Lorenzo and I paired off his Grey Knights against my Kingbreakers tonight at Redcap’s. No dramatic cinematic moments, but a solid, balanced, strategic 1850 pt game. Fast playing as well since he fielded like three models and many of mine hung out in transports!
Army
I made some small adaptations to the 1850 pt list I used last week. In particular, I was originally planning to play Jason’s Dark Angels so I dropped the Thunderfire Cannon and brought some Predators, an extra Plasmagun, etc.:
- Capt Angholan—Vulkan
- Librarian Rorschach—Librarian w/ Terminator Armor, Storm Shield
- Terminators x5 w/ Thunderhammers and Storm Shields
- Sternguard x5 w/ Drop Pod w/ 3x Combi-Meltas
- Tacticals x5 w/ Razorback, Powerfist, Plasmagun
- Tacticals x10 w/ Rhino, Missile Laucher, Meltagun
- Tacticals x10 w/ Missile Launcher, Flamer
- Devastators x7 w/ 2x Plasmacannons, 2x Heavy Bolters
- Landspeeders x3 w/ Multi-Melta, Heavy Flamer
- Predators x2 w/ Autocannons, Heavy Bolter sponsons, Hunter-Killer Missiles
Lorenzo brought Coteaz w/ two Jokaero and other henchman, two Dreadknights, four Terminator squads, and some other Librarian HQ.
Kingbreakers man the walls!
Just waitin’ for the shootin’ to start.
Battle
Fortunately for me we rolled Vanguard deployment. Less fortunately we rolled for whatever the Annihilation Mission is currently called. I kept my usual Sternguard+Rorschach off table in their Drop Pod. Lorenzo started with Coteaz and his monkey friends hanging out fairly close to my front line, with a squad of Terminators as a buffer between them. Another group of Termies lurked well back in the center field while the rest went into reserves. Early fighting had the buffer Terminators trying to flank the Kingbreakers but blocked and eventually eliminated by aggressive Sternguard.
The core of this match was three of Lorenzo’s heavies getting right up in my guys’ grills but being worked over by concentrated shooting and then polished off in assault. The Terminators + Librarian came down in some sort of Turn 1 no-scatter Deep Strike right on my clustered Heavy Supports’ rear. They managed to destroy a Predator, but were crippled by the combined weight of multiple incoming Autocannons, Heavy Bolters, Krak Missiles, Plasmacannons, and various Bolter weapons before being finished off by Thunderhammer wielding Terminators. One Dreadknight Outflanked into a similar position on my Troops’ rear while the other Outflanked on the far table edge and then did some crazy jump move to quickly advance into place. Each of them met the same fate as the Terminators though. Even with Kingbreakers’ shooting divided in half there was just too much of it.
The match closed on a similar note. With those threats dispatched, the Kingbreakers were able to pull back and ping away from a comfortable safety at the Terminator squads advancing on foot up the center field.
Storm on the horizon!
Outcome
Kingbreakers held the field with 6 kills of Lorenzo’s 9 units, Linebreaker, and Warlord. Grey Knights claimed 4 Kingbreakers units plus First Blood.
Analysis
Normally Annihilation against a tough, Elite army like Grey Knights gives me much anxiety. After all, I brought 16 units and Lorenzo only 9, so from the start I really needed to wipe out a large percentage of his tough units and lose a very low percentage of my weaker ones to take a win. I generally find this to be much harder than making casualty tradeoffs to claim objectives. Fortunately I had been planning to play Jason’s similar elite-army Deathwing and brought a fair bit of shooting: Melta (Landspeeders and a few other guns), Plasma (Devastators and some extra guns), and sheer volume of fire (Heavy Bolters). Similarly, I kept in a squad of Thunderhammer Terminators in order to have a good unit to stand up in assault against those Dark Angel/Grey Knight meanies.
Critical to the entire affair though was Vanguard deployment. I deployed my guys hard against my short edge, tightly clustered up to create concentrated shooting and minimize Lorenzo’s ability to Deep Strike and Outflank in close proximity. Between my deployment, movement, and Loreno’s Outflanking, the table wound up essentially rotated. Passersby all thought we were playing on the short table edges. That was a huge boon to me as it forced Lorenzo’s guys to wade through some heavy shooting while most of my guys just sat tight.
Kingbreakers stare down the long view.
My Librarian again did not do anything impressive, though he did stand there in assault for a good while tieing up some Grey Knight Terminators.
My Terminators though did well this time as closers, knocking off the last couple wounds on a Dreadknight, and eliminating a half squad of Terminators before either could become real problems. I started them on the table in the middle and in front of my gunline so that they could swing either direction at the first credible threats and be a hard block to either prevent Lorenzo from assaulting my squishier guys, or to sweep in and save the day if he snuck by. This worked out as well as you could ask, these guys wound up being pivotal to mop up the remnants of tough units that had survived heavy shooting, before they could get onto my other guys and do serious damage.
The Dreadknights I was a little scared of at first, but in many ways they’re actually pretty similar to a unit of Terminators. Their Gatling Guns put out a scary amount of dice, but at S4 aren’t actually a huge deal. Meanwhile, they’re pretty tough and serious, but sooner or later they’re going to roll fluke armor save fails and eventually go down if you just keep putting lots of shots on them. Having the three ‘Speeders was really helpful with this, the Meltas did quite a number on all of Lorenzo’s guys. It was a definite risk having those easy kill ponits up for grabs. But I made sure to have them keep their distance and work the terrain. In 5th edition I really got into this mindset that they had to get in fairly closer to get those critical 1D6 AP boosts to open up vehicles. Now though I’ve tried to concentrate on using the full 24″ range of the Multi-Melta to keep the ‘Speeders in slightly safer positions and shoot away at tough targets. It also helps facing a low model count army. Pretty much anything has a shot at shooting down a Landspeeder with their 10/10/10 armor, so if there’s a bunch of squads standing around without ideal targets they’ll take potshots at the ‘Speeders and eventually knock them down. With so few units on the board though, the enemy units are all too busy doing other things to ping them just for kicks.
All in all, for a tournament I’m not so sure about my list. It doesn’t have any capacity to deal with flyers, and with just 2.5 Tactical Squads it has limited ability to hold a couple objectives. However, it does have a reasonable volume of fire that I think can inflict damage on a few of the small & elite armies floating around PAGE.
There are a few more photos of this and the other games in the Flickr gallery.
Oooh yeah.
