Ironhammer Season 4 Game 1

I had a game with James today - you remember him, especially if you're following Goonhammer. Same guy who crushed me during the Bug Hunt RTT a couple of weeks ago. I played against his Drukhari list again, and ever since I was matched up against him when I saw the pairings in Ironhammer Season 4, I already anticipated a loss.

Well, doesn't matter to me. Playing against a top player like James will teach me a lot, and I'm more grateful to learn from losing a game than...I dunno, having one-sided games like in the last RTT I was in.

Anyway, I should explain what Ironhammer is. Ironhammer is basically a season where you play 6 (or 7 in season 4 because we have 48 players) over 12-14 weeks. So it's like a league. Basically you're given 2 weeks to play a match with your designated opponent, and then you move on to the next game after that. I think that's the gist of it, so rather than a single one-time RTT, it's an entire season. The benefit is that you get to change your list here and there, just like I plan to do. It's meant to help us learn over the course of a season and become better players, so it's not just about winning. It's experimenting with your army to see what works and what doesn't, and then improve from there.

The mission today was Battle Lines, and I brought a vehicle-heavy army because...you know, I love vehicles. My list was as follows:

Imperial Knights super-heavy detachment (Mechanicus, Glorified History, Blessed Arms)

Knight Castellan, Cold Eradication, Cawl's Wrath

Knight Crusader, thermal cannon, meltagun and Ironstorm missile pod, Ion Bulwark

2 Armigers Warglaives with meltaguns

Adeptus Mechanicus Spearhead detachment (Data-hoard Forge World, Autosavant Spirits)

Tech-priest Enginseer

Cybernetica Datasmith

2 Kastelan robots with incendine combusters and fists

2 Skorpius Disintegrators with ferrumite cannons

You notice that I decided to switch to Data-hoard Forge World with Autosavant Spirits. Yeah, I'm a treadhead who loves vehicles (you've seen my Imperial Guard army), so I decided to try them out. I thought my vehicles - particularly the Kastelan robots and the Skorpius Disintegrators - would benefit greatly from them. Or so I hope, but things rarely work out the way I want them too.

Anyway, James brought the same Drukhari army as that other time. His list is already perfect, so I doubt he needed to change anything. He had Drazhar, 2 Succubi, 5 Wyches, an Archon, a Haemonculi, 2 sqads of 3 Kronos, 3 squads of 5 Wracks, 1 squad of 10 Trueborn, 2 squads of 5 Incubi (I think?) and Kabalite Warriors, 4 Raiders...and yeah, he also had the Court of the Archon with the Ur-ghouls and 5 Mandrakes.

The first turn started well for me, the Raiders failed to kill anything, and the Kronos didn't do much either. Apparently I had the advantage during the first turn, and I essentially wiped out the Kronos, weakened 1 Raider, and then I proceeded to kill the second squad of Kronos, destroyed like 2 Raiders and wounded the Haemonculi. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capitalize on my advantage because I made a series of blunders, allowing the Succubus to heroically intervene into my Datasmith and kill him before grabbing the objective, and the Trueborn or Kabalite Warriors stole the objective from my Knight Crusader. Oh, well. I tried.

After a good 2 turns, everything went downhill from that. James was able to deny me all the objectives, his Wracks and Incubi jumping from the surviving Raiders to grab my only objective. The Succubus destroyed my Skorpius Disintegrator, which blew up and killed the other one, but the mortal wounds weren't enough to take out all of the enemies surrounding them. My Knight Crusader went down to Drazhar and the Trueborn, but he ended up nuking them all, killing Drazhar, the Wyches, a couple of Trueborn, and even the Archon. I continued shooting stuff off the board, my Kastelan robots killing a Succubus and then the Mandrakes, while my Knight Castellan continued to shoot the Raiders off the board, as well as a few Incubi and stuff. He failed to kill the Succubus and eventually died to mortal wounds, blowing up everything except her because she was too far away. Oh, well. I tried. The Succubus then blitzed into my Kastelan robots and killed them. I ended up being tabled. Ouch.

Well, at least I did better this game than the other one. Because I failed to get any objectives, I only managed to get 27 points to James's 85. But it's okay, I learned a lot from this game. I look forward to putting the lessons into play next game.

Perhaps James was right. I relied too much on my vehicles, and the Skorpius Disintegrators didn't do much, to be honest. I should swap them out for infantry to hold objectives. I'm not sure if it would have worked, though, but we'll see. Let's see what happens in the next game! There are still 6 more to play!