First one in a while, Templars 1000 pt. Bat. Rep.
Well, haven't posted in here in a while. To put it as geekily as possible, I'm super pumped about the fact that late last week I recieved a phone call from a professor in the Biology college, inviting me to work in his lab with him. I had interviewed with this guy last week and it went pretty well, but I didn't expect to hear back from him so soon. So, this all but confirms I'm getting into Grad school, and from what Dr. Angelleti tells me, there's a good chance I'll be winning an NIH fellowship as well. This means more $$$ for me, so hurray.
Also, ran a test game with Jon on Tuesday to try out my Black Templar marines for the first time. It was only a 1000 pt. game, and we didn't have a full sized board to work with (or much in the way of terrain) but practice is good regardless.
My list looked like this.
1 Chaplain w/ 3x Cenobyte Servitors, Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, Meltabombs
1 Emperor's Champion w/ Accept Any Challenge vow (always hit on 3+ in CC, must charge if possible)
1 Crusade Squad w/ 10xInitiates, 10xNeophytes, 18x Bolt Pistol w/ Close Combat Weapon, 1x BP and Powerfist, 1xMeltagun, all w/ Frag Grenades
1 Crusade Squad w/ 3x Initiates, 3xNeophytes, 4x BP and CC, 1x BP and PF, 1x Meltagun, 1x Drop Pod
1 Dreadnought: Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolter, Drop Pod, Smoke, Extra Armor
1 Dreadnought: Assault Cannon, Bolter, Pod, Smoke, Armor
Jon was running his Tau, and looked something like this.
1 Aun'Shi
2 Units Firewarriors w/ Pulse Rifles
2 Kroot Carnivore Squads (max size)
1 Unit of 3x Broadsides with Rail Guns (big bad guns)and 2x Shield Drones
1 Skimmer Tank, w/ Rail Gun
Scenario was Recon: Objective is to cross the board and get scoring units into enemy deployment zone.
My general plan was to set up the big crusade squad in the middle, where they would attract lots of shooting attention from the Tau (and thus get mad and Zeal forward into close combat faster.) There wasn't much terrain so I figured they'd just go balls out into the enemy, or they'd be shot to death by the rail guns. The rest of the army would charge in like the cavalry in drop pods. The small crusade squad would be used as a suicide squad to (hopefully) kill the tank.
Jon's setup seemed odd at first, but was actually somewhat cunning. He attached Aun'Shi to his Broadside unit and shuffled them towards the front, with the Kroot set up behind. Thus, I would be forced to charge his Broadsides (who can be difficult to kill, especially with Aun'Shi and his gay attack deflection to protect them) and would then be set up to a counter charge from the Kroot on the resulting turn. The tank hid behind a wall, preventing any shooting/assaulting it (it's a skimmer, so on his turn it could just fly over the wall.) I knew I would have my work cut out for me, especially when Jon won first turn.
Top 1) Tau open fire. His firewarriors drop a markerlight on my Crusade Squad and manage to kill one Initiate, making the Scouts now the majority armor save. The Broadsides miss spectacularly (which is a shame, as this is the only turn he would get to shoot with them) but the tank does not. One pie plate template later, five scouts die. Hurray. My unit is fearless, so no leadership check to see if they break and run. Instead, they get royally pissed and righteous zeal forward 9" towards the Broadsides.
Bottom 1) We realize that we set up wrong, as I'm now in charge range (we were supposed to be 24" apart, we were actually more like 20".) Jon doesn't have a problem with this, so we play on. I fire my bolt pistols ineffectually at the Broadsides (forgetting to throw the Holy Orb, doh) and then chhhhaaarrrgeee!!! The Emperor's Champion immediately seeks out Aun'Shi to duel, while the rest of the squad unloads on the Broadsides. One shield drone dies and one wound actually goes through to a Broadside (shocking.) Aun'shi deflects all but one of the Champion's attacks (he has to leave me with 1) but the Emperor lent his holy strength to the Champion's black sword, as the Champ proceeded to wound and instantly kill Aun'Shi. I try very hard not to laugh as his entire army now has to roll a morale check (alas, they all pass.)
