Meltdown Mayhem

 Well, yesterday was quite a disaster. I went up to Phoenix to participate in Meltdown Mayhem, another cool RTT, and Phoenix is a great place. Nice store, like Next Level Wargames in Woodbury. I changed up my list from last week, taking out the Armigers Moirax to add infantry to my list for objectives, while swapping the Questoris Knight Cruader for the Cerastus Knight Atrapos. Certainly, while I could get a lot more secondary objectives (no more less than 20 points score), it didn't work out for me. I lost all 3 games. Ouch. Yeah, it was brutal.

Anyway, this is my list:

Imperial Knights super-heavy detachment (Questoris Imperialis, Glorified History, Slayers of Beasts)

Questoris Knight Preceptor, Ion Bulwark, Sanctuary

Cerastus Knight Lancer, Strike and Shield

Cerastus Knight Atrapos

2 Armigers Warglaive with meltagun

Adeptus Mechanicus Patrol detachment (Slaved Systems Forge World: Ryza)

Skitarii Marshal with Exemplar Eternal

5 Skitarii Rangers with omnispex and transuranic arquebus

5 Skitarii Vanguard with omnispex, plasma caliver, phosphor blast pistol and power sword

2 squads of 5 Ruststalkers with transonic blades

So yeah, I was hoping to use the Skitarii to get me objectives, but in the end they died too quickly, and I didn't score as many points as I hope to. Better than zero, perhaps? But they lack the resilience of my Knights, and Objective Secured and Banners are useless when my opponent could charge them and kill them in a single round of combat.

Match 1

The first mission was Retrieval, if I'm not mistaken. My opponent fielded an Adeptus Custodes list. I can't remember what he had, but I recall he had at least 6 jetbikes, a bunch of Sagittarum, 2 squads of Venatari and Allarus Terminators. Huh, seems like it was an Outrider detachment, because I don't recall any Custodian Guards (and I vaguely remember him telling me that). Oh, and 3 Pallas grav-attack tanks if I remember correctly. He also had a squad of Sisters of Silence.

Um, so what happened? I think he took out my Knight Lancer with his Allarus Terminators jet-bikes despite the 4++ invulnerable save in melee and Strike and Shield while I...probably just killed a couple of Allarus Terminators in return. That was bad. His Sisters of Silence camped on an objective with the Sagittarum, while the tanks remained at the back. Try as I might, I just couldn't kill the Sagittarum despite my Armigers Warglaive moving up to shoot them. I did finally kill one Pallas tank in the second turn, after failing all my melta shots in the first turn. That's it, I'm probably taking the Armigers Warglaive out of my list for my next game...ugh.

The Venatari jumped around to grab objectives and killed my Skitarii Rangers and Skitarii Vanguard, and eventually pinged my Knight Preceptor to death, along with the jet-bikes. On the other hand, the Knight Atrapos did well in this game, killing all of the jet-bikes before charging into the Allarus Terminators. He failed to kill them...but he blew up and killed the last surviving Allarus Terminator. Meanwhile, my Ruststalkers heavily injured one Pallas tank before they were hosed off the board by the Allarus Terminators. The other Ruststalker did manage to kill the Sisters of Silence, but they got held up in combat with the Sagittarum and failed to kill all of them, with one guy left at the end of the game. And these same Sagittarum also survived my Armiger Warglaive's attacks. Just...wow. Sigh.

Being tabled except for one small squad of Ruststalkers, I lost the game. Got some of my secondaries, which brought me up to 50+ points or so, but that was nothing compared to the 80+ points of my opponent. I might have fared better with Armigers Moirax with this, if I could kill the Sagittarum to deny him the objective, and they certainly would survive better against the Venatari than the Skitarii.

Match 2

The second mission was Surround and Destroy. I met my opponent back at WaaaghFest! If you remember, he was the one with Chaos Knights. Unfortunately...even with more Knights, I got destroyed again.

His list was as follows:

Chaos Knight Super-heavy Detachment

Cerastus Knight Atrapos

Dominus Knight Castellan (or Knight Tyrant, whatever)

Knight Rampager

2 Armigers Warglaive (or War Dogs, whatever)

Armiger Helverin (or War Dog, whatever)

Damn it! I got so excited about playing Knights versus Knights that I forgot to take any pictures of this match! What a waste, he had a beautiful army too. Well, I think I have pictures of his army from WaaaghFest, so check out the WaaaghFest for how his army looks. I got too excited and completely forgot about pictures for this match, sorry. I kind of get carried away playing the game sometimes.

