Summer of Slaughter League Final

Ryan Glover versus Tim Miller. Vanilla marines versus vanilla marines. My list is here:

HQ
Master of the Forge w. Conversion Beamer 120
Elites
Dreadnought 105
Dreadnought 105
5 Assault Terminators (TT/SS) 200
Land Raider w. Multi-Melta 260
Troops
10 Tacticals w. Multi-Melta, Meltagun, Sgt. w. Combi-Melta 185
Rhino 35
5 Tacticals Sgt. w. Combi-Melta 100
Rhino w. Hunter-Killer Missile 45
5 Scouts w. Sniper Rifles 75
Fast Attack
3 Attack Bikes w. Multi-Meltas 150
2 Land Speeders w. Multi-Meltas and Heavy Flamers 140
2 Land Speeders w. Typhoon Missile Launchers 180
Heavy Support
Thunderfire Cannon 100
Thunderfire Cannon 100
Thunderfire Cannon 100
Total: 2000 Points

Ryan's list was very similar. His dreadnoughts had twin-linked lascannons instead of MMs. He had 3 dakka preds instead of the thunderfires. His HQ was a libby and he had 5 extra tactical guys. To make up those points he only had 3 single landspeeder tornadoes for fast attack. We decided to play a rulebook scenario and rolled sieze ground and dawn of war. Sieze ground is perhaps the scenario least-suited to my army, but it's not completely horrible. There was a big LOS blocker in the middle of the table and the 4 objectives were placed two to a side. Ryan unfortunately won the rolloff and forced me to go first. I chose the side where the objectives were a bit further ahead because there were less covered avenues of approach. I deployed my Master of the Forge in a bolstered ruin with 5 tactical guys off in a corner. The rest of the squad holed up in their rhino on my leftmost objective. Ryan decided to deploy nothing.

Turn 1

I rolled on in the middle (so Ryan could not refuse a flank) and set up my firebase. Thunderfires were behind the dreadnoughts, rhino and landraider for cover. I kept my fast attack choices in reserve and announced I would be flank marching my scouts. Ryan said his scouts would do the same. Ryan put his predators opposite my thunderfires (but closer to his left corner) and moved his speeders flat out behind the LOS blocker in the middle. Everything else came on pretty centrally. His night fight shooting was ineffective.

Turn 2

I rolled for my reserves and only got my tornadoes. They turbo-boosted up my left flank to threaten his dreadnought and rhino. Ryan had deployed heavily around his left objective but completely neglected his right one. His speeders were the immediate threat so they were priority one. In any sort of objective based scenario the fast stuff is double valuable (because it's killy and contesty) so it has to die first. One thunderfire could see a bit of a speeder's nose so I fired an airburst at it. I blew off the MM and shook it. My conversion beamer missed. My leftmost squad shot their MM out of the rhino's hatch and blew up another speeder. I hit his dread and landraider with a subterrainian burst so if they moved they would have to roll for dangerous terrain. The other cannon had no LOS. Not bad but not great. At least there would only be one speeder shot at my landraider on Ryan's turn. Ryan's turn 2 was a bit better than mine. His scouts didn't come on. He did fail to kill my landraider with his speeder. Each of his predators fired a single autocannon at each of my thunderfires and each one killed the cannon. 3 for 3. He also blew up one of my dreadnoughts with a lascannon and blew the weapons off/shook my rhinos. Yikes. Another turn like that and I won't have much of an army left.

Turn 3

This time only my attack bikes came on. They came up my right flank to take some pot shots at Ryan's damaged speeder and threaten his predator firebase. My 3 new techmarine independant characters (the old thunderfire crew) moved up to take plasma shots at speeders. My tornadoes moved up to shoot Ryan's rightmost rhino. I was hoping to seal him off from grabbing his neglected objective in the lategame. My shooting was dismal. I blew both weapons off and immobilized his speeder. That was about it. He made all his smoke saves, or I missed everything else. At this point I had given up the idea of trying to win from doing damage and had fully moved into objective mode. I had a mobility advantage with my bigger fast attack choices and would have to use it to have a chance (tough when going first!). Ryan responded to the threat of my attack bikes by shooting them with 2 predators. He did 8 wounds and I failed 4 saves. Unsurprisingly the lone survivor ran off the table. Not good. Ryan's scouts came on the table (which was good for me, or so I thought) and rolled the neglected side so they were basically camped on his rightmost objective in a vacuum. Ryan's shooting cooled off a little bit and he immobilized and blew the weapon off of my central rhino.

