Saturday 30 May 2009

Wolves vs. Guard (half game)


So as alluded to in my previous post, I got in a game with my newly expanded wolves army. It was about 1000pts (I couldn't give exact as I had just broken out the dread etc and hadn't worked out a list). My list comprised of roughly:
  • Wolf Lord with twin lightning claws with one wolf guard bodyguard in termie armour
  • Grey Hunter pack with meltagun and 2 power weapons
  • Grey Hunter pack with flamer and 2 power weapons
  • Blood Claw pack with flamer, power-fist and power weapon
  • Dreadnaught with multi-melta, cc-weapon and storm-bolter

I was facing up against a guard army with 2 platoons, a squad of ratlings, some missile launchers, a leman russ with sponsons and an armoured sentinal with plasma cannon. The game was capture and control (4x4 cityfight board), three objectives of which there was one on the edge of each of our deployment zones at opposite ends of the table, and one mid-way between the two on the side of the objective on my side. Setup was pitched battle. We had very limited time after waiting for a table to free up, less than an hour, so were likely to only get in 2-3 turns. 

My opponent set up all across the board, mostly in cover on or in buildings, with the tank parked up facing the left side of my deployment area and the sentinal on the right. As I was facing over-whelming firepower, and had nothing long ranged myself (something I must rectify) I decided to pile down my left side where "my" objective and the thrid objective were, so set my dreadnaught up facing the leman russ, all my squads around it, and left my Lord and guard on the far side to keep him from reacting across the board towards my main force. Guard player was going first.


His first turn he opened up with the russ on my dread as it was the obvious threat to him - missing spectacularly with the lascannon, and the battlecannon shot scattering and taking out a grey hunter. The majority of the rest of his firing was innefectual except on the other side the Lord and bodyguard absorbed a plasma-cannon shot, 4 krak missiles, and a load of lasgun fire for the death of the bodyguard and 1 wound from the Lord (all working nicely to plan).
My first turn - everything forward at a run except the dreadnaught who in an epic moment, at max range, wrecked the leman russ with a single shot from the multi-melta! (I'm going to have to model on a trophy for that ;)

Second turn - he fired a lot, killed the odd guy on the left hand side, and on the right, another round of plasma-cannon, krak missiles and lasgun fire finally finished off my lord (perfectly to plan as that had kept all those possible templates from my main force).
My second turn was piling forward again, hoping to get some combat before time ran out. The dread tried to get the sentinal but was unlucky and missed.

Third turn (and final as time ran out) he stayed static again - completely losing sight of the aim of the battle, and fired everything he could again ablating away the odd model here and there.
My third turn, I just dropped back a bit to claim the two objectives and that was the game for me.


So, what did I learn:
  • I need some ranged support and some template weapons to thin out numbers of forces like guard, orks and tyranids.
  • I think piling down one side was a decent tactic in the situation as it negated a lot of his firepower - whether it was necessary to sacrifice my lord and guard such I don't know - what do people think?
  • I want to get transports to get around quicker, running across the board like that into guns was a real disapointment - I didn't kill anything all game apart from the russ as I just couldn't get to combat and with the saves from the building, shooting would have been a bit of a waste.
  • It really helps when your opponent doesn't play to the objective of the game - afterwards he claimed to have a long game to take the middle objective with a squad of guards who all game had been skulking in a ruined building killing themselves on dangerous terrain tests - but I somehow doubt they would have got past a squad of GH, and as we knew it would be a short game, a long game strategy wasn't much good.

Any other thoughts??? What do you all think might have helped or hindered me? I'd really appreciate your thoughts so that I might be able to improve in the future. Also, how does the new layout work for people?

Friday 29 May 2009

It emerges...

I broke out the Black Reach dread as it is just too tasty to not do really. Love it! I've also aquired some greeny-yellow-grey stuff (milliput - I have the regular but its a bit grainy so I'd recommend people go for the extra fine stuff in future) so I'm making the dread as wolfy as possible:


As you can see, I've got some nice trophy's (the left hand bit of wire has broken off so I'm going to have to redo that), a bit of pelt on the leg, and my favourite bit being the wolf over his shoulder which I'm going to complete once I glue on the arm as it will span the gap between arm and body. I need to come up with something for the multi-melta arm, and I am thinking of a nice bit of tread as in his first outing last night he blew away a leman-russ in one shot at max range completely crippling the guard army I was up against >:D. I also plan on some extra little wolf totems etc, and the genestealer is just for deco at the moment, although I kind of like the look of him executing it under his foot so he may remain after a little reposing to make it more realistic.

I've also got the Blood Claws assembled and I'm beginning to paint them:



I'll be posting a quicky battle report in a bit on last nights game, and as I'm off to Sydnet for 3 weeks for work next week, this'll probably be some of the last activity on here for a while (although I am taking the dread, BR termies and my bits and bobs with me in case I get some free time and the weather is bad).

Monday 18 May 2009

Reinforcements have arrived

So my birthday is upcoming, so I decided to treat myself to some new crack.



AoBR, two drop pods (one for the dreadnought, one for the bloodclaws), a Landraider for the termies and a land-speeder which will be fitted out with multi-melta and assault cannon for some nice anti tank fast attack goodness. As you can see I couldn't resist and I've already cut out and put together the dreadnaught (although I will be taking him apart to clean up).

Awesome! Happy Birthday me

All were bought from Gifts for Geeks who are really great. Prices are almost universally 20%+ cheaper than GW (I got all this inc delivery for less than £100), delivery for courier was about £4, it arrived about a week after placing the order, and they are really nice and helpful even letting me change the land-raider from the standard to redeemer/crusader variant with no issues what-so-ever. I would definitely recommend them to you for your larger purchases where you will really save yourself some money.

Thursday 14 May 2009

Grey Hunters (2)

So I've got my second unit of Grey Hunters up to table-top standard, and I completed one more of them to near full level (trialling techniques). I'm still not totally happy with the final result (and the photo's don't entirely represent the paint job), so, without further ado:





As ever, comments, questions and tips are very much welcomed, I'll be updating my painting points accordingly.

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