Ding, ding, ding! Ladies and Gentleman, in the red corner weighing in at a massive 200 tons, the one, the only, Hauptmann "Smack Daddy" Greiss' Panzer Corps (crowd roars)!!! And the contender, in the blue corner, weighing in at 85 tons, the masters of disaster, the droppods of doom, Art's "Can't roll dice to save my life's" Mantis Warriors!!! (crowd boos) hahaha, just kidding Art.
Well, it's been over a year since Art and I have faced off against one another, but now back in Olympia it was time to rock. No, not another earthquake goofballs, that was yesterday morning though hehe. Just a small one. Too much to drink Saturday night kept me from feeling it. Oh... mi cabeza! This is the first time that I have squared off against his new Mantis Warriors. You old timers may remember them from way back when in RT. Their picture was on the boxed set and a little blurb about them and color schemes were mentioned in WD 101 (May 1988) involving the Badab War with the Lamenters and Tiger Claws (since purged to suspected corrupted geneseed). Art's CODEX: MANTIS WARRIORS, is excellent! As soon as he scans it in, I'll have it posted here. His scratchbuilt drop pods are awesome!!! It was so neat to see the doors open up and out pop a dreadnought. The are still works in progress but a wonderful sight to behold. Bravo Sir Gillian, Bravo.
We played two missions that day. At 2500 pts a side, (we love bigger battles) it was interesting to see how his new army would fair. The Mantis Warriors incorporate a number of different features that make them unique. One in that they utilise droppods on every mission that dictates deepstrike rules. They have to DS whenever possible. I was going to have my hands full.
I got the opportunity to lay everything I had on the table. I'll be posting army lists soon, so yall are gonna have to wait for it. The first mission we played was a bunker assault. I was defending. Deepstriking all around me, no heavy support for at least 3 turns...my guardsmen were screaming like little girls. This was a tough one, but as we learned that day, no game is won until the last turn. I lost almost all of my troops by turn 3 to assaults and sniper fire. After my Storm troopers came on, I deepstriked them behind the droppods and did SOME damage before being vaporized by heavy flamers.
The highlight of the game for me was Commissar Yarrick. YOU THE MAN!! Even though, struck down by power weapons, storm bolters and sniper rifles, he gets back up defiantly for four turns in a row!!! He in turn, killed over 1000 pts. of enemy characters, termies, etc. Got to love force fields and bionics.
Art won the game hands down. It was close until the end. But the final score was 1564 to 2183. At first it appears to be a clobber until you saw how many models he had left. His high point costs per model gave him the edge along with his good tactics. One of the funniest moments was watching him pour lascannon and melta shot after shot into three bunkers for six turns at POINT BLANK range and only destroying one of them. His miserable penetrating and glancing rolls helped me out as I continued to roll on the floor laughing. Typical "Art dice rolling". Better luck nice time buddy.
The next game was a standard Cleanse mission. Art wanted to see how well the MWs would stand up to the full force of IG ordinance. He learned real quickly. Again, it was one of those games where the outcome isn't decided until turn six. After the first two turns, I thought I had it in the bag. But you never know. I pounded him with templates from the get go. My sentinels did well again and I knocked off his Land Speeder's multi melta to seal the game in the last turn. Phew!! |
