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G'day,
Over the weekend I had a 8000pts a side game with CAL and another player. CAL had 2x4000pts of Iron warriors (normal CSM, no summoning, can take vindicators and basilisks in armour formations). I had a 4000pt SM force of ground troops/veh (no air for once) and our other mate used 4000pts of my IG.
I retrospect I should have taken better notes but the game size and time restrictions meant that we had to get on with it.
The Guard force consisted of
1 reg HQ + Hydra + Firesupport
1 Shadow sword Coy
1 Bane Blade Coy
1 Inf Coy + snipers + ogryns + demolishers
1 Arty Coy (6 Basilisks,3 manticores) + hydra
1 rough rider
1 sentinel
1 hydra battery
1 bombard battery
1 deathstrike battery
1 thunderbotls
The table used was my table tennis table which made for some big expanses but allowed some maneouvre room for the massive forces. Terrain consisted of a large city scape at one end using Cal's lovely city terrain and the other half of the board was an expance of light forrest and scrub land with a few minor hills. Rob the IG player, decided to take the more open terrain, so the SM force faced off against the CSM in the city.
Overall the battle was a blood bath for the forces of good although chaos didn't get off easily either. The game ended in the 4th turn with chaos claiming Hold the line and take and hold.
As far as Guard are concerned i hoped to get some feedback on a few of the units currently up for review, namely the Baneblade, Deathstrikes & bombard.
Changes were:
Banebalde with AT3+/AP3+ main gun, 3 x TL HB, 2 x Lascannon, 1 x Auto Cannon and 1 x Demolisher cannon.
Death strike: indirect fire (as opposed to no LOS)
Bombards: nil change, just to show they are cool!
Firstly the baneblades: These guys i believe suffered from poor initial deployment and much of the CSM forces were hidden from view. They doubled forward on both the first and second turns to find suitable targets, but the end result was only a few dead inf stands to the upgraded battle cannon.
Unfortuneatly at this point the Coy was attacked by a CSM decimator formation of 3 tanks. The initial barrage caused minor damage but a very very lucky reaper round caused 1 tank to explode and take another baneblade that was close with it. (how many sixes can can CAL roll?)
With the formation broken the last fella played no more useful roll and spent the rest of the game broken.
In my mind the upgraded main gun is very useful in the earlier stages of a battle, allowing the bane blade to double up and still have a decent chance of hitting enemy.. If they had survived to the next turn they were in a prime posistion to catch a large combined force of CSM and CSM armour in the open and i'm sure the extra firepower would have been noticed.
Next Deathstrikes:
These guys deployed at the rear under a flak umbrella (really...) and didn't get to fire until the 3rd turn due to continued failed activations. When they did fire it was to target a reaver that SM land raiders had stripped of shields earler in the 3rd turn. The two missiles struck home and reduced the reaver to a burning wreck. In the 4th turn they raced across to secure our side's blitz. Still very effective TK unit but no longer a sure thing.
Finally Bombards:
1st turn they unloaded on a CSM retinue that had garrisoned and caused multiple hits. Good saving throws saw some of the damage minimised but the ability to hit CSM in cover on a 3+ was awesome. 2nd Turn the bombards moved fowards to camp behind a tree line and prep for the 3rd turn. In the third turn they again targeted a CSM formation that was sitting broken on one of the Take and Hold Objectives. Again the 3 + to hit combined with extra blast makers all but wiped the broken formation out. The bombard formation was destroyed later in the turn by CSM air power as the flak umbrella had been removed.
All in all the IG got hammered but that was due to poor placement, and some terrible luck. The changes to the baneblade and deathstrike were acceptable and didn't seem to unbalance the game. The bombard is still a useful, but specialised bit of kit. Even on such a large table the range wasn't really an issue.
It was actually quite funny watching the guard crumble against enemy titans whilst the deathstrike battery stuffed around and tried to est radio coms with someone whilst the poor IG commander was getting hammered by CSM assaults... dam REMFs.
Cheers, hope this helps. This week i will attempts to make more detailed notes as the guard again go up against CSM or SM in a 3000pts clash.
ORTRON
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