The Imperiad Grand Tournament: Game 2

My second game was against an army composed of 5 Imperial Knights, all with thermic cannons. The game was Purge the Alien (kill points) with Vanguard Strike deployment. If that sounds like a brutal match up for me, I'll cheer you up with some nice pictures of my opponent's knights. They looked great, and I was really impressed at how well he was able to get the decals to blend into the paint.




The game was pretty straightforward. I held back and tried to kill Knights with my Devastators while he advanced. Once he got close, I tried to meltagun them with my Tacticals, assault them with my Command Squad, and shoot them in the back with my Stormtalons. I used my Thuderfires' Subterranean Blast rules for possibly the first time ever, and they did a great job of slowing down two Knights a turn.

My Command Squad held up a Knight until some 6s came up on the Stomp attack, removing them with no recourse.

The Stormtalons destroy the first Knight.

"See those guys? They are soooo dead." -my opponent.

I think I played this one was well as I could. I killed 2 Knights, reduced another to its last hull point, and left another with only 3 hull points. I never shot at the Seneschal because I didn't want to bother with the 3+ shield. I think my opponent scored 11 kill points to my 2, so there wasn't much I could do. Despite this battering, my opponent was very pleasant and the Knights were not as ridiculous as I expected. They are tough but not inconceivably so, and their damage output is actually rather low for their points. The only thing I was really worried about was when he rolled a 6 in close-combat, which I believe resulted in the deaths of my whole Command squad.

Lessons Learned:

1) I should spend my extra points giving my Command Squad meltabombs. Armor 13 Walkers are too tough for them to hack through with their power fists.

2) If you can force difficult terrain tests on super-heavy walkers, it will slow them down considerably, so you'll have a lot more time to deal with them. The Thunderfire was indispensable here.

3) Knights have a huge problem with flyers. Had my Stormtalons had lascannons or typhoons, I think they would have been able to destroy several more knights. A Stormraven would have been even more devastating. On a similar note, the flyers allowed me to hit the Knights from multiple angles to reduce the impact of their shields.

4) No matter what you do, you'll have a hard game when you have 14 kill points available in your army and your opponent has 5.