lunes, 18 de julio de 2016

A Green Dawn: Eldar Second Turn

My strategy seemingly had paid off after the first turn, having collected more points than my opponent, and also able to disable his vanguard of vehicles without too much complications. However, I started to worry about the fate of my list pitted against the knight, given that he could easily era one or two units of bikes off the table every turn. I decided to bait him with the Seer Council, the only unit seemingly able to withstand its fire, and focus the rest of my army into wiping the minor threats. He had way more units on the left side, so I thought that on principle I should block him there and see how the Council fared on the right on its own. Yet, my tactics were dependant on which objectives I got for the turn, which were:

Secure Obj4
Secure Obj5
No Prisoners (1VP for killing a unit, 3-5 units for 1d3, 6+ units for 1d3+3)

With those aims, I needed to control the center of the board this turn, unless I wanted my opponent to rob me of all those points on the next turn. No prisoners seemed easily to do, but hard to get more than one point given the circumstances. To make things worse, I counted on the Swooping Hawks to come in on this turn and help me grab any objective, but I got the worst reserves result possible and ran out of scoring units. This is a schematics of how I moved.



I rushed my Shining Spears towards his wagon fort on the left, hoping to overwhelm them in close quarters and dig them out. Taking risks, I advanced my scatterbikes on the center hoping to reach both objectives in the town's plaza with my assault moves. On the right, the Seer Council, as I had planned, ignored the Battlesister Squad next to their position and squeezed themselves between the building and the Rhino, drawing line of fire to the Knight.

My psychic phase diminished in power, surely syphoned away by the storm, and I got only two dice to add to my now 12, for a total of 14. Plus, I had to discard a power from the Warlock Squad, as their Mastery Level had been reduced after suffering casualties. I went with Destructor/Renewer, as I did not think I could heal autarchs that were on the other side of the board, and there was only one infantry unit that could threaten me on that side of the board.

As for the powers cast, they went like this:
Farseer casts Fortune on Seer Council on 4 die= Cast
Warlock Council cast Protect on council on 3 die= Cast, deny fails
Farseer casts Terrify on Battlesister Squad on 2 die= Cast
Warlock Council cast Horrify on Battlesister Squad on 2 die= Cast
Farseer cast Psychic Shriek on Battlesister Squad on 3 die= Cast with reroll
Current Ld = 4, 3d6 = 11, 7 wounds. Morale Check= Stay

So with half my pool I renewed the powers that allowed me to kept the aura of invencibility around my Council, mainly Fortune and Protect, that my opponent tried to stop to no avail. With his Deny die already counted for, I decided to use my remaining 7 die on the Battlesister I was leaving behind, and to which I still had line of sight with my Telepathy Farseer and Warlocks. Thanks to the allmighty 3+ to activate charges, I launched my power combo perfectly, landing Terrify and Horrify on them for a massive -4 leadership penalty before hitting them with Psychic Shriek, rolling 11 and causing 7 wounds, making sure the squad was mauled enough as to not cause me further problems on that lane. 

During the Shooting Phase, I resolved the situation on the right flank first, with the Seer Council letting fly as many Singing Spears as they could on the Knight, and managing to scrap a couple of Hull Points off from it. Next, the Scatterbikes on the right opened up against the decimated Battlesister Squad and scored two more casualties, leaving the Priest leader alone. On the center, with the HQ squad as the only target, the other Scatterbikes units scored a good round of shooting, first one unit disposing of the shielded crusaders on front, and the second wiping out the Assassins and the Canoness with their volley. Finally, on the left, one unit of Shining Spears tried to get rid of the Rhino without success, just managing to shake it, while the other two units shot at the Battlesister Squad between the two vehicles, scoring 6 dead, more than half the squad. 

This is how the battlefield looked so far:



For the assault phase, I planned to focus on getting the No prisoners Objective, as I had already killed one unit during shooting, (the HQ conclave), and had two pretty close to being wiped out as well.  Both units of Shining Spears shot into the targets they had weakened during the shooting, the Sororitas Rhino on the upper left and the castled Battlesister squad. The Exarch finished the Rhino without problems even although his squad failed to do so, and the Autarch unleashed his attacks on the poor sisters, who ended wiped out without being able to answer, letting the Shining Spears consolidate back in front of the disabled Exorcist. Finally, I repositioned the Seer Council, forcing a couple of terrain checks, but not daring to assault the Knight with them this turn, and also grabbed both central objectives with my Scatterbike squads.

This is how the map looked as my turn ended:


For this turn I got:
1VP Slay the Warlord
1VP Secure Obj4
1VP Secure Obj5
1VP Secure Obj5 (Stolen from my opponent)
2VP No Prisoners 

And those were another 6 points. At this stage, even with the Knight looming over my forces, I think I had him against the ropes. The advantage on VP was huge, and I had slain mostly his entire infantry while almost all my force was still present on the field. I don't even think he had any chance of recovering in VPs at this stage, but the campaign forbids to concede before turn 3, as the Victory Points are cumulative.  

In that situation we went for the second half of the turn,


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