Team Tournament Game 2 Battle Report vs Dual Fateweavers

Game 2 matched us against a combined Daemon army with 2 Fateweavers, 2 squads of Bloodcrushers, 2 squads of Horrors with Changelings, another unit of Horrors, a unit of Plaguebearers, a unit of Fiends, and 2 units of Screamers. I knew this game would be rough.

The mission was Seize Ground with Spearhead deployment.  I set up my objectives as far apart from each other as possible in an attempt to force the opponents army to separate itself.  They followed suit, and we ended up with 1 objective in each corner, and one objective in the center of the board.  I set up our force as spread out as possible within our quarter, and then spread out even further on my first turn to keep our opponents from deep striking behind us.  I did leave a few gaps that were big enough for a monstrous creature or small unit to fit, just in case they got greedy.  I like to do this when I have some time to react to another player's deep striking units.  If I can persuade them to deep strike into this small opening that I have created, I can force a mishap if the unit deviates at all.  A Fateweaver Daemon army relies on all of its units dropping as close to Fateweaver as possible, and my opponents were canny enough to not take my bait, dropping in on my right flank instead.

The Vindicator, Land Raider, and Penitent Engines on the left flank began to sweep right to support the other flank while the squad of Storm Troopers and 5-man Crusader squad began to foot-slog across the board toward the objective directly across from them.  The Penitent Engines on the right flank surged toward the Bloodcrushers who appeared in their face, with the Callidus Assassin appearing right next to the vile daemons as well.  The Callidus was within range of the Changeling's power, failed her leadership test, and shot her Neural Shredder at the oncoming Penitent Engines.  Fortunately, she was out of range.  Unfortunately, she now couldn't charge the Bloodcrushers, having shot at a different unit.  The Callidus would meet her fate to a fusillade of shots from the nearby Horrors.  The Penitent Engines would trade blows with the Bloodcrushers for the entire game, finally wiping them out in turn 4.

The Daemon players deep struck a squad of Horrors onto the objective directly in front of me.  I sent the Vindicator and 2 infantry squads at them.  The Horrors shot up the Stormtroopers, causing them to break (very similarly to last game), so I tank shocked onto the objective with the Vindicator on the last turn, hoping to weather the storm and contest.

The 5-man squad in a Rhino surged onto the central objective and tried to hug cover to try and avoid being charged by the Bloodcrushers on the other side of the hill.

 The Land Raider tank shocked through Fateweaver and the Bloodcrushers across the table and unloaded the 15-man Crusader Squad onto the Horrors protecting the objective in our opposite corner.  The Horrors were quickly massacred and the squad spread out to deny the screamers the ability to turbo boost within 3" of the objective.









At this point, we were ahead, controlling 3 objectives to 1, with 1 objective being contested.  In the final round of the game, the Horrors across from my deployment zone would destroy the Vindicator with the aid of one of the Fateweavers, giving them 2 objectives to our 3.  The Bloodcrushers would roll very highly for their difficult terrain check to charge the squad in the center, contesting the center objective, causing a draw result.

I was quite pleased with this result, as this was a very tough army to play against.  2 Fateweavers on the board cast a big bubble where things just don't die.  It would be made known that in the result of a tie, victory points would be used to determine the winner.  Having killed very little of the opposition, it was no surprise that this caused us to lose the game.  There were another couple of players at the next table that were also surprised to find out about the tiebreaker at this point in the tournament.  It may have been mentioned earlier on and we just didn't hear the TO from the back of the room, or it was not made clear in the first place.  Either way, we ended up losing the game solidly based on the large discrepancy in victory points.  This team would go on to tie for first place, going 3-0 in the tournament.