Turn 4

My scouts came on, but typhoons did not (I rolled a 1). My scouts rolled a 6 and got to choose sides. I chose to follow on Ryan's scouts and try to assault them off of the isolated objective. I would get pistol shots on the way in and and bunch of extra attacks for charging. Really, even if they could just tie them up they would pull them off the objective and it would become a 3 objective game. I had one basically locked up and could try to contest the other two and eke out a 1-0 win. I'll talk about how the assault went on turn 6 when it finished. My shooting (I didn't have a lot left at this point) was average. I killed his last speeder (important) and immobilized one of his dreads. Ryan's turn 4 he shot a bit at my tornadoes but only managed to shake them. He rolled up his landraider and his termies got out within range of my immobilized rhino. His shooting wrecked my rhino and his termies assaulted my 5-man squad who had abandoned the Master of the Forge to make their way back to the objective. He didn't want to risk a multi-assault because it would have meant a dangerous terrain roll. He wiped the 5-man squad but only rolled a 1 to consolidate.

Turn 5

This could be it! My typhoons came on automatically (about time!) and my tornadoes moved flat out to contest Ryan's central objective. I killed two of his termies with shooting, and I blew up his landraider with a multimelta. His rhino behind the landraider was also destroyed. Our scouts were still locked in combat. That was about as good of a turn as I could expect at this point. I had one objective, was contesting 2 and one was unclaimed, although scouts were fighting nearby it. Ryan had his first really bad (by his standards )turn of the game here. He did manage to blow up my last dreadnought with a meltagun, and killed my useless Master of the Forge with a lascannon. His terminators rolled bad terrain and couldn't get into assault (there were wrecks everywhere). His shooting at my tornadoes was ineffective (he did some damage, but rolled mostly 1s and 2s), and he didn't get a result against my scouts. His libby assaulted my tactical guys near my central objective and killed 2, taking a wound in the process. I intentionally failed morale and rolled a 6 to get away, but of course Ryan rolled a 6 to match me. If the game ended here I win 1-0! Of course it did not end.

Turn 6

Things were getting desperate now. I counterassualted his libby with a techmarine, but now it was looking like my central objective could only be contested at best. The libby cut down the techmarine and made 2 more armour saves to hold the tactical squad in place for the termies to finish off. I still could be okay, but my speeders that were contesing his objective would not have the benefit of flat-out saves this turn. Ryan's turn he poured a bunch more shots into my tornadoes contesting his objective but could only kill one. That was it, I had another chance to win! Not so fast Tim. In the assault phase Ryan's 3 remaining scouts did 2 wounds to my last 2 scouts and I failed both saves. Then he rolled a big enough number to consolidate back to the objective with them. Sigh. Over the course of the 6 assault phases Ryan made 9 out of 11 armour saves on his scouts and I made zero out of 5. That was it, game over. I could really only draw at this point and Ryan was well ahead on kill points. We ended up playing another turn. I did manage to pull him off of his other objective with a techmarine, but I rolled a 1 for an artificer save on the last turn and he was able to get back onto it. So in the end Ryan won 2-1. All in all it was a great game of 40K, maybe one of the best I've ever been a part of. The big scout fight was key, and Ryan came out on top where it mattered most. He was full value for the win, and only made one minor mistake all game. Otherwise I thought his play was excellent.

Congratulations to our Summer of Slaughter Champion Ryan Glover!

Good write up Tim. I'm always amazed by your memory for your battle reps. Awesome game, definitely up there with the best ever's. Through the final turns it really could have went either way with some key dice rolls.

I roll the lights out during the first few turns for sure and the scout squad that made saving throws like nobody's business.

Unit of the match goes to my 5 man scout squad for being insanely lucky.