Top 2) There's nothing to shoot at, so the tank hovers sideways to hide amongst the fire warrior squads while the Kroot move forward for the dreaded counter-charge. Kroot have 3 attacks on the charge (like me) but there's a lot more of them than there are of me. Thankfully, there initiative is lower than a space marine's, so the champion, Chaplain, and Initiates all act first. Unfortunately, the champion is in base to base with the stupid Broadsides, so he has to swing at them (accomplishing nothing.) The Chaplains and Initiates, however, manage to kill about 7-8 Kroot on their own. I focus my attacks into one unit of Kroot, hoping to make them break and scatter. This does not work. Thankfully, the template blast from earlier has got the Initiates 3+ armor save back into the majority, so that paired with some below average attack rolls from the Kroot means only 3 Initiates die. We win, everbyody passes morale checks, and the game moves on.
Bottom 2) Roll for reserves brings in the pod for the suicide squad, who land neatly 3" from the tank, and one Dread, who has nothing to shoot at and so pops his smoke launchers for protection. The suicide squad fires, but fails even to glance the tank with the meltagun. Balls. In the assault, more slaughtering of the Kroot squad (I also think I kill one Broadside here) results in one of his units only having 2 members. In the resulting leadership checks, both Kroot units break and run, but the Broadsides don't, which locks me into CC with them and prevents me from overrunning the fleeing Carnivore squads.
Top 3) The full strength Carnivore squad rallies, setting up for another charge. This is very bad. The tank hovers away to line up a shot at the smoke-enshrouded Dread while both Firewarrior squads walk into rapid fire range of the suicide squad. They then proceed to slaughterize them, killing the whole unit in one round of shooting. Again, balls. The tank, however, misses the Dread with the rail gun and has no other weaponry that can damage its frontal armor. Assault phase sees the Kroot charge again, and I'm running out of Initiatives. Thus, most of my marines die in the ensuing brawl. The champion finally kills the Broadside in front of him, meaning he and the Chaplain can start chopping up this new Kroot unit, but it might be too little too late. We're fearless, so even though we lost combat we don't break.
Bottom 3) The other Dread shows up, dropping in adjacent to the one from last turn. Dread 1 walks upfield to draw a bead on the firewarriors hiding at the back of the board. Shooting phase, Dread 1 picks off 2 firewarriors with his assault cannon and misses all 3 attacks with the heavy bolter. Dread 2 fires his ass cannon at the tank, but fails to get a rending result to chew through its armor, so I figure the tank's probably gonna kill him next turn. Hurray. In assault I gamble that the Crusade Squad can hold out on its own and let the Dread charge one unit of firewarriors, where he proceeds to kill half of them on his own and overrun the rest, resulting in a massacre result and his consollidating into close combat with the firewarriors adjacent to them (a slight miscalulation on Jon's part, methinks.) The Kroot/Broadside/Crusader fight doesn't workout nearly as well, as everybody but the Chaplain and Champion die after inflicting some casualties on the Kroot (I think another Broadside and the other shield drone died somewhere in here too. It doesn't really matter, anyways.)
Top 4) The tank fires instead of moving, and misses. I chortle with glee as Dread 2 is thus still alive. No shooting left, so Dread 1 lather/rinse/repeats on firewarrior squad 2, killing them and consolidating behind the tank. The chaplain and champion cowboy up on the Kroot, killing a bunch and taking no wounds, meaning we win. Both the Kroot and Broadsides fail morale checks, so they are then overrun and destroyed by the champion and chaplain. Go team go!
Bottom 4) As they're both independent characters, the chaplain heads toward the tank while the champion hightails it for a corner to hide. The chaplain throws the holy hand grenade at the tank, but misses (boo) but Dread 1 unloads with his ass cannon into the tanks rear armor, blowing off it's rail gun and immobilizing it (since it would have landed on impassable terrain, it is thus destroyed.) Thus, his army is dead, and I win. Huzzah.
Results: We didn't calculate victory points, but I probably would have recieved a solid victory result. In the end, every Initiate and Neophyte died, which is somewhat worse than I had hoped to do. Dread 1 pretty much owned, which pleased me, but I'm concerned about how the game would have turned out if I had been forced to face another round of shooting (IE: if we would have set up correctly.)
