vs Void Spectors

LVO is coming. There will be Space Marines. There will be lots of Space Marines. So this week I played against Derek and his sneaky Void Specters!

I have played against this army many times.  I've learned what hits hard, what sticks around a long time, and what the army's weakness are. With this particular list, Derek doesn't have a whole lot in the way of anti-tank ranged weapons, so I thought maybe my Dreadknights might actually do something. I threw my models into my fancy new carrying case and went out to Beers and Battles.

All safe and magnetized! Hopefully this will survive the flight to Vegas.

I work on Thursdays and then go boxing right afterwards before heading out to Mox for the weekly Warhammer night. Usually this means that my opponent has very thoughtfully set up terrain before I even arrive, and then we can get straight to the carnage. I walked into Beers and Battles at 6:15 and found Derek relaxing by this table.

"Ah," I said. "The perfect battlefield for Space Marines."

"I figure it'd just save us some time," he replied.

We sifted through the bins of terrain and set up a somewhat more forgiving board.

Like a snow base, or something.

We rolled up the mission Frontline Warfare from CA2019 on the Spearhead Assault deployment zone.

My forces. I shared my LVO list (which I'm playing here) in a blog post last week.

Derek's forces.

Derek is also playing the list that he will be bringing to LVO. He's got it locked down tight, and entirely painted aside from an Eliminator Squad and an ++INVICTOR TACTICAL WARSUIT+++. He's got two Captains, two Lieutenants, and a Phobos Librarian who is his warlord rocking some Raven Guard powers. He spends a bunch of CP before the match to hand out relics and special issue wargear to his various characters, turning most of them into snipers. He's given his Phobos Captain Korvifari Bolts, so now that motherfucker is running around with a 36", Assault 1, S4, AP-2, D3 rifle that can target characters and ignore line of sight. Which, like... feels like a lot.

I somehow left my GMNDK's sword at home.

I deployed first and set up my Terminators, my GMNDK, my Dreadknights, and my Ven Dread like so. I was slated to go first, and figured that I was stolen against last week so it probably wouldn't happen this week. The plan here was to push forward with the Termies and the GMNDK and open up a spot for my deep striking Paladins and characters.

He deployed thusly. You can see that he's got a pretty nice castle right there, and many of his units can deploy out of his deployment zone so he wasn't as bound by the wedge formation as I was. The two Redemptors were placed in the back to probably try and discourage deep striking. I saw that and figured I could kite them around the board for most of the game and render most of their big spinning guns irrelevant. He deep stroked his Aggressors and Hellblasters.

He did not succeed at seizing the initiative! So I moved my forces on up to get within smiting range and Gated my GMNDK across the map to disrupt his backline.

Mission accomplished.

The Redemptors, as I'd hoped, moved backwards to engage my GMNDK, pushing them deeper into Derek's own deployment zone and away from the rest of the battle. S5 AP-2 guns are bad news for my Terminators. We were playing one of the new Maelstrom missions which use Schemes of War, and I didn't have a single objective grabbing card in my hand. There was no reason for me to throw any of my forces in his backline, so keeping the Redemptors back there worked out perfectly. My GMNDK was destroyed after this, but he did his job and I commend him for his valiant service.

Side note, I hate Eliminators. They just kill everything.

These boys decided not to move any closer to the ++INVICTOR TACTICAL WARSUIT+++ and just hold our objective outside of its flamer range.

The Invictor's charge.

Oof, you're over here, I guess.

Turn two I dropped my Paladins and my characters in. Yes, that is my Brother-Captain up in front of every body. Yes, he is my Warlord. I needed him where he was for the FttF aura and the Psychic Locus aura. The was the best spot for him to be to assure everyone got everything. I had two Dreadknights in front of him for screening. My Paladins were buffed by both Astral Aim and PSybolt Ammunition, so they made mincemeat of the Eliminators that threatened my characters. I figured the Brother-Captain would be good!

Alas, it wasn't so. The +++INVICTOR TACTICAL WARSUIT+++, being the pinnacle of Adeptus Astartes battle suits, ruined my Dreadknight in close combat. On Derek's turn, he walked it forward and flamethrowered my Brother-Captain into ash. This was not great! That not only gave him Warlord but severely limited my army's potential threat range.

To make matters worse, he dropped in his Aggressors right in my deployment zone and forced me to deal with them rather than completing objectives. It would have been entirely irresponsible of me to leave these little monsters unchecked back there. On his next turn they'd be firing 36+6d6 AP-1 shots at whatever they wanted, which would just ruin either my Paladins or the Ven Dread off to the right. I couldn't leave them alone.

I threw my Brotherhood Ancient up to smite them with the Banner of Refining Flame, and I forgot that they each have 3 wounds. He only dealt 3 MWs, and slew but one Aggressor. My Ven Dread proceeded to whiff all of his shots after that so those guys remained.

I figured that I'd rather have my Paladins in cover and acting as a gun platform than skirting around the edges of the center structure only to get wasted by the remaining Aggressors and Derek's Hellblasters, so I Gated them up into the nearby building. They Perils'd on the way up there. I only had six left by that time, which was rough!

The cards I drew on the next turn were not favorable. They all focused on claiming one of Derek's backfield objectives and killing one or more of his characters. He had a small opening back in his deployment zone, but his Phobos Captain was keeping me 12" away from him. We were pretty close on points, and I knew if I could just get there then I might be able to charge some Intercessors, pile in, and get the job done. But the opening in his zone was too small for my Paladins, and everyone else was dead -- everyone except Grand Master Elion Simandus.

I yeeted my Draigo proxy deep into enemy lines. Those Intercessors up there were sitting on the objective I needed. I rolled for the charge...

... and made it in! The Blade of Doom Mons made short work of that squad of five Intercessors, but the objective was still being challenged by his Redemptor right there.

Seven wounds and a 3++ invuln is hard to get through. I chose not to consolidate Simandus into combat and waited for Derek to run through his turn, hoping that my Grand Master's legendary survivability would keep him alive until my turn.

He died to the sniper weapons of the various HQs. The Redemptor didn't even fire.

At that point, all hope was lost. Derek scored 1700 victory points on his turn and I had only 4. We called it.

This matchup was fun, and honestly closer than I had expected it to be. We spent some time after the game talking with other guys at the club about how powerful Space Marines are right now, and how it is really difficult for other armies to even feel like they can compete. I saw an interesting comment on reddit the other day, I don't know by who. They mentioned that good armor characteristics increase the point costs of models substantially, and that the same is for high AP weapons. But the trade off between my expensive armor and your expensive AP weapon is that my guy dies, and your weapon continues to stay on the table. That... isn't balanced properly. High armor is good, yes, but only when anti-armor options aren't as common and cheap as White Claw. It is so rare these days that I actually get a chance to make an unmodified 2+ armor save on my Terminators.

In any case, the game was fun and I am happy with how it played. I felt like I made some good moves there, despite the loss.

Next week I will be playing against Ynnari!