Angry Griffin's Oldhammer

Category: Battle Report

  • Battle Report: 2021-05-15

    Today it was a Raven Guard Successor chapter vs. the Angels of Annihilation (Imperial Fists successor).

    500pt game which was largely decided before the second turn of the first round. A RG smash captain and Bladeguard Veteran squad were Master of Ambushed up the board and successfully charged an Outrider squad, between the two of them taking it out and consolidating into a squad of heavy intercessors, who were forced to fall back rather than shoot in their first turn.

    I think we are finding that 500pt games are sometimes easily decided like this – the Outrider squad was 30% of the total army points, and that’s a blow that would be hard to recover from (at least at our skill level…). As fun as it is to MoA a close combat squad up the board it would be a more fun game at a higher points figure, I suspect.

    We’ll try 1000 pts for next time and see if we can fit it in a reasonable timeframe. Despite the game being over relatively quickly it still took 2hrs to set up, play and pack away. It would have been quicker had it not been months since we last played…

    RG successor won, as you may have gathered. Terrain takeaway: Need more ruins!

  • Battle Report: Raven Guard vs. Space Wolves 2020-09-26

    Played a 500pt combat patrol game today with a Raven Guard successor force vs. some Space Wolves. Nobody had a fully painted force and some of the SW were borrowed RG units, so no 10pts for either team.

    The game was a Combat Patrol Incisive Attack and the RG’s secondaries were Cut Off The Head, Domination and Attrition. SW chose Attrition, Engage On All Fronts and Raise The Banners High.

    The RG’s Phobos Librarian warlord deployed in what looked like a vulnerable position, luring a couple of the SW units into deploying in what looked like an advantageous position. The Librarian’s Master of Ambush shenanigans proved to have fooled them, however, as he turned out to be deployed on one of the mid-board objective markers while a squad of Intercessors were placed on the other.

    This board control advantage proved hard for the SW to shake, and the game went to the RG who maxed their primaries along with Domination. The SW warlord was a very lucky Battle Leader who survived being targeted by a Predator two turns running, only being taken out in the very last round and providing the RG with a measly 1pt for Cut Off The Head.

    SW did well with Engage On All Fronts, almost maxxing it via use of Outriders to rapidly move up the board.

    Terrain takeaways – some buildings with higher levels to get up onto that are more complex than stacks of shipping containers would be nice.

  • 9th Ed 40K Battle Report: Raven Guard vs. Chaos Space Marines

    Last night saw the Raven Guard face off against Chaos in a 500pt Combat Patrol game. Raven Guard won on points, though they were certainly losing in terms of casualties.

    Takeaways: The new ruined walls set of six was the MVP as far as terrain goes, with just the one set making a meaningful difference to each side of the mid-board. Tactics-wise the RG were managed horribly. The army makeup was more based around what was painted than what was effective, and it showed – a second lieutenant ended up being wasted points in this particular battle as he didn’t make a single point back for. the ~75pts expended.

    The lack of AT weaponry also hurt when it came to taking out the Rhino, which Mrs. Griffin positioned inconveniently right in the face of one of the Intercessor squads. Auto bolt rifles were disappointingly ineffective against a squad of CSM in light cover (15 shots and one wound? Aaaaaa) yet the Stalker bolt rifle squad of Intercessors kept on rolling 2s to hit. Yeesh.

    Terrain ideas: Need some multi-level ruined buildings to contest in the center of the battlefield. Also, I need to assemble some Eradicators/Hellblasters/Plasma Inceptors/anything that has more shots and better AP.

  • Battle Report: Kill Team 2020-06-29

    Primaris vs. Primaris this time around! Raven Guard took on Space Wolves.

    Takeaways for the Space Wolves – the Easy To Build 3x Reiver + 3x Intercessor squad combo lacks punch vs. a more customised set of Primaris marines.

    Takeaways for the Raven Guard – Thunder Hammer + Intercessor Sergeant = very threatening. Auto Bolt Rifles seem to be superior to Stalker Bolt Rifles, at least in this game – the former dealt out a handful of wounds where the latter didn’t succeed in wounding once.

    The Raven Guard sergeant with the Thunder Hammer took out two of the Reivers single handedly – the AP and damage of that weapon certainly makes it a threat to Primaris.

    General takeaways – need to come up with some rulers and a score counter. Oh, and some tokens.

