40K ETC 2013 – Game 4 vs Romania

Once more unto the breach went Team Scotland. Once more would we face a nation we had previously played in years past; this time it was Romania whom we took a draw from at last years ETC. Its seems that this year not only are we fated to play previous opponents, but ex Soviet Bloc ones at that ;-)

Last years match against the Romanians was one of the most enjoyable for Scotland; great opponents both in terms of gaming and sporting attitude. This year was certain to be no different with Coman "the always stoned" once again leading the Romanians as Captain.

A better bunch of lads you cannot find

Coman "Niraco" Razvan - Space Wolves & Imperial Guard

As I said Coman's army was significantly different from that of Jiri's in the previous battle; Rune Priest with Runic Armour, 4x 10 Grey Hunters with 2 Plasma and Wolf Standard, 6 Long Fangs with 5 Missile Launchers, 2x Vindicators with Dozer Blades, Company Command with Master of Ordnance, Sly Marbo, 30 man Blob with 3 Autocannons, Vendetta with Heavy Bolters, 2 Griffons, Aegis Defence Line with Quad Cannon.

The reason I say it is significantly different is the number of large blasts Coman's army could drop on me, and in particular the 2 Griffons which have the potential to snipe out key models with impunity (IMO they are one of the best vehicles in the game right now for this). I was going to have to deal with those 2, and then the Vindicators, not to mention the Rune Priest who rolled up Perfect Timing for one of his psychic powers, as soon as possible.

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Coman placed his Aegis and objective down around a large ruined building on the right flank. I then positioned my own objective behind a large LOS blocking building (dubbed the 'biker bar'...) on the left flank. I then went for a similar deployment to the previous game; 3 Attack Bikes on each flank with the bulk of my army opposite his Aegis - which then made Coman deploy his forces on the far left away from the Aegis and my army... Perfect! I was hoping for this; by placing my army against his Aegis he had deployed away from it and thus removed said cover benefit from his army (he would instead have to make do with a small piece of Area Terrain and a small Ruin as cover for his army). I then scout 'teleported' (remember it is actually a 12" redeploy NOT move and thus ignores cover and other models) towards his army positioning the bulk of my forces within striking distance of his 30 man Blob  which was in the open and the Long Fangs contained his Rune Priest, with the 3 Attack Bikes on the left moving round the Biker Bar to take some potential 2D6 Melta shots against his 2 Vindicators (the Griffons where hidden behind them).

So turn 1, it is Night Fight, and off I go... except I don't because Coman siezes the initiative and what happens next is VERY painful indeed...

THAT WAS PAINFUL!

Coman shuffles some units around, including moving his Vindicators about. He then casts Perfect Timing on the Rune Priest and then moves him from the Long Fangs to the Company Command Squad. Now in Sweden you have to chose if the power stays or goes with the unit. In the ETC however it both stays with the unit and follows the Psyker, therefore benefiting the newly joined unit as well. He then calls down an orbital strike from his Master of Ordnance which will Ignore Cover from Night Fight. This doesn't worry me too much as the Strike can never hit; if it rolls a hit it still scatters 2D6 following the small arrow on the HIT side. If it rolls a scatter it moves 3D6. However... Coman rolls a HIT followed by a double 1 and lands the Strike near perfect on target and removes a whole truck load of bikes in one shot! OUCH! My pain was to continue with 1 Vindicator taking out 2 of the flanking Attack Bikes with a single shot (it scattered perfectly to catch both) and the other bludgeoned yet more Bikes. His Long Fangs then make use of Perfect Timing to remove 3 more Ravenwing Bikes... then finally his 2 Griffons fire at my command squad which is hidden out of LOS, but that does not bother Griffons who can re-roll their scatter die, which results in 2 direct hits on the Dakka Banner Apothecary, who fails 1 Look Out Sir test, his 3+ Armour Save and his Feel No Pain save, and so dies an ignominious death. FUCK ME THAT HURT!

Me deep in thought....

