The last game I played was for 1500 points against ultramarines. I chose a lord with VOD, flame gaze and lightning field. I also had 2 x 10 warrior squads, 10 immortals, 10 flayed ones, three heavy destroyers and the nightbringer. My plan was to use VOD to get close and rapid fire his most dangerous unit, and then tie him up in CC with that unit and infiltrating flayed ones until the nightbringer arrived to finish him off.
The ultramarine player chose a librarian, 2 x 10 man troop squads, each with a power fisted sergeant and melta gun, 2 land speeder tornados, 1 dread with assault cannon, 1 devastator squad with 3 missile launchers and a lascannon, a terminator squad with 2 assault cannons, a small scout sniper squad with a missile launcher, a small tactical squad with a lascannon, and a vindicator! He didn’t move much, just stood there and kept shooting.
He won first turn and moved the vindicator a bit forward, enough to get line of sight on one of my infiltrated flayed ones. After the scatter roll and a poor WBB roll 4 were killed.
I used VOD to bring in a warrior squad and attack his most dangerous unit, the vindicator, and immobilized it. I brought up the heavy destroyers and destroyed one of his landspeeders.
On turn 2 just about everybody he had shot at my warrior squad, knocking it down to 1 and the lord. He used his snipers to pound my immortals as they tried to move forward. He used the devastator squad and remaining tornado to good effect against my heavy destroyers, killing two. They failed their WBB rolls.
When it was my turn I moved the remaining heavy destroyer back to stay out of assault cannon range, and then blew one weapon off of his dread. The immortals took out two of his terminators. I charged my lord and few remaining warriors from the VOD unit into one of his tactical squads, figuring that they were strong enough to do a lot of damage and survive long enough to allow the nightbringer to get there. That didn’t happen. Between the power fist on the sergeant and the librarian’s force weapon I lost them all, including my lord.
I don’t recall the specifics of the rest of the game. My flayed ones all died during the next shooting phase, I managed to kill the dread, vindicator and terminator squad, and even wiped out one of his tactical squads with the nightbringer before I got phased out. I never touched his devastator squad, the sniper squad or the small LC squad.
The problem I have is that he has too many units with long range heavy weapons. It seems like no matter how many I kill, there is always another unit with a missile launcher, lascannon or assault cannon. He always phases me out before I can get them all.
The Nightbringer did great against the one tac squad he managed to reach, but took forever to get there. I can’t use VOD to get him into combat any quicker. What good is it to have the best cc model in the game when he can’t reach the enemy to get into cc until it is too late to make any difference? Whenever I use destroyers or heavy destroyers he just shoots them first with his heavy weapons. They never earn their points back. I didn’t use VOD with the immortal squad because the last time I did I destroyed his vindicator, but then got shot to pieces by all of his other units. I didn’t want to lose such a valuable unit again during turn one, and so chose the warrior squad, which was just as effective. If I don’t use VOD I get destroyed as I slowly march up the board toward him. If I do use it I get one good turn of shooting before getting slaughtered by all of his remaining force.
Sorry for the long post, but I figured that some detail would help you help me. This game would be much more fun if I won occasionally.
