A Little Psychology: Your Poker Face

Just a little thought on some above the table tactics that work very well but aren't underhanded in nature. Your Poker Face.

Don't let them see you sweat. When you start getting agitated, irate, a little red faced, flustered, blubbering, insolent, a little more quiet than usual, etc., I can tell, as your opponent, that I've got you on the ropes.

Now, you might think, "of course I know when I got someone on the ropes! It should be obvious by looking at the board!"

Have you ever finished that game where you though, "holy cow I was losing so badly and then all of a sudden my opponent did some things that caused me to win!" You turn around and ask the opponent and he says, "man, I was losing the whole time. Knew I couldn't win it so started moving some things around."

So, who was really losing the whole time? You or him?

When people feel like they are in a bad position, they tend to react a little more off center than usual. Heard of "flight or fight"? Well, it's not quite that primal, but when people feel like they are not doing well, they tend to make more mistakes, overlook things, and more importantly, give away tells. What's a tell? A tell is when you inadvertently give away information such as signals that you think you are doing poorly or losing.

There's a few things I can do with the potential knowledge that my opponent doesn't think he's doing well.

First, I'll become a little less risk adverse. I know that my opponent thinks that things are not going well and so will react a little more erratically, possibly missing key elements, possibly making bad decisions... you know... the kinds of things that make taking risks pay off!

Second, it also tells me that if I tighten the screws, I might be able to break his will and make him give up. Maybe I'll focus a little more effort on killing more units, giving the appearance of an oncoming tabling, and he'll just throw in the towel! Secretly, I can wipe the sweat off my forehead going, "IF ONLY HE HAD STAYED IN IT... WHEW!!!"

Third, I also know that my opponent's behavior is also about to become a lot more risky. He's much more likely to go for broke when he thinks he has no options left. You can use this knowledge to help you predict what he might do on the next turn.

So, what's the 40K Poker Face look like? The #1 key is to not let bad situations play on you. Lose your Land Raider on Turn 1? Respond with "On to turn 2!" instead of "oh, man, that screwed me bad! I hate my dice." Lose a critical combat? "Okay, on to this combat over here" instead of "oh man, I got screwed. I'm going to lose!"

Other tips.

No, the fake sportsmanship thing doesn't work on someone with half a brain for social skills. When you play off the "I'm acting super nice!!!!!", I can tell. If you can't tell, learn to tell. This is even better for you because your opponent will have a super hard time keeping up the charade when he thinks things aren't going his way. It's much better to be cool and calm.

Likewise, no, I'm not fooled by the "oh man I'm screwed .... (but secretly I'm not I just want you to make a mistake thinking I'm going to give up!) ....". You shouldn't be either.

Think either of the last 2 scenarios don't happen? I haven't been to a tournament yet where I haven't had at least one opponent actively try to engage in psychological warfare across the table top either feigning ignorance, acting overly zealous, feigning a loss, bullying for rules, etc.

It happens. So, use it to your advantage.

Tyranids Aren't That Bad vs. Grey Knights

When the Grey Knights dex came out, many of us thought that one of the biggest losers were the Tyranids. We already know that Tyranids got hammered hard by the Dark Eldar release, and let's be honest, it's widely considered the most under-powered dex in 5th Edition. However, I wouldn't necessarily throw my Nids out the door at the moment because, after watching a lot of the Grey Knight lists flesh out, Nids really aren't that bad of a match-up.

Before I even start talking about the match-up and talking about what I now see as some misconceptions about the match-up, I want to quickly address the Dark Eldar. Dark Eldar completely maul Tyranids in a competitive scene. It isn't hard to figure out why with all the poison shooting and AP 2 shooting from dark light weaponry. For this reason, if you are a Tyranid player, you may have packed up your models a while back. However, things are actually looking up ever so briefly because Dark Eldar get mauled by Grey Knights. Why? Grey Knights can pour on a ridiculous amount of S6, S7, and S8 shooting which annihilates Dark Eldar vehicles. Indeed, most GK lists I see pack a weapon capable of shredding a Dark Eldar vehicle in EVERY, SINGLE, SQUAD. Heck, even mass Storm Bolter shooting can stun lock them.

What I'm saying then is that the Dark Eldar presence on the tournament scene is going to drop like a rock. (It already has in a lot of areas).

