vs Imperial Fists

"Hey guys, I was just, uh, keeping your objective warm for you. I swear."

Tonight I had the pleasure of playing against Goonhammer's Jack Hunter and his beautiful Imperial Fists. Jack was a great dude to play against and his army is just absolutely stunning. They are clean and grungy at the same time, occupying that wonderful little space between "what a crisp paintjob" and "those Marines look like they've been through some shit." Our game was pretty close when you look at the points and he really knew his stuff, so we finished in like three hours.

Holy shit Imperial Fists are fucking strong.

There seriously wasn't a single point in this game where I felt like I had the advantage. Often my Paladins' sturdiness and Gate of Infinity will afford me some flexibility in my games, but Whirlwinds and Centurions just nullified all of that. "Now, Stefan," I hear you saying. "He's playing what is largely considered the second strongest Chapter of the exceptionally powerful Astartes books, and you're playing fucking Grey Knights. It makes sense that you got your dick stomped." To which I say, yes. On to the battle report!

Count 'em. That is 29 Terminator bodies.

Tonight we used the Schemes of War game mode that was in a White Dwarf issue earlier this year. For those unaware, Schemes of War is a modification of the Maelstrom missions where you form your own deck of 18 Tactical Objectives and draw up to 5 cards every turn, making a "hand" of objectives that you then choose your active Tactical Objectives from. It is essentially a refined version of typical Maelstrom games with a lot of the "ah, fuck, I'm a Necron and I drew Master the Warp" taken out. I really like it and, from what I hear, it is the form that all of this year's Chapter Approved Maelstrom missions will be taking.

Schemes of War interacts weirdly with the current Maelstrom missions, so we elected to just do the most basic version possible. We set up 6 objectives on the battlefield, rolled for deployment, and commenced. 3 active objectives every turn, chosen from our hands of cards. Easy peasy.

Imperial Fists in various states of completion. Look at those Whirlwinds!

Jack won the roll-off to choose sides and picked his without even a second's hesitation. I set up my whole army on the other side of the board.

Everyone on the ground. The plan is to fling my GMNDK across the board and fuck shit up, as always.

Everyone in space. This is pretty close to exactly 1000 points.

I think I've almost nailed down the potency of my Paladin bomb. Those guys do incredible work every game, I just need to figure out the cast of characters that will accompany them in the teleportarium. Tonight I brought a Brotherhood Ancient to give everyone more attacks and wield the Banner of Refining Flame, a Brother-Captain to extend the range of the Banner and also provide FttF as my Warlord, an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor to remove overwatch and free up my Paladins for the charge, and Grand Master Simandus acting as Kaldor Draigo so everyone could reroll like crazy. This combination seems to be working pretty good!

Jack then deployed his whole army and I immediately saw why he chose the side he did.

There was zero chance I was going to get up there. I was only vaguely familiar with the potential of Centurions, but I knew that the Imperial Fists flavor are spoken of only in hushed whispers in Warhammer circles. I have a personal rule that I won't research the capabilities of an army the first time I play against them -- it's more fun for me if I go into a new matchup blind. But even then I knew that these guys were reputed to be motherfuckers. My Paladins ruin things in melee, but I couldn't get up into that ruin. There just wasn't the room, and too many units in the way. I internally resolved to just ignore them.

Turns out that is impossible.

The overview.

I went first and played Supremacy, Secure Objective 3, and Area Denial, which were all immediately achievable so long as I could grab Objective 3 in the middle. I yeeted my GMNDK across the table and told him to stay still for those sweet, easy points.

My GMNDK did not survive his shooting phase, even with a 3++. Hell, he didn't even survive the first volley. Those Centurions were part of a Siegebreaker Cohort so they dealt mortal wounds to vehicles on 6s. This would've been nasty by itself, but also Imperial Fists hit twice with bolt weapons on 6s, and also also they hit 3 times on 6s when they are feeling particularly spicy. My Grand Master took enough mortal wounds from those five Centurions that I didn't even bother rolling his saves. He was just erased. Then Jack focused his Whirlwinds on my Ven Dread in the back and blasted him to atoms.

Taking cover is literally pointless against Imperial Fists, so I dropped my Paladin bomb right into his frontline. The plan was to charge his Intercessors, kill them, pile into his Contemptor and fight again to kill it, then consolidate up the stairs and maybe hopefully entangle his Centurions.

Pictured: A good plan.

I buffed my Paladins with Astral Aim, Hammerhand, and Sanctuary, and successfully terrified the Intercessors. I decided to unload 40 storm bolter shots upgraded with Psybolt Ammunition into his Eliminators to try and secure some safety for my characters.

I also think I perpetually hate these guys because of Derek's Raven Guard successors.

