That'll learn me...

Wow, what a weekend
Had a schedule change and as such was able to play an extra night o' Hammer with my friend Sterling. Sterling as of late has been playing imp guard/deamon hunters so something I am familiar with. This time, however, he decided to bring full on Grey Knights. I learned the hard way that this was a VERY different army.

His list (from what I can remember)

1 Squad of Grey Knights w/flamers in a LR ( Heavy Support)
- I believe this is called a Purgation squad
1 Group of Grey Knights on foot w/brother captain in artificer armor
1 Grand Master in terminator armor & psycannon
3 Grey knight terminators
1 Dreadnought w/psycannon and CCW
1 Dreadnought w/TL lascannon and missile launcher

My list

2 Leeman Russes w/heavy bolter sponsons, lascannons, extra armor and dozer blades
1 Leeman Russ Squad
- 1 Punisher with lascannon and heavy flamer sponsons
- 1 Standard Leeman Russ with hull heavy bolter
2 Groups of vets with 2 meltas and 1 flamer a piece in chimeras with pintle stubbers and extra armor
2 Primaris Psykers that rode with aforementioned Vets
1 Group of Vets with Demolitions, shotguns, 2 flamers and 1 heavy flamer in a chimera with a pintle storm bolter and extra armor

We played a 3 games: 2 annihilation and 1 capture and control. I lost 2 and tied one :/. As I am still trying to decide how I want to do batreps on this site I will give you some highlights of each game:

Game 1 - Annihilation (lost):
- Killed the Terminators down to the Brother Captain turn 1 and finished him off turn 3 as he was trying to hide behind a bunker
- Successfully melta'd a Dreadnought hiding in cover on the other end of the board
- Totally underestimated the assault envelope of a Land Raider (20 INCHES!!!!!!!) and got to watch it rip my tank squad apart
- Last turn a Dreadnought routed one of my vet squads w/psyker giving him 2 victory points and the win

Game 2 - Capture and Control (tie):
- Immobilized the LR on the first turn of shooting! Right... in front... of his objective :/
- Decimated the squad inside said LR down to one man
- Did not play aggressive enough and left a unit in reserve so I could not get to the cap point in time

Game 3 - Annihilation (lost):
- WON the steal initiative roll
- Poured 3 turns of Russ fire ( ALL OF THEM ) into the terminator squad and could not kill them
- Totally underestimated the assault envelope of a Land Raider AGAIN and got to watch it rip my flamer vet chimera apart
- Finally got tank shock to work and was able to save said flamer vet squad from complete destruction
- Last turn a Dreadnought routed one of my vet squads w/psyker giving him 2 victory points and the win.... AGAIN!

As you can see there needs to be some finger wagging in my general direction. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. I just couldn’t get over how far a LR could move disembark troops out of the front 2 inches and then charge. That coupled with multiple str 6 hits tore me to ribbons. Believe you me, I will not be making that mistake again if I can help it. Also, I need to keep in mind that while my Psykers hang out with my Vets they are NOT PART of the vet squad. Throwing them into hand to hand combat was just adding a free point.

It wasn’t a total loss though. I had a lot of fun and I learned how my army plays by itself. Normally we run team games due to the # of people we have over at any given time. You can really build a good relationship with your fellow players that way but you don’t get a good feel for what you can do as an individual. Now that I have tasted defeat I can start analyzing where I went wrong and make changes to bolster that aspect of my game.