I had a long Horus Heresy day yesterday, which was just great. It's been a while since I played Horus Heresy, almost a year if I remember correctly. The Janus Campaign last year, actually...so I was delighted when my friends organized another Horus Heresy day. So I joined in and we had quite a field day.
This time, there wasn't a narrative. We just showed up with our 30K armies and had games, which was fine by me. Still pretty fun. This was the first time I was playing my new Legio Cybernetica army...I say new, but it isn't actually brand new. Most of the Cybernetica models were stuff I have slowly collected over the years, as you probably already know. I mean, you recognize my Thanatar, my couple of Castellax, and my Vultarax, along with the Magos and Tech-priests that I already use in regular 40K, right? Only 2 of the Castellax battle-automata were new, but otherwise evrything else had been collected over the years. Oh, and I added Mechanicum Knights - which is why I have 2 Knights Moirax with graviton pulsars and a Cerastus Knight Atrapos. I also added a Knight Errant because...yeah. I needed a regular Knight anyway, so might as well. In any event, my Legio Cybernetica list looked something like this:
Taghmata Mechanicum, Legio Cybernetica
Archmagos Dominus with graviton gun and power sword
Tech-priest Auxilia with cortex controller and 4 servo-automata armed with servo-arms
2 Castellax battle-automata with mauler-bolt cannon
2 Castellax battle-automata with Darkfire cannon
2 Vultarax strato-automata
Thanatar siege-automata
Thanatar siege-automata
Mechanicum Knight Moirax Talon of 2 Armiger Knights with 2 graviton pulsars
Questoris Knight Errant
That's for the 2,500 point list. The 3,000 point list allows me to add a Stormspear rocket pod to my Knight Errant and moves the Knights to an allied Questoris Knight Crusade army...meaning I have a Cerastus Knight Atrapos as my Knight Seneschal (HQ), a Knight Errant as a Scion Marshal and the Knight Moirax Talon as Scion Amuntar, both of which are considered Troops and thus scoring units. Yay.
My boys (bots?) did me proud yesterday. Seriously, praise the Omnissiah! I love my Legio Cybernetica army! They did not let me down at all!
Match 1
The first game I played was against Salamanders, and it was a 2,500 point game. I can't remember what he had...it looked something like this:
Some Character Dreadnought as HQ, the Dragon guy with AV14...
2 Tactical squads (can't remember if they had 20 marines each)
2 squads of Fire Drakes (Salamanders special Terminators)
2 Land Raiders
1 Saber Tank with volkite slaker
1 Skorpius Whirlwind or something with that insane Strength 8 Barrage missile launcher (Sorry, I can't remember the name)
The mission was War of Lies, if I'm not mistaken. I went second, unable to seize the initiative, and he moved his dudes forward, especially the Land Raiders. I think one of my Thanatar ate quite a bit of lascannons, as did my Knight, who went down to 2 wounds or so after taking a few hits. The Vultarax also lost a wound or 2 from the volkite attacks from the Saber tank. I struck back and destroyed his Character Dreadnought with my Vultarax Strato-automata. That was hilarious. Haywire is so broken in this editionn. Not to mention, my Armiger Moirax crippled and immobilized a Land Raider, and the Fire Drakes had to get out and footslog toward my deployment zone. My Castellax and Thanatar slowly wiped out the tactical marines throughout the entire game with plasma stuff and Darkfire cannons, which was insane. Don't you just love plasma wave?
My Vultarax Strato-automata and Knights Moirax continued to wreck the Land Raiders with their grav weapons, and the Vultarax eventually swooped upon the Skorpius and destroyed it. I think it was my Knights Moirax who wrecked the Saber Tank. But not before the Skorpius killed my poor Tech-priest Auxilia with a barrage blast and damaged my Knight again. On the other side of the table, the Fire Drakes went forward and wrecked my Knight Errant...who simply blew up and did several Strength D blows to them, nuking the entire unit. Ouch. On the other side, the second squad of Fire Drakes rammed into my Thanatar and Knight Moirax and tied them up in combat, and I had my Castellax and surviving servo-automatas crash into them. I lost three of the servo-automata eventually, but with Smash granting my battle-automata and siege-automata AP 2 in close combat, I was finally able to destroy the Fire Drakes. Better yet, the Strength 8 of the Thanatar meant Instant Death. Holy Omnissiah.
By the end of the game, I think my opponent had a few tactical marines or so left, but we held like a similar number of objectives? 2 to 2. Unfortunately, I killed way more units than he did, so even though we rolled a 6 and lost 1 victory point (him) and 2 victory points (me), thanks to me killing a lot more, I won the game like 11 to 4 or something. Or was it 10 to 3? That was just...brutal. I didn't expect my Legio Cybernetica to be so...killy.
