Tips for 500 pt games against Ad Mec, Chaos Daemons, and Tau - Friendly, no cover, no obj

albions-angel wrote:

Yeah, I was using fire and fade more than once. I thought it was "per unit" not per round. My mistake. Hmm, in that case, what should I have done? 2 flyers with people in them, cant leave one exposed, cant shoot from behind full cover. Cant get a LOS on just the troops and not the onagers (assuming thats what those 4 legged tanks were).

Presumably next time screaming jets will be super useful turn 1, right?

EDIT: Just got confirmation from friends. We use basic matched play rules but stratagems that target single friendly units can be used multiple times and the tactical reserves rule can be ignored if it "makes sense".

Use Fire and Fade to put one in cover and Lightning-Fast Reactions on the exposed one. -2 to hit on Venoms is nightmare fuel for a lot of armies but Raiders are typically harder to fit behind line-of-sight blocking cover.

Ok, just played vs Thousand Sons.

500 pt, with lots of regular cover and 2 pieces (one each end and diagonal to each other) of "infinite height" total cover (FLY can go over but its total cover for anything behind it). We played proper match play rules.

They ran -

2x5 Rubricks
1 Ahriman
1 Vindicator

I ran -

2 Archons (one warlord with Spite)
3x5 Kabalites (all splinter rifles)
5 Scourges (4 haywire... I know, but the vindicator scared me)
Raider (dissi)
Venom (cannon)

4x3 table, playing longways. Annihilation.

Flayed Skull (turned out not needed, should have gone poison).
Deploy archons, venom, and one squad in venom.
Place scourge in sky
Place Raider (and 2x5 kabalites) in sky for 1 cp (screaming)

Thousand Sons first. They have to move up so they do that together. They cant see me as archons and venom are behind full cover. They put buff spells on the rubriks (one perils, and rerolls for 1CP). They dont shoot. They dont fight. I move my archons up to the cover. And my venom pops over. It shoots without RF. So do the kabalites. I kill one rubrik. Then I pop back for 1CP. End turn 1.

Turn 2. Thousand sons moves up again. This moves them just in front of the first bit of full cover on their side. They refresh the spells. They cant shoot. They cant fight. I keep the archons in full cover for now. Then I make a very risky set of plays. I pop the venom over the cover. Kabalites still arnt in RF range but the cannons now are. But its still movement. I then drop the raider in BEHIND thousand sons, behind the full cover, so I can see one squad but I cant see the tank. I also drop the scourges RIGHT IN FRONT OF THOUSAND SONS! Well, into some ruins, but yeah. Its only +1 save so it wont save them right? My shooting. Venom and kabalites hit the already wounded unit of rubriks, deal one more wound, and pop back for another CP. I then unload with everything I have on the other unit of ribriks, dealing 3 (3!) wounds. Just to point out how hard that is to do, everything I hit them with only had 1 dmg, meaning they get +2 saves! Splitfire the shard carbine onto the rubriks, hitting but failing to get through the save. Then 4 haywires on the vindicator, dealing 6 attacks (boo). Still unsure about how the haywires work. Going on STR VS Toughness, I needed 6s to do damage. But 4+ gives at least one mortal wound + any other damage? We talked it over and ruled that if I got a 4+, I dealt the mortal wound, but not the regular wound. 6s would grant the regular wound AND D3 mortal. After all that, I did 3 MW. Boo again.

Ok, I had my fun. Its time for me to die. Thousand sons reverse the tank to hit the raider, the HQ prepares to use all its psykic on the scourges, one rubrik self buffs, and the other tries a mini-smite AND PERILS. 1CP for a reroll and it does 1 wound which I feel no pain... The HQ tries 3 different damaging spells on the scourges, I feel no pain ALL BUT 1!!! I think I had the potential to take about 13 wounds to a 5 wound unit there. And it wasnt saves. It was 6s on feel no pains. We swapped dice pools because he was getting lots of 1s. Final CP spent on tank to allow for using heavy after move without minus. Tank fires all its stuff and does.... 5 wounds to the raider. Uh, ok? My turn? Time to throw the cat amongst the pigeons. Archons break cover and advance into new, less good cover. Venom pops up and moves its full 19 inches. Raider pops over to the other side of the LOS blocking terrain where it can hit stuff. Scourges stay put. Raider (+ kabalites) unloads, taking out one of the rubrik units. 1CP and its now hugging the cover and everything needs to move to see it. Haywire on the tank does 1 more wound. Oh well. Venom pings a rubrik. Archons are useless.

Thousand sons are not in good shape. Tank stays where it is. HQ moves round cover to within 6 inches of raider. 2 remaining rubriks stay by the tank. Psyker phase sees a wiffed mini-smite (feel no pain save, after my deny failed), and 4 wounds on my raider. One left. Tank, tries to target venom. And misses every shot! Rubriks miss too. HQ misses. HQ charges raider. Gets that last lucky hit... raider explodes, dealing 3 mortal wounds to HQ, and 2 MW to ONE of the units inside from the crash (other one is fine). Uh, sure, Ill take it. My turn. Kabalites arnt in base contact, or within 1/2 inch. I move them back under move rules, in 2 directions, giving the larger squad some cover. We are past turn 4 start so I care little about leadership. Venom moves up more. So do archons. Venom unloads, and does frak all (yay!). 2 footsloging kabalites unload and deal 4 wounds to mr HQ. Scourges pump the tanks wounds up to a fantastic 10 out of 11! I charge the rubriks with the venom, which puts it out of range of the archons should it blow up. I do no damage and take no damage.

Final round. Thousand sons move HQ up closer to my kabalites. Intends to kill with psyker phase and then charge if any remain. Heals self first for... 1. Then Perils into 3 MW and dies. Prepares to concede, citing the fact my scourges are still alive and his tank has only one wound, and my 2 archons can charge his rubriks. I point out that if his tank gets lucky, he can kill ALL my scourges, and then I pretty much cant hurt his tank. Its a long shot, but I convince him to try the shooting phase. He does. He hits with every shot (3 from main cannon, 6 from missile launcher, 2 from RF bolter) and rolls max damage for cannon (3x6 = 18!). Thats a lot of saves. I fail about half. So I need to make a ton of feel no pain rolls. Out of about 13 feel no pain rolls, I get... 12 6s. We have swapped dice multiple times by now. With no way to kill my scourges, and only 2 rubriks left vs a venom, 13 kabalites and 2 archons, he concedes. We both marval at my feel no pain rolls.

Aside from being BLOODY LUCKY, I also felt I play WAY better. Far more hit and run. A few reckless moves but necessary ones. Caught him out of position. Made him come to me when it mattered and he KNEW I could drop in behind. Forced him onto the offencive when he wanted to defend, and on the defensive when he wanted to press his advantage. Sure, Ranald helped me a lot, but I feel that THAT is how a 500 pt DE army is supposed to be played. All in all, this week, I am 1 win, 2 losses, and have a far better understanding.

Not terrible for my first set of games in 13 years!

Sounds like you had a great game, well done. And holy hell those fnp saves

Glad you're enjoying it mate and thanks for the bat reps its always good to hear how others games go.

have you considered a lottery ticket? with all those lucky rolls, you're on for the 50 millions jackpot.