Battle Report: Astro 2011 Playtest AKA battle of the Prototype List

Unlike previous years I decided that I would actually try to playtest my army at least more than once before a major tournament! So with that in mind Dave and I got together to try out our tournament armies. Dave was playing his 'no forgeworld' Vegas GT list and I would be playing my the prototype for my 2011 Astro list.

So lets go through the pre-game run down.

My Army:

My armylist starts with 5 scoring units in trukks, 3 boyz squads, one of grotz and one meganobz squad.

I have two characters, the Warboss of course and a Big Mek with a KFF which I find incredibly useful.

2 squadrons of Wartrakks, a squadron of Zzap gun wartrukks (Imperial Armor 11), The Huey is running as a Mek Junka (IA 11) and the Chinork is running as a Big Trakk (IA 11) and a small squad of tank bustas.

I have a fair bit of forgeworld vehicles in my army which I like because they give me a great deal of flexibility.

Lots of scoring units and men on the ground and all following my usual preference of target overlord. Essentially having more units on the board than my opponent can shoot at in a turn.

I'm running almost no dedicated specialist units this time around but I'm hoping the sheer number of targets will be able to give Dave a run for his money.

Dave's Army:

Dave arrived with a classic Dave list. Lots of Falcon hulls (4 Wave Serpents and a Night Spinner) supported by three vypers and a squadron of 5 warp spiders.

Dave is playing a larger squad of Fire Dragons in one boat and 3x 5 man squads of Dire Avengers. As he put it DAVU (Dire Avengers as a Vehicle Upgrade) essential making the wave serpent scoring.

He finished it up with his Autarch and a Farseer.

Dave has alot of armored hulls, that will be tough for me to crack. His preference lately is run scatter laser and shuriken cannons on everything. The lack of high strength guns may seem a disadvantage but I know better. He can put alot of Str 6 shots down field and cut my trukks and boyz to pieces so I will have to be careful.

No matter what I'm expecting to have to run at a wall of 12 armor with tons of shots coming down wind at me.

Scenario: Headhunt

I went digging through my scenario book and ended up pulling out a gem from a Warcon from 6 years ago. We adapted it to 5th ed on the fly. I rather like random scenarios since it helps you get a better feel for your army and at Astro there is a different scenario on every table, so flexibility is key.

The scenario is a modified victory points mission, with your general (highest point character) being worth and extra 250 VP but while he is alive all of your models get +1 ld, but when he dies all your models get -1 ld.

I also pulled out some of my con terrain from the garage, I've had this volcano table for months but I had yet to play on it!

Deployment

I managed to get the option to go first or second. I usually prefer to go second (to get the last turn) but I opted to go first to put myself in a harder position being that it’s a playtest game.

The table was fairly even, with a large LOS blocking volcano in the center.

I got to deploy first and deployed in a 'turtle formation' blocking LOS to my more valuable trukks and keeping everything under the watchful cover of my force field. I decided against reserves in the game because I knew I would have to aggressively move towards Dave.

In retrospect I made the turtle formation out of habit when I probably would have been better off deploying as close to Dave as possible since I got the first turn anyway (assuming he didn't steal the initiative)

Dave Chose to deploy everything as well. I was actually expecting him to deploy in reserve but like me he decided to have that extra couple of turns on the table to shoot at me.

I had deployed my force in the center of the table to hopefully force him in a corner (to be as far away from me as possible) but avoiding having our armies in opposite corners. Since of course its to my advantage to be as close as possible to start with.

I don't know why this pictures in sideways, don't ask its just too late at night.

Turn 1 - Alex

 I started by making a B-line for the Volcano. That would get me closer to Dave while staying behind cover.

I fired of a Grot bomb and my Zzap guns to try to disable a wave serpent and a torrent of fire against the vypers but no joy. Then I hunkered in for the oncoming storm.

Turn 1 - Dave

Dave shimmied up the Vypers and the serpents and unloaded a great deal of scatter laser fire taking out my Gun Trukks, damaging a warbuggy and destroying a boat carrying my Meganobz.

He dropped a Night Spinner template in the middle of my trukks immobilizing my Huey and giving everyone markers that force difficult terrain checks to hopefully disable more of my trukks. (luckily I have rerolls on everything ;) )  You can see the ! markers in the previous picture.

It was a bit of damage but nothing I consider even close to crippling. This would just slow me down slightly.

Turn 2 - Alex

At this point my plan began to spring into action. With Dave in the corner I decided to swing my forces in two directions around the volcano. With my force driving towards Dave he would have 3 choices. Move towards my main force and all my guns exposing his flank to my tank hunters. Or move towards the tank hunters head on and expose his flank to my main force. Or move into the corner and fight my entire army head on.

My hope was to crack some of his boats. At that point if he tried to make a break for it I could decide to give chase or abandon and clean up the Eldar left on the ground for the victory points.

I moved my boyz into position and fired! And once again couldn't kill anything. Hopefully my boyz will dig out the live ammo next turn.

Turn 2 - Dave

Dave started the turn by rolling for reserves with the Autarch +1 and got his Warp Spiders in. They jumped in behind my lines, but deviated 11 inches. Still in a great position to damage my tanks from the rear and he managed to immobilize one of my trukks.

Dave then moved up his Vypers to attack and hopefully screen his wave serpents and moved the serpents to unload into my tank hunting wartrakk squad.

He does modest damage to some more trukks and continues raining down Webs from the night spinner.

Turn 3 - Alex

I start my turn with a series of repair rolls from my grot riggers and my big mek to fix my trukks without any luck at all.

