As promised, a batrep. Sorry for the delay.
Maybe you can get a post out of it. If not, any advice is much appreciated. If you want more of a comment,, let me know. I wasn't exactly sure what you wanted.
BroLo
Okay so what I'll do is put my comments in blue, BroLo's in black and his opponent's moves in red.
Well, it's finally here Kirby, Sorry for the delay! I'll do the batrep bit first and then the try and link it back to the article you did for me.
My List (Black Templars - 1500)
HQ
Emperor's Champion - Accept any Challenge
Elite
Assault Terminators (6) - Furious Charge
- 4x Lightning Claws
- 2x TH/SS
Troops
Crusader Squad (8) - Meltagun/Power Fist
- Rhino - EA/Smoke
Crusader Squad (8) - Meltagun/Power Fist
- Rhino - EA/Smoke
Fast Attack
Land Speeder Typhoon - MM/HF
Land Speeder Typhoon - MM/HF
Heavy Support
Predator Destructor - Lascannon Sponsons, EA
Predator Destructor - Lascannon Sponsons, EA
Land Raider Crusader - Smoke Launchers
Why EA on the Preds & Rhinos? I know it’s 5 pts but that’s 20 pts! Rhinos I can understand but not the Preds, maybe Frags instead?
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His List (Flesh Tearers/Blood Angels - 1500)
HQ
Mephiston
Librarian - Blood Lance, Unleash Rage (with terms in Storm Raven)
Elite
Assault Terminators (5)
- 3x Lightning Claws
- 2x TH/SS
Corbulo (with terms in Storm Raven)
Troop
RAS (5) - Meltagun, Power Fist
- Razorback - T-L Heavy Bolter, Dozer Blade
RAS (5) - Meltagun, Power Fist
- Razorback - T-L Heavy Bolter, Dozer Blade
Fast Attack
Baal Predator - Heavy Bolter Sponsons (Sorry TKE - couldn't persuade him otherwise), Dozer Blade
Baal Predator - Heavy Bolter Sponsons, Dozer Blade
Heavy Support
Storm Raven Gunship - T-L multi-melta
Enter BA problems with Terminators, they have jack crap elsewhere. He has a minor edge in mobility but otherwise your terminators are cheaper but less durable, you have more midfield support and more long-ranged support. Only advantage he has is Libby & Meph.
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Mission... Annihilation
Deployment.... Pitched Battle
The table....
A little on why I did so at the end. Land Speeders in Reserve
Due to his lack of good high AV anti-tank, I’d of put your Rhinos behind the LRC and your Preds are only denying one half of the field. If he deploys in the other half you have to reposition all of your ranged firepower to get back into firing. Moving one of the Preds into the building in front of your Rhinos (depending on windows) would have been beneficial and the other one more where the LRC is (whilst trying to gain cover). This way the one in the building (depending on windows) should be able to affect the whole field and get cover whilst the one behind the building loses 1 LC if the BA deploy on the right. …and since he was outflanking the two Preds in the building would of screwed anything which came in on the far side. The failings of outflank.
His deployment.... Mephiston deploys behind the building that blocks line of sight. Pussy! The baals outflank and the rest is in reserve.
Turn 1
LRC moves up 12"... rhinos prep to receive side shots
Preds move to cover fire lanes.
Meph moves back a bit to avoid charge from Termies in LRC.... pussy!
Turn 2
One speeder turns up.... moves 24" as I can't get him out of LoS.
More prep to receive Baals and storm raven.
Rhinos and LRC pop smoke in case the raven and his melta turn up.
Again.... I will discuss why I've manouvered into this position at the end... as it's still kind of me deploying as nothing of his has turned up.
This is looking a bit better but I’d be hunkering all together around that building putting a Rhino in front with smokes popped if anything comes in from this side. You then have the firepower and combat ability to stop whatever comes in & the RBacks aren’t scaring you but you’ve left your side armor open on the Preds (block it with your Rhinos).
