Friday 15 April 2016

2500pt Heresy Battle Imperial Fists and Knights vs Knights and Lunar Wolves

I had the opportunity recently to catch up with a friend, and play against his Knights. I've only used Knights twice, so I was interested to see how it would go playing against them. The good thing is we played with completely painted armies on a completely painted board, so it was great to see it all in action.

The mission we rolled up was from Betrayal.
Mission: Dominion
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

We had 3 objectives (all mid-field) worth 3pts each, Slay the warlord, First Blood, Attrition (extra victory point if you destroy more enemy units than your opponent). In addition everything except Independent Characters, Flyers and Dedicated Transports were scoring.
This did mean the roads would be brutal going down.

This is my 2500pt army. I knew I was going against Knights,  I just didn't know what type and how many, so I went for as much anti-tank as possible.

Imperial Fists with Allied Knights

Legion Praetor Adalwulf
-Terminator Armour
-Storm shield
-Digi-lasers
-Paragon Blade

Primaris Medicae Omni
-Terminator Armour
-Storm Shield
-Solarite Power Glove

6 Huscarls
-3 Thunder Hammers
-2 Chainfists
-6 Storm Shields

Spartan
-Flare Shield
-Armoured Ceramite

Tactical Squad I
Sergeant with
-Power Fist

Tactical Squad III
Sergeant with
-Power Fist

Land Raider Proteus

Land Raider Proteus

Imperial Knight Paladin

Imperial Knight Errant

Knights with allied Luna Wolves
 Cerastus Knight Lancer Seneschal (Warlord)

Questoris Knight Errant Scion Aspirant

Cerastus Knight Acheron Preceptor

Questoris Knight Styrix Scion Arbalester

Luna Wolf Allies:
Chaplian
-Power Maul
-Artificer Armour
-Bolter
-Jump pack

10 Tactical Marines
Sergeant with
-Heavy Chainsword
-Meltabombs

7 Destroyers
-jump packs
-meltabombs
Sergeant with
-Thunderhammer

5 Reavers
-jump packs
-power fist
-2 power swords
-plasma pistol
Sergeant with
-power maul
-hand flamer


The scene is set...
  The traitor deployment.

Imperial Fists deployment.
The traitors get the first turn.
They move everything up. A few shots go off against my Knights, but to no lasting effect. The template on my paladin is a grav template.

Imperial Fists Turn 1
My Knights move up to shoot at the opposing knights. They manage to do 4 hull points to the Styrix, though its flare shield soaks the rest of the shots.
The Spartan 'Victory' unloads on the Errant, along with the Land raider 'Dauntless'. They manage to do 4 Hull points again. The last Land Raider 'Indomitable', can't draw a bead on the Errant, and instead takes some ineffective pot shots against the Lancer.
Traitor's Turn 2.

They moved up their knights, take off quite a few hull points of my Paladin, and then all 3 assault in. His Errant obliterates my Paladin. My Paladin, despite going at the same time, misses with all his attacks. The resulting explosion finishes off the Styrix.
Some new craters to add.
The battle against my Errant goes even worse, despite attacking first (as the knights went through cover), my Errant again misses with all his attacks. He is then quickly annihilated.
Imperial Fists Turn 2. At this stage, I have lost two knights and my friend has lost 1. The Spartan 'Victory', unloads the terminators, and shoots point blank into the Errant, but not enough to kill it. My terminators, then assault it, taking 3 casualties. They succeed in destroying the Errant, but the resultant scatter of 3 inches towards my Terminators, kills them all but my characters and 1 Huscarl. At this stage, with still 2 knights to fight, along with his marines, things were looking shifty.
My other Land Raiders line up and fire on the Knight Lancer, but only succeed in doing 1 hull point damage.
Traitor Turn 3. The Acheron moves up to my Terminators, and manages to splat them convincingly in the assault phase. The Jump Pack marines movie to assault my Spartan. At this stage I wasn't worried as I had armoured ceramite, however, melta bombs are not 'melta', but armourbane, so my spartan just destroyed by my ignorance. The lancer moved to the Land Raider 'Dauntless', and quickly smashed it to pieces, with my tactical squad make a quick disembark.
Clearing the streets.