  • Battle Report: Kill Team 2020-04-27

    Battle Report: Kill Team 2020-04-27

    Today’s Kill Team battle consisted of Master Griffin’s Khorne Bersekers fighting Raven Guard Primaris units.

     

    Angry Griffin Battle Report Photo - 2020-04-27

     

    The Khorne side had a bit of bad luck with the dice rolls and largely failed to get into close combat before being fired upon by the RG team. The Raven Guard did suffer from their own bad luck, though, and in one shooting phase every single model except the Eliminator managed to spectacularly miss. The Eliminator did somewhat make up for that by managing a spectacular shot that took out the Khorne Aspiring Champion with a mortal wound scored from an Executioner round.

     

    We introduced command points for this battle and they were well received – tactical reroll in particular was popular. Raven Guard came out on top points-wise, though it would probably have been a different story had the Berserkers managed to close like they intended.

     

    Terrain thoughts: Need more light cover for close combat Kill Teams to utilise en-route to their opponents.

  • Battle Report: Kill Team 2020-04-22

    Today’s Kill Team showdown was between a Raven Guard Primaris force and some Chaos Space Marines. The scenario was Objective Ultima. For something different we decided to use a Chaos Berserker Dreadnought as the central objective, and four computer consoles to “control” it as the secondaries.

    From the Raven Guard perspective the Reiver Sergeants are a little underwhelming – four attacks in close combat is nice, but AP0 isn’t great. The dice rolls weren’t going in the sergeant’s favour today either:

    Regardless, the Primaris came out on top – the Eliminator Sergeant drew a lot of fire and managed to avoid being struck once, though he too had cursed dice rolls and failed to injure anybody through the whole battle.

    Theme-wise it was a good bit of fun pitting a team of Primaris against CSM who were trying to re-activate a dormant death machine!

  • Battle Report: KT 2020-04-21

    The Mini Griffins played Thousand Suns vs. Chaos Space Marines in a matched play mission (Recover Intelligence). As an experiment, we set up a bunch of shipping crates to make one long corridor between the deployment zones with the central objective marker inside.

    The corridor proved to be hotly contested for most of the five-round battle:

    The Thousand Sons Aspiring Champion got taken out in a stream of plasma early on but the generic CSM Aspiring Champion suffered a more ignominious fate, going down to a vanilla CSM in melee while succeeding in only inflicting a flesh wound on his opponent.

    The more open nature of the surrounding battlefield made for less interesting gameplay, though, as it devolved into a back-and-forth of repetitive bolter fire. In the end the Thousand Sons came out on top with victory points and an equal number of casualties.

    MVP went to the CSM gunner wielding a plasma gun who managed to take out the TS leader and inflict several flesh wounds to boot.

    Biggest Fail went to the CSM gunner wielding a heavy bolter, who managed to fire every round of the battle and succeeded in wounding absolutely nobody.

    Terrain thoughts: A 2×2 corridor with 2″ high walls on either side is not the most convenient way to play. As much as we have pined for proper walls in Necromunda or Kill Team: Arena I think that 1″ high walls may be more practical – both are probably worth trying, the claustrophobic nature of the higher walls may work well for the feel of some games.

  • Battle Report: KT 2020-04-20

    Thousand Sons v. Space Wolf Terminators today in regular Kill Team. We took some inspiration from the LVO 2020 championship terrain layout and designed/printed some shipping container-esque terrain pieces, using four on the regular Kill Team board.

    While the Mini Griffins are really enjoying playing harder-to-kill models it seems that in at least some of the scenarios it’s hard to score victory points with so few models. The battle ended with Thousand Sons coming out with more casualties but also more victory points.

    Where to from here? Need some more variation in scatter terrain and perhaps some ramps for putting between some shipping containers to get a quick and easy second level.

  • Battle Report – KTA 2020-04-17

    Played our first game of Killteam Arena today – Grey Knights vs. Khorne Berserkers. The claustrophobic board was a little reminiscent of oldschool Space Hulk, which I rather enjoyed. Both Master and Miss Griffin enjoyed the door mechanic and the walled board.


    The mission was Forgotten Data, and while the Grey Knight Terminators did not suffer even so much as a flesh wound throughout the entire battle they failed to come out ahead on points.

    Terrain thoughts from the session – the computer terminals were a nice fit, along with some barrels down the corridors. The doors did fall over regularly when the mini Griffins bumped the table, which was somewhat annoying.