Whew! So Round 2 is done (for me anyway, since I can't do weekday games), and I came out 4 wins to 1 loss this time, bringing my overall record to 4-4. I ain't in first, but I'll be damned if I'm in last anymore! At this point I'm pausing writing this to get a beer in celebration. Cheers! :drinks:
I played the Librarian in the first game against Space Wolves and won in Crusade through a complete annihilation, though had his squad survived I would still have held 2 of three objectives with Linebreaker and First Blood to boot. He played a pretty zany list, had a 5 man Vanguard squad all with dual plasma pistols. The were wrecking a unit per turn in shooting, and he was just killing his Gets Hot rolls/saves. The two points in the game where it really swung in my favour was when my assault squad deep struck and scattered very far away from their Vindicator target, but stayed a 16th of an inch range of the rear armour, popping it before it could do anything at all T2. The other was when his Dreadnought (some siege variant, had a hand drill and flamer that could hit people in transports depending on CC conditions) charged 5 Tactical marines, killing two then taking THREE GLANCES from grenades from the remaining dudes and getting wrecked. His Long Fangs were also neutralized quickly thanks to the Rending action on the Furioso....all in all, I was pretty stoked.
I switched to a Priest as HQ and MBs on all squad sergeants (just in case there was more of those Dreadnoughts kicking around) and in my second game faced Space Marines using the Iron Hands tactics in the Emperor's Will mission. He dropped Sternguard and combi-melta'd my assault squad vaping a few guys easily. Glorious deployment saved my Baal. Fragioso dominated some Sternguard, Assault marines and the Baal took care of the rest while my two Tactical squads began the long flank around the board to his Objective. I tied up so much of his attention with my Dreadnought, Baal, and Assault squad that my Tactical marines (and later the Baal) basically made a massive bubble of 'you can't put a model within 1" of me' around his objective because Objective Secured is a son of a bitch on whatever the Scout Landpeeder is called. Saved me the game, because the one damn Scout left that was in CC with my Furioso had ObSec that kept it 3-3 for Objectives. Thankfully, I had Linebreaker and First Blood over both of our Warlord points.
At this point, I would like to stress how important it is in Emperor's Will for you to put your Objective outside of your deployment zone (while still on your half, obvs). First Blood is a finicky mistress, and even though he had one tactical marine and one scout left (muahahahahahaa) it could have gone very differently. Why give them a 4 point objective grab?
My next game was pretty brutal. I faced some nonsense Chaos list with a FW flier that could shoot ~3 targets per turn, two FW artillery pieces, a fully stacked Noisemarines unit, and the obligatory Cultists to be Battle Forged. The only reason that I won was because my army is hella fast and I got a bunch of Tactical Objectives achieved while he got shit all done....cuz when the game ended at T5 I only had one Drop Pod with 2 HP left :laugh:
Lesson learned, as the point limit increases I'll be adding in a Stormraven (or two, we're allowed to bring a couple different lists in the interest of not being steamrolled by the limitations of people's model collection....some people apparently only buy ridiculous armies) to deal with fliers. There's another guy playing Unbound with FOUR Stormtalons, a Stormraven, and a squad of Hammernators. He's already been asked once to make a non-flier list for a game because his opponent literally would have just ran around dying. Had I gone up against him I would have had to maguiver a list with the Stormraven and ADL that I had in my case...lame-o.]
This brings us to the game I lost miserably....even more miserably than if the previous game had gone on and my Pod been blown out of existence. New Chaos army, this guy played 10 Raptors with 2x Meltas and his tricked out Tzeentch Lord so he could take Noisemarines as Troops. He 'dropped the bass' so to speak. Poor placement let at deployment let him murderate both my Razorbacks T1 with blasts, and he continued to brutalize me further with every passing turn. At least I killed one unit of Noisemarines and half his Raptors....right? Pay attention to your deployment! Jeeze....
The last game I played was a rematch against the Ork player from round one. He had two Battlewagons with rocket launchers each with 20 boyz, and a decently tricked out (if small) Warboss and Nobz on bikes. Klaws all over da place. I focused hard on those bikes, who dummied me in the first match at 750. I fucked them up pretty hard, losing combat when they charged my Assault squad/Priest combo and falling back before it was my turn to walk up and Jump charge them....but not before opening up on them and halving their number with pretty much all my army's shooting. Fucking Jink. Getting the warlord trait that grants a master-crafted weapon was great for my Priest, who was racking up the kills in CC for the rest of the game with a 20 Ork mob. FnP and +1 WS for life, Libbys might be out for me...I'm vexed that I can only get 4 ML points out of a single Detachment now. Not enough against the dedicated psychic forces out there, may as well just ignore it if I'm never to get a useful power off. He took down just over half of my army, but I took his last model in T6 and won 9-0 with points. I would say that I had my revenge, plus the dude was a blast to play against with Orks and Blood Angels just being made to fight each other. Win and loss, these Ork matches have been my favourite.
Now for the kicker....damn League is only going up 100/150 points each round. So: 1000, 1100, 1250, 1400, 1500. At that point, it will keep escalating until 2500 but everyone will be required to continue bringing 1500 point lists as well for those whose collections can't keep up. There's also other awards and bounties put on players on winning streaks so there's lots of ways for those people with smaller armies to keep having fun while those of use with the models can really escalate the way this should happen. To take this list to 1000, I was thinking of just making the two Tactical squads 10 man in Rhinos. Points don't allow for heavy weapons in the squad, so just Meltas and Bombs it remains. I'm still rolling around ideas though, I've got a week to figure it out.
Baal Strike Force
Priest - Lightning Claw, Jump Pack
Furioso - Frag Cannon, Heavy Flamer, Drop Pod
10x man Tactical squad - Melta Gun, Melta Bombs, Rhino
10x man Tactical squad - Melta Gun, Melta Bombs, Rhino
10x man Assault squad - 2x Melta Guns, Melta Bombs, Power Sword
Baal Predator - Twin Linked Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolter Sponsons
1000 even.
I'll have to make up a second list that includes a Stormraven just so the games against the flier dudes aren't ridiculous...but so far I'm ok with 30 fast marines with anti-armour capabilities and two infantry-shredding AV13 vehicles.
