Old School here with another battle report of Death Wing vs Wolfson's developmental Dark Footdar, inspired by the talk between Reecius of Frontline Gaming and Hyv3mynd over at Synaps3. In our last game, Wolfson was fresh from a long break away from the game and made a couple mistakes. He may have been beat, but he was not defeated and brought it on strong in our second game ...
... to set the stage, the game involves all three victory conditions from the rule book. The player who wins two or more victory conditions wins. I won deployment and deployed in a line formation with the idea of turning it into a phalanx for the command squad to break through after catching an assault with regular units. The dreadnoughts deployed behind the termies to add counter assault against the beastmaster packs and Grotesque horde. My speeders were set to be able to place shots on any target Wolf would present to them.
Wolfson deployed the Grotesque wall in ... well ... a wall, keeping Lady Malice behind in the middle and keeping a Haemoneculi one each side to drop portals. His one mistake is actually that he deployed two squads of warriors in cover, which didn't seem bad at first, but once I realized my fire would just bounce off FNP grotesques, I figured I would shoot them in my turn. My turn one saw me form my phalanx and fire into the warriors, dropping them both to less than five models, but they made their leadership and stayed on the board.
Turn one for Wolfson saw him place his portals. I stayed back to temp him into a bad decision and killed off one of the warrior squads.
Wolfson opened turn two by exploding from the webway with a talos, a squad of six reavers with two heat lances, witches with grenades and a HUGE beastmaster pack. His grotesques charged a squad of termies and killed all but two. His beastmasters charged five terminators, which I was certain would die, but ...
... I activated the lucky horse shoe that I hide in the dank parts of my body and rolled like a boss, losing zero termies, winning combat, but the beastmasters stayed.
Now I wanted to capitalize on the major strength of Death Wing in CC: Combat resolution. Basically, my resiliency will see that I win combat even if I take serious losses, which will force fearless saves on the grotesques that survive and force the beasts to run. I charge the grotesques with a five man squad of termies, a dread and Belial's squad multi-assaults the beastmasters and the grotesques.
Well, I lost the one two man squad of termies, but everything I thought would happen did and for a moment, I thought I had Wolfson on the ropes. He regroups the beasts in turn three, and brings in a second talos and whells the wyches around to get the dread.
He assaults the combat between the regualr termies, dread, belial's squad and the grotesques. He ensures that he can only reach base contact with the regular termies and hoses them with attacks, killing all five. Belial and his boys managed to kill more grotesques and even Lady Malys, winning combat by two, causing the beasts to run again, but keeping the termies in combat with the remaining grotesque! Also, his wyches charge and start taking the dread apart with grenades. The two talos assault and kill a three man terminator squad. I am now starting to get worried.
The store was closing so we got into turn five and called it, but my plan was to boost into contesting his objectives (he would have held three). I also moved my termies to take my home objective to tie that victory condition. My idea was to at least tie there, win KP and lose the multiple objective condition, at least squeeking out a draw, which is how we called it since we had to leave.
Had the game gone on to six, which was likely, I would have lost Belial and the command squad and at that likely my dreads to the Talos and wyches, freeing him to take another objective and bringing him ahead in KP. He likely would have killed a speeder and if he did would have won the game hands down in the 6th.
This was a great game and it sucks that he had to cal it, but it also served as a great leap in his come back to the gaming side of 40k. Also, with only two games in, I feel that his Dark Footdar will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.
For more info and links to the original discussions on Dark Footdar, check out this link and the links attached to the article. It is some great reading and lets you inside the minds of two great players and great members of the 40k blogging community.
I am a big fan of the Grotesque. My webway list was wych cult centered but I started experimenting with other units as time went on. I never had much luck with reavers though. I like the unit mix Wolfson is using though.
ReplyDeleteLooks like I may have to brush the dust off my dark kin and experiment.
The cool thing about this list concept is that it allows for a lot of oddball units to make their way into the army and really make a difference on the field as well.
ReplyDeleteImagine if he had not made the mistake of deploying two squads of warriors. He would have been able to have handled my termies the same way, but also dominated the objectives and had more shots against my speeders and dreads. This is only his second game with the list and already it has given my DW a hard time and they are a tournament placing army for me.
I think as time goes on, at least for the rest of 5th, this is going to grow into a very competitive list.