Epic at The Games Cube

Sunday (29th September) we had a impromptu game session at The Games Cube in Parramatta.

Was just two of us. Given there is no October CoD day (due to MOAB event) i'm looking at this as kinda my replacement session.

Was good. We had Krieg (imperial guard) vs my Knights.

Was something different for my opponent as they haven't been up against knights before and they're a bit different to many of the other armies being used locally (marines, eldar, dark eldar, vraksians, chaos, ork (orks are probably the most similar in style to krieg)).

Don't particularly want to make this a full battle report, just some pics and notes. 

The Krieg list had lots of heavy-hitting blobs that were to be avoided in either close-combat (gorgon infantry) or at range (stormblade, shadowsword, macharius group and warhound pack).

Without any super-specific strategy in mind i divvied up my force into left and right groups.

Turn one was shifting things forward a bit but making sure not to over extend.

From memory my opponent jumped too far ahead with his warhound pack and lost one of them to a clipping assault.  The baron group doubled and shot to weaken them, then the rough riders engaged with infiltrate (leaving the knights free for some nasty support fire).  The remaining warhound retreated. This was the main action on the right side of the board.

Turn two and over on the left side of the board the knights and heavy tanks were trading shots at long range. Not ideal but the knights were resilient enough to weather most of the damage.
Most of the knight's fire was focused on a single stormblade tank (plasma blastgun) just to try to reduce activations further - though it also held out quite staunchly. the gorgons sneaked up a bit and managed to use their mortars as well.

An advantage that the knights had was two sets of thunderbolts which worked the krieg's deathriders. The krieg had one formation of hydras stationary in the centre of the board and flying along the edges meant the aircraft were relatively unhindered.
End result was the baron formation and death riders were able to advance up the right side of the board.
In general both armies were activating most formations fairly well. There were only a low number of failures and in those instance the supreme commander reroll usually resolved the matter successfully.

At turn 3, on the left side of the board the krieg gorgons and infantry and crept up to half-way. the knights were 'retreating' to ensure they avoided engaging for as long as possible.
The lancers jumped up into cover on the right side of the cathedral and started shooting at the hydras, leaving the AA and Castellans to cover the back line.

At end of turn 3 krieg were up 1:0 so onto turn 4.

One gorgon did engage the two paladin formations (intermingled, 4 knights all up). The krieg didn't put out all their forces (probably unaware of the punishment knights can dish out) and hoping for a 'clipping' style victory. From memory they might have also been a little out of range.
However... the knights managed to inflict a whole bunch on the squishy infantry - combined with a favourable dice roll in the calculation they pulled a victory for 1xDC worth of damage. 
Each knight gets 3 dice (2x DC + EA1) so it's very much a case of rolling a handful of dice for very few models on the board.
They also rolled a lot of hits against no armour-save units.

As victors they also got their activations which helped turn the game. While a gorgon group managed to make it to the knight blitz the pair of castellan knights denied the objective (also shot at the shadowsword, breaking it) - being turn 4 i wasn't worried about an engagement in round 5 at this stage).
The baron formation managed to destroy the remaining warhound and advance toward the krieg blitz. (they were preparing for a clipping assault but the warhound carked it before that happened - no complaints here). 

By this stage the krieg were low on activations with the knights having several formations to play with. One paladin sat on the take and hold to deny it (though the shadowsword was already broken, as was the infantry blob - pic below). 
The marcharius group on the left side failed to activate, even with reroll (phew!!).
The group of 3 paladins rushed up and attacked the hyrdas hiding behind the cathederal destroying them. 

The lancer group who had been little more than a target for the first half of the game swung up the right side of the board along the road (extra 5cm per movement; yes please!!) and managed to move to capture range of the blitz and break the deathstrike silo sitting there (lucky).

And that was it.

The final result was 2:0 knights. Blitz  +  Take and Hold.

Both of our BTS were intact (regimental hq group and baron formation).
We both had unbroken units of our halves. 
Neither of us were holding all our own (3) objectives.

The clincher was probably knights having enough formations to deny the objectives and/or being able to break enough krieg formation stationed near objectives.

Overall it was an entertaining game. Some aspects were resolved by the dice but there was a lot of considered manoeuvring and placement, so very dynamic - especially given they're both quite slow, cumbersome armies.

This was the remaining units from the knight side (not too many casualties).

As is often the case, i'm sure my opponent learnt a great deal about the Knights from this battle and i'd expect some tweaks to his strategy when next we play. Not knowing your opponent's strengths and weaknesses is a huge 'problem' and the only feasible solution i can think of is 'more games'.

Fortunately i've played krieg a few times now which undoubtedly helped.

For my opponents i like to use only one or two armies so they don't have a constantly changing array of opponents.

Good session.

Until next time...