Battle for Tristania IV

Well, last night we had another Drunken Gamer fest over at Ca$h's, and this time I took my Pre heresy Night Lords. I know, I am listed as using Tyranids for the Locara campaign, but instead of looking up the current rules for them, then having to relearn them all in a month, I figure why not just keep working on my Night Lords, and hit Tyranids afresh on Jan 16th.

The list I took:

Librarian in power armor, with Avenger and Gate of Infinity

10 man Tactical Squad with Powerfist sgt, melta, multimelta , drop pod (Librarian hangs out here)

10 man Tactical Squad with Power weapon sgt, melta, multimelta, rhino

10 man Tactical Squad with power weapon sgt, plasma, lascannon (yup, went old school las-plas) rhino

Another 10 man las pls rhino squad

Dreadnought with Assault Cannon, extra armor, drop pod
Dreadnought with twin las, drop pod

Multimelta Tornado
Multimelta Tornado
1500 points on the nose.

Game 1 vs Joyous Oblivion's Guard
His list roughly:
Plasma Russ
2 vendetta-vet squads with demo's meltas
1 platoon with grenade launcher command section, heavy bolter section, sniper section, 2 missile/melta squads
3 heavy plasma sentinels
company command with powerfist, plasmagunx4, medic

mission was 3 objectives with pitched battle deployment.

Like an idiot, when I combat squaded up my las plas squads, I bunched up the lascannon 5 man sections, and the one deployed in the middle ate 20 plasma cannon shots.. failed more than 5 cover saves, he immobilised one of my speeders straight away so it did nothing else all game, but basically didn't do too much damage first turn. I retaliated by dropping in the drop tactical with librarian, and combat squaded the melta gun section to take out the Russ, which I did. Revenge!

Adventures in incompetence part1: I drop the assault cannon dread to his infantry and sentinel flank, hoping that with side armor shots I could cripple the sentinels, however I rolled 1's and 2's to hit....

He then with his entire infantry flank and with sentinels, proceeded to shoot at this dreadnought, which made ALL of its cover saves! Elsewhere, my rhinos with combat squad sections move up, and take all 3 objectives.

Actually since this battle was video taped, in summary, the assault dread took 4 turns of combat to wipe out a single infantry squad in another show of Incompetence, but more Incompetently, I had 4 marines charge into 10 veterans.. I kill 2, he then hits back, and kills 3!!! I lose combat and fall back into my objective building... that veteran squad would later be charged and killed by a lone marine! At the end of the game, that lone marine with melta heroicly tried to John Woo style leap from a building , firing his melta at a vendetta, but only succeeded in blowing a wing lascannon off, but he was still within 3 inches of an objective, winning me the game, because.. in yet another adventure of incompetence, his lone platoon commander "ran" to contest my far right objective, and my remaining 3 marines with power sword sgt charge in and promptly FAIL to wound, guardsmen then bayonets one of my guys to death, tying up combat, and contesting.

Great Game, man oh man, I truly now see the power of the Vendetta.. 130 points? wtf! Also, the fragility of little 5 man squads is really telling, as this was teh first game i had combat squaded everything. Hopefully Ca$h can post the video

Game 2 vs Ca$h's Emperors Children
His list roughly:
2 noise marine squads x8 with sonic weapons, doomsiren, rhino
1 5 man noise marine squad with 1x blastmaster, 4 x bolters
land raider
Terminators x 5 chainfist, combimelta, heavy flamer
lash sorceror
2 obliterators

Seize Ground with Dawn of War deployment

We were now playing on the open ground table, and he placed his objective deep in his zone, and mine I placed near a bunker near the center of the board. I was expecting a shooting fest, so placed it BEHIND the building so i could combat squad a few guys there, and hold it, BUT Ca4H then states he is deep striking both oblits and terminators.. so I wisely chose to defend my objective with3 combat squad sections, 2 of them the lascannon ones, and hide out my speeders, waiting for him to drop in. Cunningly, when i deployed, the only things I had were 2 empty rhinos that were 7.5 inches from my table edge. Why empty rhinos? because on turn one, after my drop pods would come in, I could walk on my tacticals 6 inches, and now being 1.5 inches from the back doors, embark, and then zoom forwards 12 inches and pop smoke, for a grand total of 19.5 inches on turn one. This was my strategy, and i did just that

