Despite the devastating loss against Adeptus Custodes about 2 weeks ago, I brought my same Imperial Knight list for a Rogue Trader Tournament today! It was the same Glorified History and Hounds of War House Yato list that I brought to Chaska. So something like this:
Imperial Knights Super-heavy Detachment, Questor Mechanicus, Glorified History, Hounds of War
Knight Castellan with Cawl's Wrath and Cold Eradication
Knight Prreceptor with Ion bulwark and stormspear rocket pod
3 Armiger Knights Moirax, 2 with graviton pulsars, 1 with lightning locks
3 Armiger Warglaives with meltaguns
With the new Objective Secured abilities for my Armigers, let's see how they fared today!
The first game was the Scouring, and my opponent was Aeldari. I think it was a mixed Harlequins and Drukhari detachment. I initially thought it would be pretty bad for me, but he didn't bring any Voidweavers or whatever those jets were. You know, the ones with either the haywire stuff or the prismatic cannons. Instead, I got first turn, blew up his Raider, killed a Talos with my Armiger Warglaive, and took out all but one Troupe clowns in a squad. I think I took out a few jetbikes too. The surviving 3 Talos moved up, but I used Counteroffensive to kill one with an Armiger Warglaive before it could swing, and that was after I rolled a 6 on my invulnerable save to survive a melta shot from the dude. Phew. Unfortunately, Drazhar and the Archon and the jetbikes killed an Armiger Warglaive. Ouch. The Knight Preceptor maybe did like 6 or so wounds to one of Talos, but shooting from both him and the Knight Castellan killed the rest of the Talos. With the Talos dead, my Knight Preceptor stomped on the Wracks to claim the center objective.
My opponent fought back, with Drazhar and the Incubi killing my Knight Preceptor. I think I lost an Armiger Warglaive earlier to the Talos's heat lances, not the one who fought back. Another one. I can't remember. Then the Troupe dudes came over and killed my triumphant Armiger Warglaive with their fusion pistols. My Knight Castellan would not be denied and I eventually whittled down his army, but before that...well, I spent 2 CP on Noble Sacrifice and nuked the middle of the table, dealing 4 mortal wounds to my Armiger Knight Moirax before 5 mortal wounds killed the Incubi, 6 took out Drazhar and 5 took out the Archon. That's why you blow up your Knight! Heh!
Even though I only had 4 Knights left, having lost half of my army, I was able to slowly shoot down the rest of the army. My opponent got unlucky, unable to kill my Knight Moirax who ate 4 wounds from the catastrophic explosion, so I continued to shoot and hold objectives somehow with Objective Secured Armigers. Heh. I couldn't kill his jetbike, who sped to my deployment zone to deny me Yield No Ground, but I already scored quite a few points for that, so it wasn't too bad.
Eventually I won the game 84 to 36. That was quite the...game. It was less one-sided than the score made it seem because I had half of my army dead, with one of my surviving Knights half-dead (he took 4 mortal wounds, ouch).
The second game was Death and Zeal, and I was up against Genestealer Cultists. My opponent brought 9 Ridgerunners with blast mining lasers, and a whole boatload of Goliath Trucks, each crammed with 10 Genestealer Cultists. Acolytes? Sorry, I'm not familiar with Genestealer Cultists and I probably annoyed my opponent with all sorts of mistaken assumptions. I thought Crossfire was the same as Exposed and assumed all of them had a +1 to wound against my poor Knights. Whatever the case, he had first turn and killed 3 of my Armigers and wounded my Knight Preceptor to 8 wounds before I could do a single thing. From there, it was a downhill battle for me, and I simply didn't have the firepower or numbers to claim objectives.
I could only watch as his Ridgerunners and bikes (Atalan Jackals?) zip about and get exposed or whatever on my Knights. That just hurt. I did my best and killed 8 Ridgerunners, all the bikers and 10 Cultists, but that was all. Oh, and a single Goliath Truck. It made no difference. By turn 4, I was completely tabled. Just like when playing against Adeptus Custodes, I didn't get to play my turn 4 (though against Custodes I didn't play my turn 3 and was tabled). It was...uh, brutal.
Oh well. It is what it is. In any event, I was relieved I didn't score 22 points this time. I lost heavily, but it was 39 to my opponent's 96. It hurts, yeah, but...I already expected this when I saw the amount of mining lasers in his list, as well as the whole Exposed and Crossfire thing. Imperial Guard needs something like that, that's for sure. It'll help us out tremendously.
The third game was Abandoned Sanctuaries. I was up against an Iron Hands player, which was intriguing because I've never actually played against Iron Hands before. This was fun. I actually wanted to play against Crusher Stampede because...robots versus kaiju in Pacific Rim style, but Iron Hands had its own charm. In any event, my opponent had 2 Leviathan Dreadnoughts and a Character Relic Contemptor Dreadnought with dual volkites. Apparently the volkites are still worth it even with the points increase.
He had a lot of infantry, though, which was strange considering that he was playing Iron Hands. I thought he would have a lot more vehicles, but no, it was a drop pod and those 3 Relic Dreadnoughts (or Martial Legacy Dreadnoughts). 2 Techmarrines, a Judicar, 4 Bladeguard Veterans, 2 Company Veterans, 5 Infiltrators, 15 Intercessors, 10 Devastators (4 multimeltas and 4 gravs), and...Inquisitor Cotaez, who he brought for psychic interrogation. I guess the 6+++ Feel No Pain for Iron Hands infantry should help a lot?