Match 2
The second game was Tide of Carnage, and it was another 2,500 point game...this time against Iron Warriors. What did he have again? Uh...
Some Special Iron Warrior Character Warsmith
10 Tyrant Siege Terminators
1 Spartan Assault Tank (their dedicated transport)
1 Mortis Contemptor Dreadnought with 2 twin lascannons
Contemptor Dreadnought talon of 2 Dreadnoughts with Kheres assault cannon and fist
2 Tactical squads of 20 (?) marines each
Typhon tank (is that the name?) the one with the Strength 10 AP 1 cannon
We had Hammer and Anvil for deployment, so the mission meant we needed to have scoring units in each sector to get points - 3 in our respective deployment zones, 5 in the no man's land, and 7 in the opponent's deployment zone. That was...yeah.
Once again, I got second turn and failed to seize the initiative. My opponent basically nuked my lines with the Typhon tank...except that he only collapsed the shield construct on 1 Armiger Knight Moirax and did maybe 1 hull point of damage against my Knight Errant. The Tyrant Siege Terminators let fly with their Cyclone missile launchers and did 13 wounds to my Vultarax strato-automata. That hurt like hell...until I made 9 5++ invulnerable saves and only 1 Vultarax died. Whoa! Lucky break there! Holy Omnissiah, that was a lucky break! Some people claimed that the Vultarax got nerfed when Forge World faq-ed them to remove their flare shielding and replace it with atomantic shield, but I think having the 5++ atomantic shield is a lot better than the flare shielding reducing Strength of attacks by 1 (blast and template weapons by 2). So yay!
I proceeded to nuke his Typhon tank with haywire from my surviving Vultarax strato-automata and Knight Moirax talon, glancing the damned thing to death. Try as I might, I was only able to take out 6 Siege Tyrant Terminators, leaving 4 of them (I think?) despite shooting them with both Thanatars and the Castellax with Darkfire cannons. Ouch. I wasn't able to kill many tactical marines with the Castellax's mauler bolt cannon because of the Sergeant's 2+ armor save artificer armor. Yikes.
My opponent then destroyed my Knight Errant with the Spartan assault tank and the remaining Siege Tyrant Terminators. Ouch. I had to scramble to haywire the Spartan to death while my Knights Moirax and Darkfire cannon Castellax eventually destroyed 2 of the Contemptor Dreadnoughts, including the Mortis Dreadnought. Meanwhile the other Contemptor Dreadnought made it to my lines and got into a slugging match with my Castellax battle-automata with the Darkfire cannons, killing one of them. I had to use Smash attack on the damned thing because Strength 6 can't do much against AV13. Yikes.
Fortunately, I was able to whittle down his tactical marines by a lot, throwing pie plates after pie plates of plasma from my Thanatar. The Vultarax helped by firing his havoc launchers and I annihilated one squad. The other squad was also decimated and only a single Sergeant survived along with the Warsmith, who ran away. Oh, and the Contemptor Dreadnought, who was locked in combat with my Castellax. Yikes. But hey, it is what it is. The sergeant remained in the No Man's Land, securing my opponent 5 points...until I ran my Castellax battle-automata with Mauler cannons to deny him the No Man's Land. Heh. That was hilarious.
With the combat ending in a stalemate, the Contemptor still unable to kill the Castellax, who was also unable to take him out even with Smash, they got stuck there. But I still had a Scoring (?) unit or Troops on my deployment zone, which means I had 3 points. Neither of us had the No Man's Land while the Contemptor Dreadought, Sergeant and the Warsmith were the only ones who survived. I had more units than him, so I scored that secondary objective of the player having more units surviving, and we both scored Price of Failure because we both lost our Lords of War. That meant I had 5 points to his 1. It was a good thing I was able to deny him the No Man's Land with my Castellax battle-automata, otherwise I would be screwed. No, seriously. I might have been well on the way to tabling my opponent, but he actually was winning on objectives. He had more scoring units than I did, and had more units spread across the table while I only had 2 scoring units - the Castellax, which meant there was no feasible way for me to get them across the table. Fortunately, I was able to hold my own deployment zone while denying him the No Man's Land. In addition to scoring Attrition - I had 7 units (2 Knights Moirax, the Vultarax, the 2 units of Castellax, and the 2 Thanatars) to his 3, that gave me a slight advantage. That meant I won the second game. Phew.