Imperial Fists Turn 3 sees my Last Land Raider disgorge my tactical squad to shoot at the marines in front of them. I believe I killed 1, maybe 2 from the literal hail of shots pumping into them. The Land Raider again shoots at the Lancer, and scores 1 hull point damage.
My other Tactical squad moves up to the chaplains squad and unloads into them, killing 1 I believe. It was at this stage I thought, perhaps, I might be in trouble.
Traitor Turn 4. The assault marines fly into my tactical marines, and get beaten back, and sent fleeing. The Acheron fluffs its assault move into my Land Raider, buying me one last turn to try and bag their warlord Lancer. My other tactical squad, with El Fisto, gets sandwiched between the chaplains assault squad and the Knight Lancer. Unsurprisingly they get wiped out.
Imperial Fists Turn 4 sees very little. My marines fire heroically into the back of the fleeing jump marine, failing to do anything. The land Raider gets his final shot against the Lancer. If he bags this, then I would have at least have killed his Warlord. I manage to get though with 1 lascannon shot, and do, again, 1 hull point, leaving the Lancer breathing safely on just 1 hull point left.

Despite no other pics, you can certainly see what happened next. Everything dies and that is the game!

Final Victory points
Knights/Luna Wolves: 6
Imperial Fists/Knights: 0

I just couldn't take out the 4 Knights. I do feel my own luck with my knights (them not hitting anything at all), did not make things easy for me. That and not having the first turn, with an extra round of shooting, also meant that the Knights were in combat with only 1 round of shooting into them. The melta-bomb thing was also a good lesson to learn, so I'm glad that came up. Will remember that next time!

So after that slaughter, I did take away a few valuable lessons, and have bumped some things up on my painting table, so I have some more anti-tank weapons.

Still, despite the loss, it was great to play on such a great table with cool models and have a most enjoyable evening. And of course I now know how hard Knights are to play against!

Thanks for looking

Cheers!


4 comments:

  1. That was a pretty damned fun game, although horribly one sided in my favour.

    I don't think you were lacking in anti tank fire. 1st turn to you would have seen one of my knights dead for sure and maybe a second. The bigger issue was your Knights fluffing their CC attacks and both of us firing Errrent Melta Cannons at Flare Shielded targets. The unlucky scatter of my dying Errant didn't help things, your Huscarls should have by all rights messed up my Acheron some too.

    I'll put my full list below and a link to my battle rep too. Quickly though the MkVI jump troops were Reaver attack squads, which are super cool. The MkV jump troops are a Destroyer squad..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Army List:
      Cerastus Knight Lancer Seneschal (Warlord)

      Questoris Knight Errant Scion Aspirant

      Cerastus Knight Acheron Preceptor

      Questoris Knight Styrix Scion Arbalester

      Luna Wolf Allies:
      Chaplian
      -Power Maul
      -Artificer Armour
      -Bolter
      -Jump pack

      10 Tactical Marines
      Sergeant with
      -Heavy Chainsword
      -Meltabombs

      7 Destroyers
      -jump packs
      -meltabombs
      Sergeant with
      -Thunderhammer

      5 Reavers
      -jump packs
      -power fist
      -2 power swords
      -plasma pistol
      Sergeant with
      -power maul
      -hand flamer

      The mission was a rolled up from Betrayal.
      Mission: Dominion
      Deployment: Hammer and Anvil

      We had 3 objectives (all mid-field) worth 3pts each, Slay the warlord, First Blood, Attriton (extra victory point if you destroy more enemy units than your opponent).
      In addition everything except Independent Characters, Flyers and Dedicated Transports were scoring.

      Final Score was:
      Knights/Luna Wolves: 6
      Imperial Fists/Knights: 0

      Delete
  2. below is where you can find the battlerep from my PoV, with plenty more pretty pictures.

    http://ultramarsecession.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/tides-of-war.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers for the info! I really need to keep track of these things with notes during the game. Something I need to work on. Thanks for information, I'll update the post with the added info.

      Cheers for the game as well! 4 Knights is brutal, though I am already plotting my rewenge!

      Delete