Tuesday Throwdown 06/21

 Dante, Bishes!

After an extended hiatus, I managed to set aside the time to meet up with friends and field my 40K forces at Olympic Cards and Comics (OCC)- and let me tell you how I have missed it!
Duties such as our baby, the process to find and purchase a house, coupled with work afforded me little time to devote to this hobby. With a balance slowly emerging in my personal life I am able to focus, once again, on the war-ridden 41st millenium. And during my brief hiatus the Grey Knights finally received their updated codex, with an impending pink-slip to Imperial Guard's (IG) allies only weeks away.

Yesterday I met up with Six-Deuce, Jacoran, and friend's Don and Sean at Olympic Cards and Comics to field my Blood Angels in a couple of 2,000 point games. Also present were Mike, Jeff, Mat, and Greg (I think your name is Greg, however, if my memory has served incorrectly forgive me, good fellow).

My first game pitted my Blood Angels against Six-Deucer's "Bug-Jagers" in a kill point game. Six won the roll-off and chose to go first; this was perfect for my Descent of Angels list that I chose to play. Following is that list:

• Dante
• (2) Sanguinary Priest(s) w/Jump Packs
• (1) Honor Guard with (4) Plasma Gun(s); Jump Packs
• (3) 10-man Assault Squad(s); Sgt with Power Fist & Infernus Pistol. (2) Melta-Gun. Jump Packs
• (1) 10-man Assault Squad; Sgt with Power Weapon. (2) Flamer. Jump Packs
• (2) Vanguard Veteran Squad(s); Sgt with Thunder Hammer. (1) Veteran with Power Weapon. (3) Veteran's with Melta Bombs. Jump Packs.

I reserved my entire force,and ran into my first rules' snag of the night. During the deployment phase, I didn't declare any combat squads.  I had read and perhaps misinterpreted the FAQ with regards to assigning combat squads to units in reserve- I thought that I had to wait until the units arrived on the table (deployed) to combat squad them.
Oh well- as Six pointed out that it would only provide him the potential for more kill points. However, a ten-man unit is a hefty foot print when rolling even rolling one D6 to scatter. Six was truly worried- the second time I have seen him visibly concerned playing against him. He admonished that his list coupled with the kill point mission would be hard pressed to compete with my Descent of Angels list...Yet, by the end of turn five victory would be his.

Due to shoddy troop placement, I ended up rolling three mishaps (ones and twos), and scattered a fourth unit off of the board! One a VV squad, the rest assault squads. In fact, my second game of the night (against Sean's Death Wing list) resulted in a loss for me- another painful but valuable lesson in troop deployment! My units were spread about, piece-meal, across the board, which provided Sean the opportunity to engage units singly with relative impunity. Add to that fact that someone (being me) devoted my plasma gun-wielding Honor Guard and Dante to tangling with a unit of bikes on the side opposite of both objective markers and you get one messy recipe for a Blood Angels puree. Sean has had about as much luck as myself winning a game of 40K, and as much as losing sucks, seeing a friend finally win a game was well worth it.

Why didn't I bat-rep it? Oh man, I was slumming with "counts-as" troops to cover the plethora of assault figures I do not own, heh. Likewise, many of my marines were unfinished; missing arms, jump packs, and even weapons! My poor ghetto-troop have spent the last seven months packed away in storage boxes in various states of assembly. I plan to allocate the necessary time to finishing my army so that painting can commence on my troops! With excuses aside, expect more iPhone bat-reps in the future from yours truly!

Closing Thoughts with regards to my DoA list:
I had a lot of fun with this list. Ever since I watched Jawaballs field his Blood Angels against Fritz over two years ago, I had been smitten with the idea of marines that excel in assault. The idea of decisive close-combat in this game is what drew me in to the 40K universe for a second time in my life. I will admit, that out of all of the lists this noob has played so far (using assault termies, storm raven, mechanized assault) this one was my favorite to date. I will play this list some more, swapping out Dante for Astorath, or even two Librarians' to see which I prefer.

In the mean time I'm on the hunt for good tutorials (videos, articles, etc.) on deployment and such for new players. I'm going to dig around Fritz's videos on Youtube- he used to have a few gems. Please share any suggestions you may have.

Is that Dante, or a Droid that specializes in Human-Cyborg relations?!

Edit: Purgatus has been kind enough to devote time and energy covering my list, and DoA in particular over at his blog, "Best Overall" that is worth a look. I'm looking forward to part 2 which should extrapolate on ideas presented in part 1.