Special Mission 2

Today we tried a new special mission, which I hereby dub "Lords of War". Huh, maybe I can create a new series next time. Priests of War, Lords of War and Gods of War. Sounds fun, and they'll feature Imperial Knights heavily in the latter two books and the Adeptus Mechanicus in the first book. Ha ha. I've to start writing Freeblade once I've submitted my thesis. We shall see. I'll need to write Freeblade first, but I'll write a new post for that next time.

In this post, I'll focus on Lords of War. So the staff at Battle Bunker and I were wondering how the new Stormsurge would work against other Lords of War. We read through the Godbreaker clash or whatever it's called in the White Dwarf and agreed that it's pretty boring. Ack. Not our type of game. So we decided to just play normal killpoints, by situating our Lords of War at the back of a 72" table and move them each other for the kill.

The first match was Imperial Knights versus Stormsurge. The rules were simple. KILL! Well, we had this fun thing where we placed as much terrain between our armies as possible, and basically if a super-heavy or Gargantuan Creature walks through the terrain, it gets destroyed. Pretty cool, huh? So it looks like this at first:

The beginning of battle

Anyway, our armies were pretty simple. I brought a Knight Paladin and a Knight Warden, 375 points each, no upgrades. My opponent brought 2 Stormsurges, and upgraded them to the Pulse driver cannons so they were 375 points each as well. Yay. 750-point game, basically. Don't mind the models, we proxied the Riptides as the Stormsurges as nobody had finished building their models yet.

So my Imperial Knights smashed across the table, and I wounded the Stormsurge with my battle cannon at first while I made my Ion shield saves against both cannons. Phew. S10 AP2 is no joke. Same thing with the Destroyer missiles, and man, without the markerlights to turn them to Strength D, the S8 is almost useless against my Imperial Knights, and whatever shots managed to glance got saved by ion shield.

However, 8 wounds made the guy hardy so taking 2 wounds wasn't something to cheer about. Except that once my guys were within range, the Avenger Gatling cannon basically tore a huge chunk of health out of him. Poor guy. But he still wouldn't go down and I failed to charge him because he was too far away. I think my opponent fired back and this time he took off 2 hull points from one of my Knights.

I eventually finished the wounded Stormsurge off with the Avenger Gatling cannon and battle cannon shots while the other Stormsurge took another 2 hull points off my damaged Imperial Knight. I then finally charged the last guy with a vengeance and rolled a 6 with one of my hits (I got 2 hits, I think). Boom. A full-health Stormsurge died in combat before he could even strike back.

Aftermath - destruction is guaranteed!

Yeah, as you can see above, my Imperial Knights basically razed a path toward the Stormsurges, rampaging and destroying the buildings in between to get to their targets. Ha ha.

Conclusion? Basically, the Stormsurges suck against other Lords of War. My opponent reflected that if he had kept the normal D weapon, he would have nuked one of my Knights when they got into such close range. I agreed and pointed out that if he had markerlights, it would have been a very different game, with 4 Destroyer missiles hitting my poor Knight at Strength D (8 if 2 were brought, but why waste all of them on 1 Knight when I have 2?).

Then I remarked that if I had been playing Wraithknights instead, I would be the one getting wiped on the floor because they are so undercosted. That gave my opponent an idea and we decided to repeat the game with Wraithknights this time.

Imperial Knights versus Wraithknights (2 proxies)

As Wraithknights are so cheap, my opponent could bring 3 of them with the Strength D Wraithcannons at a mere 295x3 = 885 points. So I had to upgrade 2 Knights to get 885 points too. That led me to choose my trusty Knight Crusader with battle cannon and Stormspear rocket pod, and I also brought in my Knight Paladin back, this time giving him a Stormspear rocket pod.

This time, I stayed where I was while my opponent advanced. I did 2 wounds with the battle cannons at first, and they got closer before running. Phew, I had 1 turn where I survived. The next turn I had no choice but to move forward as they were within range of the 36" Wraithcannons and I basically failed to wound the injured Wraithknight with my battle cannons, Avenger Gatling cannon and Stormspear rocket pods, with him making all his 5+ invulnerable saves. Oh boy.

The next turn, he fired all his Wraithcannons on my Knight Crusader, and only 2 hit. But he only needed 2. He rolled 2 sixes, and my Knight Crusader went boom, no saves allowed. Ouch.

My Knight Paladin managed to take 2 wounds off the injured Wraithknight with battle cannon and Stormspear rocket pod, but failed to kill him, as I expected. Oh well. He survived the next round of Wraithcannons, which thankfully didn't score any sixes on the Destroyer table this time, and made his ion shield saves. Unfortunately, 2 of them charged into him and took 4 hull points off him with their Initiative 5, S10 attacks. OUCH.

I hit back and rolled a 6, thus destroying the full-health Wraithknight. Muahahaha! Combat continued in my turn and I basically lost a 5th hull point but managed to kill the Wraithknight with my Strength D Reaper Chainsword. Phew.

Again, my opponent moved his last Wraithknight forward and fired whatever he had in his Wraithcannon, and I survived by making my ion shield saves (no sixes again). I moved forward and fired whatever I could, but my battle cannon rounds scattered both times and struck my Knight Paladin both times - how unlucky can I get? Fortunately, I rolled ones on both scatters and my Knight survived. I did 3 wounds with Stormspear, but my opponent made all but one of his invulnerable saves. I then charged and wounded the guy with my Hammer of Wrath, which meant the guy took only 1 wound, and 2 in total. Speaking of which I realized my opponent had forgotten his Hammer of Wrath attacks in the last round of combat, but it was too late and he said it was all right. Oh well.

It was his victory anyway. Even with the Hammer of Wrath, the Wraithknight struck at Initiative 5 and blew up my Knight. Even as my Catastrophic Explosion went up, I rolled a 1 on the D table and he basically saved that 1. Sigh. So it ended up in my opponent's victory, his 3rd Wraithknight still on at least half his wounds.

My opponent agreed that Wraithknights are undercosted - and even if we think about it, unlike the Stormsurges, the Wraithknights do not need markerlights or anything to boost their power - and look! They performed so much better than the 360-point Stormsurges! WHAT?! Not only that, I pointed out that with the Eldar Warhost, people could potentially take up to 5 Wraithknights in a 2,000-point list, and in fact we already have people doing that. The winner of one tournament took 4 Wraithknights to cement his first place while his runner-up brought 5 Wraithknights. Just wow. At least Imperial Knights have their counters - a few drop-pods of melta-Marines could easily blow them up as you saw in one battle report, and I remember losing one in combat to Thunderwolves Calvary before being tabled. Sigh. Wraithknights? I don't know, will melta or plasma drop pods kill them? I highly doubt it.

Anyway, that's for better skilled players than me to say and analyze, and I'll continue trawling the Internet for ways and strategies to counter Wraithknights rather than whine and demand that Games Workshop nerf them or something. Ha ha. Oh well, I like the formations anyway. We'll see.

Happy gaming!