The Tyranid Match-up:

Just like everyone else, when the GK dex came out I was saying, "welp, that's it for Tyranids. Right after the Dark Eldar, too. It's over!" Why?

• Initiative 6 Force Weapons - Insta-gib monstrous creatures before they even get to swing!
• Mass Anti-Infantry Shooting - Storm Bolters, Incinerators, Psybacks, oh my!
• Mass Mid-Strength Shooting - Pours out wounds on Monstrous Creatures.
• Cleansing Flame - Deserves a mention all by itself.

So, having been playing with the new GK dex since its launch, a lot of things have changed. I've also had the opportunity now to play against some good Nid players and see how wildly different the reality of this match-up is than it looks on paper.

Yes, You Will Have to be Good with Your Army

So, no. You aren't going to be able to do well with your Nids versus GKs if you don't have a solid army or solid skills with your army. This is true of any army.

The Misconceptions

To begin, many of the biggest potential match-up issues are taken care already not by Tyranids but by the Grey Knights need to play against other armies. Grey Knights lists basically look like either Henchmen/Purifier spammy kinds of lists with Psybolt Dreads as back-up and lots of Psybacks. There will also be a smattering of Psycannons with the Purifier style lists and likewise, Death Cultists littered about in Henchmen style lists.

Grey Knights need all kinds of anti-vehicle shooting, just like Nids, to be competitive against things like Razor Spam and Mech Guard.

Thus, even with Purifier Spam, what you will start to see are small, MSU squads of Purifiers, potentially with a Demon Hammer, a couple psycannons, and usually in a Rhino or Psyback.

The first, promising, misconception is that Grey Knight shooting will shred Tyranids. It certainly will kill its fair share of Genestealers and Gaunts, but only at 24 inch range. Dreads and Psybacks can certainly do some damage to, but with cover saves, it doesn't amount to really more than Guard can do.

However, you know what Grey Knights can't really kill at range? Monstrous Creatures. Toughness 6, combined with a 3+ save, combined with Feel No Pain is a nightmare for GK shooting. For example, I usually carry 5 Psybolt Dreads in my list. Shooting at a Tervigon w/ FnP, I will average about 2.5 wounds. That's not promising for me at all, especially if you have 2-3 of the buggers backed up by some things like Trygons. I can't shoot through that before you get to me. Not even close!

The second misconception is that Grey Knights will blow you off the board. GKs can't kill monstrous creatures at any range because they lack AP 2 weaponry. So, they can shoot at your gribblies, but that can't do both. When Tervigons make gribblies as fast as I can kill them, I don't like my prospects when shooting at Nids.

Third, the Force Weapons. There are a couple issues here for consideration. First, most GK squads, unless they contain an IC, can't both Hammerhand and Force Weapon. This means that those I6 Halbreds, need 6's to wound MCs. Second, most GK squads, unless they contain an IC, are LD 9 or less. Shadow in the Warp is a beast for a GK player! Trust me on this one. So, even if they do get a wound, which they can with a Demon Hammer certainly, they have less than a 45% chance for the force weapon to even go off. So, time to change your strategies around how you use your MCs and overlapping Shadows. Cleansing Flame a problem? Shadows is a great answer to this problem. Likely, those Purifiers only get one shot at it because of this next reason....

Numer 4, Grey Knights bring nothing to the table versus Gribblies than normal marines. Genestealers and Gaunts dominate Marines in HtH. Do you care about their force weapons? Not really. Your saved already sucked! Grey Knights don't have a lot of attacks, and their save is only a 3+. Furious charging, poison gaunts will dominate in that fight, point to point. Not to mention, devil gaunts can seriously rake GK units over the coals.

This leaves us with the Death Cultists. So long as you make them charge through cover, you win.

Do Grenade toting assault units still hurt, a lot? Indeed. Just like having to deal with a pack of 10 TH/SS terminators, as a Nid player, you will have to use your tools and guile to shoot, tie up, assault, or what have you, these types of units. Things haven't changed for you at all in this department.

The point of all of this is, Nids are not a bad match-up for Grey Knights. They are what I would call, an even match-up. It's going to be all about who out plays the other guy, and that's exactly where you want to be.

NoVA Battle Reports: Game 5

So, I wisely decide to go to bed Saturday night rather than trying to stay up to late. I still didn't get enough sleep, but I was way better off rolling in on Sunday than I was on Saturday morning.