He had first turn and he proceeded to destroy my Knight Castellan with a Leviathan Dreadnought's shooting, along with the multimeltas and grav from the Devastators who drop podded in front of him. He also killed an Armiger Warglaive with his other Leviathan Dreadnought. At that point, I thought I had lost the game because he took out almost half my army in the first turn alone, before I could do anything. It was brutal. I was...utterly deflated, and things looked pretty bad. My Knight Preeptor survived with 15 wounds, though, so it wasn't too bad, but still...ugh.
Despite shooting everything I had with my Knight Preceptor, I only did a few wounds to the Leviathan Dreadnought. Ugh. The grav pulsar Armigers managed to kill a bunch of Bladeguard, along with the Armiger Warglaive...maybe only 3. It was pretty horrible shooting. The one bright spot was that my Knight Moirax with lightning locks killed a couple of grav devastators, and my Knight Preceptor charged and killed 2 of them, locking them in combat. Not enough...not nearly enough. That was just awful shooting on my part. Worse, the multimelta Devastators killed my Armiger Warglaive in overwatch, so I lost 3 Knights, including the Castellan in the first turn alone. That was worse than in the Genestealer Cultists game.
The Judicar charged my Armiger Warglaive, but I somehow managed to survive and kill the remaining Bladeguard Veteran. Hah! Huh, that was about it. The Leviathan and Contemptor Dreadnought tried to shoot my Knight Preceptor and I think he was left with 4 wounds. Yikes! On the other hand, my Knight Preceptor performed a Heroic Intervention to ensnare the 3 multimelta Devastators and this time, I finally killed them with Titanic Feet. Phew. My other Knights survived shooting from the Leviathan Dreadnought, thankfully, but they had like 6 or so wounds. Fortunately, the Mechanicus trait allows them to regenerate a wound, so my Knight Moirax went back up to 7 wounds, top bracket, and proceeded to blow 4 Infiltrators or so off the table. The other guy failed to hit anyone with his grav pulsars, I think? Meanwhile the Knight Moirax finished off the grav Devastators with Lightning locks and then the Knight Preceptor charged and destroyed the Contemptor Dreadnought in melee with his Reaper chainsword.
I was leading in primary because I controlled 3 objectives, including the one in the center. This continued onto the third turn because I always controlled more than my opponent, allowing me to score all 12 points each turn...plus 2 for the center objective! That was after my opponent finally destroyed my Knight Preceptor with his storm cannon and volkite, and I blew him up with Noble Sacrifice. Didn't do much, maybe killed a Company Veteran and a few Intercessors here and there, a couple of mortal wounds to Coatez, the techmarine and the Leviathan Dreadnought. My Knights survived another round of fire from the second Leviathan Dreadnought...somehow.
The Infiltrator finally succumbed to my Armiger Knight Moirax, while my other Knight Moirax deleted another squad of Intercessors off the table. My sole surviving Armiger Warglaive fired and charged the other Leviathan Dreadnought, but didn't do much damage. Instead, he got killed when the Leviathan Dreadnought fired into him pointblank with his storm cannons. Even with the -1 hit penalty, the techmarine just brought it back to 3+, and he died. Oh, well. But I was able to hold objectives and avoid getting shot at by having my Knights Moirax charge into the Intercessors or drop pod, forcing him to fall back and shoot through dense cover. Oh, the guy with Lightning Locks wiped out an Intercessors squad before charging a drop pod, who couldn't fall back. Somehow I survived another round of shooting from the Leviathan Dreadnought, and continued to hold more primary while he had basically none in tha turn because my count-as-5-model Armigers stole the objectives out from under his Intercessors or Infiltrators, who had taken losses.
Eventually, I killed Coatez and the Company Veterans by shooting into combat when they charged me, the Lightning Locks just doing amazing amounts of damage. The grav pulsars did kill all the remaining infantry, leaving no Intercessors o the board. Hell, only 2 Techmarines and 2 Leviathan Dreadnoughts were left on the table by the end of the game. My opponent rolled badly and I made my saves for my Knights Moirax against the Leviathan Dreadnoughts, which allowed me to continue to hold objectives. That allowed me to max out primary, and...phew. Even though I lost almost all my Knights, with only 3 Armigers left and completely unable to kill the Leviathan Dreadnoughts, who I just gave up on dealing with and straight up ignoring them in favor of grabbing and holding objectives, I somehow managed to scrap a narrow victory by playing to the mission. The final score was a close one, 79-65, in my favor. A very close match! Holy Omnissiah, I thought I had lost for sure when my opponent destroyed my Knight Castellan in the first turn, but somehow I turned it around by playing to the objectives and focusing on the infantry instead of the Dreadnoughts. Objective Secured Armigers who count as 5 models are so, so, so good. They were what secured the win for me this game. Ave Omnissiah!
The debacle against the Genestealer Cultists meant I finished 5th place out of 11, the 39 points in that game not doing me any favors. Can't complain, though. I won 2 out of 3 games, so that's good enough for me! I wonder if I should bring the same list to Gamezenter next week, or if I should swap out the Armigers for Adeptus Mechanicus. Bring Mars and a single Knight of the Cog. I don't know. I feel like trying out a Mars plus House Taranis combo, but the objective secured Armigers have been working so well for me. I guess we'll see. I have a week to decide, so until then!
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