Anything you can do, I can do better? Grey Knights vs. Grey Knights Battle Report
Last time, I finally executed the strategy I had put together over the course of several games. That was, keeping Strike Squad and Librarian back to hold points, and using the Terminators and 3 Dreadknights to score points/kill stuff. Of course, just when I get my crap together I get thrown a curve ball. The last battle of the 1,000 bracket was a mirror match: Grey Knights on Grey Knights. I was facing someone that was running a list very similar to what I was running.
Just as a reminder, this is the 1000 point list that I'm currently working with:
Warlord: Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight
Brotherhood Librarian
2x Nemesis Dreadknight
Strike Squad
Brotherhood Terminator Squad
Round 8: Grey Knights vs Grey Knights
To try something new, the person organizing the league used the Tempest of War decks to plan out the Primary Objectives and to add special unique rules each round. Ultimately, some players weren't a fan of doing it this way, so we went back to the Nachmund chapter approved book. But it meant that the special rule this round was that any unit on an objective marker had to pass a save during each battle round or suffer mortal wounds. Sounds nasty but really didn't affect our battle too much, as everyone passed their checks on both sides of the board.
Knowing that I was up against more Dreadknights, when we placed terrain out on the board, I made the terrain super close on one side of the board to limit how much the Dreadknights could move around the board. Once again, I ended up going second, but I had somewhat of a plan, keep most of the marines and Terminators back and get the Dreadknights into play and try and hammer them down one at a time.
When "I forgot they could do that" isn't an excuse.
Keen observers will notice that in the deployment photo above, I left a WIDE GAPING HOLE that is *just* perfect for a teleport. Sure enough, turn 1 my opponent teleports one of his Dreadknights into the back corner to come at my Terminators. I really should have thought more about "what would I do", because this was such an obvious play. Once he picked up his Dreadknight from the board, I immediately knew where it was going to go. This was not a great start to this game.
On the plus side, my plan was to try and focus fire the Dreadknights down one at a time, and here I had one right in my backyard. So naturally, it became public enemy number one as everyone opened fire on it. The downside is that while my focus was on the Dreadknight, his other troops were moving closer and closer to my side of the board. Remember in previous posts, when I said that Dreadknights allow you to do things behind the scenes as they tend to distract people? Turns out that tactic works on myself too.
I can do that too, you know
Two can play this game though. Time to teleport the Grand Master to the back of the field and have a run on his marines for once. Plus, this will activate my Grand Master's abilities when he charges people. Next, it turns out I wasn't as good at terrain placement as I thought, as I managed to squeeze one of my Dreadknights through the opening on the left. This meant I could make a run at his characters that were near the other objective point.
I switched up my strategy at this point - taking out the non-Dreadknight units would be easier and quicker than trying to knock out all three. Plus, it would reduce the amount of attacks that my opponent would have on me. So I kept the Troops back for defense and used the Dreadknights to whittle down his units. The Troops in the rear could still provide cover fire to help out the Dreadknights. I "sacrificed" one Dreadknight to engage his remaining 2 Dreadknights in the center terrain to keep them occupied.
Great idea, poor execution
Of course when I finally got my act together and had recovered to something resembling a plan, the dice gods lost favor with me. Suddenly *all* my dice rolls went out the window. Psychic rolls to try and deal some mortal wounds? Just barely passed, which meant it was easy for my opponent to roll above them and Deny the attack. Lots of attacks sent towards units? Yeah, let's have all of them fail, or make it easy for the other Grey Knights to roll saves against.
Suffice to say, without being able to deal any kind of damage, my units died quick and painful deaths. The Dreadknights were obliterated, and then his Dreadknights came after my troops. Once the terminators were dead and I was just left with my Strike Squad, I knew that the end had come. I conceded, finishing up the 1000 point batch of games with a 2-2 record, 3-5 overall. Not bad, but not exactly great either.
What did I learn?
If you've ever listened to competitive sports and/or poker players, you'll hear them talk about moving forward when you get put on "tilt". Tilt is when your opponent does something unexpected and throws you off your game. The best players are able to stay focused when they get put on tilt and recover from it. I need to do that.
Now I have to do more list building to figure out what I'm going to bring to the 1,500 point games.
WHY THE HECK DID I LEAVE A PERFECTLY GOOD TELEPORT PLACE OPEN?
Have you ever felt like you have to remember too many lessons from previous games? Enough that you end up forgetting the basic ones you learned in the beginning? Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter/Facebook.