11th edition starts with a paintball match between friendly imperial forces. We were pretty sure that the terrain footprints were off by a bit, but who cares. I tried a new detachment: the Grizzled Company a.k.a. "I don't like to miss". The Dark Angels brought All The Plasma Ever. Well haha, my girls are T3.
The Dark Angels played "Locate and Deny" where they place a bunch of markers in terrain. I got the opposing "Extract Relic" where I must remove the markers. We got a bit over eager - no deployment pictures. I got turn 1, so have at it!
I am really warming to Lady Leontina. I had deployed conservatively, then when I got the first turn, I moved my stuff around to my Rogal Dorn Commander could fire on the Black Knights. Note: Dorns are still cool.
I also unleashed my one and only Artillery Team on them, leaving only two alive in the end. I expected indirect fire to be much weaker after all the nerfs, but I got to bring more.
The Dark Angels focused all their might on my left flank. The Black Knights advanced forwards, and the Dorn's overwatch only killed 1.
Land Speeders and a dreadnought poured fire into the Dorn, bringing it down to 9.
They then bathed Gaunt's Ghosts in plasma and charged in, leaving only the Commissar alive. Burden of Trust denied!
Azrael and his Hellblasters also came out of hiding to shoot at my Hellhound, but could not kill it.
Benefit of Cover is very, very useful now.
Battle round 2
I had my work cut out for me, with Display of Might active. I decided to leave Overwhelming Force for later, and focus on what I could actually kill.
The repositioned Dorn, plus all the Cadian squads killed all the Hellblasters. I lost a Hippogriph to overwatch. But more sadly, I overextended and now everything was out in the open.
Even more sadly, the Dorn failed its battleshock test.
The Dark Angels went full kill mode. The Lion and Azrael took care of my right flank...
...with the vehicles and deep striking Inceptors cleaning up both of my tanks. The Hellhound also exploded, killing Gaunt. Sigh.
With my reduced unit count, the Angels scored Bring it Down, Display of Might and Burden of Trust.
Battle round 3
We were approaching closing time, so we decided to speed things up. This was to be the last round played. I also forgot to take pictures.
I drew No Prisoners and Overwhelming Force. I went in for the kill on the far left, with a squad of Cadians shooting down a Speeder for both secondaries.
The Artillery team firing directly, plus my third Cadian squad from reserves killed Assault Intercessors.
Kasrkin jumping out of the Centaur murdered Azrael.
Sadly, the Lion made all his saves.
The Angels repositioned some units for Outflank and killed the Kasrkin for Center Ground. The Centaur, very heroically, resisted and survived.
End of battle
46-48 to the Dark Angels. Well fought!
To break it down, we both scored very few primary points. The primary missions are now very different to the previous edition, and require careful thought on orchestrating actions and holding terrain, coordinating units across the board instead of just plopping a couple guys down on the objectives. 19 for me, 16 for my opponent.
I also did poorly on secondaries, with 17 points, as opposed to the Dark Angels, with 22. However, the secondaries have changed for the better. Not only can you keep all of them and score whenever, but many include a lesser condition for fewer points. I always took all the points as quickly as I could, due to my units lacking survivability; but tougher armies could easily hold out for more points.
Battle ready remains part of the scoring, and I will be more strict in applying it in the future ;-)
Terrain has changed a lot. Instead of the board being full of huge L-shaped ruins, now it's full of... stuff. We really weren't prepared with all the smaller terrain shapes, but I welcome the future variety of forests and statuary returning to the game. Vehicles are a lot more mobile, moving through light terrain. This also makes shooting deadlier. You think you're safe? Well suddenly there's a dreadnought bursting through the pipes and giving you the plasma.
Also regarding terrain, Benefit of Cover is so much more useful now. And ignoring it is so much more important. While there are some things to clear up, such as Gaunt's Ghosts receiving cover from two sources to no benefit, most vehicles will be in cover when being shot at, and most infantry will not. Again, a major change. Grizzled Company is great for allowing 1 unit to ignore cover. I also plan to bring more Hellhounds in future games.
Finally, on the army composition: I brought a hodgepodge of new things I painted and whatever else to try out. The Hippogriffs sadly did nothing before dying, but I'll try them again. I also did not use the Centaur to its full potential. I had one opportunity to shoot with all the Kasrkin inside, but the heavy stubber killed a surviving Black Knight in a single volley. We both laughed at that. Artillery is still fine. Extra command points and redeploy from the Lord Solar might be an autoinclude now that I won't be discarding secondaries all the time. The Rogal Dorn is great.
Next game coming up hopefully soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment