Konor Campaign Battle Report 5

I finally managed to play a Konor Campaign game today! Over the past few weeks, Chaos has been winning and for some reason I didn't play any of the campaign missions. Wasted opportunity, especially with the Denthral one. Whoops.

Anyway, I ended up fighting a Tau opponent instead of Chaos. Not ideal, but still a very fun match and I love playing against this particular opponent. As you guys know, I had my ass kicked by him for the previous 2 games...well, the 2nd game was so close, almost managed a draw but the luck of the dice rolls went against me. Well, let's hope the Emperor smiles on me this game.

Well, my opponent as usual brought the awesome Tau list with the Stormsurge. He brought Commander Farsight, 2 Crisis Commanders with 4 fusion blasters each, 2 squads of 5 Fire Warriors, 2 squads of 3 Crisis suits with plasma rifles, 1 squad of 3 Crisis suits with ion cyclic blasters, a whole group of shield and gun and marker drones, 2 squads of 10 Pathfinders and 1 Stormsurge. He brought a Battalion Detachment and a Vanguard Detachment.

Me? I brought my 3 Imperial Knights in a Super-heavy Detachment - a Knight Paladin with Stormspear rocket pod, a Knight Errant with Stormspear rocket pod and a Knight Warden with twin Icarus autocannons. They are supported by a Spearhead Detachment of a Tech-priest Dominus with 3 Onager Dunecrawlers, all equipped with Icarus arrays.

Hell yeah! I have all the badges and the datacards for the Konor campaign! Gonna think of these as medals.

The mission was Death of a World, taking place on Loebos. Basically, my opponent was the defender and I'm the attack by virtue of being the Imperium faction. My opponent spread the 3 objective markers across his deployment zone, one in the left, one in the center and the last one in the right, behind some ruins. Well, they were all in the ruins. Anyway, what happened was that he placed his Stormsurge, Pathfinders and Fire Warriors all on a single objective in the right, behind the ruins to get cover or something, while his Commanders, Farsight and Crisis suits were all in Deep Strike. I spread my Knights out, with the Knight Paladin gunning for the right, the Knight Warden and Knight Errant going for the center and the Onager Dunecrawlers and Tech-priest Dominus on the far left.

2nd picture because I didn' take the first one properly.

Turn 1

My opponent failed to seize the initiative, even with a re-roll. Phew. So I got to go first. There wasn't much for me to do. I was aiming for the three objectives - if I had more models on the objectives than my opponent by the end of any turn, I immediately destroy them. My goal was to destroy all the objectives. Destroying 2 of them would give me a minor victory. It didn't matter - I only needed a minor victory. It was impractical for me to aim for a major victory.

So I advanced my Onager Dunecrawlers. They were all too out of range to shoot anybody, so they slowly crawled 1 or 2 inches up the table in addition to their 8" rule. The crawler rule meant they could only advance D3" instead of D6, which kind of sucks, but hey, I'll take it. My Tech-priest Dominus also rolled horribly on his advance move, a 1 or 2, so he only moved 8" and was lagging far behind my Onager Dunecrawlers.

Stormsurge, led by Farsight!

My Knights all moved up the table and began shooting stuff off the board. My opponent had cleverly hidden his Pathfinders out of sight, so I couldn't shoot them. Instead, I wiped out one Fire Warrior squad with my Knight Warden's Avenger gatling cannon and put 8 or so wounds with the combined firepower of my Knight Errant and Knight Paladin's Stormspear rockets, thermal cannon and rapid-fire battle cannon. I think I killed 1 or 2 Fire Warriors in a 2nd squad, but that didn't make much of a difference.

That was all I could do. I still couldn't capture any objectives.

My opponent then Deep Striked his Crisis suits right behind my Knight Paladin and Knight Warden. Farsight Deep Strike on his own in the ruins where the Stormsurge, Pathfinders and surviving Fire Warriors were. He moved the Pathfinders up into view, and then threw about 5 or so markerlights on my Knight Paladin. Those were the only markerlights he could put because they are heavy and his Pathfinders had to move. He then fired everything the Stormsurge had on my Knight Paladin, bringing him down to 1 wound. Everything that could fire, fired on him, even the fusion blasters. I made a few saves, until he was down to 1 wound. He then fired his 3 Crisis suits' plasma rifles on him, and I made 3 out of 4 saves. I then opted to spend a Command Point to re-roll that failed save and ended up saving that last wound. That forced him to divert 6 of his 18 plasma rifle shots from the other Crisis suit team at him and he finally destroyed my Kight Paladin. Ouch. The plasma rifles and ion cyclic blasters then fired on the Knight Warden and took off about 9 wounds. Ouch. This was bad.

