vs Void Specters

Alright, let's do this.

Last night I played against the dreaded Void Specters once again. My buddy Derek's Space Marines are a Raven Guard successor Chapter who have a perverse obsession with murdering characters. The Chapter Tactics he's chosen for them are Long Range Marksmen (giving his heavy flamers an irritating 11" range) and Stealthy (giving all of his backline vehicles an irritating 2+ armor save). He pilots this list incredibly effectively and knows his army inside and out. Facing him is always a challenge.

The forces of the Void Specters. That is so many bodies!

He runs four neo dreadnoughts who all just hit like absolute trucks. He has two squads of Infiltrators who obnoxiously stop my Grey Knights from deep striking. All of his characters have high damage sniper rifles, and every infantry unit in his army has the potential to deep strike. What this all means is that he is primed to control the board very effectively and shut down my best force multipliers. He knows this, and he leverages it to his advantage.

Before we started we chatted about all of the latest 40k stuff that has manifested recently in the noosphere. He's looking forward to the upcoming Faith and Fury expansion, thinking of promoting his Phobos Librarian to Chief. He talked a bit more about the few changes he thinks he might make to his list, which I find super interesting. For me, list making is an afterthought, something that I do as I'm preparing to leave for my game. Sure, I know my good units and consider my opponent before throwing something in my list, but largely the way I build my roster is influenced entirely by what models I feel would be fun to play with. Derek is very different: his army has a fully realized state that is somewhat occluded by the fog of the future. With every game he plays he pierces the fog a bit more, and sees that finalized form that his Void Specters will someday be. He talked a bit about how he wants more Eliminators, and that if he substitutes one unit for another then he can throw certain weapons on another unit with those extra points and tune his list to just the way he wants it. I find this all incredibly fascinating, because it's so different from how I hobby and game. I really admire the drive to build an effective and at the same time fluffy army.

Grey Knights and friends.

I brought along a comparatively tiny army. Big heavy hitters are something that my army lacks, so for this game I decided to bring along my Imperial Knight in a Super Heavy Auxiliary Detachment. Beyond that I had two GK Vanguards with my usual backline Dreadnought guns and my big blob of ten Paladins. I was also super excited by the new Inquisition Index in this month's White Dwarf, so I brought along an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor in Terminator Armor to deep strike alongside my Paladins. This list looks skinny, but I have a plan here. I've equipped all of my characters with the necessary support spells (Hammerhand, Sanctuary, Astral Aim) and given the Paladins themselves Gate so that I can shift them around if I need them. The Inquisitor knows Terrify so that I can shut off any overwatch that might pick off a few Paladins on the way in -- particularly the approximately infinite shots that Aggressors seem to shit out. God, I hate Aggressors.

Onto the game. Both of us are going to the LVO in late January and playing in the friendly tournament. The mission pack for LVO states that they will be using the missions from the core rulebook, so we drew one from there. We nabbed Deadlock with Search and Destroy deployment.

The battlefield. I ended up deploying in the lower right, him in the upper left.

Running a basic rulebook mission is weird now. I'm so used to the deployment from CA2018 and the adjustment to Maelstrom objectives that playing in such a barebones format feels blasphemously simple. There's no pruning your deck based off of what units your opponent is bringing, so if I draw Scour the Skies and he doesn't have any flyers I'm just fucked. Also, bizarrely, the basic rulebook just says that the player who finished deploying first goes first; no dice rolling or anything. Which is... extremely powerful for lists that bring only a few units. It would mean that Knights always go first. Both of us were vaguely certain that we'd read in an FAQ that you instead roll off with these missions, so we did that. If we were wrong here and we should be going off of the mission as written, please let me know! I'd hate to be blindsided at LVO.

I brought a squad of Servitors to deny deeps striking, but forgot them at home. So here they were represented by Random Minis From Mox.

This was a very short game. Turns out when you bring a list dependent on characters against an army of invisible assassins you can't get a lot done. I knew that his Dreadnoughts would be a problem so I charged my Knight in to deal with them before they could trash my backline.

