Too sick to post...

By Ollie Crafoord 

Okay, I haven't posted anything for almost a week. I got a good excuse mind you, I am quite ill. I had a nasty cough for the last week so I visited my local GP. I've been coughing on and off for a few years so I know there is something wrong with my lungs but I never really checked it. So after the examination it figures that I have a chronic respiratory disease and I have to take medicines for four months. This didn't sound very good but since I wasn't that ill at the time (last Wednesday) I didn't feel too bad. Oddly, as soon as I started taking the medicine I felt much worse. One of them is a bronchodilator so maybe that's why I'm having dizziness and nausea.

Furthermore I foolishly went for a walk on Friday and played a 40k game on Saturday morning and since then I've been really sick. I called the doctor again today and he told me that if my condition continues tomorrow I should go for further examination (blood test, chest x-ray). As you can imagine under these circumstances I couldn't do as much blogging as I wanted to (like 11 hours a day) and couldn't really paint (although I had some progress on my Land Speeder). Okay enough with the ranting, let's look at my weekend game.

I played against Giannis, a regular customer of my friend George (the owner of the FLGS). He's been playing 40k for a year now with some of his mates but wanted to try his luck against a more experienced opponent. George asked me and I was up to the task. I totally regret it now of course because since then my health has deteriorated. He was using Kantor, a librarian with vortex and something else I don't remember, joined by 7 TH/SS assault termies inside a Redeemer, 2 x tacticals with rhinos (ML, FL, MM, MG), 2 x Land Speeders (HB, HF and HB, HB), 2 x dakka preds, dreadnought (MM) and 5 sniper scouts.

I was using my revised ork list with a biker warboss (PK, attack squig, cybort body), big mek (KFF), 3 x Battlewagons (plank, paintjob, rolla, big shoota,armour) containing 19 boys with nob (PK,BP), 3 x TL rokkit buggies, 3 x 5 Lootas and 5 Nob Bikers (painboy, PK, BP, WB). We rolled for Kill Points in Spearhead and I got the first turn. This is the ideal setup for me since spearhead really limits my opponents deployment options. This allows me to use the first turn because I don't  worry about his units deploying too far away from my battlewagons.

So I deployed my Battlewagons as close to the centre as possible and slightly to the right with the buggies and the bikers behind them. All the lootas were deployed together inside a big piece of terrain.  Giannis deployed his Land raider to his left (across my vehicles) and pretty much everything else in a very large piece of terrain in the middle of his deployment zone. He left his predators hanging back near his table edge and put both Land Speeders in reserve. His two rhinos was on my left, containing the combat squads with the special weapons and also one had Kantor inside.

Unsurprisingly I rolled my vehicles forward with everything hidden behind them. Lootas stunned the Dread and killed a Scout. Nothing too exciting there. He moved his vehicles towards my battlewagons and tried to destroy them to no avail (KFF FTW!). I then rammed both his Rhinos with 2 of my Battlewagons and both were destroyed by the deff rollas. One squad failed it's Morale check from the tank shock and fell back 12'' inches. The meltagunner from the other squad decided to "Death or Glory" my vehicle (I pity the fool) and was squashed like a little bug under the Battlewagons wheels. The ensuing 2D6 S10 hits killed off the rest of the squad (some unlucky armour saves there) but at least Kantor didn't die. The bikers shot some of the tacticals in the terrain and killed one, but the rest of my shooting was pretty bad with the buggies and lootas failing to do anything.

In his turn, Giannis charged his Terminators into my Nob squad. All nobs died but they killed 3 Terminators and the warboss remained unharmed and killed the Librarian. A lucky Leadership check and he stayed in combat (I wouldn't mind much if he broke off since he could regroup in the next turn). Kantor charged a Battlewagon and managed to wreck it and  the Dread immobilised the other one. He also destroyed a weapon from one of my Buggies with a Predator. I rammed the Dreadnought and destroyed it with the third Battlewagon and the boys jumped out and charged 2 combat squads and cut them down very easily. The other boys that had their taxi destroyed charged a Predator and destroyed it. Warboss lost a couple of wounds but killed another Terminator and remained in combat.

His Landspeeders arrived both on the 3rd turned and didn't scatter at all. They both shot at the boys mob that charged the Predator the previous turn but didn't manage to reduce them below half strength. Terminators finally killed my Warboss but before he killed another one of them. Rest of the game my Lootas killed his Speeders and the boyz were picking off his other units one by one. In the end he only had his Land Raider left and I lost 2 buggies, a Battlewagon and the Nobz with the Warboss.

The hard part of the battle was when he asked me what I thought he did wrong and how he could improve his game. I don't know much about Space Marines but I told him that having too many points in one unit (assault termies) can be risky (although in our game they performed quite well) and also the weapons on his Landspeeders were kinda weird in my opinion. I prefer Multimeltas and Heavy Flamers personally. Also not a big fan of Kantor since I think losing Combat Tactics for Stubborn is not very helpful.

As for his game I think he played quite well. Maybe it wasn't a very good idea to move his rhinos close to my battlewagons but if he didn't I'd have charged my boyz in his units on the terrain. At least this way he baited me away from his main gunline for a turn. And also I don't know about his Termies charging my Nobs. They are a big juicy target but if he was more reserved he could have kept them back and use them as a support to his other Space Marines.

So you guys have any suggestions for his list? He told me that he really likes Assault Terminators so something like this could be cool for him.