He only gets one baal and one razorback so my smoke is wasted :(.
His Baal shoots my Speeder. Two pens (heavy bolters) and a glance (Ass Can). One Pen saved. Immobilised and Shaken result. The Razor shot at one of my rhinos and did nothing.
Turn 3
My speeder stays off.
Rhinos move around a bit to open fire lanes.
LRC moves 6" toward Baal and blocks LoS to speeder (:-( for BT PotMS... BS2 FTL). Multimelta and AssCan do nothing.
One Pred shoots at the Baal - Immobilised
One Pred shoots the Razor - nothing! Ouch.
You seem to be reacting a bit to him; if you were in that building the Baal essentially could do nothing and you could focus your firepower on the RBack.
Second Baal turns up.
Razorback moves behind building with Mephiston
One Baal shoots LRC. - nothing
Second Baal Shoots Rhino - nothing
Second speeder turns up - moves on to get side shot at baal
Preds stay as they are
LRC stays still
non-immobilised rhino moves around large central crater.
Speeder shoots baal - weapon destroyed
LRC shots baal - nothing - again!
Preds shoot baal - nothing. As you've guessed... my shooting is pretty unproductive.
Your shooting is better than his though so the longer you’re shooting and not having Meph/Libby in your face, oh well.
Storm raven turns up flat-out into central terrain.
Second Razorback turns up and both razors sit alongside storm raven.
Raven shoots nearest rhino - immobilised.
Razorback shoots immobilised speeder - destroyed.
Baal shoots Speeder that shot it's AssCan off - stunned.
Turn 5
My crusader squads get out to max-out shots on Storm Raven. LRC moves toward Storm Raven and I stupidly get my Termies out....Dur!
Speeder gets away from anything that can shoot it.
Pred shoots raven - destroyed. Termies fail pin to get out. Re-rolled with Corbulo (game-saver for him!)
Crusader squad shoots termies - nothing.
Crusader squad shoots Razor - stunned.
LRC shoots Razor - nothing.
Termies and Crusader squad charge razor. (I'm not sure why I did this with my termies.... it took me into his assault range - more dur!)
Claws do nothing 6s to hit :-(
Crusader squad and hammers at same time as assaulting through terrain. Hammers do nothing! Power fist does nothing! Basic crusaders (with no krak) get an immobilised (okay, okay.... I've finally learnt I need frag ALWAYS!).
Well you know what you did wrong here :P. Your units were out of position to assault so they should of stayed inside, especially the terminators. Handing BA FC isn’t a good idea. Again if you’d of hung back and shot him with your better shooting (ignore bad rolls) and let him come to you. Yes buy Frags
Termies, Libby and Corbulo line-up to charge. I'm a gentleman and tell him he's moving his guys like an idiot and is going to have to assault through terrain. He stops and removes his squad. This is where I lose the game - if it wasn't lost already.
Mephiston wings over the wreck to charge the crusader squad.
2nd Razorback moves alongside building on the left (pic above).
Terms assault terms.
Meph assaults crusader squad.
EC leaps into combat with Libby and puts one wound on him - 3s with re-rolls, 2s to wound.... and 1 bloody wound! Libby takes out EC with 2 failed 4+ Inv. Claw terms put enough wounds on my terms to wipe-out the squad - hurrah for Furious Charge!
Meph takes out 4 initiates.
Turn 6
I open-up razorback with my un-engaged crusaders and assault squad inside.
Preds shoot with very little to show for it.
Meph finishes off crusader squad.
Crusaders take out 4 of the 5 assault squad, but lose 3 'cus no 'nades. They stay.
Meph assaults pred and wipes it out.
Second assault squad assaults the crusader squad in combat.
Terms assault immobilised rhino and blow it up.
We finish there as I've got to get to football and I'm pretty sure it's unsalvageable.
Turning points...
Corbulo's re-roll to unpin terms.
Me getting assault terms out AND assaulting the razorback.... I'm always over-zealous with them.