Match 3
The third game was against a scary White Scars list with quite a bit of bikes. It was 3,000 points this time, and the mission was Shatterstrike. We had the Dawn of War deployment zone. My opponent's Whiite Scar List looked something like this:
Some Khan on bike (his warlord)
Librarian Consul on a jetbike
2 squads of 5 bikers (I think?)
1 Tactical squad of 10 marines
1 tactical support squad of 5 marines with plasma guns
1 Rhino as their Dedicated Transport
10 Cataphractii Terminators
1 Storm Eagle
1 Xiphon Interceptor
2 squadrons of 5 (?) jetbikes) with a bunch of meltaguns
I can't remember if that's all? Yeah, that seems about right.
Anyway, once again I got second turn and failed to seize the initiative. My opponent had almost everything on reserve, so he only had 1 squad of bikers with the Khan, the Rhino with the tactical marines, a second squad of bikes with the Rhino and...that's it on the table on the first turn. In any event, I had my Knight Moirax and Vultarax destroy the Rhino, and then my Knight Errant tried to kill the tactical marines and 5 bikers...without much success. I think I only killed a few of them and maybe 2 bikers with the Thanatar and the thermal cannon, but the other Thanatar, Knight Atrapos and the Castellax battle-automata killed 4 Bikers, leaving only the Khan and the Sergeant. Wait, what about my opponent's first turn? He had nothing in range, so he didn't do much shooter, with only his bikers killing my Tech-priest Auxilia. Yeah...that was about it. Anyway, on to the second turn.
The outflanking plasma support tactical squad dropped in and fired into the back of my Knight Atrapos, taking one wound off him, but the Storm Eagle got in and dropped him to 1 wound with all the lascannons, multimelta and stuff...and I failed a bunch of my invulnerable saves with he rolled a 6 on the vehicle damage table plus a 3 for D3 wounds. Omnissiah...my luck was just horrible. A single squad of jetbikes got in and took out the construct shield of one of my Knights Moirax, while the tactical squad and surviving bikers tried to get out of the building to charge my Knight Errant. They failed.
My Castellax with Darkfire cannons and Thanatar were able to take out the whole squad of jetbikes while I did my best to move my Knights Moirax forward, runnning them toward my opponent's deployment zone. The Storm Eagle was stunned by the arc blasters of the Vultarax strato-automata. Then my Castellax charged and attacked the Khan and biker sergeant, but didn't do much. I did kill like a couple of the tactical squad guys, but my Knight Errant failed to do anything with his thermal cannon, and he even failed his charge against the tactical marines. That was just...horrible. Maybe he killed another biker, leaving just the sergeant in that decimated bike squad, but otherwise he did f all. Sigh. The Knight Atrapos charged the support squad, but before he could fight, he could melta-bombed to death (?). And he failed to do anything with the explosion. I think I rolled a 1. Sigh.
The Storm Eagle hopped out of hover mode and the Terminators jumped out and destroyed my Knight Errant, who rolled a 6 on the catastrophic explosion table...only to scatter away and do f all to the Terminators. Jesus, why was my luck so horrible? The Knight Errant was a liability the whole game. Meanwhile the Khan and biker Sergeant charged and killed a Thanatar in close combat.
The game was falling apart and my army was being annihilated. The Xiphon Interceptor came on and did more damage to my Knight Moirax. For Omnissiah's sake...the only silver lining is that the second squad of jetbikes failed to arrive on reserve.
My Vultarax strato-automata had to fly off the table. I was able to finally kill the Khan and Biker Sergeant with my Castellax battle-automata, while the other Castellax squad killed the plasma squad. Phew. The surviving Thanatar fired and killed a bunch of Terminators, but it wasn't enough. It was far from enough. Ugh. Sigh. To make matters worse, my Knights Moirax tried to shoot the Storm Eagle, but it jinked and didn't get destroyed. For the bloody love of the Omnissiah...
The jetbikes finally arrived and destroyed one Knight Moirax. This was bad. Like, really bad. The Storm Eagle returned to flying, but...at least I didn't lose any more units. The Terminators, surviving tactical marines and a single biker sergeant (the sole survivor of his squad) rushed toward my deployment zone to get points. It was just frustrating...
My Castellax and surviving Thanatar killed all the Terminators with Darkfire cannons, mauler bolt cannons and plasma hellex mortar, then charged in and finished them off. Finally! My Vultarax also flew in and finished off the wounded Storm Eagle. Good riddance. But that changed nothing, for my opponent still had more units on the table. I watched with dread on the 5th turn when the jetbikes took down the construct shields and damaged my last Knight Moirax, and then charged and destroyed him in combat. Ugh. That was just horrible...and so painful to watch. I had lost all my Knights and the only scoring unit that could get across to my opponent's deployment zone. Sigh. It was game over for me, or so it seemed.
