Nebula Raiders and Birds of Prey

It's been a long while since my latest blog entry. This thing called real life keeps interfering, I've got to get rid of it before it consumes me entirely, by the Emperor!

Anyway: good news! The Birds of Prey, 523rd Air-Ground Operations Wing of the Duglum Shieldbearers, have arrived. Here they are, merely the vendetta conversion kits from Forge World are still missing and haven't been shipped yet. (How long do they usually take? It's been a while since I placed my order...)


Birds of Prey
Company Command Squad w/ 3x Plasma Gun, 1x Flamer, 1x Astropath
Veteran Squad w/ 3x Melta Gun
Veteran Squad w/ 3x Melta Gun
Veteran Squad w/ 3x Melta Gun
Veteran Squad w/ 3x Flamers, Demolitions Doctrine
Veteran Squad w/ 3x Flamers, Demolitions Doctrine
Vendetta Squadron w/ 2x Vendettas, 2x Heavy Bolter Sponsons
Vendetta Squadron w/ 2x Vendettas, 2x Heavy Bolter Sponsons
Valkyrie Squadron w/ 2x Valkyries, 2x Multiple Missile Pods, 2x Heavy Bolter Sponsons
TOTAL - 1,500 points



I already proxied a game with them two weeks ago.

Short Battle Summary

versing Necrons...
Lord w/ Resurrection Orb, Veil of Darkness
Lord w/ Destroyer Body, Lightning Field, Solar Pulse
Warrior Squad w/ 13x Warrior
Warrior Squad w/ 10x Warrior
Warrior Squad w/ 10x Warrior
Scarab Swarm w/ 10x Scarab Base
Destroyer Squad w/ 4x Destroyer
Destroyer Squad w/ 4x Destroyer
TOTAL - 1,499 points

I used the list above, but because I had two free Superiority TACOPTs from my campaign, giving me 2x 5% of the points limit as extra points, I also used two hydras. This was almost my undoing...

Mission was Seize Ground with 3 objectives, deployment was Pitched Battle.
I got to decide who gets first turn and passed it on to my opponent.

Thinking that -as Imperial Guard- I had all the firepower in the world, and seeing that I was effectively playing 1,650 against 1,500 points, I chose to disregard my entire strategy for this army and instead assault head-on.
So after my opponent deployed (reserving the two smaller warrior squads) I deployed everything (making the astropath obsolete and destroying my entire strategy of reserving everything) and used my scout move to close in with the Necrons.

Long story short: my firepower was absolutely disappointing: two valkyries shooting two large blasts and a multi-laser and two heavy bolters each into a squad of bundled-up, recently deep-struck Necrons numbering fourteen models -a thing you can't possibly miss, and where I could have gotten 14 hits from a single hit with one blast marker- only killed two warriors, one of which got back up the following turn. And the entire game went like this for me. I kept missing with twin-linked lascannons, scattered my demolition charges back into my own units, and so on.
On the Necron side, though, the dice rolling was very lucky indeed: he just kept rolling those sixes to glance and then immobilize my flyers, wrecking them. Perfect example: Necron player thinks he is done with his shooting phase, I tell him he forgot his staff of light on the destroyer lord. He shoots it at my valkyrie and does damage - argh! His warrior squads got three to four glancing hits average when shooting at my vendettas.

Needless to say, I was pounded for four turns, literally getting blown apart in shooting as well as the assault by Necrons. Luckily for me, I had more points on the table and was better suited for objective capture.
On the bottom of turn five, my opponent had ten warriors and his foot lord, plus another squad of three warriors, plus his destroyer lord and two scarab bases left, while I had the one hydra, the entire valkyrie squadron, and one vendetta from each of the vendetta squadrons, the bulk of my command squad, one entirely untouched melta vet squad, and one lone melta vet sergeant who had kept his nerve.

My command squad ended up contesting one objective despite being assaulted by the destroyer lord, Lt. Colonel Blue Bart heroically saving the day while my sole two intact scoring units were holding one of the remaining two objectives with the option of holding the second one (which I had cleared) as well, but I didn't risk it on the bottom of turn five because I wouldn't have had cover there and 1 to 0 sufficed for the moment.
The dice turned up with a two, the game ended, Birds of Prey score their first victory!

Anyway: there is a lot to learn. Stick to the plan, stay focused. Accept that Imperial Guard is extremely fragile, especially airborne Guard - more fragile than biker Marines. And accept that the firepower of an airborne force isn't exactly godlike, and that Necrons are nearly invulnerable to shooting anyhow. Next time I'll do better!



Some time ago I also finished my Tactica: Space Marine Bike Armies for those interested who haven't noticed yet.
On the second pages of that tactica as well as my Tactica: Landspeeders I have also only recently included some pictures to illustrate some of the tricks I describe throughout these tacticae. Be sure to refresh your browser a couple of times, because the forum almost always fails to load some of the pictures - and it doesn't give you any clue that there should be one, so you won't even know you're missing it.


Thanks for reading, fellow commanders! Enjoy your time - I'll see you around. Red Archer out.