This should
be my final one for a while. 4 games in 2 weeks, and now my wife is starting to
give me the look.....
This time I
am taking on Alex_H and his NIds. It has been a while since we had played and
this is our first 7th game.
We played
1500 points. I am a big fan of this value.
1.
It allows plenty of chat throughout the game and
still be finished at a sensible time. This game took 5 hours!
2.
Choices have to be made. At 1750 you can
generally get everything you want in your list, and 2000 you can take an extra
something a bit special that you have not used to see how it plays without
affecting your army too much. 1500 something has to give. You can’t have all
your fancy units and toys to play with. Some have to stay in the box
3.
There is so many rules to remember in 7th
and trying to keep track of what is going on you need to keep it as simple as
possible.
I had chosen
3 lists initially so I could choose which to take at the time. The first was
based on my unbound terminator list from a few games back. This time I used the
Dark Angels codex with Belial, a librarian, 5 DW Knights, 2*5 DW and 1*10 DW.
It looked good and if I was playing the emperors will missions then I think
would have had a chance, but playing Maelstrom I did not have enough units or
manoeuvrability to cover the board. Also I had no flyer protection (in
hindsight I may have worried about that too much).
The next 2
lists were basically the same. The main change was terminators for stern guard.
Here is the list I settled on:
Chapter
Tactics: Imperial Fists
I initially
wanted 3 typhoons and was going to drop a talon. I am worried about Nig flying
monstrous creatures as they can vector strike and shoot good weapons, as I
found out. The grounding test now is definitely may FMC a solid choice for
armies
His list
(CAD)
Winged Hive
Tyrant
Winged Hive
Tyrant
Venomthrope
Exotrine
Harpy
Mawloc
4
Zonethropes with a Nuerothrope (sp?)
4 Zonethropes
2 Spores
As you can
see the basic minimal troop choices, and they don’t even have objective
secured! I was not really expecting such a small force. When I think of nids I
normally think loads of gribbly stuff supported by some fancy big stuff.
As Alex and
I had played a few game recently we decided on a mission neither of us had
played, Maelstrom 4. This had an interesting twist where both you and your
opponent can claim tactical objective “secure objective X” when they are in
your hand! The newer codexes will be at a slight advantage here as they only
have 12 of those and 24 other ones where using the one from the books there rae
18 “Secure Object X” cards. As we both have an older codex it levelled out.
Again I am
not going to give a turn by turn report, but here are some of the main
highlights.
·
I set up with the heavy stuff at the back. The
idea was for the scouts to infiltrate up field and the 2 tactical squads (the
assault half) would get forward for objectives on the other side.
·
I was interested to see how the whirlwind would perform
as I had not used one. It would have been ok against a horde list but against
this high armour/inv save list it was pretty poor. Will I still get the
model.....probably
·
Initially forgetting about the sternguard! But
when they came on they were OK. Helped kill a squad of zonethropes for first
blood. There second round of shooting against the Exotrine with only 2 wounds
left....5 grav gun wound and he made all 5 of his 5+ cover saves!
·
The librarian was poor but a cheap HQ choice. I
am not sure what other option a marine player has. The others are more points,
and a captain needs even more points to make him useful. The librarian did get
shrouding off once but failed a perils test, and eventually died. He is a bit
of a soft VP for slay the warlord and also some of the tactical objectives
require you to kill the warlord and offer D3. In the turn he died he gave up
3VPs.
·
I worried too much about the spores. They
couldn’t get objectives and worst of all they didn’t give up any VP’s killing
it first did not get me first blood.
·
Again the lack of solid mobile units, objective
secured or not, was my opponent’s downfall. He bunched in one corner and all I
had to do was bombard him. He could not go and get the other 4-5 objectives. I
had enough stuff to cover lots of area and on turn 4 I controlled every
objective on the board. I was picking up objectives on both of our turns. It
could be said I had reasonable luck in
getting the objectives, but I generally covered 4-5 of them in most turns.
·
The legendary deathstar units are a thing of the
past at 1500pts. I can’t see how you can justify 450pts, for something like a
land raider and a squad of assault terminators (about a 1/3rd of
your army) and still have enough stuff to get everywhere. Edit: my sternguard
and librarian were 372pts!
·
The internet whinge about a lot of things! I was
out gunned 8-1 in psychic phase. Did anything horrible happen in the psychic
phase, no it didn’t? Power went off, powers failed, powers were nullified. Even
rolling 3 dice for a warp charge one was failing. Additionally he got half of
the charges from the zonethopes who used up a lot of points that could have
been spent on other things.
·
The final score was 17-4 at the end of turn 4
where Alex conceded. His flyers were bombing around causing problems but
nothing else was on the board. The flyers would have had to land to get the
objectives when my fire power should have been enough to sort them out
·
Net lists are they any good. Alex played a
strong net list that is doing the rounds. I think it would have been ok in the
emperors will games. KP wise at the end I was 5-5. If we had carried on playing
I had a lot of easy KPs that his flyers could have dealt with, but his
venomthrope was about to go splay and his mawloc had one wound left.
In review of
my last few games. A solid core of marines is a hard army to beat. They have
survivability and can manoeuvre very well. Boss Bludtoof has been playing something
similar since 4th but the older rules set and missions didn’t suit
“balanced” armies. Now they do and we all have to adapt (apart from Boss Bludtoof!)
The aim of
the game should not be to build a list that will be rock to your opponent’s
scissors. I think the missions have produced a good levelling effect for this.
Will we see the deathstar unit again? Yes, but not at 1500 and maybe not even
1750.
Pictures:
Setup-
Turn 2:
The End:
