11th Company Game 5

So game 5 is against Eric and his White Scars with Champions of Fenris Allies.

Beautiful bikes and wolves for as far as the eye can see.

Khan

5 bike Squads - 3 grav, 2 melta

Scout Bikers

2 Storm Talons

2 Wolf Guard Battle Leaders on Thunderwolves

2 Iron Priests on Thunderwolves

2 Solo Servitors

Our mission for round 3 was scouring.  We both elected to score points at the end of the game.  Eric won the dice off and forced me to go first.

I deployed both Flyrants out of theoretical ranges of his army, including their scout moves.  I also deployed a mawloc  further back and all my spore mines.  After Eric deployed I also infiltrated 2 LIctors, one in the cusp of that L shaped terrain in the middle, and one in a hidden cubby in the top right ruin.

Eric deployed all his bikes in little groups, each had a wolf character with it.  Scout bikers, servitors and storm talons were in regular reserves.

 Turn 1 I flew the Flyrants forward, the one in the middle of the board is actually on the ground and not in the air.  I shoot at a bike unit but they have 2+ jinks due to nightfight.... oops.  Eric moves his bikes around, thinks about being aggressive but backs away from the top area instead, shoots at the spore mines at the bottom in terrain and kills them.

 Turn 2 for me and now its my turn to be cagey and scared instead of aggressive.  I drop mawlocs near my lictors basically to keep them alive instead of going for kills.  I also fly one tyrant into that terrain to keep it safe from incoming flyers, but costing me its firepower.  The other Flyrant kills a whole bike squad aside from the attached battle leader.  Lictors and genestealers pop up in the ruin at the bottom.  The mawloc I had on the board at the beginning of the game burrows.

 Eric moves his guys around some more, scout bikers and servitors come in but not planes... so much for hiding.  He moves down and assaults a lictor or two in the bottom but doesnt finish them.

 Mawloc time.  Land on the combat and put wounds on the iron priest and khan... khan passes a few invuls to divert most of the damage.  Stealers and other lictors pump into combat and kill the  regular bikers, khan and the priest live and hit and run out.  Flyrants swing forward and waste some bikers.  Lictor and some stealers pop in the top left and kill a servitor with shooting from lictor.

Storm talons come in and first one shoots and kills a Flyrant.... passed zero saves and zero feel no pains... ouch.  3 wolf characters and some bikes assault mawloc that he mis hap placed in his battle lines and they kill it.  Priest and some more bikes assault lictor and stealers and lose combat.  Scout bikers run off board after assaulting lictor.

Some things happened in a another turn here... I dropped a mawloc on combat and killed a bunch of more bikes but the iron priest passed his 6++, and then the mawloc mishap died.  End of the game here is really blurry as we were up against the clock and playing through lunch.

We only got to play one more turn after this and had to rush to do it... was not pleased.  Some assaults hapen and   Sloppy moving around by both of us and end up splitting objectives down the middle.  He has first blood, I have marked for death(got to pick one of his units as a secondary), both have linebreaker.  He was playing the kill points secondary so we totaled them, I counted 7 and figure I had lost, he counted 8, so we re counted a few more times, ended up with 8 each.  So tied all the way down.  So we had to total victory points.  I ended up scoring 830 off him and he had 810 off me... so I win and advance.

Was frustrated not being able to finish this game, had to make a bunch of choices at the end of the game to score objectives because there wasnt enough time.  But basically I think the weight of the game got to both players and caused bad choices.  He spent lots of time maxing movement and placing so mawlocs wouldnt hit lots of guys, and I played into that and didnt drop in after him basically... I feel that if either of us had been more aggressive we could have won the game instead of backing into it.  I usually pride myself on pushing the action with aggressive strong moves, but from turn 2 on I felt I made some very weak plays, and it was extremely close to costing me the game.

I was also reminded some days later that spore mines dont give up victory points for being destroyed... and thats 7th edition VP, so basically kill points, and first blood.  So if I had remembered that day of we would not have even had to go to tie breakers, but thank goodness I didnt lose or I would have really been upset about forgetting the good side of their weird rules.  They also dont score or deny objectives which I did play all weekend, so to constantly forget their beneficial side while playing their penalties could have sucked.