Oh lawd he comin'

He did pretty good in there! Were it not for the fact that Space Marines can halve damage to Dreadnoughts, I think my Knight would have crushed these dudes. As it was, I ran in and I split my attacks against two Dreads. As it was, my Knight only did 6 wounds to each Redemptor with his gauntlet, so neither of them were even bracketed. I knew this was bad, so I pocketed my last 3 CP and waited for his turn.

Fortunately for me, he kept his Dreads in combat and most of the rest of my army was in space so he didn't have a whole lot to shoot. He charged in his Aggressors and I waited for the inevitable fight. I had 2 CP to spend and interrupt after something hurt my Knight.

Unfortunately he used Gene-wrought Might on his Aggressors and swung 13 times with power fists. They absolutely butchered my Knight, which I totally wasn't expecting. But! Silver lining, all of his dreads and even his HQs were within 5 or 6 inches of my dying Knight. I spent my last two CP on Heroic Sacrifice. He had popped a Stratagem earlier called Stranglehold that makes all my Stratagems cost +1CP if he rolls a 5+. He got that 5+ and forced me to spend all 3 of my last CP on this Heroic Sacrifice. But it paid off when my Knight erupted in glorious fire.

I was so stoked. If I got lucky, I might kill his command squad and bracket all of his Dreadnoughts. I rolled 2d6 for the size of the explosion and got double 1s.

Oof.

I rolled for damage on the two Dreads engaged with my Knight and got 1 damage on each of them. Then I rolled damage for the Aggressors and failed to kill even one of them. Both of us just collapsed into laughing fits at that point.

Dreadnoughts moving freely around a building, unopposed.

So my Knight was gone and he took my last CP with him. That's fine! I only had 5 to start with, so it wasn't like I was really holding onto them or anything. On my next turn I deep stroked my blob of Paladins, the Inquisitor, the Brother-Captain, the Ancient, and the Apothecary.

Gotta make sure everyone gets that cover bonus.

Here's where things got rough. My Brother-Captain cast Purge Soul on a double 6 and dealt 3 mortal wounds to himself, and then I failed the roll-off for Purge Soul and did nothing to my opponent's +++INVICTOR TACTICAL WARSUIT+++.

A quick aside: what about this thing's profile says "this should be 90 points base." That is the same price as my Brotherhood Champion!

I saw my Warlord sitting on 3 wounds and knew that the Eliminators in Derek's army could ignore LoS, and that next turn they would be wounding him on 2s because of Raven Guard Combat Doctrines. I knew I'd be relying on his Iron Halo to save him.

We gunned down one of the +++INVICTOR TACTICAL WARSUITS+++ with lascannons and storm bolter fire, but then we were left with nothing to charge. So my Paladins sat surrounding my precious characters in ruins and praying for the best.

The best did not happen.

On his turn he sniped away my Warlord and my Inquisitor with ease. Then his Suppressors destroyed my gunline Dreadnoughts and I was left with nought but a Paladin squad, a Paladin Ancient, and a lagging Apothecary.

We would seek vengeance if not victory.

My Paladins did work, as always. They tanked a ton of fire and killed his Hellblasters and Captain in one round of fighting.

But then the Dreadnoughts that my Knight had failed to kill were rounding the corner.

To my immense pleasure, the Paladins wasted two of the Dreadnoughts and only lost 3 of their brothers. My Apothecary and Ancient got shot off the board in this interim, but my Paladins persisted.

Just one left, and no characters to be seen.

After that fight I was sitting at 5 VP and my opponent had 14. We both agreed that there was no way I was coming back from that, especially with only one squad of Paladins left.

Victory once again for the Void Specters! Space Marines are so good right now, guys. It's crazy! As I've said in the past, Derek really knows their strengths and weaknesses inside out, and he pushes their limits while also playing intelligently. It's such a rough matchup, but one of these days I will best him.

On the plus side, my brother was playing at the club last night as well, and I snapped this picture of his Exalted Sorcerer Tzefu getting clobbered to death by Iron Hands Aggressors.

It runs in the family.