| November 22, 2003 RTT hosted by the Pittsburgh Iron Legion |
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Battle report by Dan Moore
Larry Paladin - Space Marines
Each player selects three spots on the battlefield as their priorites. They are given values of 1 to 3 points and all three must total 6 points. Objective is to defend your priorities and sieze your opponents. Player with most points wins. The game was played on a desert battlefield with a few small ruins and NO cover.
The space marine army consisted of a Land Raider, 2 Predator tanks,a Razorback with twin lascannons, a Dreadnaught with twin lascannons, a Speeder with multi-melta, an Attack bike with multi-melta, 2 Tactical squads with lascannon/plasma rifle, a Scout squad with sniper rifles, and Librarian with Force weapon and Veteran retinue. One of the Predator tanks had a hunter-killer missle on it.
Setup was in 10" wide L-shaped zones at opposite corners. Given the complete lack of cover on the battlefield I decided to play the Wych cult agressively and deployed my forces as close to his deployment zone as possible. This would allow me to get into dark lance and assault range early and hopefully destroy some of his vehicles before their lascannons could be focused on my transports. This was a risky gamble, but I figured it beat the alternative which was park all my raiders in the back corner of my deployment zone and wait to be destroyed.
Battle description:
We rolled to see who got first turn and Larry won the roll. There was a brief volley of lascannon fire followed by the sounds of three raiders exploding and many wyches being killed. When the smoke cleared all three squads were at or below 50% strength AND pinned courtesy of the Trial Vehicle rules in effect. Larry hit and destroyed every vehicle that he could see (The HQ raider was screened by two of the wrecked raiders.) He even had firepower to spare so he started shooting at my Warpbeasts and Hellions with lascannons.
My surviving warpbeasts fail to damage the speeder. My surviving units attempt to consolidate their positions in the nearby ruins. I offered to concede the game at this point but Larry wanted to keep playing.
Final Results and Analysis:
In subsequent turns Larry managed to destroy every unit in my Wych Cult army with the loss the attack bike and the tactical squad that was in the Land Raider. The tactical squad disembarked from the Land Raider to destroy my HQ with bolter fire. Lelith slaughtered them all in close combat before being vaporized by a multi-melta gun. It was a very ugly loss for the Wych Cult.
There were several factors that made this a devastating loss for the Wych cult. The lack of cover on the battlefield, the overwhelming space marine firepower, the Trial vehicle rules, and not going first all played a part in the destruction of my army. In retrospect there are not many things that I can think of that would have changed the outcome of the battle, especially since the marines went first. As I mentioned earlier, I could have deployed my raiders way back in my deployment zone, but I doubt that it would have changed much. One of Larry's vehicles had a hunter killer missle and his razorback would still have had range to my raiders even in the back of the deployment zone. One possible stratagem that I considered was deploying all the wyches separately from their raiders at at the start of the battle. This would certainly have prevented them from being killed as the raiders exploded, however it would have eliminated their mobility, which is the greatest asset of a rapid assault army. This was one of those losses that I attribute to a poor matchup given the terrain and mission. As they say: "sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you." The bear feasted in this battle…