All Gravis Army

I actually had a plan for a couple of games today, first against my friend who wanted to practice an all Gravis army for Waaaghfest next year. The second was suppoed to be Crusade...but unfortunately, the usual Crusade gang went MIA. I was already aware that a couple of them would be out of town because of the holidays, but yeah...I didn't expect almost nobody to show up. Only Adrian did, and since we were on the same side, we couldn't really do much. Also, I don't think it was a good idea to play my Black Templars against his Imperial Guard...

Anyway, I ended up playing the practice game for the Waaaghfest before the Crusade that ended up not happening. I guess we'll be doing Phase 3 on New Year's Day instead. Hmm. We'll see. Hopefully it'll be fun because it's the last 100 power level/Strike Force game before we move on to 150/Onslaught. As for the other game, it turned out pretty...unexpected.

So my friend brought a list that was all Gravis. It sounds pretty good on paper because you have an army that's all Toughness 5. He chose to play them as White Scars, curiously enough. I think his plan was to run them up the table with their assault weapons and shoot without penalty (so melta rifles, hellstorm bolt rifles, assault bolters, autobolt gauntlets, etc.). Then extra damage in combat later, especially with the Aggressors. So his list looked like this:

White Scars Battalion

Chapter Master in gravis armor, with autobolt gauntlets (I think?) and a Warlord Trait that gives him +1 wound against vehicles and monsters

Primaris Captain with master-crafted heavy bolt rifle (the one in gravis armor)

2 squads of 5 Heavy Intercessors

10 Heavy Intercessors

2 squads of 3 Aggressors

4 Aggressors

3 squads of 3 Inceptors

2 squads of 3 Eradicators

I think that's about it? Yeah, he mentioned that he would have 47 Toughness 5 gravis models with 3 wounds each running around the table, so that sounds about right.

I brought my usual Crusade list - you should be familiar with it by now, it's the same list that I used against Drukhari on Wednesday. Primaris Marshal, Emperor's Champion, Primaris Chaplain, 3 squads of Assault Intercessors, 5 Bladeguard Veterans, 4 Sword Brethren, 2 Redemptor Dreadnoughts, and 2 Repulsor Executioner tanks. We used the Open Play cards or something, the ones with the Twist and stuff like that, so as to simulate the crazy Waaaaghfest games. Fortunately, there were 6 objectives that we placed to mostly mirror each other. Then I got first turn.

I'm not sure how to say this, but perhaps it's the type of terrain that we had, but my opponent was unable to hide all 47 of his Gravis models, even with like 6 Inceptors in Deep Strike (so 41). He sort of castled up his gravis dudes in the middle of his deployment zone, so I had a good amount of shooting. My Repulsor Executioner fired and basically killed 3 Eradicators and 2-3 Heavy Intercessors. The Redemptor Dreadnought then fired and killed 2 Eradicators with his macro plasma incinerator. The other Redemptor Dreadnought then fired and only had 1 shot for his macro plasma incinerator, which meant he failed to kill the last Eradicator, but I think he did some damage to the Aggressors. The second Repulsor Executioner, on the other hand, killed the last Eradicator with the twin heavy bolters, and then blitzed the two squads of Aggressors, killing all 7 (probably 1 was killed by the Redemptor Dreadnought). With the exception of the second Redemptor, I was rolling 5s and 6s for the macro plasma incinerators for the two Repulsor Executioner tanks and Redemptor Dreadnought, which allowed me to basically wipe out the Eradicators and Aggressors. Wow, just wow. I'm not sure what else to say other than...yeah, wow. Oh, the pintle-mounted multimeltas on the Repulsor Executioner tanks helped a lot as well.

In the first turn, I essentially wiped out almost half of his army (more like 1/3), taking out all of his Eradicators and 2/3 of his Aggressors. With just 4 models from my army - nothing else shot, nobody charged, nothing. That was unbelievable.

My opponent then conceded because he had no way of taking out my tanks. We kind of tried to simulate what would happen - his remaining Aggressors still wouldn't be able to get within charge range of the Repulsor Executioner, my guys would just disembark and charge, while I continued to wipe out the remaining Heavy Intercessors and Aggressors with my two Repulsor Executioner tanks and Redemptor Dreadnoughts' 3 Damage plasma weapons. He had no other forces to contest the other objectives, and I probably would just win on objectives anyway. That was just...brutal.

Okay, that was an unexpected victory, but it turned out that my list countered his list hard. Like really hard. The answer to an all Gravis list was to bring about 4 macro plasma incinerators that did 3 damage each. Furthermore, with their AP -4 (going to AP -5 in the first turn because of Devastator Doctrine), that meant that his poor Heavy Intercessors and Gravis guys wouldn't get any saves. So...yikes. And each shot that went through killed a model. In the first turn alone, I basically killed 16 models, basically 1/3 of his army. And he had no anti-tank left, so...yeah. It would be near impossible for him to destroy my Repulsor Executioner tanks, not with Strength 5 D 1 weapons. The only units that would have a shot would be the plasma Inceptors, but they'll deep strike, maybe do some damage (and hopefully not blow themselves up with supercharged plasma), and then get shot off the table or charged.

Not...exactly a good scenario. Oh, well. I guess we'll be trying out another game after the holidays! This time I'll switch my Repulsor Executioner tanks out for Terminators instead!