I am literally sent reeling from that horrific shooting phase. My army is already in tatters (I have lost over half my scoring units already) and my Dakka Banner is dead. I sip some Ardberg from my famous silver hip flask and start to re-evaluate how I am going to take points from this game. I realise that I do not have enough models left after 1 shooting phase to play an up front game against Coman's army - I will just get ground out now in the attrition game. At the same time I cannot just retreat as I need to deal with units such as the Long Fangs, Griffons, and Vendetta when it arrives. So I retreat my remaining Ravenwing Bike Squads away from his army popping a few cheeky bolter shots off at some Grey Hunters which Coman obligingly fails most of his armour saves for (how very kind of him :-P ). I then move the remaining Black Knights and Command Squad, and 2 scoring bikes behind the Biker Bar (where my 'home' objective is), who snipe some more Grey Hunters at long range with their Plasma Talons, Cannon, and Bolters. I send 1 Attack Bike on the right flank to take control of his Quad Cannon, knocking off yet more Grey Hunters, and getting ready for the Vendetta or Marbo should they arrive. Lastly I 'suicide' my remaining Attack Bikes forward; the one of the left takes out a Vindicator whilst the 2 on the right take a hull point off a Griffon at extreme Multi-Melta range. And that concluded my first turn.

Turn 2 and things just keep getting better for Coman; both his Vendetta, Marbo, and the Grey Hunter unit what was in reserve arrive at once. Marbo lands behind a wall next to most of my remaining scoring bikes, luckily his demo charge scatters wide and only kills a single bike. The Grey Hunters move on the board in a position to shoot up the Attack Bike manning his Quad Cannon and take it back for themselves. Whilst the Vendetta moves on, takes 3 penetrating hits from the Quad Cannon, which Coman saves all 3. He then snap fires the Vendetta's 3 Lascannons scoring 3 hits and 2 kills on some more of my scoring bikes (I am rapidly running out of scoring units here). His second Vindicator takes down the last Attack Bike on the left, whilst his Grey Hunters shoot up 1 of those flanking his Griffons. Luckily the Attack Bike manning the Quad Cannon does take a single wound from the freshly arrived Grey Hunters, and the Griffons miss their targets spectacularly this turn, and the final Attack Bike somehow survives being assaulted by a unit of Grey Hunters and then Hit and Runs out of combat to within 1" of the Griffons.

My second turn is short and sweet. I blow up 1 Griffon with the Attack Bike, whilst the Bike at the Quad Cannon moves off it and away from the Grey Hunters taking a pot shot at the Vendetta which actually knocks a hull point off it. One of my remaining Bike squads snatches the Relic up and starts to move away from Coman's army towards a nice and large LOS blocking ruin in my bottom right. The other 2 remaining squads shoot at Marbo but the crafty bugger goes to ground in Area Terrain for a 2+ cover save and survives**, with me then failing my subsequent charge rolls to assault him. Lastly the Black Knights and Command Squad take some more long range pot shots from around the corner of the Biker Bar, killing yet more of Coman's Grey Hunters (he kept failing all his 4+ cover saves).

** both me and Coman forgot that Marbo was fearless and tbh I am not bothered by this oversight.

My bikes did a 'Brave Sir Robin'

Turn 3 is a quick affair for both of us; Coman's evading Vendetta zooms off board to return in a better position next turn. The left flank Grey Hunters take control of the Quad Cannon and kill the Attack Bike opposing them. Whilst with the rest of his army out of LOS or range of my army they instead turn all weapons on my last attack bike and avenge the death of the Griffon in short order. Lastly his Master of the Ordnance manages a hit against my Command Squad with another lucky low scatter roll, but this time the blast is centred on Sammael and he passes all his 4++ saves. I then repeat my previous turn, retreating the Relic from Coman's army, shooting up some of the Grey Hunters on the Quad Cannon, and sniping yet more Grey Hunters from his right flank with the Black Knights and Command.

Turn 4 and we realise we are rapidly running out of time in the round; but both me and Coman agree to keep playing to the end of the 5th turn even if we go over the clock (barring a ref telling us to stop that is). Coman's Vendetta arrives, dropping off his platoon command on his home objective and sniping yet more of my bikes with the super accurate Lascannons. Otherwise the rest of this turn sees little happening apart form he starts to move his bubble wrapping Blob Squad forward  towards the Biker Bar and my Objective, with the surviving Grey Hunters behind.

