Local Tourney 2000pts - GK vs BT

Played the 5th week game last night and I was matched up against another undefeated player (Black Templars gunline list). I had anticipated the high probability of this match up (the other possible opponent would have been IG or Necrons) and I had initially planned on bringing an anti-gunline list (20 GKTs, 2 jump NDKs, psyfleman dread) but after careful thought, I didn't think it was fair. I've always used lists that had some theme and that would be competitive against most opponents. In this case though, I had a little bit of wiggle room--after all a list that can pump out 28 missiles is like playing a list that had 6 psyfleman dreads

This was by far one of the best games I've had against possibly one of the best players I've faced. I learned a lot from him about being methodical, precise and getting used to true line of sight. The way he played made me feel I like a noob in how I still forget a lot of things.

I will just give a brief summary since my opponent did a video batrep. I'll post the link once he gets it up on dakkadakka for anyone interested to read the full version.

His list:
Marshall w/ artificer armor, SS, power fist, adamantium mantle, bike
Emperor's champion w/ AAC
5 x crusaders w/ 1 lascannon
5 x crusaders w/ 1 lascannon
5 x crusaders w/ 1 lascannon
5 x termies w/ 2 cyclones
5 x termies w/ 2 cyclones
5 x termies w/ 2 cyclones
1 x 3 typhoon speeders
1 x 3 typhoon speeders
1 x 2 typhoon speeders

My list:
GM w/ staff, psycannon, rad, psychostroke, 2 skulls
10 x GKT w/ 2 psycannons, assorted weapons, psybolts
8 x GKT w/ 1 psycannon, banner, staff, assorted weapons, psybolts
10 x GKIS w/ 2 incinerators, 1 hammer, psybolts
NDK w/ heavy incinerator, gatling psilencer
Dread w/ 2 TWLAC w/ psybolts
Dread w/ 2 TWLAC w/ psybolts

Mission: Objectives (1st), Table Quarters (2nd), Kill points (3rd)
Deployment: DoW
He won the roll off and gave me first turn.

Pre-game thoughts: So I have 18 GKTs vs. his 15 termies; 10 GKIS vs 15 crusaders; and 2 walkers/1 MC vs. 8 skimmers. Not a bad match up. The objective and deployment actually works in my favor because I can get close much sooner. His list's weakness is the 3 soft scoring units so I am hoping to exploit that. I just have to weather a ton of missiles getting to them

I roll for GS and get only 1 unit so I make my GKIS scoring.

Deployment:
I deploy my 18 GKTs and the GM right on the 24" line spread out on the center of the board. 2 dreads will walk in from the board edge. NDK will DS and GKIS is also in reserve. I thought of combat squadding the 10 GKTs but my gut instinct told me not to. This became an important factor later.
He deploys 1 crusader squad to his far left behind some ruins. Another crusader squad to his far right behind some trees. Every other unit will come in first turn except for the last crusader squad who's in reserve.

