vs Raven Guard

I hope they inscribe "He Just Had To Make a 2+ Save, Come On" onto my tombstone.

Last night I faced off against the Void Specters, a Raven Guard successor Primaris chapter. This was a matchup that I always stumble over. I have played my pal Derek dozens of times in the last two years, and I think I've won maybe once. His army is good, no doubt, but above that he is a phenomenal general with a water-tight understanding of his army's capabilities and their weaknesses. He used to play Tau, but has since transitioned to Primaris Space Marines and has taken all of his mastery of the backfield gunline with him. At its core, his army is nearly impervious to small arms fire (he's using the successor trait that gives him cover beyond 12") and dishes out literally hundreds of low strength, AP-1 to AP-2 shots every turn. Historically, if I can get a few of my Paladins into his lines then I can cause some havoc. But there are so many shots blocking my way, God damn. So much overwatch. Fucking Aggressors.

There are only so many Terminator saves that I can make.

I've watched Derek play at the club the last month or so with the new Marines Codex. Combat Doctrines just shred infantry at all levels. I've been keeping an especially close eye on him since the release of the Raven Guard 'dex, and what I have beheld is a thing of horror. I watched him cause our local Knights player to concede at the end of turn two. I watched him tactically out-maneuver Eldar Flyer Spam, for Christ's sake. He has a lot of scary toys in his toolbox, and he leverages them to brutal effect. The single scariest toy that he's had recently is the Repulsor Executioner.

And his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. Credit: Derek Lancashire

The Executioner just deletes units. Absolutely removes them from existence. If the Space Marines player goes first, just accept that you are about to lose your favorite vehicle and move forward. This thing fires four times at S10, AP -infinity, and d6 damage minimum 3. I knew I had to take care of this tank right out of the gate. If I wanted any of my dreadnoughts or planes to survive, I had to annihilate it. Behold my army:

Yes, this is 2000 points.

The first thing you will notice is the inclusion of the Stormhawk Interceptors, which are largely considered a "bad unit." But the Executioner has the FLY keyword, and Stormhawks get +2 to hit flying units with most of their weapons. These flying boys are Executioner executioners. The rest of the list is honestly probably as competitive as I could go with my Grey Knights. GMNDK in the back there, three Venerable Dreadnoughts (2 with lascannons, 1 with double twin-autocannons), a Razorback with lascannons, BroCap as my Warlord, Paladin Ancient with the Banner of Refining Flame, Squad Darius, and my somehow-still-unfinished Paladin Death Ball on the right there.

This list hits hard. The backline of VenDread heavy weapons shoots whatever it wants through Astral Aim while the nigh-unkillable Paladin mob takes objectives and holds them until the End of Days. The GMNDK does a fantastic job of deep striking turn one with Gate of Infinity and either messing up a gunline or serving as a beautiful distraction carnifex while the rest of my army moves in. The only oddball here is the 350 points of flyers, but that was unique to this game and I knew they'd serve me well.

This is what most armies consider 2000 points to look like.

... Except he didn't bring the Executioner.

Well then. The Stormhawks were prepared to receive no bonuses to their hit rolls, and instead receive penalties when shooting at non-flying units. Oof.

On the one hand, ouch. But on the other, he didn't bring the Executioner! He went over his list, and it turns out he didn't have much in the way of anti-armor. Just an ass-ton of heavy bolter equivalents. Maybe my dreads and planes would survive this.

The battlefield.

We played Visions of Victory, which I think is a really fun mission. Every turn you generate up to 4 tactical objectives, except for each tactical objective you draw two cards and your opponent chooses one for you to keep. The other one is discarded. There's a lot of mind games and thinking involved in this mission -- more so than other Maelstrom missions, which I am usually not a fan of.

Our deployment was Hammer and Anvil. He chose sides, I deployed first, and I had the option of going first. I watched as he deployed all of his units outside of my line of sight. I pondered their effective ranges, and the fact that my boys wouldn't be able to get at them while they were buried away. I gave him first turn. Which is a controversial move, but I think it was a good one! He spent the first turn lumbering all of his shockingly fast ultra-dreadnoughts out of their hiding places.

A perfect firing lane for all my lascannons.

I was feeling pretty good about how this turned out. I successfully denied all of his psychic powers. But then he shot one of my dreadnoughts off the table with bolter fire, which was sad.

A lot of his more potent stuff was still in deep strike (Hellblasters and Aggressors, because Raven Guard just puts whatever into deep strike), so he really only took out the one dreadnought. It was a lamentable loss, but not impossible to come back from. I very purposefully chose not to reroll the final save on this dread (which was a failed 3+), because I knew that if I did then I would certainly fail again and then immediately explode as punishment for my hubris, dealing mortal wounds to my entire backline. There was no scenario where that wasn't going to happen.

On my turn I moved my Stormhawks forward and teleported my GMNDK up with them. Two things got fucked up here, though. First, I failed Sanctuary, so my Grand Master was going to get torn apart by sneaky Hellblasters later. Second, those little green guys on the right are Infiltrators and not intercessors, so I couldn't Gate within 12" of them. The rest of the board was similarly screened (other Infiltrators and a Phobos Captain), so there was no where for me to really go. I elected to place my Grand Master up on this platform to discourage charges and give my Stormhawks rerolls. Maybe they'd do something! They didn't, but I thought hey, maybe.

