List testing against great opponents

Blood Angels Honor Guard by Jawaballs

More from DocRailgun.

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Recently I played a couple of great games at Tower Games in Minneapolis, and I thought I would describe them in general.

The first was a 1500 point game against Red5Angel and his Plague Marines. He had a pretty good-looking list (and miniatures) consisting of 3 scary-tough squads in Rhinos, a lascannon daemon-Predator, and Typhus with some always-scary Chaos Terminators.

I was playing 5 RAS squads with a melta and a power sword each in Las-Razs, 2 Baals with heavy bolters sponsons and storm bolters, 2 Librarians (hiding in Razorbacks with their Battle Brothers) and a Whirlwind to round out the points.

I reserved everything, while he moved immediately to claim objectives. My units came on piecemeal, but I was able to whittle down his transports with all the lascannons, then his troops with the Whirlwind and Baal dakka. Things looked touch and go near the end, though... Typhus and his Terminators appeared on my left and threatened to contest an objective. Though they flamed the heck out of my RAS squad there, the game ended before the Terminators could get there or kill off the other half of the squad.

It was a great game, but there was probably too much BA firepower that could have scooted away from trouble if the Plague marines had given chase. I can see why he wanted to hunker down on objectives... with T5 and 3+ armor saves, why not? Red5 was great to play against too.
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Next was a 1750 point game with Kroxitau (http://kroxitau.blogspot.com/). I should open with a disclaimer: I learned after the fact that I cheated, though I didn't mean to. I ended up with 4 Heavy Support choices, which was of course would make my list illegal. So, Kroxitau won the game. Luckily, my Whirlwind didn't do much except be a delicious, delicious Kill Point for the foul Xenos.
He had a lot of typical Tau scary shooting ... his list was:
El : CIB, MP, PR, HWMT, SI, BSF
2 x 3 Deathrains
6 FW
2 x 10 Kroot
2 x 8 Pathfinders (Fish have Dpods and 2 seekers each)
2 Piranhas with Fusion Blasters, Dpods,TA, 1 FD, 4 seekers
2 Broadsides with 2 shield drones, Bonding knife and 1 TL
1 Railhead (normal kit plus 2 seekers)
1 Skyray
He has a much better report than I do... with video, even! So, I'll just offer up a few observations.
I did reserve everything, hoping that I would be able to avoid the all-out nuking of my tanks. I did, but not really for the reasons I'd hoped. Most of my armor came on on Turn 2, and was able to alpha-strike the scariest things. This was a good thing, because I my later turns of shooting were abysmal. I foolishly left vehicles on the edges of the board where hungry Kroot swarmed all over them... I lost a Whirlwind and an AC Predator to the chicken-heads.
His units were hard to kill, especially when a vehicle needed 3 kills to finish off (with the addition of drones). If he had hidden the drones the weight of his firepower (even after my initial onslaught) would have made it impossible for me to catch up in kill points. If my guns hadn't come in en masse and so early it also would have been a different game. That second wave of shooting (his suits) did a lot of damage, and would be devastating to pretty much any army.
I was definitely out-thought and out-generaled, and it was pretty much luck and just the pure goodness that is the BA list that saw me through (though as I said, since I cheated, I didn't win after all).
I was surely too excited about blasting away instead of playing smart. Hopefully the Black Rage won't take me next time.

Kroxitau was great to play with, and I hope to be bashing the heads of his fish-men soon!
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