I was thinking coming into Day 2 that I would be in one of the upper 3/1 brackets. I figured I would have a hard day but a good chance at winning my bracket. However, that wasn't what the cards had in store for me. Rather than being in a 3/1 bracket, they had me bumped up into the 4/0 "Tournament Ace" bracket. Doh! This would mean that rather than, in my opinion, playing against my peers I would be playing against a whole group of guys who are better than me. Oh well! At least when your expectations are low, there isn't a whole lot of pressure. This helped me out a good bit in Game #1. Whereas my opponent had full expectations of being able to take home the 8-0 prize and win it all, my expectations were to lose all 4 of my Day 2 games. So, I wasn't really sweating (for the game that is... more on this later) at all.

Good thing too because they have placed me as the last seed in the 4/0 bracket. This meant that I was paired up against the #1 seed coming into Day #2, Nick (yermom) (http://thebrownpaintbrush.blogspot.com/). Nick is the guy who had just won the NoVA Invitational on Friday, and he is a known killer on the GT circuit.

Let's up the ante for me and put us on Table #1. Cool! So, now I get to have my ass handed to me LIVE using my OWN recording equipment.

So, on to the game.

I didn't have to look at Nick's list because I already knew what it was from following his BLOG. It was kind of humorous to me that I had had a lot of considerations about running a list similar to his. I knew that my list could stand up to his in terms of fire power, but it was a big ??? for me as to if I could he would simply outlast me given all the Marine bodies. This was going to come down to me outnumbering him with Dreads and more useful Dreads, Venerables, at that. I also knew right away that this was going to be a slug fest ala Rocky IV where we just beat the crap out of each other and see who is left standing.

Nick's list is this:

HQ:

Coteaz

Inquisitor ????

Elite:

5 x Purifiers + Hammer + 2 x Psycannons

Rhino

5 x Purifiers + Hammer + 2 x Psycannons

Rhino

5 x Purifiers + Hammer + 2 x Psycannons

Rhino

Troops:

5 x Strike Squad + Hammer + Psycannon

Psyback

5 x Strike Squad + Hammer + Psycannon

Psyback

5 x Strike Squad + Hammer + Psycannon

Psyback

5 x Strike Squad + Hammer + Psycannon

Psyback

5 x Strike Squad + Hammer + Psycannon

Psyback

5 x Strike Squad + Hammer + Psycannon

Psyback

Heavy:

3 x Psybolt Dreads

So, basically, if you want to see what was going on, you can go to our UStream channel and watch the game. This will breakdown how I felt about the game.

First things first, I rolled and got first turn. I was pretty pleased by that and set up. My army has a good bit more alpha strike potential than his thanks to extra Dreads and monkies, but not really to much more. I did recognize right away though that aside from his Dreads, his major threat to my army would be his Psycannons. The idea I would go for then would be to keep most of my stuff out of range of his on Turn 1. I would keep some there to give him something to shoot at rather than blitzing forward into mid. This would cause him to take another turn of movement for the "blitz", or even better, if I could somehow hold him near his quarter and turn his vehicles into parking lot hell hole or wreckage which might slow him down for advancing into quarters.

The missions objective was quarters.

Nick uses the terrain to his advantage and deployed mostly out of LoS or in cover to mitigate my alpha strike. Then, he stole the Initiative from me.

Two things to say about that. First, Nick was way more happy about it than I was sad about it. I had already resigned myself to doing poorly in this game. So, losing first turn didn't phase me to much mentally. Second, I had also deployed myself in such a fashion by being back from him and mostly in cover in case he did seize. So, it wasn't that big of a deal. This would also give me last turn, and in a quarters game, that's not a terrible thing.

I promptly lost a couple Razorbacks, and he moved up. I returned fire, and he lost a couple Rhinos. He did end up shooting at my right elements as I had deployed semi-center. This kept him back for an additional turn. This would prove useful to me later. The next thing he did was bring out his Dreads to shoot me.

I have already learned by this point in the tournament that Ven Dreads >>>>>>>> Regular Dreads. The reason is that my Ven Dreads will gladly trade fusillades with "normie" Dreads. Mine will outlast them more often than not. So, right away, I decided I would step into the line of fire and chance getting hit by his Dreads and Psycannons with my Vens to take his Dreads down. It paid off and I got 2/3 of his Dreads.