The Eliminators died quick because their cover was denied and a lot of my shots seemed wasted. But, honestly, I couldn't think of anywhere better to put those storm bolter shots. The Centurions are T5 with 2+ saves; they would not have given a shit about my Psybolt Ammunition. Even if I killed one Centurion, Jack had a Chief Apothecary hanging out behind them. In my previous turn I killed one with a lascannon, and Jack's Apothecary just rezzed it and healed it back to full. I think the Eliminators were my best choice.

To the great surprise of everyone, my Paladins succeeded in their charge! We crashed into the Intercessors and tagged the Dreadnought. Plan was going well so far. I did 6 wounds to the Contemptor and killed 6 Intercessors, leaving 2 alive after having earlier killed 2 in the psychic phase. I was going to Honor the Chapter at the end of the phase and fight again, but his power fist sergeant took out three of my Paladins, and a fourth fell to just random punches from that last remaining no name Intercessor.

Seriously. Why do we even wear Terminator armor?

We didn't kill the Dreadnought and the inevitable happened. Jack fell back and I just had to pray that my Paladins could weather the storm of bolter fire that was coming their way. They couldn't!

The commanders look on in horror.

His gunline absolutely annihilated 500 points of Paladins like they were nothing. The bonus AP from Devastator Doctrine turns Heavy Bolters into TDA killing nightmares. My Paladins died almost entirely to the Centurions alone.

Somewhere amidst all this, 20 Intercessors with Stalker Bolt Rifles erased two squads of Terminators that were trying to hold objectives.

I had to make a decision. I had to push, even though the Paladins were gone. I had Blood and Guts in play, and four fairly competent melee characters. I also had Secure Objective 2, which was back in my deployment. I gated my Grand Master back to grab that, and then pushed the other three characters forward to slay those last two Intercessors.

Only my Brother-Captain made it in, but he made short work of the Astartes on that objective.

On Jack's turn his characters finally decided to come out and play.

They surrounded and murdered my Brother-Captain, giving Jack Warlord. But my BroCap had done his job. It was clear to me at this point that I was definitely going to lose my entire army -- what I needed to focus on was having my units grab what points they could while they were still alive.

My Grand Master watches as everyone else is mercilessly cut down by bolter fire.

At the start of turn 4 I had one model left on the table. Grand Master Simandus had snuck back to grab an objective and had survived the mass executions that the Imperial Fists were performing on my troops and HQs. Jack actually forgot that Simandus was hiding back there. I was sitting at 15 victory points, and he at 16. On my turn I drew up to 5 objectives, and I saw my chance.

The Emperor's gifts.

Simandus knew Gate of Infinity. Jack had a squad of Intercessors sitting on Objective 5. If I teleported into his deployment zone and then made that 9" charge, I could get enough points to shoot myself into the lead.

On the plus side, Grand Master Simandus was outside of line of sight of the Centurions. On my turn 5 I ran Simandus forward, made the charge, and secured my Tactical Objectives, but at that point Jack had had an entire turn to overtake me in points. We called it there.

He tried his best.

Oh my word, Imperial Fists are good. They hit so hard! A lot! They have so any shots and my pitiful Terminator armor just cannot withstand it. His Stalker Bolt Rifles had AP-3 and did flat 2 damage, which just erases my 41 point troops. Plinking my dinky storm bolters off of all that impregnable yellow armor felt so hollow. It makes me think I should've brought less bodies and more heavy armor, but part of his Combat Doctrines says that all of his heavy weapons do +1 damage against vehicles so my Land Raiders and Dreadnoughts would've just been obliterated right out of the gate. Frankly, I'm not sure what I could've brought to counter this army.

Sportsmanship points to Jack, though. When I dropped in my Paladins he very kindly said, "maybe you want to push them back a bit. So they are outside of 12" from my Centurions. Auspex Scan." I thanked him profusely and scooted my boys into a safe zone. He definitely didn't have to warn me about that, and it was super cool of him to give me a heads up.

In the end, I think I played this game really well. It looks like I got slaughtered but, honestly, it was a pretty close one at the end there. I was hemorrhaging Grey Knights but they were doing what they were supposed to do while they were alive, and that's all I can ask of them! Jack was an excellent opponent and I look forward to playing against him in the future. I will take the lessons learned today and find some way to either outshoot his Imperial Fists or force them into melee where I have the advantage. Maybe next time I'll just not include any ruins at all on the table. Negate cover for both of us.

As a final note, I really love this game. I know most of my reports end with me losing horribly, but every single game that I play I look at my Grey Knights and I just think, "man, I love these little silver boys." They are so cool and they are so fun to play, even if they aren't even remotely competitive. They just... they feel like they're mine, you know?