Grand Narrative: The Warm Up Match
Okay, okay, so I said this would be posted up "soon" after this actually happened, and soon was apparently just over a month away. I haven't been lazy though, I have been incredibly busy getting mentally prepared for my weekend away at Warhammer World which is only a week away (eep!) as well as focusing on my online store which has taken a huge amount of my time...
So, as some of you maybe aware of through my several posts about the event, I will be attending the Grand Narrative; from sniping a ticket as soon as they were available to joining the event player exclusive Discord channel, it's been a very exciting time for me.
More recently however, I booked a table at HATE club and arranged a game with one of my fellow Interlopers for a little warm up match to get the ball rolling and see each other's playstyles. It was a friendly game and not at all competitive, we just brought along whatever units we wanted to play with. For me, that was a Canoptek Court with all five Cornetto flavours of Crypteks - yes, even the Psychomancer. This was then backed up with 3 full units of Scarabs, two Warrior Units, a unit of Immortals, Deathmarks, a Doomstalker, a Reanimator and Ophydian Destroyers, as well as some Lokhust Heavy Destroyers of course.
My opponent went a different route however, with 2 units of 3 Skorpekh Destroyers, 2 units of 10 Flayed Ones, a big ol' stinking unit of Warriors and a Seraptek Heavy Construct... No one at the club (including myself) had never seen one in person so that was going to be fun!
Now I've decided not to go into full details like I do in my usual battle reports, and instead I'll be treating this as a highlight reel. I do not have the inner strength to relive this battle, it was traumatic already...
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| Little did I know that this would be the deployment that would end me |
Slaughter in the first round
In hindsight, I probably should've thrown in the towel after this turn, it was an absolute slaughter fest. We were playing with the (now outdated) Tyrannic War mission cards and we pulled the Primary Objective of taking objective markers in no-man's land, home objectives did not award VP. In addition, we also pulled the special rule where there was an extra objective in no-man's land. So why would this affect me negatively you may be asking.
Melee units were the bane of my evening
For starters, I had a list that heavily favored shooting as well as fielding big infantry blobs - I had 3 Lokhust Heavy Destroyers, 2 Warrior Units, and, of course, a full unit of Immortals; the best hope I had in combat were my 6 Canoptek Wraiths. My opponent meanwhile had 2 full units of Flayed Ones, 2 units of 3 Skorpekh Destroyers and a Seraptek Heavy Construct. I stood little chance of holding no-man's land against such a combat heavy list.
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| The Seraptek is a beast to behold |
My opponent won first turn as well, and thanks in part to his infiltrating Flayed Ones and titanic canoptek unit, both Warrior blobs were all but destroyed in a single turn, a few survived to reanimate but not many at all - Seraptek anti-horde weapons hurt! My triple Scarab threats didn't last long either despite my best efforts to hide them. I need to practice a bit more with the Reactive Subroutines stratagem I think.
Death of the Seraptek and the Psychomancer
With the combined firepower of my Lokhust Heavy Destroyers and my Canoptek Doomstalker, I was eventually able to bring down the Seraptek Heavy Construct but not without sacrifice. My opponent was able to roll a successful save against a Gauss Destructor shot that I had hoped would bring down the Titanic unit and presented me with a tough decision - does my Doomstalker follow through with my original plan to blast the nearby Skorpekhs away after the Seraptek's assumed demise or should I put everything into destroying the Seraptek Heavy Construct Instead? Remembering how much damage it caused me previously I reluctantly chose the latter and succeeded, but at the cost of not halting the Destroyers advance.
The Psychomancer... surprisingly, not rubbish!
My Psychomancer, on the other hand, was surprisingly not rubbish. I took it without a unit as it doesn't provide any buffs whatsoever, instead I hid it behind a ruin as the Psychomancer abilities do not require line of sight and battle shocked a unit of Warriors he competed with for an objective marker, scoring me a Secondary Objective (one of only 3 I scored). My opponent, as I predicted, only blew the Cryptek off the board when he had nothing else to shoot at.
So the results?
Not good for the Khertet Dynasty I'm afraid. Between the Flayed Ones, Skorpekhs and the Seraptek Heavy Construct, my poor ol' shooting heavy Canoptek Court got absolutely smacked silly. We called it a turn early but since I only had a Doomstalker (who was in combat with a Skorpekh Lord at the time) and a Heavy Lokhust Destroyer, and being so behind on points I think it's fairly safe to assume I had lost the game.
Post game I had realised I had forgotten everything I learned from my Crusade games, and completely underestimated the damage 2 units of 10 Flayed Ones can do. I should have held back a bit against such a melee heavy army and counter attacked instead of creating a gun line at the front of my deployment zone thinking my weight of shots would come through for me, though to be honest the points my opponent would have earnt before I would've had the chance to counter attack probably would have won him the game regardless. Either way I'll be sure to remind myself of the lessons I learned here at the main event.
Casualty!
Unfortunately a piece of resin terrain fell over straight on top of a Heavy Lokhust Destroyer's bonce and broke him off the stem. Not what I wanted to happen a month before the main event!
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| The only "real" casualty of the battle, to add insult to injury! |
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