I unload a squad of boyz to deal with the spiders killing 4/5 with shooting, too far away for assault.

I continue to move steadily towards Dave's army. My Tank Bustas jump out of the Huey, tired of waiting for it to be fixed and along with the rest of the army unload a torrent of Big shootas and rokkits into his serpents and Vypers without any serious damage.

Once again my Grotz appear to have loaded my ammo bins with fireworks.

You can see those intact vypers in the picture... taunting me ;)

Turn 3 - Dave

With the game over the hump Dave begins to count victory points and starts working on damaged units to get as many points as possible.

Aside from some more trukk damage the highlight of the turn was 20 odd shots into my meganobz dealing  a ton of wounds, killing 2 of them. Not quite enough to claim victory points, but there will no doubt be more shooting.

Dave also dropped the Nightspinner template on my tank bustas wiping out the squad and my best chance to crack one of his tanks.

Turn 4 - Alex

With most of the trukks on the left flank gone my boyz began to move through cover on the last turn while putting down as much fire as they can. 

I let off another torrent of fire and caused more minor damage. I also manage to finish off the Warp Spiders giving me my first victory points.

Still would have been nice to take advantage of the tank bustas, so in there memory here is the marker identifying the crater containing there remains. No doubt the dummy firework rounds the were carrying went off in the process making an awesome display.

Turn 4 - Dave

Dave continues to gun down trukks and boyz to try to take VPs from me.

He wisely continued to move his vehicles in an armored column away from my now on foot boyz.

A well placed night spinner shot did a few wounds on the mobz on the left flank and forced my boyz to make dangerous terrain rolls next turn!

I roll the dice for random game length and the game shall continue!

Turn 5 - Alex

 

My last good chance to take victory points was a lone rokkit shot at a wave serpent and some big shoota fire to try to take out the vypers.
I shimmy my remaining vehicles and men to take some pot shots as best I can but to no avail.

I chose to leave my last boyz on the left flank in the crater barely within weapons range. I felt it wiser then risking losing them due to dangerous terrain from the night spinner and giving Dave free points.

Turn 5 - Dave

Dave continued to slide his 'wall of wraithbone' out of the majority of my weapons range. Cleverly positioning his vulnerable vypers inside his hulls to give them cover. A few more scatter laser shots rained down on the last of my Orks not in cover and took out the last trukk on my right flank. Dave rolls a 'Kareen!' result sending the trukks contents almost to my own table edge and way out of position.



Turn 6 - Alex

At the start of the turn my riggers finally manage to reattach the rotors of my Huey with Duct Tape and not a moment too soon. My Huey moved to get one last volley of shots on the Vypers but to no avail. The last Ork on my right flank fired his big shoota at the vypers from within the cover of his wrecked trukk with similar results.

Turn 6 -  Dave

In Dave's last turn he continued to shimmy his forces away from my remaining Orks and gunned down a few remaining Orks. Luckily many of my squads weren't finished off so they weren't worth as many points to him. But the damage to my forces was quite extensive there was no doubt Dave had won.

Dave rolled for random game length and the game ended on turn 6.

Post Game

Despite some serious problems with crappy ammo and bad dice (I blame the curse of the unpainted figs!) I was actually quite happy with my performance.

In hindsight I could have deployed closer and more aggressively (given that I had the first turn) The turtle formation was not required and even if Dave had managed to steal the initiative he couldn't take the chance of deploying aggressively so deploying my boyz in a more aggressive posture would have helped.

My Attempt to trap him in a corner seemed to be the best way to go. If I had managed to pop a serpent or two Dave would have been in a position to either sit still to protect his troops and get trapped in the corner or escape and leave his troops in the open.

If he sat still I could have rained fire down on him, if he tried to escape I could give chase or ignore him and mop up the vulnerable troops for points. It was a solid plan but bad luck did me in. You can claim I didn't have enough anti-tank Guns but when you fire 20 odd shots in a game, many of them twin-linked and hit twice it really doesn't matter how many gunz you have ;)

By turn 3 I could have given up but I chose not to and I'm glad I didn't. I had fun despite the dice and calculating the points afterwards we realized it was alot closer than we thought.

The trouble with Dave shooting my orks is that each of my squads and tanks are only worth 30-80 points each vs 130-150 for each of his tanks. I didn't actually need to deal that much damage to him to catch up. Killing one of his tanks might had made it a draw, killing 2 might have been a win. With that kind of situation you'd be a fool to give up turn 3 because you still have a good chance to turn it around!

Dave and I discussed his armylist. He had doubts about the one shuriken cannon turret he had, and was debating dropping a single fire dragon to upgrade it to a scatter laser for the extra range. I agreed with him, that lone shuriken was rarely in range. Whereas a single fire dragon would help in one turn and then likely die (being a glass cannon unit) the turret would be useful all game. And really when you have 8 meltaguns in a squad a ninth won't make much of a difference!

I also talked with Dave about the army choice. We both agreed that the army in general was solid but the only flaw seemed to be my chinork acting as a halftrakk. It had plenty of firepower but was too slow, being forced to sit still to shoot its gunz. After discussing the options I think I will take out the grotz, and use the extra points I have floating and upgrade the halftrakk to a battlewagon. At least then if it sits still or double times forward it will have the 14 armor to keep it in the game. It will also free up a troop slot and possibly a heavy support if I make the battlewagon a dedicated transport for the meganobz which will help my composition score at Astro.

Lessons learned and that's what playtesting is all about!