Battle reports - lose some, win some!

When I started playing Iyanden, I had a series of wins and posted some battle reports. After that, RL intervened and my leisure time allotment shrank a bit. My Iyanden list got quite some play and I still got some painting and modelling done, but I didn't go for elaborate battle reports.

Obviously, the series of victories was unlikely to continue - and it didn't. I still won some games decisively and some by points - but on the flip side there were defeats. I did not document each game fully, but I'll just highlight some losses here.

 I lost to 186 or so HPs of Ork boys with my list reduced in points to match the lower point limit. That cost me one serpent. Facing a number of 30 boy mobs each with a power weapon as threat in it. While I was able to slaughter the orks with gay abbandon , there were simply too many of them for the amount of individual shots I could offer. Having to kite the orc mob also meant that I couldn't use my wraithguard effectively. I lost the game by points with the game ending early. I might have won with another turn or two, but clearly there were too many wounds marching over the table. 

I got stomped by chaos deamons. Twice. The first time a combination of various deamon flavours smashed my forces - in cases of the serpents and FMCs quite literally - while my wraithknight fell to a plague bearers special sword via instant death and my farseer got swapped for a herald by the warp storm table. The second round was even worse. Four squads of rosa horrors with heralds, guide and banners unleashing 20D6 S6 24" shots to start with. Add in fire deamons, two FMCs, the grimoire of true names and the portal glyph producing a 4-5 horror squad behind a building. In addition, the deamon player was rolling awesome and lucky, while I had FAIL on tap. =] 

Luck and bad luck respectively nonwithstanding, I clearly couldn't deal damage effectively to the deamons. Outgunned and faced by a load of invulnerable saves making my AP irrelevant, my space pansies were even more doomed than they are supposed to be. Oh, and the warp creatures had their invul saves improved the first two rounds... Khaine wept. 

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Recently, I fought a Forgeworld Army for the first time. In this case, an armored company. We got the kill points mission and diagonal deployment, I had initiative. I deployed on the line to the nomands land, eager to get my wraithguard in range. Imperial high command deployed conservatively behind an Aegis defense line. To begin with, I faced three Hydras, an Executioner, two Leeman Russ's and one Atlas. I'll use the following pictures to illustrate what these can do. ;-]

The following picture shows the end of turn 1. I moved forward, shot at the Hydras - did either no damage, hit the Aegis or had the damage done nullified by the Atlas and the two techpriests, which get to repair hull points on 5+ and may do that twice and reroll fails within 6" of the Atlas. Awesome!

On the flip side, the Hydras have a special rule (not ignore cover, specific to them in the IA book) which prevents me from using my jink save on my Serpents. They have only skyfire, but that USR does count skimmers as valid targets for full ballistic skill. Ouch.

Also, the HQ and Commissar Leeman Russ tanks were sporting Beast Hunter shells. Those are S8 AP2(?) small blasts, but they have instant death against anything with hit points. Since a part of my wraith knight was visible through the building, it was a valid target, got hit, wounded and failed it's cover/invul 5+ save. Dead. OUCH!

Here is the end of turn 2. My second wraith knight arrives via deep strike, but is displaced a perfect 12" away from the enemy lines. My Serpents are mostly scattered across the landscape and my wraithguard are foot slogging but of course not sized for that. Imperial reinforcements arrive and mow down my footies.

Blessed by my farseer with a 4++, the second wraithknight is lucky a number of times. The beast hunter shells either scatter, fail to wound or I make the saves.

With only a few wraithguard and a wraithknight left alive, I finally get to carry the battle to the enemy.

Who deftly manouvers to avoid me jumping his HQ tank and places other vehicles in my assault path.

Even thoug I got spanked big time in this game, it was fun to see the guard be awesome instead of an also died in a Space Marine story. ;-]

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A few weeks later I got my rematch. Same army lists, same deployment and initiative for me again - by chance. I kept both wraithknights in reserve this time. Imperial HQ got a warlord trait that allowed granting outflank to a unit, which was given to the commissar Leeman Russ. Punisher, two Chimeras and the flyer stayed in reserve.

My first turn consisted of advancing my serpents by 30", thanks to 12" normal movement and 18" turbo-boost. Imperial forces killed one of the Serpents, but the rest survived thanks to luck and the serpent shield.

The following picture shows the table after the movement phase of my second player turn. I got lucky with both wraithknights showing up and not scattering too badly.

And here we see the table after my shooting phase. With multiple wraith knight units being in range, some tanks - including the HQ tank - got destroyed. Funny enough, the bunch shooting at the executioner missed all but one shot.

This pretty harsh alpha strike pretty much called the game in my favour in combination with all of the heavy Imperial reserve rolls failing and only the Chimeras comming in. This allowed me to dish out some more before the flyer and the commissar tank arrived. The commissar insta-killed a wraith knight, but got nuked in return.


Taking a step back, it is quite obvious that moving forward agressively and actually using all the wraithguard from turn two onwards was the way to go. Nobody can plan for dice, but with 30" movement in turn 1, 6" movement of the serpent in turn 2 and 12" weapon range, clearly it is possible to reach quite far indeed, even if some range is lost due to the serpent exit point and shape in combination with the up to 6" disembarcation move.

TL;DR: won some, lost some, had fun! =]