Battle Report: Mechanicon Game 1 Blood Angels vs Dark Eldar

Hi from West Chester PA! Mechanicon is underway and what an event so far! Friday night started with open gaming and I got in two games. Batreps on those to follow. The boys at Mechanicon have it wright so far. There is a bar right in the convention room! The tables are beautiful, with actual GW terrain, along with some they made up, like one piece that has parts from the Millenium Falcon all wrecked. They have been on time so far and right on top of things. Tony, Jeremy and the guys are friendly and open. Definitely the way to be when running an event like this. There is nothing worse then surly event staff that ignore you unless you are one of the recognized 40k mainstays.

The highlight of Friday night was the guy dressed up as a Blood Angels Death Company trooper! He had a suit of armor made from resin, a power weapon and a bolt pistol and he looked fantastic. Pics to come as well as video.

The boys at Mechanicon have developed a pretty good scoring system. The first game was broken down by Victory points. You earned certain victory points for completing objectives, like 500 for each loot counter your own, 500 for your HQ surviving etc. The max for game one was 4k victory points for each player. Then there is a scale. It is a little complicated, but the best game resolution system I have seen so far. On the scale, the winner is decided by comparing Victory points. If you scored 1000 more then your opponent for example it is a Victory. What I see from this scale is a lot of drawn games. That is not a bad thing in tournament play becaue it levels the playing field.

On with the Batrep!

Mechanicon Game One:
Blood Angels vs Dark Eldar
1850
Dawn of War
5 loot counters

I won the roll to place the counters, and set up the standard diamond plus one formation with a diamond on one side of the board and a single objective far removed. This kept all of the fast moving DE right where I wanted them.

My opponent won the roll and went first.

Turn One:
He deployed a squad in the middle of the table on an objective in cover in the diamond formation, and one at the back on the lone objective. He placed an HQ with the one upfront. I placed two 5 man combat squads with lascannons on my side in cover and attached Corbs to one of them.

On his turn, he brought on all of his Skiffs and attempted to shoot my Las team with Corbs, but nothing could reach.

On my turn I brought on every thing except for my Dread pods. Of course, both of my rhinos rolled 1 for terrain tests and got immobilized. Damn me and my cursed ability to roll ones. It got worse. Almost every thing got range on his squad in the middle, and I killed all but one of them. The last model made its morale and stayed. It would last to the last turn!

Turn Two:
On his turn, he moved his skiffs up, deployed and got ready to assault my Death Company distraction. (I moved them up as far as they could go looking to tempt him out into the open by assaulting them.) He layed down a lot of fire, reducing my Lascannon team with Corbs down to just the las, and wounded cobs. He knocked the Ass cannon off one of my preds. The one with the angel wings. Dante's favorite tank. It is not good to anger the Blood Angels Eldar scum. My death company died in the assault, and his witches ran for cover after. My ploy failed. Oh well, they would get cover saves. And they would need them.

My turn came up. Both of my pods came in and I dropped them right into the middle of his stuff. They got out and opened fire. One missed, but the other destroyed two transports with melta and heavy flamer fire! The resulting explosions killed a lot of guys and pinned even more. Then the rest of my army opened up. It was not good. I exploded or destroyed all but one of his skiffs, and killed a lot of troops in the process. At the end of the turn, most of his squads were hurt and hiding in wreckage. The dreads were foaming at the mouth with so many targets in range, and Corbulo was confidently giving orders from the rear. Dante would be proud.

Turn Three:
With most of his armor dead, and his troops hiding or pinned, he tried to deal with what he could... the dreads. He opened up on them with str 8 weapons, but failed to hurt them. The Venerable upgrade was a HUGE buy. They were each destroyed 2 times, but the reroll reduced that to shaken! Beautiful. He would then assault my Death Company dread with his HQ squad, fail to hurt it and take 4 losses in return... But they made their leadership test.

On my turn it was back to business for my guns. One of my rhinos rolled a 6 for repair, and fixed itself! Woohoo it would be able to move and take an objective next turn. My bikes got into position to take out the rest of his armor, and my preds began shooting up his troops. All but one of his ships were destroyed now and my preds mowed down most of his troops. At the end of the shooting there were just a couple clinging to life. He was lucky enough to get one of his squads out of assault range for my dread by removing the closest models. That just made him mad. In the assult, my dread would take no wounds from his HQ and only killed 2, but that was enough. They failed leadership and broke. Already dangerously close to the edge of the table, he rolled low and lived, but did not get away from my dread.

Turn Four:
The game was all but over. Now Jeff was playing for pride. He assulted a bike squad and killed it with a couple of witches and shot at the dread chasing his HQ but missesd. The HQ still did not run off the table however.

On my turn I would complete the massacre. First of all, it was time to move onto objectives. My single las cannon moved to claim an objective. A combat squad left their immobilized rhino to run for the center objective about 15 inches away. My other las team moved to claim, and my other rhino? A 1. Thats right. Immobilized again. Frag. The guys got out and hoofed it. In this game I had to claim as many objectives as I could to get victory points and score maximum. So I had to get my boys onto those objectives! In the assault, my dreads mopped up the stragglers. One assaulted the HQ and they died because they were falling back. The other assaulted the last two in cover on his objective and killed them.

Turn Five:
With him removed from the table, it was time to run my boys through all the wreckage and score objectives. I had to difficult terrain and run checks on all 4 of my combat squads. Some were pretty far and I would need 5's to reach... but the emperor was with me and my Blood Dice, from Army Dice, came through.

At the end of the game, I held 4 objectives. It was a complete massacore for me.

I scored 20 points out of 20 and Jeff scored 6.

The MVP of the game? Dawn of War. His inability to reach me in turn 1 was key, plus it kept him clustered when he did come on. In turn two and three I was able to lay down the law. The co-MVP was my bike squads. Their multi meltas were getting +2 on his transports and exploding them like it was their job... because it was. I felt bad for the ruthless victory, but all is fair in hate and war. Jeff understood. He was a fun opponent and gracious in his failure to achieve victory. I wish all opponents were like him.

So there we go! Round 1 has me with 20 points in a difficult scenario to score 20. I will be surprised to see more then a few players equal that.

The overall makeup of the tournament looks like mostly marines, with some nids and orks thrown in, and just a few IG mech lists. Most notably is Ork Boy Rob from Thewarstore. He has a beautiful IG army, made up of orks. I'm not too crazy about him using orks as IG, but they look good, so it is forgivable.

More to come!

Jawaballs