Tale of Gamers Month 5 - Result

The Battle

You can have the best arms, armour and warriors under your command. But they mean nothing if they are under the banner of an incompetent commander.

That's how I felt as the game this month drew to a close against an army I should know like the back of my hand. Being a Dark Eldar player, I felt I could second guess my opponent and know what he was going to do, but it led to some very silly decisions.

We were playing The Relic and in the first turn my Land Raider was immobilised then blown to pieces. Like a fool I'd placed it in the open because my Dark Lance fire is normally poor and misses or fails to penetrate. Not this time, it took a lot of firepower but was shredded to bits. First mistake.

Now my big scary unit was down, Reavers moved forwards and claimed the objective to start running off with it. My own units chose to shoot at the Reavers instead of rushing fowards into their faces. It worked and caused horrific causalities, but one survived and it retreated into a nest of Raiders where it passed the objective off to a Talos.

The Bikers became tied up with a unit of Grotesques, but my opponent got the Poison rules wrong so I can't judge their performance too well (he was re-rolling on even strength v toughness, not higher as you should do). The Lascannons kept missing or failing to cause significant damage when penetrating. The Veterans should have moved up but were moved only 6" as I thought the Raiders would move away, forgetting it's the slow Talos I am meant to be chasing. But too close would trash the Rhinos and units inside, a hard choice.

Eventually I handed the towel in, with the Veterans disembarking for more firepower and getting shredded by Raider gunboats.and only two vehicle units left, I had no means of picking up the relic which was the other side of the board.

What went wrong?

Everything. From deployment I had underestimated my opponent and overestimated their speed. The units were spread out too far over the board and unable to support each other. The Veterans needed to get up close and personal to use templates and shred the infantry inside the Raiders, and press the objective. Units at the back could then support the assaulting units, instead the Veterans were hanging back too much and appeared to be supporting thin air.

The Inquisition are angry. Very angry. And they will be making an appearance next month with the challenge to include a flyer for the final multi-player showdown of the 7th Edition campaign.