Grand Tournament - 1st Round - Battle Report



My first game at this years Grand Tournament was against a pure Drukhari army.

Not someone I have managed to face before, but have seen some of the highlights on the internet. 

My opponent Rich & I were on separate tables, with no one to face off against. 

Resupply Drop was the mission and Dawn of War was our deployment type.

Rich's List can be seen below:




It was an interesting one, and to be honest i don't know enough about the army to know if this is a good bad or indifferent list. 

I did know that I was going to struggle! 

Turn 1:
He stole the initiative! 
My step hadn't put me at a disadvantage though, I always try to deploy assuming I won't go first, so that didn't cripple me. 

His movement put his Bikes, Void Raven Bomber and one of his Fighters out on my right flank.

He deep struck in three units, the first of which I elected to spend 2 command points for my Custodes to get to shoot at him. He in return decided to use his Agents of Vect to stop it, thankfully rolling a 3 and giving me my command points back.

His next deployment put guys within 12" of my Intercessors, so I rinse and repeated, using the Space Marine stratagem this time. That managed to kill 3 of them. 

1 charge on his turn 1, with five Wracks (check the name) Charging my Custodes on the left flank. Two died to Overwatch and the remaining 3 fell to the squads blades, although one of their brethren died in the combat phase

No failed morale checks with the Tantalus giving everyone LD 10! 

My Turn 1 result in me advancing - thinking stupidly that I could lock down his armies shooting as I usually do. It wasn't until the shooting phase that I appreciated that Fly means I can't do that... the problem with not playing enough games against people with Fly, let alone nearly an entire army of it. 

By this point though I was pretty committed! So in my opening turns shooting I managed to reduce both of his flying infantry units to 1 guy, while shooting took wounds off a couple of his flyers and transports. 

The charges on my left flank failed with both the Custodion Guard & Shield Captain failing, while I did get the Allarus Terminators, Vertus Praetors & my Warlord in. 

The Allarus Terminators managed to nab enough wounds that coupled with the Mortis Contemptors shot, the Tantulus was down to 9 wounds left. 

The Vertus Praetors were split attacks a little preventing them form making the full effect, with 1 guy on the Venom, 1 on a Raider and 2 on his fighter. All up I didn't kill anything but a serious number of wounds were lost

The Shield Captain managed to kill 3 of the bikers. 

Turn 2: 
So they moved out of combat. No real surprises there! 

The shooting this turn flattened my Contemptor and between combat and shooting all of the Allarus Terminators died, while the Vertus Praetors were reduced to a 2 man unit, with one guy down to 2 wounds. 

The Drukhari are as a fast as I thought! 

My turn 2 resulted in a bit more movement and some charges into the Tantalus, bikes & one of the fighters... My shield captain wounded the Tantalus once out of 9 dice rolls, to which of course it saved on a 6+ ! 

My other Shield captain failed to kill the unit he was engaged with, while the Librarian again failed to win the Ld roll off for Psychic Scourge. 






Turn 3:
By this point we were actually running out of time with only 27 minutes left on the clock. 

Shooting didn't actually do much for him this time, with the Vertus Praetors falling to his Warlord, however I didn't have anything close enough to get to the Objective that stayed out of the 3 he rolled for. 

My turn rocked up and the Objective ended up being the one he was parked on and too far away for me to advance my Shield Captain to. 

That basically mean that the 15 minutes I had was about 8 minutes of planning out if I could win, or draw and how to do it. 

I could take the objective closest to me off him, easily in fact, however that would mean no Linebreaker, that with him having first blood would mean I lost 4-3. 

So instead I left my Captain in his deployment zone to score Linebreaker. I then had to deal with his fighter in my deployment zone to get rid of Linebreaker for him. 

All in all it came down to a choice.

My Custodian guard could, with a 5 or 6 get on their advance get close enough to contest (and therefore claim) the objective, or with an 8" charge they could do the same. 

So we gamed it out, I got line breaker, he didn't as my captain killed his target. 

Then it came down to the charge (I figured slightly better odds on the 8" charge than the advance). 

I got a 6... not enough! 

The game ended 7-1 to him rather than 4-4 to me, or 4-1 to me had I shot the guy holding the objective. 

We ran out of time which was disappointing, but entertaining because it meant we had a really close game right there at the end. 

Had the objective I rolled for been either of the other two and I would likely have won as I could easily claim it and the one he had left giving me a 7-1 victory. Ach well.

It was a great game, and i look forward to the next one tomorrow!


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