Either way, a somewhat succesful baptism of fire. It was a pyhric victory, but victory all the same. There is no more desired fate for a Templar than to die in service to the Emperor, and we did kick the piss out of some unholy Xenos scum, so all is well.
Also, ran a test game with Jon on Tuesday to try out my Black Templar marines for the first time. It was only a 1000 pt. game, and we didn't have a full sized board to work with (or much in the way of terrain) but practice is good regardless.
My list looked like this.
1 Chaplain w/ 3x Cenobyte Servitors, Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, Meltabombs
1 Emperor's Champion w/ Accept Any Challenge vow (always hit on 3+ in CC, must charge if possible)
1 Crusade Squad w/ 10xInitiates, 10xNeophytes, 18x Bolt Pistol w/ Close Combat Weapon, 1x BP and Powerfist, 1xMeltagun, all w/ Frag Grenades
1 Crusade Squad w/ 3x Initiates, 3xNeophytes, 4x BP and CC, 1x BP and PF, 1x Meltagun, 1x Drop Pod
1 Dreadnought: Assault Cannon, Heavy Bolter, Drop Pod, Smoke, Extra Armor
1 Dreadnought: Assault Cannon, Bolter, Pod, Smoke, Armor
Jon was running his Tau, and looked something like this.
1 Aun'Shi
2 Units Firewarriors w/ Pulse Rifles
2 Kroot Carnivore Squads (max size)
1 Unit of 3x Broadsides with Rail Guns (big bad guns)and 2x Shield Drones
1 Skimmer Tank, w/ Rail Gun
Scenario was Recon: Objective is to cross the board and get scoring units into enemy deployment zone.
My general plan was to set up the big crusade squad in the middle, where they would attract lots of shooting attention from the Tau (and thus get mad and Zeal forward into close combat faster.) There wasn't much terrain so I figured they'd just go balls out into the enemy, or they'd be shot to death by the rail guns. The rest of the army would charge in like the cavalry in drop pods. The small crusade squad would be used as a suicide squad to (hopefully) kill the tank.
Jon's setup seemed odd at first, but was actually somewhat cunning. He attached Aun'Shi to his Broadside unit and shuffled them towards the front, with the Kroot set up behind. Thus, I would be forced to charge his Broadsides (who can be difficult to kill, especially with Aun'Shi and his gay attack deflection to protect them) and would then be set up to a counter charge from the Kroot on the resulting turn. The tank hid behind a wall, preventing any shooting/assaulting it (it's a skimmer, so on his turn it could just fly over the wall.) I knew I would have my work cut out for me, especially when Jon won first turn.
Top 1) Tau open fire. His firewarriors drop a markerlight on my Crusade Squad and manage to kill one Initiate, making the Scouts now the majority armor save. The Broadsides miss spectacularly (which is a shame, as this is the only turn he would get to shoot with them) but the tank does not. One pie plate template later, five scouts die. Hurray. My unit is fearless, so no leadership check to see if they break and run. Instead, they get royally pissed and righteous zeal forward 9" towards the Broadsides.
Bottom 1) We realize that we set up wrong, as I'm now in charge range (we were supposed to be 24" apart, we were actually more like 20".) Jon doesn't have a problem with this, so we play on. I fire my bolt pistols ineffectually at the Broadsides (forgetting to throw the Holy Orb, doh) and then chhhhaaarrrgeee!!! The Emperor's Champion immediately seeks out Aun'Shi to duel, while the rest of the squad unloads on the Broadsides. One shield drone dies and one wound actually goes through to a Broadside (shocking.) Aun'shi deflects all but one of the Champion's attacks (he has to leave me with 1) but the Emperor lent his holy strength to the Champion's black sword, as the Champ proceeded to wound and instantly kill Aun'Shi. I try very hard not to laugh as his entire army now has to roll a morale check (alas, they all pass.)