Spot on the Terminator analysis :P.
Anyways.... onto deployment. Just some of my thoughts.
I always find it extremely difficult to decide which deployment zone to take. I'm always torn between the best deployment for me and taking away the best deployment for my opponent (as they're often the opposite zones - I like space to advance my mech force, most of my opponents like cover). So if I take the most open deployment zone, it gives him the cover. I thought about it long and hard and thought about what you said in your article... particularly fire lanes. I chose the edge I did as my preds positioned where they were could almost see the entire field with pivoting and it proved true as they bought their entire fire-power to bear every turn - even if it did very little!
Again I can’t see what the building is like but from the buildings we use I know there are windows on the bottom floor which give cover but your guns can see out of. Whilst it will narrow your field of vision slightly because he was outflanking and reserving you could of got your preds into even better firing positions and had your Rhinos/Speeders/LRC bunkered up in there and forced him to come to you, particularly with his terminators. Assault me in cover please. As I said, you have more shooting ability than him and he doesn’t have a huge amount of mech to hid Mephiston behind.
I knew I'd have two turns to shuffle around so I wasn't under too much pressure, but my end deployment (i.e. after turn 2) was reasonably nice. He could would struggle to get side shots on the preds and the rhinos would get cover as well as my pen to glance smoke - shame not much turned up.
I need to think more about the way I use my terminators... they are a bit of a glass hammer as they NEED the charge and it was pretty obvious they would not get it that turn so I don't know why I did it.
Thanks for the article anyways, it did genuinely help... sorry you didn't get any comments. I hope you've realised it's not cool to mention me in a post! BroLo FTL!
This is true :P. BT Terminators are excellent on the charge but not at taking damage which is why they are not a rock unit.
I think I've got a very reasonble list and can see it working really well. My opponent had seen it do badly before and poo-poo'd it. Despite hammering me, he commented on how it was actually a really nice list, i just had some bad rolls and helped him out with his termie movement. We did the rolls for that combat had i not told him. Without FC I would still have taken out all but one hammer term and only put one wound on his libby. Game changer.
I hope this makes you write a few more articles on in-game play. They're far more useful for guys in my situation than the endless list-writing we see elsewhere.
Anyways... if you want more from me... let me know
BroLo
Keep it up.... 3++ is the new black!
Reports like this are great though I find it hard to really assess a battle without watching it unfold :P. I’d say the main points was not taking advantage of your superior firepower and this comes down to list analysis. If the RBacks had Asscannons or las/plas it might have been different but as it was, your Preds/Speeders/LRC should of outshot his Preds/RBacks, particularly since they were coming on piece meal. In the end I think that was your undoing above and beyond getting your Terminators out a turn early. Remember to plan your assaults in the turn before :P!
If anyone else wants to send in reports please do. Thanks to Brother Loring for putting himself on the line.
7 pinkments:
Good bat rep, quite interesting, especially for me since it looks like I will be taking that BT list to LoT :D
I think you were just really unlucky with AT rolls :( Your termis were also in the wrong position (out in the open ^^) It looks like a solid list however. Frags would be one thing I would consider, especially considering how many guys you lost because you did not have them. I think I might have to include some Frags into my list but I'm not sure what to drop...
Anywhoo, good bat rep, look forward to reading more! I think me and Kirbs will do a big bat-rep-athon after our 2 day LoT tourney, all with pics and everything :D And we will do bat-reps of our practice games too :D
Frags on those Termies is a definite must. They're brutal guys, but they need to be hitting to do their thing.
Dumping EA on the Preds does seem like the solution. I can appreciate that it's cheap, but it almost never comes up.
You obviously know where your big mistake was in jumping out of your box before necessary. I'm not super-familiar with the army so it's hard to say how your overall strategy was, but I think you made some other odd tactical choices.
-Meph is a big dude, but you've got the low-AP weapons to put him down. He's like a MC but fewer wounds, so dropping him isn't all that hard.