Summary/highlights:
- With his initial volley aimed at my GM+8 GKTs: 28 missiles, 24 heavy bolters, 30 storm bolters, 1 bolt pistol, 1 bolter (bike), he caused 40 wounds ...and I lost 1 GKT
- The subsequent turns were trading shots while we closed the gap. By the 3rd turn, my GM squad was down to 4 GKTs and my GM had 1 wound left. They were multi-charged by the Marshall, EC and 3 termies squads. I still managed to win the 1st round of combat (thank you rad and psychostroke!). I put 2 wounds on the Marshall, killed the EC and another termie while I lost my GM and another GKT. My last 3 GKTs eventually fell the next turn but they did their job.
- The NDK managed to DS where I wanted him to but I was disappointed in his damage output. I did make some mistakes in positioning him so I wasn't able to fully employ the incinerator template but even with 2 rounds of shooting with the psilencer and the incinerator, he only killed 4 out the 5-man crusader squad before he fell to massed shooting.
- It all boiled down to the crucial 5th turn.
By the end of the 4th turn, the scenario was: My remaining GKT squad was down to 9 bodies and was within range of securing an objective. My GKIS had split up and each 5-man squad was behind some ruins ready to jump on objectives. I still had 1 dread for fire support. He still had a 5-man and a 4-man termie squad, the Marshall (w/ 1 wound left) within assault range to my GKTs. His scoring units were down to a 1-man, a 2-man and a 4-man. All of them were within move/run range of objectives. Lastly, he still had a 3-speeder, a 2-speeder, and a 1-speeder squadron all poised and within turbo-boosting range to contest objectives. Things looked really grim and I knew that any objective I went for, he can contest since he had last turn.
So, I pulled my ace in the sleeve and switched to plan B -- GKIS squad 1 shunted right next to the 2-man crusader squad. GKIS squad 2 shunted next to the 4-man crusader squad. The GKTs did the GKT shuffle and stretched themselves so that 1 model is securing the objective and 3 were able to get range on the 1-man crusader squad. The 2-man squad went down. The 1-man squad went down. But the 4-man squad made amazing armor saves and only lost 1 model At this point, I thought my gamble didn't pay off because he still had 1 scoring unit.
He moved and ran his remaining 3-man crusader to the same objective my GKTs were holding. The 2-speeder squadron turbo-boosted to the same objective for added measure. Everything else shot up my GKTs and again he did a butt-ton of wounds but I only lost 2 GKTs. The marshall then sacrificed himself by assaulting the GKTs to draw them away from the objective. I promptly cut him down and made the crucial consolidate roll to see if I can get back to the objective--I rolled a 6 and contested the objective! So at the end of turn 5, we were tied for Primary but I was ahead for secondary (table quarters) and would have won but the game went on.
- It was downhill from there. My GKTs wiped out the crusaders. One GKIS squad wiped out the 2-speeder squadron. The other GKIS shot and assaulted the 4-man termie unit and wiped them out before they were wiped out by the 5-man termie unit. At the end of Turn 7, I controlled 1 objective with the remaining 7 GKTs. Grey Knights win 1-0
- Dice rolling did play a big factor in this game due to very good rolling on my part and below average rolls on his part. That's just the way the game plays out some times.

After game thoughts:
Keeping my 10-man GKT squad intact turned out to be the right decision. I anticipated he would concentrate fire on 1 squad at a time and that he would go for the unit w/ the GM first. So I was very happy they were the brunt of so much shooting and assault. Even though they went down, it took him 4 turns to knock them out. This pretty much left my other GKT squad fairly intact for the end game. The GKIS were also priceless. I basically sacrificed them to win the game and they ended up doing a hell of a lot of damage, all in the 5th, 6th and 7th turns The NDK could have performed better but he also helped by drawing a lot of fire.
My opponent played very well and did all the right moves with what resources he had. I do believe though that he totally did not expect me to pull that offensive stunt in the 5th turn. That was the turning point of the game although I still could have lost if I didn't make that crucial consolidate roll. But, this is what makes for awesome games!!!! I now stand 5-0 and have 1 more game to go to possibly win the whole tourney.

Thanks for reading

Well played! Can't wait to see the video!

Brother Rivan,

Congratulations on the win, I also look forward to the video. I hope your opponent enjoyed the game to ...

Here is hoping you win the tourney. I guess it is Tyrainds or IG to face...

Brother Flaxis

Thanks Brothers.

@flaxis: Yes, my opponent enjoyed it too. He really played very well tactically. What helped tip the game in my favor was the dice rolling averages. I did my best to limit or direct his options but ending up making almost all my 2+ saves really helped. Tyranids are actually out of the running. It will be either IG or BA I think.
The IG has an Executioner, lots of melta vets, vendettas, etc. The BA is an assault heavy list.

Many congratulations on another win Brother.

