2009/01/11: Drawn and Quartered

A multiplayer battle among Akil on Eldar, Lovell on Tyranid, Justin on Space Wolves, and Joe on Kingbreakers Space Marines.

Rules

Mission rules: 1250 pts per side, every man for himself, most objectives held wins.

• Terrain covered just under half the 4'x6' table.
  • Vertical terrain was limited, but effectively blocked about half the board from any given position, resulting in large firelanes.
    • The terrain was constructed on a very impromptu basis out of Heroscape components. Anything above two tiles was considered a cliff.
  • All terrain was treated as difficult, water also dangerous. An extra inch of movement per vertical inch was substracted for scaling cliffs.
  • All terrain provided a 5+ cover.
• Each side chose one home objective, which they controlled at the start.
  • Teams held their objectives by default until contested, even if no scoring unit was present.
  • Once an objective had been contested once, however, that objective had to be explicitly held.

Startup was sequence of random orderings:

• Rolled off to determine terrain placement order.
• Rolled off to determine deployment, which included choosing home objective.
• Rolled off to determine first turn, then proceeded clockwise. Winner of roll could have opted to go last instead.

Deployment was within an 18" box centered around home objective.

• Home objectives were placed two per long table edge, at 2 feet and 5'3", 9" from table edge.
• Infiltrators were placed in same order as initial deployment.
  • Due to limited sight blocking terrain, infiltrators simply had to be 12" from any enemy unit.
• Table edges for outflanking units were determined by die roll---5+ was player's choice, otherwise a table edge determined by the roll.
  • Outflanking units could not enter the table within an enemy's deployment zone.
  • Space Wolves' Behind Enemy Lines ability enabled them to enter within enemy deployment areas.

Shooting into a close combat in which the player has no units was allowed.

• Shooter picks a target unit, rolls to hit, rolls to wound.
• Shooter rolls a die for each wound. With two sides in combat, wound goes to the target unit on 4+, and the opposing side otherwise. If three sides are in combat, wound goes to the target unit on 5+, one side on 3+, and the remaining side on a 1 or 2.
• See notes below for comments on this scheme.

Units falling back headed on the shortest path to their home objective.

• Any unit which fell back to within 3 inches of its objective was eliminated.
• This scheme was to account for the lack of clearly defined table edges in this battle.

Battle

Results

Objectives held:

• Akil: 1
• Joe: 1
• Justin: 0
• Lovell: 0

Army status:

• Akil: Decimated
• Joe: Light casualties (< 4 models)
• Justin: Moderate casualties (Tactical Squad eliminated, miscellaneous casualties)
• Lovell: Decimated

Lessons

Joe

Devastator 1 (Sergeant, heavy bolter, missile launcher, two plasma cannons, two marines w/ bolters) is very solid. Sergeant probably doesn't need a chainsword, but if he's alive he's using his signum rather than shooting anyway. Other armies were not prepared to stand off a trade shots at a distance with a heavy support unit like this, giving them significant power. The relatively large firing areas helped as well, though that was balanced by the large amount of terrain providing cover saves. Notably, Devastator 1 was able to swing its support role well, assisting Tactical 2 (w/ Missile Launcher) in staving off one Tyranid threat (infiltrating Brood Lord & friends), then crippling Eldar that got too close, then assisting Tactical 1 in annihilating an onrushing Genestealer horde.

The other armies were also largely unprepared for fighting a Dreadnought, though Tyranid may have managed to stand against it. The Dreadnought essentially walked into the Space Wolve's lair unopposed, as they had few weapons with which to attack it. More care should be taken in maneuvering the vehicle though, as at one point it nearly suffered catastrophe when its back was exposed to several threatening units.

Once Sternguard capabilities were recognized, they instantly became shot magnets. In particular, snipers managed to pin them down, allowing them to be lit up by other armies on their turn. Casualties were light, but their effectiveness was almost totally mitigated by being locked down (several bad leadership rolls on the pinning tests). See notes below on combat tempo.

Terminator 2 did well by deploying in reserve, then deep striking directly down on the Space Wolves home objective. If the game had gone longer they likely would have died, but they bought time for the Dreadnought to arrive, and likely would have essentially covered the Sternguard's final approach as well if there had been more time. Most importantly though, it put the Space Wolves on the defensive, forcing their focus back onto their home base rather than expanding out. Well worth the points. In some respects an Assault Terminator unit might be better suited for this, particularly against assault happy Space Wolves, but shooting is always nice...

Fifth edition changes to have only Troops be scoring units made a huge difference here, as the Terminators and Dreadnought could only contest, rather than hold, an objective. For the most part I think this is a good thing, forcing more decisions. It might be worth using cheaper units in this role in return for some extra troops & a vehicle (or drop pod!) to secure the objective if it is successfully cleared. This inability to hold the objective also changes their role. If they could have held an objective, sending them against the weakly defended Tyranid or Eldar objectives would have made more sense (and was strongly considered). However, without that ability, it seemed as effective to use them to tie up the Space Wolves and hopefully get another, scoring, unit over to one of the weakened objectives. A transport might help with that, but they're not any faster than running...

Care and balance is definitely required in placing terrain... In this case, I constructed an excellent little fortress around a home objective, thinking of it as my own as I was standing by it, only to have the crafty Space Wolves deploy first and steal it out from under me!

Notes

The rules for shooting into close combat were taken from the 40k rulebook. It didn't actually come up in this game, but they make no sense. You should roll for hits, *then* figure out where the hits are going to go, then roll for wounds, rather than assigning to units after rolling for wounds (as in the rulebook). The logic in that revised sequence is that if some weaklings are fighting some buff guys, you want to resolve shots against the "correct" armor that the shot will hit, rather than a chosen target. Otherwise the shooter will always choose the weaker unit and hope to get some cheap wounds against the tougher unit.

Shooting into combats also needs to be cleaned up to deal with cases where there are multiple units from a particular side, make clear how/where they get assigned. It also needs to be formalized what happens if the unit is forced to take a morale check. Most likely it should be very similar to losing the combat, but needs to account for multiple sides, possibly eliminating the sweeping advance in that case, as well as the other side(s) taking morale checks, getting pinned, etc.

The turn order scheme is a little awkward and super lethal in that a turn could be utterly devastated before you get a chance to do anything, much more quickly than with two players. For example, in this game, if a player's unit was pinned by the player following them in the turn order, that unit would have to endure five rounds of shooting before it could move somewhere safer. In general, the game seemed to be very lethal, with many units taking severe casualties through joint fire.