Vassal Battle Report: Nipple Hammer versus Hybrid SM

(pic from Tim @ The Vanus Temple) I was bored of entering data today so I decided to play a game with Smurfy on…Vassal! We had no LoS arguments, amazing. I decided to try out Nipple Hammer and am pleased with the results (see below) whilst Smurfy ran a Hybrid SM list w/Bikes, Armor & some ASM.

We roll DoW w/C&C. Yay for auto draws. Smurfy wins roll-off and takes the top spot which I wanted with his objective hidden behind LoS blocking terrain. I slap mine behind some forest terrain (I’m a real man) and Smurfy drops two bike squads and his Bike Captain in midfield in a V shape to access both corners on my side and discourage me from deploying anything. I oblige and don’t deploy anything with 2 sang guard squads including Dante, libby and a Priest Deep-striking with everyone else walking on.

Deployment:

Turn One:

Smurfy’s T1 sees him move everything on and bring his bikes back as bubble-wrap to protect against my deep-strike. His tanks are lined up for a pretty blood lance if he doesn’t move them about next turn and he protects both of his flanks with his terminator squads. My Turn sees me split my devs up (I combat squadded btw) since he’s moved his bikes away to threaten side AV. My 5 man ASM squad moves onto my objective to weather any incoming firepower and the Sang Guard move 12” on then run into terrain (key point here, when you want to get into terrain and aren’t shooting, move as close to terrain as possible without going into it [I.e. not diff terrain test] then run into it).

Turn Two:

Smurfy moves up his right flank to shoot at the white Devs who have no FNP and to try and stay out of range of my other MLs. His terminators are still protecting both of his flanks and his bikes are bubble wrapping most of the mech. Pred kills sarge + 2 regs out of white (go my rolling!). Some poor rolling later and they are dead. That was useful… Let’s see what comes in on my T2...nothing and I don’t bother re-rolling. SG stay put since there is no support and I open up with my missiles..and miss with most. 8 Missiles resulted in one removed heavy flamer off a Speeder. SG run into cover and T3 begins with it looking grim!

Turn Three:

Again Smurfy moves forward to claim midfield whilst protecting his flanks with his terminators. At this point my deep-strikes may simply be to keep him off my objective rather than threatening his. He opens up on the Sang guard…kills 2 reg sang Guard, phew! Good saves makes up for poor shooting/saves before and they pass their Ld. So we imagine all my reserves should come in…and on the first roll nothing does. Wow. Re-roll and get Dante +SG and the 5 man ASM, not Blood Lance =/. ASM DS on target and I put Dante’s group nearby half in cover as well, pass all my dangerous. SG already on table move up through terrain and also pass Dangerous and look ready to assault bikes! My ASM drop the Speeder in a fiery explosion. My missiles all but fail again with misses and pings on armor but the final missile explodes a LasPlas and kills a marine inside. Dante’s squad manages to kill a single bike and difficult terrain stops the SG from making combat.

Turn Four:

Turn 4...Smurfy advances some more with his whole firepower pretty much intact. His Captain + Bike squad, ASM and TH/SS consolidate around his objective and he opens fire on Dante & the SG. And my dice some to the rescue! Lose one pistol from the non-Dante squad and one reg SG from Dante’s squad. Yay. My Libby + SG finally come in and scatter into terrain, killing one reg SG. Dante scoots into the little area like a brave moron to attack the GKTs and everyone else preps for shooting and assaulting. Black SG + Libby do nothing thanks to failed psy tests and poor rolling which forces me to shoot the SoB w/Orange. My SG account for a single bike and my missiles…start to do things. Remaining LasPlas is shaken & immob, Pred on left is Immob and remaining speeder is wrecked. Enter mass assaults into Immolator, SoB, Bikes, Tacs & GKT. The ASM drop the Immolator and 2 sisters who stay in combat. Both the SG squads wipe the Tacs & Bikes and Dante wipes out the GKT squad. Consols ensue and it’s Smurfy’s T5.

Turn Five:

Smurfy’s turn went like this CHARGE with the Termies on the Blue SG. Killed the Priest and 1 SG but the Fist remained. SG/Priest/Fist did nothing in return. The Orange combat w/ASM continued after nothing happened. My Turn saw me move as much as possible towards his objective and I killed 3 of my own guys thanks to fail dangerous rolling. There goes half my mobile army! Lol. Dante was able to squish in amongst Smurfy’s bubble-wrap and prepared to assault the Captain + Bikes. Libby & SG didn’t know what to do now that the rest of the squad died and the remaining SG squad prepped to take down his final scoring Troop. Libby gets off a massive 19” blood lance which kills an ASM. Rest of my shooting shakes the Pred, drops a Tac and drops the Captain and a Bike from the bike squad who flee. Not sure why Smurfy took a S8 missile on the Captain… They flee off the table so Dante assaults the ASM and blue SG into the tacs. Orange finishes off the SoBs and the Blue SG fail to do anything but take no damage in return. Dante drops 2 ASM who fail to do anything to them but stay thanks to ATSKNF whilst the Terminators drop the final SG and consolidate towards Blue SG and the Tacs.

End Game Comments:

Game ends on a 2. So an odd game in terms of dice. My shooting was piss poor until T4 but outside of my Devs on T1 and dangerous terrain, my saves were great. My SG only died to melta, Terminators or terrain and even then prob saved 65-70% against melta thanks to cover. Once the SG hit combat w/Furious Charge the game was on my terms and I was able to send Dante into the midst of Smurfy’s objective bubble-wrap and he made a mistake with the Captain which made the unit flee (He rolled Ld10 for their save). My fire-base was also never threatened so they were able to keep plugging away and finally made a difference in T4 whilst my objective was never threatened.

Overall thoughts on the list are solid, whilst there wasn’t a huge amount of mech the SG suffered a lot of fire and were able to weather it quite well and I still had a good amount of damage capacity. The ASM also added some bodies and a cheap scoring unit I was happy to keep in my backfield to hold my objective. Smurfy’s list was a little haphazard but he played it well and ensured when I assaulted there would be things to counter assault me…like the Terminators though Dante detaching was able to run around by himself nicely. Hopefully Smurfy will post his thoughts on the game as well!

GG Smurfy.