Ca$h had deployed his 5 man Blastmaster squad in Bunker 22 (counts as a ruins.. we d6'ed it to see if it was a building or not) and had an empty rhino parked near it, probably to do the same trick I was going to do, and my big plan was to drop pod in the librarian and his buddies, and 'Avenger" str 5 ap3 flamethrower his guys on top of Bunker 22. But the scatter was huge, right near the board edge, and so I had to place my squad in harms way to rapid fire into them, but I would eat vindicator shots.. and here comes some controversy... While I was deploying this squad, I seperated the librarian off, and deployed him with his back against the board edge, hiding in my drop pod fins.. in case I didnt kill the blastmaster, I didnt want him to have LOS, but Ca$h didnt see him there, which would cause controversy later on...

Sure enough, with the assault cannon dreaddeploying near his objective and my rapidfiring squad, I wiped out the Noise Marine squad in Bunker 22. His turn one, EVERYTHING goes towards bunker 22... so this battle was to be dubbed battle for Bunker 22. He drives up a noise marine squad, and Doom Sirens all but the meltagunner and wisley chose to not assault him, as that squad would then be right in front of 2 tacticals in rhinos, and my librarian, in a cluster, where his Avenger would crush them. I even said "Go ahead, assault" with a smile, he chose not to. His land Raider had moved on with another NM squad inside it, and it lascannoned my drop dread.

Turn 2, I drop my last dreadnought in the open field between Bunker 21 and Bunker 22. My plan was to put it far enough away from my objective by bunker 21 that when he dropped his terminators or obliterators, they would then be in the open to eat 2 tornado shots and 2 lascannon shots from my Obj Defence guys.. The lone meltagunner moves forward 6 inches, and staring down the fresh-from-the-factory Land Raider, promptly killed it! Sorry Ca$h, I know how it feels when models tend to bite it early in their first game! My Librarian circles around the drop pod, and proceeds to vaporise 6 of 8 noise marines with Avenger, then assaulted the remainder and did nothing. My Bunker 22 rhinos fire a few pot shots at the now disembarked land raider squad to no avail.

Ca$h then decides to put NOTHING towards my objective, and was playing for the draw by wiping out anything by Bunker 22. Ca$h did a few mistakes here where he wanted to lash my meltagunner out of the way so the squad could charge in and kill my librarian, but you must charge the target you shoot at, and so he should have split his sorceror off prior. his vindicator immobilised my lascannon dread out in the open, while his terminators dropped in to move in later turns to wipe out anything I put towards his objective. My librarian wipes out the last 2 noise marines, Ca4h not having good to-wound rolls on his power sword champion..

My turn, the librarian then is in great position to Avenger a second full noise marine squad and so here is where the controversy (nothing serious, but I felt super bad) in that he is now going to wipe out another 150 points, all because Ca$h didnt see me deploy him in the wings of my drop pod. The only reason I put him there wasnt to be a sneaky little bitch, but to hide him from eating an instant death ap3 blastmaster shot if I fail to wipe out the whole squad on top of bunker 22. However, Ca$h brings up a good point, in that had he known he was there, he would have shot him. I chime in with "well, it doesnt matter, there is no way you could draw line of sight 'through' my drop pod" My drop pod is a custom job, built prior to the model being released, and being Pre heresy and using only old models, I like having a drop pod(x3) that look different, as every other model is different. But the hatches are glued shut. By True Line of Sight, he wouldnt have been able to lash him or shoot him with 7 sonic blasters firing on triple shot! BUT other players, and I believe Capt Agamemnon's name came up, say that yeah, you CAN shoot through them. The rules in the space marine codex state it is open topped and that "the hatches blow open upon landing" but says nothing about whether or not you can physically close the hatches to block line of sight after this turn.. I assume you cannot, as that would be cheesy, to close the hatches when you need LOS blocked, then open them again like gun covers on the old galleons.. Lothlann and Joyous bring up additional points, with Lothlann being in the camp that no, if they are glued shut, they always block LOS, since if you glued your skimmers on their flight stands, the wrecks still hover.

So, please, opinions on what you guys think is right: Can a regular drop pod open and close its hatches to suit the situation and what happens when drop pod hatches are glued shut?...

The game ended with me driving up rhinos to contest his objective while still claiming mine, with 90% of the battle occuring in the 12 inch by 20 inch area near Bunker 22. Shit we coulda played this on a bar table :)

I'm going to scour the net for what others think about the Drop Door Dilemma