Don't underestimate these little guys. They took out 2 Knights.

Turn 2

I moved my Onager Dunecrawlers up, but realized 2 of them still weren't in range of the Crisis suits, so I advanced them toward the objective on the far left. The surviving Knights also moved up closer to the middle objective. With nobody contesting them, if I could capture and destroy them, the victory would be mine despite losing a Knight.

My Knight Warden killed a whole bunch of Pathfinders, reducing them to 4. I think. The Knight Errant put a few more wounds on the Stormsurge, but really, there wasn't much I could do. Oh, the Knight Warden's twin Icarus autocannons killed a Drone or 2 and put 2 wounds on a Crisis suit. My Onager Dunecrawler that was within range fired and killed like 4 or so Drones, so I failed to kill even a single Crisis suit. Wounded one, though. Oh well.

This was not good.

One more Pathfinder fled because they failed morale. Then they put 4 markerlights on my Knight Warden and 5 on my Knight Errant. The Crisis suits jumped up and flew toward my Knights to shoot them. Everyone except the Stormsurge fired on my Knight Warden. It took me some nice ion shield saves to deflect the worst of the damage, but they eventually took down my Knight Warden, but my Knight Errant was mostly unscathed. Oh, and some unlucky rolling on my opponent's part - the Crisis Commanders failed to wound the Knight Warden with their 4 fusion blasters despite hitting all of them. Heh. Then the Stormsurge fired and took off maybe 11 or so wounds? I can't remember, but I know it wasn't a lot of wounds, and my Knight Errant had more than half his wounds left after all the shooting.

It was my win.

Turn 3

No...seriously. It was over by then. My Knight Errant was going to move to capture the center objective marker and destroy it. My Knight could still move at full speed because he has more than 12 wounds. Yay! He was less than 12" away from the center objective marker, so...yeah. That's definitely one point for me. My Onager Dunecrawlers were slowly crawling up to the last objective marker and there was nothing - absolutely NOTHING my opponent could do to stop them. All his forces were on the right side of the map, his Stormsurge anchored and out of range, his Fire Warriors out of range, his Pathfinders out of range, and his Crisis suits too far away to make it to where my Onager Dunecrawlers were heading to deny them the objective. In fact, if I advanced, I would have moved my Onager Dunecrawlers to the 2nd objective - they weren't that far away, and destroyed it by the end of my turn.

The Adeptus Mechanicus legions of Draconis IV and Imperial Knights of House Yato achieved victory, but at a massive cost! (Lost 2 Knights, ugh)

There was no use playing for a major victory. I had already lost 2 Knights and will most definitely lose my 3rd Knight by the end of my opponent's turn. I would have nothing that could capture and destroy the 3rd objective marker. So I achieved a minor victory by destroying 2 objective markers with my Knight Errant and Onager Dunecrawlers, and I was happy with that. A win is a win, and this is the first time I have ever beaten this particular Tau opponent. Thank the Emperor, praise to the Omnissiah!

So I contributed to the global campaign in my own way. I just hope the guys at Dreamers Vault log my battle results. I mean, I'm checking the website and there are no results recorded. Come on, guys! I have the Lords of War and I won about 2 games! Give the Imperium some much-needed victories! I'm begging you!

Well, if there's still no results logged by Saturday, I'll go again on Saturday and bug them about it. Funnily enough, while I want to play a 2nd Konor campaign game with this opponent, but against a different Tau army, there seems to be a Renegade tournament taking place on Saturday in Dreamers Vault. I'm talking about the one in St. Louis Park, Hiawatha. I have no idea what's going on, but I'm not going to take part. I mean, I heard one of the guys are bringing a Tau Supremacy Suit with 38 (?) Drones. No way in hell am I going against something like that. My Knights will melt in the first turn against that sort of firepower. I mean, I don't mind, but I'm not going to pay $20 to get my ass kicked. I would rather just play a normal, casual game against that and have fun. I don't mind losing, but $20? Against a Tau Supremacy Suit? Nah...

Anyway, I finally won, and Loebos is going to be destroyed at this rate! Woohoo! For the Emperor! For the Omnissiah!