Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Grey Knights vs Bike Marines at 1000 points



Had time for a quick game today, despite arriving later.  I'd changed my Grey Knight list just to try some different units and was against Dave's Silver Skull bikers.  Only a couple of photos, we were trying to play quickly, and my grey knights aren't painted yet so not much to show off.

My army
Inquisitor with rad and psychotroke grenades.
Venerable Dreadnought with Assault Cannon and psybolt ammo.
6-man Purifier squad with 2 psycannons, 3 halberds, and a master-crafted daemon hammer.
5-man terminator squad with hammer, halberds, psycannon, sword.
10-man Strike Squad with 2 psycannons, 3 halberds, justicar with master crafted falchions.

His army.
Captain on bike with relic blade, digital weapons.
Command squad full of storm shields and lightning claws and power fists plus an apothecary
6-man bike squad with flamer and multimelta attack bike.
10-man bike squad with flamer, melta gun and multimelta attack bike.

Capture and Control, Dawn of War, I'm player 1.

GK turn 1.
The strike squad with the inquisitor set up in terrain next to one objective.  The terminators set up in terrain across the board from the other objective.  The dreadnought and purifiers come on and run straight for the center.

SS turn 1.
Everyone rolls on and head across the board.  Good rolls mean the terrain has barely any affect.  Only a bit of shooting in range but it is enough to put some wounds on the strike squad.  The inquisitor takes one for the team.

GK turn 2.
The dreadnought and purifiers move up.  There is only a limited amount of shooting in range from the termies and dreadnought and it does nothing.

SS turn 2.
They all roll forward and 2 squads open fire on the strike squad, killing a couple of knights.  The small bike squad open fire on the dreadnought but do nothing.

GK Turn 3.
The strike squad pumps a lot of fire into the big bike squad.  After some poor to hit rolls they kill just one bike.  Pretty weak for 24 dice rolled to hit.  The dread, terminators and purifiers drop shots onto the small bike squad killing three including the attack bike.

SS Turn 3.
The big bike squad and command squad are almost on the strike squad.  Bolter fire drops another couple of knights before the bikes engage.  The psychtroke grenades help keep the combat going my reducing the Steel Skulls to 1 attack each.  Doesn't matter too much as the strike squad do pretty badly and just kill 1 bike while being reduced to 2 guys and the inquisitor killed.  They hold.  The bike squad that got shot up pulls away to try and get some cover from the purifiers and dreadnought.

GK Turn 4.
The dreadnought opens fire on the remaining bikes on the small squad.  Between the assault cannon and storm bolter they are wiped out.  The terminators and purifiers look over at the objective, look at the fight going on and decide they'd rather be in the fight.  The close combat with the strike squad ends, predictably, with them being wiped without doing any more damage.  For a 10 man squad with HQ they really did very little.  Plus, the bikes are now sitting on my objective.

SS Turn 4.
The remaining bike squad, command squad, and captain are now all in the open.  Low rolls for movement out of terrain limits them and they decide to head towards the terminators, opening fire with bolt guns.  5 bolter wounds.  3 ones rolled for saves.  Yeah pretty shitty.  At least the command squad didn't do much shooting.  One of the downed terminators was Justicar Thawn.  The command squad then multi assaults the dreadnought and two remaining terminators.  The terminators and dreadnought get 7 power weapon hits, 3 of which only need a 2 to wound.  And, a lot more 1s later that turns into 1 wound with the captain saves.  The remaining terminators die but the dread survives. Not by best turn of rolling.




GK Turn 5.
Thawn gets up, really annoyed now.  He dives back into combat with the command squad and puts a wound on the captain before being knocked down again.  The purifiers move up and shoot at the big bike squad, but get nothing.

SS Turn 5.
The command squad and captain attack the dreadnought.  The captain does nothing, but the power fist manages to immobilize and stun it.  At this stage immobilize is acceptable so I don't ask for a venerable re-roll.  The big bike squad take shots at the purifiers and one falls to their fire.


GK Turn 6.
Thawn gets up, tis but a flesh wound.  He decides he's a bit low on ammo and runs off towards the objective, making it there with a decent difficult terrain roll.  The purifiers move up to assault the captain and command squad.  They put a wound on the captain and reduce the command squad to one bike.  The dreadnought misses but is tagged by the power fist that fortunately just stuns again.

SS Turn 6.
The Captain manages to kill one more Purifier while the power fist guy and the dreadnought just wave at each other.  The bike squad hit Thawn with bolter fire although he is hidden from some of the squad.  They manage to get a few wounds on him and up comes another 1.

GK Turn 7.
Thawn doesn't come back so I've lost that objective and the game.  The purifiers finally bring down the captain and reduce the command squad to one guy with his faithful storm shield (he probably made 7 or 8 saves by Daves estimation.).  The dread misses.

SS Turn 7.
The big bike squad stays where it is on the objective.  The last command squad guy is finally flattened by the purifiers.  All that is left on the table is his 1 bike squad, almost at full strength with 7 guys left, and my dreadnought and purifiers.

So in all, fun game.  I don't think I really screwed anything up but made one possibly poor choice, I should have held either the terminators or strike squad back and deep striked them on to the other objective.  Instead I'd held everyone together to try and bring a lot of fire power to the middle of the board.  Dave countered by bringing everyone in further down so he could pound the strike squad without too much return fire to start with.  I'd never played against bikes before.  Toughness 5, fast movement, and relentless twin linked bolters mean they can put out a lot of hurt.  Turn 4 was what really hurt me.  Failing 3 of 5 2+ saves and then watching as my assault failed badly was a big swing for just two sets of rolling right near each other.  Otherwise it would have been closer as I'd have had a few terminators left to bring the fight to the attack bikes and at least contest the objective.