My Stormhawks missed everything because they were hitting on 5s against ground targets. My Razorback whiffed because Derek's Redemptors had 5+ saves against lascannons from being more than 12" away. My autocannon dread killed I think 3 Infiltrators, but they had already done what they'd wanted to do. The thing about my dreadnought gunline is that when it misses you are just suddenly done, impotent, and your opponents' units are none the worse.

Classic boy vs the new kid.

I ran my dreadnought with the CCW up into one of his +++INVICTOR TACTICAL WARSUITS+++ and crushed it with classic Astartes rage. That felt cool. But... then this guy was just sitting here and ready to be shot off the board next turn. I think it was a worthy sacrifice, though, to keep the stealth dreadnoughts from breaking my lines.

Deep striking Hellblasters, accompanied by a deep striking captain and a deep striking lieutenant.

On his turn he switched to the Tactical Doctrine and deep stroked his heavy hitters. The Raven Guard have a special ability that gives all of their units +1 to hit and +1 to wound against characters while the Tactical Doctrine is active. What this means is that those Hellblasters are overcharging without the possibility to overheat, and wounding my GMNDK on 2s. They obliterated him. I have a note in my notebook that just says "hellblasters + raven guard = :( ".

Deep striking Aggressors.

His Aggressors landed on my right flank. With their auto boltstorm gauntlets they popped my Razorback.

Then they charged my last remaining dreadnought and tore him apart with 13 power fist attacks. Oof!

I want to pause and talk about Aggressors. Someone looked at the old Aggressors datasheet and thought, "man, these guys really need a buff." Out of everything in the Marines Codex, why the Aggressors? Now they have 3 wounds, 3 attacks (with an additional 1 on the charge), and they always fire overwatch twice. That is a lot of buffs to a unit that was already good! They have T5 and regularly fire 60+ shots for a three man unit! Also they are 4 points less expensive than my basic Terminators!

/end salt

Space Marines are good now and I think that is a good thing. They were garbage tier for far too long.

At this point I looked across my board.

This was everything that was left.

Okay. On the back foot, but I could recover from this. Despite his tremendous second turn, Derek was only 2 points ahead of me. My Paladins and their accompanying characters were dropping in on my next turn and they were primed to remove some of his guys and start scoring tactical objectives.

Then we both realized something dreadful at the same time. Derek opened up Chapter Approved to check the mission rules, and I looked at my planes and immediately felt black terror because in core book missions I would have just lost. If a unit with the Flyer battlefield role is the only unit left on the field, then you count as having been tabled. Fortunately this mission is from Chapter Approved 2018 and ignores that! "GOOD THING ACCEPTABLE CASUALTIES IS A THING," I shouted.

Yikes. 

Anyway, on my turn I dropped my silver boys in and blendered almost everything that he had dared to place in my deployment zone.

Astral Aim removed his Hellblasters, smiting killed all but one of the Suppressors, and then a 10" charge removed the last one from the point he was trying to defend.

The next round was a brutal close quarters scuffle. He very wisely picked out the Paladin unit back here that knew Gate of Infinity and focused all of his fire on them; shooting with Ex Tenebrous chich is an absolute monster of a relic and ultimately charging with his characters and dropping my Paladin Squad Darius to 1 guy.

That dude's pointer finger was just chopped off.

The Paladin swung back and mulched them, but Derek used his last 2 CP to activate Only In Death Does Duty End and destroy my Paladin with his dying Captain, thus robbing me of Gate of Infinity and any mobility I might have hoped to gain.

I think it was over at that point, but I pushed forward anyway. I had Hold the Line as a tactical objective, and I thought that maybe I could kill his Aggressors and claim it. I fired 40 storm bolter shots into the Aggressors and chipped 2 wounds off of one of them.

Oh, Aggressor. Two months ago you would've been dead from that.

We charged in, lost a Paladin in overwatch, and then ripped those Aggressors apart with Nemesis Force Halberds. As it should be!

But...  he had his sneaky Lieutenant sitting in my back corner, which both of us forgot about until I went to score Hold the Line. One dude. One dude was back there! That's all that stopped me from scoring it!

The curtains seemed to be falling. We moved to his turn and he charged my Paladins with his remaining +++INVICTOR TACTICAL WARSUIT+++ and mulched 4 of my boys. At the end of his turn he scored every objective he had.

We, uh, called it after that.

New Space Marines are absolutely brutal. Bonus AP on pretty much everything almost negates the benefits of Terminator armor entirely. Their basic weapons are AP-2 while the Tactical Doctrine is active. That's like Thousand Sons kind of shooting. That's better than Thousand Sons, actually, because Intercessor bolters have a 30" range! Making it so that my TDA fails 50% of the time rather than only 16.6% of the time is a tremendous advantage. Grey Knights just don't have a way to effectively deal with mass volume fire. Watching a Redemptor's storm bolters kill a 50 point Paladin because I rolled three 2s is painful.

But honestly, I did better facing him than I thought I would have. If I'd drawn some objectives that were easier to achieve or if I'd found a spot in his backline to slay his Warlord (Chapter Master Deckard Cassiter) I think I would have had a good chance of winning. As it was there was a round where the Void Specters controlled every single point on the board, which is very hard to come back from. But it was a great game! Derek is a tremendous player and also just a fun dude to be around. Our games are always super amicable and light-hearted, even when he's crushing my knuckles with a clawhammer. 

Added bonus, there was another Grey Knights player at the club tonight!

Battle-brother in the wild!