Battle Report #2 - Clusterf***ed

The title says much about how this game went (I really don't want to use offensive languge in this blog, but there's really no better description of this game, even after 20 minutes of trying). Matt, Russell and I got to the game store on time, with Max close behind (and my roommate almost beating us the 6-7 miles there on BIKE through downtown Minneapolis... yeeesh). Another friend was there that wanted to join in, and we thought 'hey, why not?' so he made a 1000pt list and Matt bumped his up to 2500pts to compensate.

This proved to be a terrible idea. Its not the fault of the friend of ours who wanted to play - he's a good guy, and fun to play against (also - Space Wolves!! Yip-yip!) - its more our collective fault for not really realizing that, while a 3000pt per side (1500pt per army) 2v2 is fairly streamlined and takes roughly 2-3 hours to play (depending on casualty rate), a 4000pt per SIDE, 2v3 game, with list corrections, time to setup, and general confusion, turns into a stressful 4 hours plus change, counting delays. It didn't help that we rolled Annihalation//Pitched Battle as the setup, meaning that we'd be going at least 5 turns, and starting 24" away from each other.

Combined with the massive amount of terrain we put down, Max's 2 Masters of the Fleet neutering Matt and Russell's HEAVY reserves (causing some very-justifiable animosity), and even the cramped nature of the tables, this game turned fairly stress-filled pretty quick.

Since explaining the full, confusing battle in detail would be long and nearly impossible, here's a quick Synopsis of how MY units did, in order of what I remember:

1). TL Flamer Battlesuits - turned out being the Tau MVP of the match. I left them in reserve, but they came on 2nd turn - right next to the broodlord and retinue that had taken up residence in a forest on our board edge after massacreing the previous inhabitants (iGuard command squad). After scorching the broodlord out of existence, they were caught in the woods a few turns (using missile pods to knock down some bikers), before deciding not to assault a biker command squad, and doing an emergency jump out (losing the Shas'vre) to help wrack up another kill point from the deep-striking space marine squad (Sternguard?). The setup proved fairly effective (the TL REALLY helps), and the gun drones especially made more standard armor saves than any shield drone ever does for me.

2). Hammerheads - the burst cannons proved to be a great addition, as although lack of line of sight was an issue for 1 or 2 turns, the 2 extra shots made up for this, doing some serious damage against 'Nids.

2.5). The Ion Cannon - worth it. So worth it. Its a 3 shot space marine killer, and is powerful enough to deny armor saves to most Tyranid units. Because it's cheaper/doesn't have a railgun, I felt confident wadeing it into the thick stuff, blasting bikes at point blank and (if I could manage to only move 6") throwing 6 burst cannon shots on top of that. It was actually largely ignored to focus on the broadsides, which was fine.

3). Pathfinders - they performed alright, though I'm still on the fence about them. My main issue was that, with all the crowding, I ended up not using some markerlight hits simply because I didn't have enough other units nearby to shoot with! They averaged 2 or more markerlights a turn, which was great, and I was lucky enough to scout them right into an AV13 bunker before turn 1, which left them essentially unmolested. I'm going to keep them, for now, because this game wasn't really the best testing grounds for them. They did end up helping a hammerhead pie-plate, 6 rapid-firing fire warriors, and a devilfish in annihalating 3 Tyranid Warriors, so I'm pretty happy with that, if nothing else.

4). Devilfish - I only managed to lose 1 devilfish, and 1 squad of fire warriors (from a different one), but they proved effective at putting out a heck of a lot of firepower at exactly where it was needed.

5). 2 Masters of the Fleet - not actually my unit, but DANG! They kept the enemy Lictors, rhinos, and the terrifying terminator-bearing Land Raider out for most of the game, helping us hold off enough of their units to scrape out a victory by the skin of our teeth. They caused some havoc for enemy tactics, and got yelled at quite a bit by the other side, but did their job. I even threw my Commander's battlesuit squad between one of them and a biker squad at one point, although the bikers headed for a different squad in the end.

Despite rolling a truly ludicrous amount of 1's in the early part of the game (it was a tough 1st and 2nd turn for out side, but we got some licks in later on), the Space Wolves/iGuard/Tau aliance won by a single Kill Point. In victory points, it was almost certainly a draw.

I'm not going to say it was a fun game (what with all the stress and hastle), but it wasn't exactly "un-fun" either. I do know that games this big are now reserved solely for the weekend, so at least I learned something out of this.