Thankfully my Black Knights are better

My 4th and I spy a chance to cause some serious damage on Coman's main force; the Blob squad is strung out in a long line with 2" between each guardsman, which a 6"ish gap between them and the Long Fangs with Rune Priest (he was back with them again). Which means I was able to move Sammael, on his Jetbike, over the Guardsmen, whilst the rest of the Command Squad moved up behind, and thanks to the gap between the Guardsmen they were able to maintain coherence. Whilst surviving Squad of Black Knights moves into a position to multi charge 2 mauled units of Grey Hunters. I retreated the unit holding the Relic behind the LOS blocking wall, and moved up the remaining bikes on the left flank in a position to charge both the Platoon Command holding the objective, and the Grey Hunters nearby - hoping to tie the latter up from getting within 3" of the objective, whilst slaying the former holding it. I make the charges on the right; the Grey Hunters and Bikes killing a model a piece, but the bikes attacking the Platoon Command fluffed things and didn't kill a single model. Onto the main event; the Black Knights charge the 2 battered Grey Hunter units and whilst the assault is a draw; we both loose 2 models a piece, it is enough to finish off 1 of the Grey Hunter squads. Next up Sammael and his Command declare a multi-charge; Sammael attacking the Long Fangs + Rune Priest, the Command attacking the Blob squad. Overwatch amounts to nothing. The Command slay a whole bunch of Guardsmen, whilst Sammael scores 5 hits and 5 kills wiping out the remaining Long Fangs, after the Rune Priest cowardly declined the challenge. I win the assault and both the Rune Priest and the Blob squad break, with the Blob squad being run down by the Command.

Turn 5; Coman takes stock and I realise I forgot to deal with someone in my last turn; Marbo... he moves up, charges the 2 guys holding the Relic, and slays them both with rending hits! COCK! and stupid Neil for forgetting about Marbo (in my defence he was hidden behind a massive wall). Well at least I have some bikes nearby that could zoom over and take the Relic in my turn....

But I have only had 4 turns!

... at which point a Ref walks over, announces that we must immediately stop playing! We both protest that Coman has had 5 turns whilst me only 4, the Ref says tough luck, we have overran already and then watches us tot up the points - with me now without the Relic and 1" from contesting Coman's home obejctive the game ends 10-10. Whilst across the tables Scotland and Romania had battled each other into a draw overall.

Whilst I am happy with taking 10 points after that murderous seize and first shooting phase from Coman, I was NOT happy with the ref's attitude. He threatened to card me and Coman if we didn't stop immediately. Which is against the ETC rules that stipulate both players have the right to play an equal number of turns. Now sure we did over run; but the problem there lies in (A) once again the draw for the round being published exactly when the round started, therefore once again denying teams the 1hr for lunch and pairings, again due to teams over running and a single guy doing data entry for 224 players. This meant that again teams were starting their pairings late into the round because everyone wants at least 10-15mins to work out their match ups. (B) Through no fault of his own, but because Coman was the Romanian Captain, the ETC rules pack says that ALL rules or game queries/disputes MUST go through the Captains first, before being escalated to a judge. This meant that Coman was continually being pulled away from the game by his fellow team mates to answer or adjudicate other games. Which obviously had a detrimental effect on how much time he took in his game.

With regards to the first point; there are many simple solutions to this issue with the most obvious being implementing some kind of online score reporting system; similar to that used in Sweden, so that players report their scores in online, which cuts out manual data entry (it is 2013 for christ sake) and speeds up the whole process. Whilst regarding the second point, Captains should only be involved if it is a serious issue. Otherwise the refs should be the first point of contact so as to free Captains to get on with their own games.

But all that besides the thing that pissed me off the most; being told to stop playing immediately or get carded, when several games on the top tables ran on for more than 20mins - when I asked about this I was told "but those are important top table games..." So my game, myself and my opponent are not important and only there to make up the numbers? I raised this issue with 2 of the Chairmen later that night, and received apologies but it still didn't change the fact mine and Coman's game ended on a low because of an overly zealous referee.

Oh well what can you do? At least the rest of the game was a blast and Coman is one of the best people you can hope to play in 40k. Onto Sunday, day 3, and round 5...