Mission:
Chapter Approved Mission: Scorched Earth(slay the warlord, line breaker, first blood)
Tiebreaker: Kill points.
Deployment: Dawn of war variant with a forward wedge.
Lists can be found here.
Index Guys Turn 1
Our army was split up between the hard-hitting deep-strikers and the chaff holding down objectives. Since the Not Heretics deployed expertly to deny a turn 1 deep strike on any important targets we decided to camp on as many of our objectives as possible with what could be called "capping units", having limited stopping power. I wanted to secure first blood and destroy what I thought was one of the faster moving units(tomb blades) so I charged one of the two Starweavers forward and shot, the short range of the fusions barely reaching their target. I learned this game that unlike 7th edition you are not allowed to pivot your vehicles before or after their movement for free, pivoting now costs inches. Tomb blades die to fusion but the rest of the turn 1 shooting does superficial damage. The Y'vahra started out on the board and was placed very back on the board despite its low range, expecting to be a large shot-magnet.
Not Heretics turn 1
There was minimal movement from the necrons/dark angels, keeping their great positioning intact. Wraiths and scarabs moved forward, denying even more space for deep striking since we didn't drop anything turn 1. The cocky Starweaver got shot into wraithbone-swiss cheese by the Doomsday ark and hellblasters, its crew also being reduced to a single lucky troupe master. The drones took some casualties and the other Starweaver got a wound as well. I played really badly here since I forgot the -1 to hit from the harlequin transport.
Index Guys turn 2
Y'vahra moves forward, slowly but surely. The Shas'ui inside was feeling particularly skittish about this battle so he didn't jump up in the air to deep strike into a more advantageous position. The troupe from the remaining Starweaver disembarks and moves forward to engage the wraiths and one of the flanks. The 12-man troupe, Shadowseer and the T'au Commander and Crisis suits come down from deep strike in the best possible positions they could - each going on a different flank. The enemy Scarabs were particularly well-positioned, pushing me back almost to my deployment zone when doing my deepstrike. Shooting this time proved more efficient - but not by much this turn, 3 wraiths, one squad of marines, a couple of scarabs and one hellblaster succumbed to the combined fire. I need to be more careful though when measuring melta range for the fusion pistols because 3" is a lot less than it looks and I should double-measure it. The cascade of failures on my part continues in the assault phase when the large troupe and the lone master multi-charge the hellblasters and the wraiths. In what was probably the move that cost me the combat - I attacked with the troupe master first, hoping for a couple of reliable kills on the hellblasters. The Necrons capitalized on this and interrupted combat with 2CP and attacked with the wraiths murdering 4 or 5 troupe members. This mistake cost me not only a good chunk of the troupe but it also cost me morale IRL, completely losing my patience and confidence for the game here, especially after the rest of the attacks were effortlessly shrugged off thanks to the wraith's saves and Azrael's invulnerable bubble. On the opposite flank the command barge was reduced to 1 health. Thankfully the drones and kroots held the objectives so that still kept us in the game.
Since the game was going very slow we were told we would only have 1 more turn to play after this one so objectives became a lot more important. There were some slight moves but both the Dark Angels and Necrons mostly held their ground this turn.
A complete and utter massacre ensued as the large troupe was reduced to only 1 member, the troupe master slain. Most kroot have also been murdered, leaving only a couple and the Shadowseer on Objective 2. The Command Barge and the Doomsday Ark veiled of darkness away from the flank where they would be threatened by the Y'vahra and shot the Crisis suits and their drones to pieces. Two harlequin players survived on the objective where the Barge and Ark retreated from.
Index Guys turn 3
At this point there was very little we could do other than try to run to objectives. Everything was too far for the Y'vahra to engage, but the T'au commander tried valiantly to shoot down the marines off one of the objectives. The last remaining player from the 12-man troupe tried desperately to square off against a wraith but neither fusion pistol nor harlequin's kiss managed to get through the 3++.
Not Heretics turn 3
The final round of the game, due to time concerns. The entire right flank surged forward and mopped up the kroot, shadowseer, drones, the last player, all the while the Inceptors deep struck behind our lines - devastated whatever they could find there and capped the objective. This was a mop-up round for the Necrons and Dark Angels because other than the Y'vahra which didn't get to do much this game we were basically out of punching or staying power. Because of some good charges from the vehicles and the timely drop of the Inceptors a large number of command points were secured - tying the victory points and winning the tiebreaker massively due to kill points.
Summary:
If I am honest I found this game extremely frustrating due to the mistakes I made early and that just caused me to make even more mistakes. I forgot a lot of my own rules and even mistreated the strength and AP of my own weapons in a couple of combat scenarios, not to mention that trying to move into advantageous positions came off as measuring a couple inches more or worse making illegal moves(from now on I'll just measure a couple less not to appear as a WAAC player and make the experience frustrating for my opponent as well). Just when I thought I was getting a hold of the new edition I realized that there were a lot of subtleties that still elude me - like the no-pivoting, the issues with movement(and how movement is calculated) and the tremendous importance of positioning and combat order which practically lost us the game. Morale and attitude are definitely two things I need to improve since both played a large factor in the loss as well, me practically giving up mid round two - only continuing to do whatever I could thanks to the motivation of my teammate(for which I thank him).