With nothing left to play for, I had my Thanatar move and shoot the tactical marines hiding behind the building. Apparently my Castellax couldn't see them because they were behind a wall (I call BS on this, but whatever, not gonna argue with my opponent - besides, I was feeling salty at this point, so it's more my frustration than because I had any valid argument) so I couldn't shoot them. I failed their charge too, to make matters worse. The Vultarax flew back onto the table, and despite shooting the Xiphon Interceptor with 2 hull points with Haywire (they had to drop to hover mode and I was hitting on 6s, apparently), I only took a off...and my opponent jinked and made a save, so I failed to destroy the damned thing. On the other hand, my Thanatar made the charge, and I finally rolled hot, scoring 3 hits and 3 wounds. What? Doesn't he have 2 attacks base? Where did I get 3 attacks from? Well, he gets +1 to his attacks on the charge, right? Isn't that how 30K works? Strength 8 AP 2 (because of Smash) did the job, and I wiped his tactical marines off the face of the table. Unfortunately I could do nothing against the Sergeant biker who was hiding inside a building and surrouded by walls. Apparently he could smash into the ruins with his bike, but I still can't shoot at him because of the wall with no windows blocking line of sight (didn't he smash through the wall to get into the ruins? Where's the logic in that?). In any event, the game was over. Yikes.
So...what was the score? My oppoonent had 2 points because he had a single scoring unit in my deployment zone - the Sergeant biker I failed to kill. As for me, I had a single point from Slay the Warlord because I killed his Khan with my Castellax, and...wait, I scored Attrition. He killed my Knight Atrapos, Knight Errant, 2 Knights Moirax, a Thanatar and my Tech-priest Auxilia. That was it. What the? That really was it - he killed 6 units. On the other hand, I killed his Khan and his biker squad (that counts as 1 unit), a tactical squad, a Rhino, a support tactical squad with plasma guns, 10 Terminators, a single squadron of jetbikes and the Storm Eagle. Yes, I killed 7 units, which meant I scored Attrition. In the end, the match ended as a...draw, 2 points to 2 points. Wait, what about Price of Failure? Well, tough luck...because I brought my Knights as an allied Detachment, they don't count as Lords of War. No, seriously. If you bring a Questoris Knight Crusade army, they count as their own detachment with their own unique Force Organization Chart, not as Lords of War. My Knight Atrapos was a HQ, my Knight Errant was a compulsory Troops choice. My Knights Moirax were non-compulsory Troops. So yeah. No Price of Failure for my opponent. That meant he only had 2 points from the primary objective while I scored both secondary objectives to also get 2 points.
That was...unexpected.
It was certainly an exciting and intense way to wrap up the day, no doubt about that. I couldn't stop laughing at the outcome. Despite how...cheesy the dudes all hiding behind walls was, I somehow scraped out a draw. After losing all of my Knights and a single Thanatar. Holy Omnissiah, despite my bad rolling (especially for my Knight Errant) and horrible luck, I somehow avoided defeat by the skin of my teeth. That really was beyond my expectations. But hey, that was hilarious. Sorry, I just feel so amused by the whole thing...my opponent was so sure he had won the game too! HA HA HA HA HA! The look on his face when he realized that I had somehow forced a draw beyond all else...but that was a great game. The both of us had great fun, and we are good-natured people, so we simply laughed off the result - no hard feelings or whatever. This wasn't a tournament, anyhow, so who cares? What mattered was fun.
And so the day ended, with lots of fun and laughter. I love my Legio Cybernetica army...in fact, I think I like it a lot more than my 40K Skitarii. I would love to see them have 40K rules. They have a lot of flavor, I think...being Monstrous Creatures and all that, plus being so tough and possessing immense firepower. All that AP2 plasma weaponry being chucked around and forcing Terminators to take invulnerable saves...yeah! Oh, and the amount of Haywire I had in my list was just...absurd. I did not expect my Vultarax and Knights Moirax to go around wrecking as many vehicles as they did yesterday. It was insane. Maybe I should tone down on them...then again, if I didn't, I would get wrecked by the Salamanders with their Land Raiders and the Iron Warriors' Typhon and Spartan Assault tank, with all that armored ceramite (actually, the Iron Warriors didn't have the points for armored ceramite, so that wasn't so bad).
I look forward to playing Horus Heresy again in the near future! I don't know if they will have some Heresy 2.0 or if they will ever release that rumored plastic boxset with MK VI power armor and a Spartan Assault tank, but we will continue playing Horus Heresy nonetheless. For the Omnissiah! I can't wait to field my Legio Cybernetica again! YAY!
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