[Epic] Elias vs Andy Battle Report

From: Andy Skinner <askinner_at_...>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 08:31:50 -0400

Sorry, Elias, this isn't going to be very detailed. I'm busy, have a cold,
and don't remember well, anyway. :)

We decided we'd play 1500 points this weekend. Neither of us had an army
designed before Elias got to my house, and I was still setting up terrain.
The son of a friend was visiting, since he's interested in getting into
miniatures. Poor guy, by the time we got going, it was time for him to
leave.

This was a pretty good terrain setup. The main flaw was to have not enough
cover on the edges, but that's typical of me. I think our best terrain
setups are where we use Geo-Hex to create the basic shape of the land, and
then put terrain items like hills, forests, and towns on top of it. This
time there was a ridge that went down the length of the table for about half
the table, and then angled and spread out towards the opposite side. Oh,
dear, I'm going to have to draw a picture.

                     Orks
  +------------------------------------------------+
  | |
  | R ork |
  | town |
  | I cliff woods |
  | hill |
  | D |
  | dragon |
  | G hill |
  | woods |
  | E R I D G E |
  | |
  | ruins |
  | |
  | |
  +------------------------------------------------+
                   Imperials

I threw together a bunch of detachments from before, though
I tweaked one because I wanted to use some normal infantry.

I had two armor detachments of:
4 Land Raiders (incl. 1 HQ)
2 Predators

infantry detachment:
6 squads assault marines

air detachment:
2 thunderhawks (carried assault marines)

infantry detachment:
captain in LR
2 squads tac marines in rhino
1 squad devastators in rhino
2 whirlwinds

1 Reaver Titan with DR, HWB, and Heavy Barrage

Elias posted his army the other day. I don't remember the specifics, but
there were 6 death rays or so, a whole buncha buggies, a detachment with a
lot of pulsas and big guns behind some woods.

We had plenty of missteps along the way. We gotta play this more often and
remember more of the rules. :)

The first was our discussion of orders for detachments. I firmly believe
that when a detachment of transport units carries a detachment of infantry,
both must have the same orders. I stated this at the beginning, and it
wasn't until we were in the game that I figured out Elias' point--Orks don't
use transport, they use hitching a lift. Sorry, Elias. We have some sort
of discussion about hitching a lift every game--I keep forgetting about it.
It already is really an exception to game rules, so detachments could use
different orders. I'm still not sure about the infantry on overwatch,
though.

I sent an armor detachment up the left, infantry into the ruins, and the
rest up the center towards the dragon hill. All except titan were on
assault, so I could move further. Elias very often marches on first turn,
and did so. He did bring a unit in the ruins close enough for me to
firefight or assault. However, an orbital barrage did a lot of damage to my
infantry. I wasn't very careful with assaults or firefights, and took
several on during the game with minor or no bonuses. I don't remember who
won the assault, but I lost some more guys. On the left, Elias' detachments
were mostly behind woods.


Oh, I'm just going to summarize.

In the second turn, I played a card to win movement initiative, and Elias
took it and used it himself. I brought the assault marines and put them
near the cliff hill. They spent the game moving a little one way, then a
little another. They never were able to assault the Ork guys in the woods.

Elias' detachment of infantry, big guns, and pulsas went behind, into, and
around the woods, and sat there firing at my assault troops or some marines
in the ruins or my titan.

His death rays didn't do as much as you might think, mostly due to range.
The single surviving LR in a SM armor detachment took out two that would
have meant bad things for the titan.

The Battle Fortresses did exactly what everyone said--they soaked damage.
Their huge firepower stripped the shields from the Titan, but he regenerated
all of them (I think the blast markers had an effect, though). I took my
assault marines and lots of work from my titan (plus some explosions from
closely packed battle fortresses) to finally destroy them, sparing the Orks
in the woods and an Ork mob with Death Rays. We forgot to roll for
critical hits, as one of our multiple missteps.

Elias was pretty worried at several points in the game, but my infantry
detachment was at half strength very early, I lost all but one LR in one
armor detachment, and my assault marines never really got it together, while
he had at least one almost untouched detachment.

At the end, my Reaver was down to 3 DC, and had 9 BMs. That was 17 morale
right there. (I rolled a 1 in the rally phase for BM removal.)

I'm pretty sure that Elias has been replaced by the pod people, because in
one turn he removed every single blast marker. That couldn't have been the
real Elias.

It was a fun game. I played the Space Marines fairly recklessly in the
assault phase, but timidly when giving orders. Mobility is such that if you
move first and go on overwatch, you may face no opponents. I think Elias
played better, using March orders (I'm usually afraid to do so) and
generally moving guys around better.

We had some questions:
1) The rules say you have to make a leadership test to move in the movement
phase, move in the assault phase, or set overwatch. Does that mean if you
fail a test for overwatch, you can roll to see about moving in the movement
phase, or vice versa? Or does it mean that if you fail a single leadership
test, you can't either move in the movement phase or set overwatch? We
chose the latter, but I'd guess the roll to move in the assault phase is
separate.

2) I don't remember the other questions.

Sorry this is so sketchy.

andy
Received on Tue Sep 15 1998 - 12:31:50 UTC