Ok,
Ok, I played my first test game last night. Won. Barely.
It came down to a cover save in the end. I think I also realised that we hadn't been doing to wound allocation properly. I also learned that managing your opponent is as tough as managing his models. The guy I was playing seemed really keen on moving stuff pretty huge distances, his blast templates his huge numbers of people etc etc.
I am used to playing with a running dialogue for my opponent. Something like this.
"Okay, movement phase. I am going to move this Rhino. Ok, Now this Rhino, he's on a road so I can move an extra 6" since I am remaining on the road the whole distance so that's 18". Neither can shoot as they both moved 12".
and so on.
Then crucially when dice rolling the spiel continues.
OK, my lesser daemons are attacking your dire avengers, you go first as you have the initiative. ... Ok, I can attack back with five, they have x attacks each plus y for charging. so that's z attacks needing 4's to hit. rolls dice. Okay five hit, 3's to wound, nice! okay that's five armour saves."
I thought this was typical but my opponent did two things that made me uncomfortable. First of all he would just quickly roll some dice, no spiel, no explanation, nothing, just some frantic dice rolling. A couple of times I pointed out that he simply had too many dice but that was only when I knew myself how many he was meant to be rolling. The first time he would say anything would be when he would say. "Right, that's three dead and four more armour saves."
I didn't like that at all. Is this common?
The second thing was that he had about 35 of his own bright green dice. He used them all and would gather up the number needed and roll them casually across the table. Nine times out of ten he was rolling in the midst of dice already on the table. I couldn't tell which ones he had just rolled! This was really frustrating and he just wouldn't stop doing it.
Is this common too? What do people do? I kept picking his dice up and point to clear spaces where he could roll but he liked to roll just in front of himself, quickly and with no explanation of what he was doing.
Other than that the game was a lot of fun. I got to test my units and see what worked and what didn't. I am aware that this is only one game so I can't base too much off of it but I think it was a good start. Oooh. A Battle Report. I have never written one of those, I will give it a go.
Battle Number One:
The Opponent: Eldar
I didn't see his army list so I will simply recount what units he had.
Dire Avengers 8 with Exarch with power which removed one attack from all attacking enemies.
Howling Banshees 6 with Exarch
Pathfinders 6 with rifles
Harlequins 6 or 7 no characters (I think)
Eldrad
Falcon with Prism Cannon
6 Dark Reapers with Exarch with quick shot and no cover save powers.
Falcon with 6 Firedragons with Exarch.
Forgive me if my knowledge of the Eldar is pretty patchy. I have never collected Eldar so I don't know my way around them very well. Some of the unit sizes may be within one or two of the actual amount.
My Army
10 CSM Rhino, IoCG, 2x MG
10 CSM Rhino, IoCG PG and ML
9 Chosen 3 x Flamer, PG and AC with fist, IoCG
11 Raptors, AC with fist and 2 Flamers, IoS
Lash Sorceror with Jump Pack
Greater Daemon
12 Lesser demons
6 lesser demons
OK. We rolled capture and control and deployed in a spear head. I managed to steal the initiative but this was largely wasted as he then re-deployed four units via Eldrad. I had deployed the chosen about 12 inches away from his rather packed behind cover so things weren't that bad. He left his tanks at the back and piled everything else together on the small forest that held his objective. I placed my objective the required 24" away on a hill with the dismounted ML squad on top of it. The rest I put as close to the corner as possible with the chosen infiltrating in front of his army behind some ruins. The empty Rhino went in front while the loaded Rhino went on my left, (the outside of the table) to rush forwards and then flank attack him.
CSM Turn One:
As I had seized the initiative I went first. The chosen advanced towards the woods which were about 12" infront of them. The empty Rhino rolled up next to the ruins giving cover saves to about half of my army. My packed Rhino flanked by heading up my side of the table and popping smoke. The raptors jumped up behind the Rhino ready to dive into combat in the next turn.
In the shooting phase I Lashed his pathfinders and formed them into a neat flamer template shape. I then hit all of them three times with the three flamers in the chosen squad. They all bit the dust. This was a bit of a highlight for me as I felt like it was going to be a cakewalk. I was wrong. The real warning was the whole rolling three dice and adding them together for the psycic test. That was painful and I only cast lash once in the whole game. If I could do it again I would have tried harder for line of sight to the harlies or or banshees.
The chosen couldn't then charge anyone as the unit they had shot were all dead. So they just stood there. raptors were out of sight so they were ok and the Rhinos had moved too far to shoot.
The ML failed to hit the Flacon I fired at so my first turn ended with some glamour as the pathfinders were gone, but that was small consolation after this first turn.
Elder Turn One:
Briefer this time
His Banshees and Harlies charged my chosen. six died. I was expecting more but I made a hell of a lot of power saves and his rolling was less than spectacular. I knocked out a couple in reply and then needed the re roll to pass my morale check.
The reapers took out three Raptors despite their cover saves. The falcon with the Fire Dragons moved about 15" and dropped off the squad who promptly immobilised my loaded Rhino. The smoke stopping all but one penetrating hit.
CSM Turn Two:
This turn started well with all three demon units arriving. I dropped the Greater by the stricken Rhino, and both units of lesser by the woods ready to charge the assault units and dire avengers.
The greater took out the Falcon despite needing sixes to hit and the lesser demons were hammered by the avengers and banshees. The Eldar initiative meant that charging was small consolation. I lost all combats. The chosen fled and were cut down, the demons lost about a third of each unit and hung in there thanks to their invulnerable saves.
The empty Rhino tank shocked Eldrad, who jumped out of the way and broke the dark reapers, managing to avoid being immobilised at the same time. Those reapers are pesky varmints!
Turn Three:
At this point the game all fades into a blur. So I am going to do two things. 1 keep notes next time and 2 summarise what happened to each unit.
The melta CSMs shoot all but three fire dragons who shoot back at the rhino, blowing it up and killing themselves in the 6" explosion. What a way to die. They then dash back to my objective as the reapers first slaughter the ML team and then all but the last melta marine who wins me the game by making his final cover save against the reaper fire on Eldar turn six! Hurrah. This squad just never really got engaged enough and I think I need to commit them more intensely in future.
The GD charged the other falcon but fails to even hit it. The rest of the game is spent trying to get into charge range of an eldar unit. It never happens. At one point I missed charging Eldrad by 3 mm. Almost. But then again almost is so far away.
The two units of lesser demons got whittle down but did take out a lot of harlies, avengers and banshees in the process. In the end I had a lone lesser on the enemy objective but there were a bunch of reapers to so it was one to me and none to him.
The raptors took out Eldrad despite him taking out three of them with his singing spear 2s to wound thing. My sorceror on a single wound after failing two psychic tests charged the dire avengers, took them all out but got killed by the exarch who was also I6. I forgot to fire his pistol at the unit. Must remember to do that in future.
The empty Rhino tried to tank shock again but got immobilised and wasn't able to shoot any more Reapers due to some appalling dice rolling.
Conclusion:
In the end I had a greater demon, four raptors, a lesser demon and a single csm with an Icon of Chaos Glory. It was far too close for my liking against an opponent who wasn't so great really...
As always I would appreciate your thoughts...