-Hard to see from the pics, but shouldn't your immobilized Speeder have crashed, since it moved Flat Out the previous turn?
-Popping smoke on all your vehicles seems a bit iffy. I would've done it on the front Rhinos and used them to shield the LRC (or vice versa, depending).
-You were playing defensively, which is fine as you had more firepower, but you didn't use cover or terrain to your advantage much. As Kirb(?) points out, you could have sat in/behind one of the buildings and been largely untouchable.
-You did seem to get some poor shooting rolls, which is unfortunate. Having Shaken the same vehicle six times in a turn, I definitely feel your pain.
Snowmobiled for the first time... I feel honoured.
Thanks Kirbs, like I've always said, I'm happy to embarass myself to help others.
I made some really dumb decisions in this game, but that's fine, I still count myself as a n00b. I like to stick with them where possible rather than ask my opponent if I can take them back (he probably would've let me)... It helps me learn.
Frags are now common place on my crusader squads, and I'm a lot more sensible when disembarking my termies, even though I made a small mistake with them last night.... but more of that over on BnH shortly (sorry for stealing traffic from you Kirbs).
Anyways... to respond to some of the points...
My set-up was as it was as I was sure he would put everything into reserve (I know the way he plays - I know this is a bad thing). That would give me a couple of turns to move things into a position that wasn't possible at set-up.
You can draw LoS through most of the buildings but not the one to the right of my rhino.... hence why my preds were safe as they were. The only real threat at >24" was going to be the lascannons on the Storm Raven.
The first speeder should not have move to where it was and i made a silly mistake to take my LRC out of formation to protect it.
Anyways... my terms don't care for many things, but being charged by Ini 5 guys is one and Paroxysm is the other (damb you Chumbalaya).
@AbusePuppy - Sadly the terms can't take frags... that's why they rock the LRC. The crusader squads do have them now. They don't care much for Mephiston... he will ALWAYS drop in the first round of combat to them.
The point about the speeder is correct... I'd not thought about it until you've just said, even after looking through the batrep 3/4 times.
Yeah... I've got to be more sensible with my smoke. I think i was just concerned about out-flanking Baals.
Thanks for your thoughts guys. I'll get more up soon.
@Vinsanity... If you don't play with BT much, feel free to ask anything. They're quite tricky to master (I'm not even close), but I think they can be very nasty when utilised correctly.
BroLo sucks, noob :P
Good report, good thing you learned from it. Getting FC is really good, so do your best to keep the baddies from getting it.
Since his army is so short-ranged, sitting back and popping stuff as it comes is gonna be your best bet. You have the firepower, leave the Termies for mop up or denial.
BroLo, I like the shortened handle.
Good list with a couple minor tweaks, good fight, and good lessons.
@BroLo (pretty sweet nick, man)
Ah, didn't know that about the Terms. :P Not that familiar with the army.
Making mistakes will help you learn and remember things more clearly. Nothing stops you from fucking up the same way over and over and over again like losing a game because of something you did. If you're looking to up your game, don't allow yourself takebacks, but give them freely to the opponent; it really makes you think about what you're doing.
Kirby;
I am pro-XA and Smoke on all vehicles (and am a BT player)
Why? Well, you've spent 110-145 pts on that Pred. 8 more is a fraction of its outlay.
Get shaken (that's a 2 right? :/) Well at least you can hoon 12" to get a decent shot next turn, get away from angry powerfists, tank-shock or whatever. Smoke allows you to do that move in greater safety.
Perhaps frags is a similar thing for Crusaders; you have spent so many points anyway, so why not a little more? You are probably right there. However, I hate paying for something others get for free.
Also, every game the Preds are a target, but not every game do I assault into cover. Hopefully when I do assault into cover, I have either a] tried to Tank Shock the critters out of it and/or b] am assaulting plebs and they wont hurt me too badly *crosses fingers*
That is my take on the matter, and the line I give to people. :)
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