He went first, and obviously that made all the difference. I lost my Knight Atrapos in the first turn (or was it second?), taking heavy fire from the Knight Castellan and other Knight Atrapos. Fortunately, I managed to destroy his War Dogs, but I just couldn't kill his big Knights. Popping off Rotate Ion Shields, his Knight Atrapos survived all the attacks from my Knight Lancer, taking only 8 damage, and then he proceeded to destroy my Knight Lancer. How in Holy Terra? My dice rolls were pretty bad while he rolled hot. This was just...disastrous. My Knight Preceptor was next, blown up by the Knight Castellan, though my Skitarii Vanguard eventually destroyed the Knight Atrapos, but by then I already lost both squads of Ruststalkers.

At least I scored big on objectives, getting 60+ this time, thanks to Banners and Primary. Still, it wasn't enough to save me from being tabled and he went to 80+ points, if I'm not mistaken? Again another loss, even though I tried to play the objectives after losing so many Knights. Oh, well...I should have gone for Bring It Down! instead of Titan Slayer. Sigh. But, yeah...him making all the saves and going first made all the difference. This time, I doubt my Armigers Moirax would have helped me much, but hey, we all do what we need to do.

Match 3

The final mission was Overrun. This time I played against the same Adeptus Mechanicus player that I played against 2 weeks ago, the one who wiped out my Skitarii, only for my Knight Castellan to survive no matter what he threw at it. It went the same way this time, heh.

His list was something like this:

Adeptus Mechanicus Battalion detachment (Lucius)

Skitarii Marshal

Tech-priest Manipulus, Holy Order Genetor (I think? The one that gives them transhuman physiology or something).

20 Skitarii Rangers

20 Skitarii Rangers

20 Skitarii Vanguard

20 Skitarii Rangers (or was it 10? I can't remember)

3 Ironstriders Ballistarii, 2 twin cognis lascannons and 1 twin cognis autocannon

2 Ironstriders Ballistarii with twin cognis lascannons

3 Kastelan robots with incendine combustors and kastelan fists (he took that idea from me, heh)

Cybernetica Datasmith

2 squads of 5 Sicarian Infiltrators

10 Sicarian Ruststalkers

5 Pxterii Sterylizors

I might have gone first, but I didn't do very well. I did manage to take out 2 Ironstriders Ballistarii with my Knight Atrapos, but once again my Armiger Warglaives fluffed their shots and failed to do anything to the other Ironstriders Ballistarii. That's it, they're going out. The Knight Preceptor also didn't do much, but he did take out quite some infantry, I think? But he fluffed his big gun and maybe did a couple of wounds to the Ironstrider Ballistarius with twin cognis autocannons. The Knight Lancer stomped a few Skitarii Rangers to death. I think that's about it. Then my opponent moved his Kastelan robots and Sicarian Ruststalkers forward and destroyed my Knight Atrapos. Everything went downhill from there.

I did manage to destroy all of his Ironstrider Ballistarii by the second time, but he had so much infantry that it was impossible to mow them all down, despite having blast weapons and Titanic Feet. My Armiger Warglaives, once again, didn't do much, though I killed a single squad of Infiltrators with 1 of them. I managed to kill 20 Vanguard and 20 Rangers between my remaining Knights, but his Sicarian Ruststalkers killed my Ruststalkers, Vanguard and Marshal, while the Pxterii Sterylizors swooped in, roasted my Skitarii Rangers, and then charged and killed them to take my objective and remove my banners. Perhaps banners wasn't a good idea for this mission. I should have gone with Retrieve Octavius Data or something. Not that it mattered, because I just couldn't score any primary objectives this game. Objective Secured, 20-men infantry...yeah. Eventually I killed all of them, including his Ruststalkers, but he still had 3 Rangers remaining, as well as the Sterylizors and a Datasmith, whereas I had 2 Knights and an Armiger Warglaive. No matter what he did, he just couldn't kill any of my Knights, thanks to me wiping out his Robots and Ironstrider Ballistarii much, much earlier. Phew. Even so, I lost on objectives, being denied the Primary for so long. That was rough. I might have done better this game and my robots survived, but not being able to score any Primary was brutal. So I only had like 40+ points this time while he had like 80? Or 70? I can't remember, but he maxed out on Primary if I'm not mistaken. I denied him Titan Slayer, though. Heh. So that's good. Still kind of sucks to lose despite managing to survive.

For my next RTT, I'll probably take out the Sicarian Ruststalkers and Armigers Warglaives, and replace my Knight Atrapos with a Knight Castellan. The Knight Atrapos doesn't really do much, if you ask me. I think I shouldn't be throwing my Knights forward so aggressively, for they were simply too vulnerable to a lot of things, I should keep them back, prevent deep strikes in my deployment zone, protect my frail infantry better so that they can score me points and primary objectives. We'll see. I'm still not sure how I'll do it, but yeah. We will see how it goes on Thursday. Till then!