectively neutering my mobility and forcing me to footslog. I was officially headed for trouble. GW now had control of 2 objectives, to my 1 contested. BTW those terminators on the hill are still inside the LR, I just took the shot as he was preparing to disembark them.

Turn 3:

I took a big bite of the fail sandwich this turn. My TWC on the right flank got torrented to death by the speeders, who also killed Baldr's faithful wolf companion. New goal with him: keep those speeders occupied and contest that objective. GW's shooting really shined as he killed most of my one LF squad, and then rushed his last LR forward to assault the disembarked GH's with some terminators. I tried to get revenge for his solid shooting and had the GH's by the objective kill the LR on the top side of the objective, and then assault the Terms/Libby who jumped out. Sadly, even with all of their attacks, broke and ran like girls. The sole upside of my shooting is that the remaining 2 fangs immobilized one of his dakka dreads, and the othr Fangs immobilized his LR. Meanwhile I threw Tyr and his cav into the lower Term fight hoping to make quick work of them and then got to the business of caliming objectives. What did I learn? a). TH/SS are stubborn mofo's to kill; b). GW had awesome dice rolls. Thor charged the immobilized LR and just get having his hammer bounce off. End of turn 3 was a crucial point, as it marked the culminating moment. Turn 4 would, in my opinion, decide who was going to win. If GW assault the rhino, my fleeing GH's could regroup and either assault them again, or go after the immobilized LR/claim the objective. If he went after the GH's, the squad GH's in the rhino could either assault him or continue to move up to contest his upper objective. Moreover, depending on how the assaults went, would determine whether I regained the momentum.

Turn 4:
Roland had written something for this but this ****** blogger edit is terrible. It went something like "no pictures so you need to wait for T5!"

Turn 5:

So as you can see, turn 4 wasn't kind to me. Most I managed to do was destroy that last Term from the bottom assault and have Tyr consol north. He lost his two companions to shooting in turn 5, and the remaining GH's from that fight bit it too. And Turn 5 was not any nicer. I rushed my rhino north to try and contest the objective, maybe even set myself up for a ramming action. I lost Baldr to combined HB/Typhoon fire from the Speeders before he could ravage those Tacs. Moreover, my valiant remaining two Fangs were sniped by on of the dakka Preds. GW' ended up assaulting the fleeing GH's who held out for two turns before succumbing to their wounds. They did well, having only a MG dude, a PW dude, and a MotW dude going against a Libby and 3 Terms. The full strength strength GH's rushed in, adding much needed combat power to the fight and quickly knocking the squad down to just the Libby. And here is where GW shined: From the top of turn 4 when he assaulted the squad, until the top of turn 6 when he gated out of combat, his libby saved no less than 20 saves. I kid you not. He suffered on average 5 wounds per assault phase. And he saved every.single.one. Epic SW fail, massive Iron Hands win. And Thor continued to pound on that LR. It became his obsession (cue Killswitch Engage's new single, "My Obsession"). That was it for turn 5.

Turn 6:
Turn 6 was the beginning of the end for me. His Libby, having survived a horrendous onslaught of body blows, gated out of contact, denying me a moral victory. Odin managed to snipe one of the rhino-less tacs, and the Dread finally wrecked his remaining dakka dread. At complete waste of firepower, as it would have been better spent killing those Tacs off the objective, but, in all honesty, I was solely focused on killing that dread for some reason. Tunnel visioned, you may say. Thor continued to be mocked by the indestructible LR, and the Fangs failed to inflict any damage on it either. Heck, even the 2 melta shots by the GH's didn't even scratch the thing. Truly the dice Gods hated my heathen soldiers. I decided to make a huge amble and charge Tyr into the upper rhino. My hope was that with his multitude of attacks, he would destroy it and either pin/kill some of the guys inside. Additionally this would put him firmly in contest range of the flag. He managed only to immobilize it. Le sigh I say.

Turn 7:
This was the en of the line for me. Tyr got overkilled by Typhoon missiles and HB fire during GW's turn. I decided to try to kill a speeder instead of using my dakka dread to take out more of the Tacs on the objective. Odin picked off one more Tac, but they hadn't lost 25% so they held. Thor epic failed killing the LR, as did the melta GH's, who managed to knock off its assault cannon and one of the Hurricane Bolter sponsons. And of course the Fangs didn't dent the armor. By the end, I contested 1 objective and he held 2 comfortably.

Roland's post Game Thoughts:It was definitely a fun, relaxed game, between two competitive lists and fairly competitive players. I realized afterward some key things I messed up on that contributed to my fail:
- I forgot I had a Chooser and completely neglected to deploy it. It wouldn't have made much difference, but shooting at BS5 would have been nice.
- I never used my Wolf Standards. I'll admit it, I completely forgot I had them. They would have been clutch in those two rounds where his Termies effectively tied up my entire army.
- Chainfists. Had Thor had one, that LR would have been slag on the first round of assault. TH are cool to model and good against things that strike back (like TMC's and DP's), but suck against vehicles. I'm now working on giving Baldr a Chainfist to be a tank hunter and keep Thor my hammer wielding fluff master of destruction.
- TWC are 6" move, 12" assault, with FoF. I kept thinking it was 12" move and 6" assault. Then when I corrected myself, I still kept thinking 6" assault. I quite possibly could have assaulted the Raider on turn 2 or 3.
- My dice rolls sucked. A lot. My average TWC fleet roll was a 2. My cover save rolls for my vehicles were also 2's. Go figure.

I also became so fixated on killing the raider and that dakka dread that I lost sight of the mission: objectives. I could have pulled a closer game had I tried to push that one Tac squad off his objective via combined Dread an Rune priest firepower. I think I was also a little hesitant in the beginning. I probably should have risked that foremost GH squad to rush forward turn 1, disembark, and pop his LR in his back field, effectively tying him up. This would have immediately given me the initiative and put him on the defensive. As I said at the beginning, my plan was to bottle neck him in between the terrain. I realized quickly though, that 2 objectives were in his deployment zone, so I had to go to him to win, which meant crossing into the bottle neck. And he did a good job of clogging it with LR's and terms, effectively shutting down my ability of using my mobility to grab or contest. The only option would be to go for the wide, time consuming flank moves. As they say though, hindsight is 20/20.

All in all though, an excellent game (though I admit I was rusty a few times on rules, having not played a real game in over a year, and this being my first vassal game in several months). Hope you all enjoyed this report! Now, where's GW....