Way to go Brother!!!!!!!!!
Nice battle of the minds on this one!
I am proud of you for keeping your lists themed, and not getting lost in the competitiveness of it all.

What are your feelings about the final match? Are these also undefeated generals?

I beleive they are. However, they both have a makeup game to do so only 1 of them will have a 5-0 record by next week.

I'm pretty stoked to have a 5-0 record so win or lose on the last game doesn't make that much of a difference to me. It'll be nice to win and get Best General but what I really wanted to get out of this tourney was testing out different units and how they synergize with each other. I'm still trying to settle on a fixed list that I'm really comfortable with that I can bring to major tourneys and GTs.

Amazing job yet again Brother Rivan, as a BT player as well I was really interested to see how this played out, and it sounds like a great game.

For those that are interested, the opponent I played posted the video of our game. I apologize if my narrations on my turns are a bit garbled. I've never really done a video rep before. The BT player, David was very clear though so you'll still understand how the game went

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxfaHaFE1qc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

nice batrep and congratulations. the camera was a bit shaky from time to time but overall it really looked nice and was easy to comprehend

Well played, sir. Nice when gambles really pay off. As a BT player myself I'm kind of saddened that he went to a krak-spam army. It's list builds like that that's dampened my enthusiasm for 40K lately. He seemed like a really nice dude though. Congrats on the win.

Thanks NF. He is a nice guy. But you're right though. The reason I wasn't all that guilty fielding a lot of GKTs is precisely because he was running missile spam

Nice stuff, sounds like a great game!!!!

GKT are a strange creature to be honest, you can see them weather a storm of fire and shrug it all off, or take 5 wounds and you lose a few.

I think using your shunt moves to full effect was a great idea however, good work and well played tactically!

Nice batrep! interesting game to see
bit of a shame though really that he blames it all to your luck, and his bad luck

Thanks guys.

@Requiem: I know Brother While it is true that I did make really good saves and that I made good rolls when it counted, it is totally part of the game mechanics. Not sure if he realized it (or just discounted it) but I actually had more control of the tempo of the game than he did. Even the shunt move in Turn 5 was already in my mind as early as Turn 3 after I saw how things were unfolding TBH, if I hadn't made some tactical errors early in the game, it would have been over for him much sooner. If I had positioned my 10-man GKT squad and my NDK correctly, I would have eradicated 2 of his scoring units by Turn 2 and would then have been able to systematically knock out his speeders with all my psycannons and psybolts. His termies were too slow and wouldn't have been able to contest all the objectives as my Interceptors shunted all over the place.

I always believed that luck is luck, true. Good or bad rolls can make or ruin your game sometimes. But more often than not, good or bad decisions are the ones that are really going to make you win or lose. Just my two cents.

Addendum: I still thoroughly enjoyed this game because I did learn a LOT from my opponent. Like I mentioned early on in my batrep, he's probably one of the most methodical players I've faced. For those who watched the vidrep, he made very sound tactical moves and decisions. I would also be a bit frustrated if my BS4 marines were only batting a 50% hit ratio. I had a lot of positive take-aways from this game and I'm hoping to be a more methodical player (like him) in the future as well

Just watched the vid, kudos to your victory Rivan =)

One thing that I'm kind of upset about is he had shooty Black Templar...That's almost unheard of. But it's his army I guess.

Gratz again,
-Petros

Brother_Petros wrote:Just watched the vid, kudos to your victory Rivan =)

One thing that I'm kind of upset about is he had shooty Black Templar...That's almost unheard of. But it's his army I guess.

Gratz again,
-Petros

It's actually not nearly as unheard of as you'd think these days. As a BT player myself I can tell you if you want to go to a competitive tourney/game and compete with the likes of BA, SW etc then shooty is your only option. Besides BT do shooty pretty damned well, and since noone expects it is all the more effective.

Rivan wrote: I would also be a bit frustrated if my BS4 marines were only batting a 50% hit ratio.

Its like playing most Xenos armies!