Okay, so remember how i said i play games against myself on a whiteboard to test stuff out? Well... My results lead me to believe that grey knights shouldn't play against me... Also, this is my first battle report so it may be a bit rough of a narrative so please bear with me.
Also, included is the board i was playing on, im not sure how well you'll be able to see it but know that green is grey knights, red is chaos and brown is terrain and objectives. If you have questions about the map feel free to ask away.
The armies:
R&H, Daemons, and Cyper:
Purge detachment. (No required troops, instead I'm required 2 elites)
HQ:
Renegade command squad 45
Ordnance tyrant 30 (allows me to have field artillery as non-required troops)
Autocannon team 10
85 for unit
Elites:
Disciples 35
Autocannon team 10
45X2=90 for two units
Troop:
2 units of 3 field artillery batteries each with a heavy quad mortar (thudd gun) and 3 crewmen
90X2=180
Heavy:
Renegade support squads 25
Autocannon upgrades on each team 30(10 each)
Militia traing (upgrades BS to 3) 10
65X2=130 for 2 units of 3 weapons teams
Daemons:
HQ:
Herald or Tzeentch: 45
Mastery level 3 50
Disc of Tzeentch 25
2X115=230 for two of the same Heralds
Troops:
Nurglings 45
Cypher's Formation:
Cypher 190
Chosen 90
X4 melta guns 40
Combi-Melta gun on champion 10
2X140=280 for 2 units of 5 marines
Grey Knights:
HQ:
Lirbarian 110
Mastery Level 3 25
135
Elites:
Paladins 165
+2 dudes 110
Apothecary 20
Brotherhood banner 25
320 fpr a unit of 5
Troops:
Strike squad 110
Razorback 55
Twin-Linked assault cannon 20
185X2=330 for two units of 5
Heavy Support:
Dreadknight 130
Teleporter 30
Heavy Incinerator 20
Sword 10
210X2=420
Okay, so disclaimer: Grey Knights aren't my primary army and I sort of just threw this together just to see how it worked, whereas my army of Chaos is well tuned and produced through trial and error.
Grey Knights won the roll-off for deploying first and decided to go first. The Paladins were kept in reserves. The rest of the force was split in half, a dreadknight and a razorback on both sides of deployment behind some cover.
Chaos deployed with the artillery and heavy weapons teams way in the back, with the heralds of Tzeentch around them, also all behind cover. Cypher and the two squads of chosen set up camp on the central hill, infiltrated, in a very precarious situation that would've gone horribly wrong had Chaos not STOLEN THE INITIATIVE.
That's right, Cypher pulled something and got the jump on the Grey Knights.
Turn 1: the heralds of tzeentch moved up to midfield, and both units of chosen manage to roll a 5 for their move through cover to get off the hill, each splitting off to take on a half of the Knights.
In the Psychic phase, one herald failed to bring in some horrors, and the other brought in another Tzeentch herald with 2 mastery levels.
Shoosting face: Melta guns on the left are shot at the dreadknight over there, reducing it to 2 wounds. The chosen squad on the right had Cypher with them, so naturally they outright killed the Dreadknight on their side. Autocannons completely failed to do anything except take 1 hull point off the razorback on the right
Now the fun part: Thudd guns.
Not having a clear target, the first unit targeted the left side of the field. Specifically the Razorback, to get to that juicy rear armor with the hope that some blasts will go wide and strike the dreadknight. After the barrage, the Razorback had been wrecked and the dreadknight dropped another wound. Thudd guns Part 2 wiped out the recently evacuated strike squad completely.
At the end of Chaos turn 1, the grey knights had been reduced to a 3/4 dead dreadknight. And a 1/3 dead razorback.
Now, on the bottom of turn one, they grey knights were left with a bit of a dilemma: where should the dreadknight teleport to? To stay in place and charge the chosen... Well shit, now i realize that might've been the better thing to do. Damn.
Instead of the smart thing, apparently, the dreadknight teleported behind the gunlines of the renegades and tried to torch one of the artillery crews.... And then remembered that all shooting towards artillery crew count as the toughness of the gun... Which is 7. So with one blast, the dreadknight ended up putting a single wound on one of the thudd guns. The razorback moved towards and objective and shot the assault cannon at Cypher's group and ended up taking 3 cbosen out. Not bad. And then ended the turn.
Chaos turn 2 was simple: move Cypher's group toward the razorback and explode it, Autocannon the dreadknight to death, and pelt the 5 remaining grey knights to dust with 12 small blasts. Tabled, end of story.
Now since this game was so short, i didn't have the opportunity to try out everything all the way, but a couple of notes i took were
That i liked how Cypher really bumped up the initial mobility of the chosen. Too many games in the past I've spent the first half of the game driving up the board in rhinos hoping to blast something along the way.
Which brings me to another thing: repeating melta guns. In the same lists that I used rhinos horribly in, I would instead have a 5 man marine squad, with 1 true melta, a combi-melta on the champion and a combi-melta strapped to the rhino and hope for the best.*sigh* if only I could send my hand back through time and slap myslef into doing this sooner.
Another fun thing was having 2 groups of thudd guns. 1 group of 4 can devastate an entire unit, but it can be overkill. 2 groups of 3 makes it so i don't have to commit all of that power in the unit to just one target; it gives me options.
Running the 3 pronged atrack of artillery with 9 Autocannons supporting them, melta right in the face turn 1 and daemon summoning has a lot of potential. Setting up the grey knights, i had to think even more carefully about my placement. As it happened it didn't really matter, but it still helped and I wish i hadn't alpha struck as well as i had had.
And my final point: I have finally witnessed a true alpha strike, and have felt the pain of removing half my army before getting the chance to do anything at all... Quite the powerful manoeuvre and yet another thing I wish I could've learned much sooner.
Well, that about does it for this one. I hope you enjoyed it and want to read more.
Please, comment and ask questions, I am open to constructive criticism and would greatly appreciate any advice.
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