Top 2) There's nothing to shoot at, so the tank hovers sideways to hide amongst the fire warrior squads while the Kroot move forward for the dreaded counter-charge. Kroot have 3 attacks on the charge (like me) but there's a lot more of them than there are of me. Thankfully, there initiative is lower than a space marine's, so the champion, Chaplain, and Initiates all act first. Unfortunately, the champion is in base to base with the stupid Broadsides, so he has to swing at them (accomplishing nothing.) The Chaplains and Initiates, however, manage to kill about 7-8 Kroot on their own. I focus my attacks into one unit of Kroot, hoping to make them break and scatter. This does not work. Thankfully, the template blast from earlier has got the Initiates 3+ armor save back into the majority, so that paired with some below average attack rolls from the Kroot means only 3 Initiates die. We win, everbyody passes morale checks, and the game moves on.
Bottom 2) Roll for reserves brings in the pod for the suicide squad, who land neatly 3" from the tank, and one Dread, who has nothing to shoot at and so pops his smoke launchers for protection. The suicide squad fires, but fails even to glance the tank with the meltagun. Balls. In the assault, more slaughtering of the Kroot squad (I also think I kill one Broadside here) results in one of his units only having 2 members. In the resulting leadership checks, both Kroot units break and run, but the Broadsides don't, which locks me into CC with them and prevents me from overrunning the fleeing Carnivore squads.
Top 3) The full strength Carnivore squad rallies, setting up for another charge. This is very bad. The tank hovers away to line up a shot at the smoke-enshrouded Dread while both Firewarrior squads walk into rapid fire range of the suicide squad. They then proceed to slaughterize them, killing the whole unit in one round of shooting. Again, balls. The tank, however, misses the Dread with the rail gun and has no other weaponry that can damage its frontal armor. Assault phase sees the Kroot charge again, and I'm running out of Initiatives. Thus, most of my marines die in the ensuing brawl. The champion finally kills the Broadside in front of him, meaning he and the Chaplain can start chopping up this new Kroot unit, but it might be too little too late. We're fearless, so even though we lost combat we don't break.
Bottom 3) The other Dread shows up, dropping in adjacent to the one from last turn. Dread 1 walks upfield to draw a bead on the firewarriors hiding at the back of the board. Shooting phase, Dread 1 picks off 2 firewarriors with his assault cannon and misses all 3 attacks with the heavy bolter. Dread 2 fires his ass cannon at the tank, but fails to get a rending result to chew through its armor, so I figure the tank's probably gonna kill him next turn. Hurray. In assault I gamble that the Crusade Squad can hold out on its own and let the Dread charge one unit of firewarriors, where he proceeds to kill half of them on his own and overrun the rest, resulting in a massacre result and his consollidating into close combat with the firewarriors adjacent to them (a slight miscalulation on Jon's part, methinks.) The Kroot/Broadside/Crusader fight doesn't workout nearly as well, as everybody but the Chaplain and Champion die after inflicting some casualties on the Kroot (I think another Broadside and the other shield drone died somewhere in here too. It doesn't really matter, anyways.)
Top 4) The tank fires instead of moving, and misses. I chortle with glee as Dread 2 is thus still alive. No shooting left, so Dread 1 lather/rinse/repeats on firewarrior squad 2, killing them and consolidating behind the tank. The chaplain and champion cowboy up on the Kroot, killing a bunch and taking no wounds, meaning we win. Both the Kroot and Broadsides fail morale checks, so they are then overrun and destroyed by the champion and chaplain. Go team go!
Bottom 4) As they're both independent characters, the chaplain heads toward the tank while the champion hightails it for a corner to hide. The chaplain throws the holy hand grenade at the tank, but misses (boo) but Dread 1 unloads with his ass cannon into the tanks rear armor, blowing off it's rail gun and immobilizing it (since it would have landed on impassable terrain, it is thus destroyed.) Thus, his army is dead, and I win. Huzzah.
Results: We didn't calculate victory points, but I probably would have recieved a solid victory result. In the end, every Initiate and Neophyte died, which is somewhat worse than I had hoped to do. Dread 1 pretty much owned, which pleased me, but I'm concerned about how the game would have turned out if I had been forced to face another round of shooting (IE: if we would have set up correctly.)
Either way, a somewhat succesful baptism of fire. It was a pyhric victory, but victory all the same. There is no more desired fate for a Templar than to die in service to the Emperor, and we did kick the piss out of some unholy Xenos scum, so all is well.