So, what I thought was very unfortunate, Coteaz and my DCA were sort of pinned in behind my own lines for fear of getting killed. I thought I wouldn't get to use them that game because they were in front of his whole army. However, I needed to make the prospect of him driving up and using that center large hill as a fire base as "risky" as possible to keep him from controlling all the quarters. I therefore brought up my Purgation and Smiley's girls. This would take a couple of turns.

The next thing that happened is we traded a few more shots. However, you will see in the video that I was slowly getting the better of the vehicle destruction rampage because of my Ven Dreads. Thank you Ven Dreads! Eventually, by the end of the game, all his vehicles had turned into the bone yard I was hoping for. However, so did mine!

The game takes a turn in my favor when he finally mounts the hill in the middle to open up on my Librarian's chimera to kill the Assassins in it. He also assaults with his no disembarked squads into my Ven Dread on the right.

The game turns because he rolls very poorly against the Chimera. The Libby and DCA live to fight on. I can then assault into chunks of his GKs to kill them. Even though my DCA will go at I1, so will he thanks to Smiley's Psykouts. And, honestly, I don't care if a lose a DCA or 2 to wipe out GK squads. Meanwhile, his boys get tied up with my Ven Dread. This opens up a window of opportunity for Coteaz and his girls to rush in and fight now that they don't need grenades. He wiffs pretty badly on some critical cleansing flame rolls, and then, the DCA eat his remaining purgation.

The Coteaz and his girls will claim another strike squad before it's over. Past this point though, I still got fire power to lob into his strike squads to make them fail saves. Eventually they go down.

The nail biter though was he did manage to charge one of my Ven Dreads and kill it with a hammer justicar and his Coteaz. This then allowed him to break out of a combat I was certain I could hold him in and charge 2 more dreads and kill them too! I thought for sure he had just tied quarters there, but i still held my quarter by just a handful of points and by moving another Ven into the quarter.

What a blood bath this game was!

In the end, I won on Quarters.

In retrospect, I think that this game was a 50/50 match-up for either of us. It did answer my curiosity about if a cheaper henchmen list with a little more fire power could outlast a GK heavy list. That's the main reason I settled on not taking GKs. At the end of the day, I feel like they are generally over-costed. If you stay in vehicles and out of LoS, their Storm Bolters provide them no advantages. Thus, you can mitigate a lot of what makes them 20 point models. If all they have then are Psycannons to threaten you, that's not much of a threat to a Dread, or anything for that matter. Unless they rend, it's just an Autocannon!

However, I think we could play that game again and again, and a different winner would come out each time. Different damage results, a few armor saves one way or another, different decisions on charges, etc. could have swung that game in many different directions.

Either way, I was definitely pleased and ready to retire from 40k.

Did Blackmoor show us how to best game NoVA?

http://blackmoors40k.blogspot.com/

My favorite list that I saw at NoVA this year was definitely Blackmoor’s. His list was the “smartest” list I saw at the event.

So, you are probably thinking, “his list doesn’t look like a list you would endorse.” Even if you aren’t, it certainly doesn’t. I’m not a fan of Paladins, expensive hammers, the low model count, and a host of other things about it. However, none of those things are why I like his list so much. I like it because I think it shows how the NoVA Open format can be gamed, and I think Blackmoor is genius for figuring it out.

Let’s also go ahead and throw out there that even if you think this list is bad… and you’d be wrong just like me… he was on the final table with it, and yours truly got beat by it… on camera none the less. So, shows what we know!

Gaming the NoVA System:

So, if you don’t know by now, I’m a pretty big NoVA format fan boi. Not without reason, though, as most fan bois are. What I am a fan of NoVA for is not really its format so much as that it represents a “thinking tournament”. What I mean by that is NoVA, in my opinion, was the first advertised and national event that shows how a tournament can be run by truly putting thought into the format. No more completely outrageous GW White Dwarf Missions. No more 3 round battle point event for 90 players which have no clear winners. No more “crazy” terrain. No more thoughtless rulings. No more favoring one part of the hobby over any other part. It’s not necessarily the NoVA format exactly that I am such a fan of. It’s the idea of the NoVA and what it represents that I am a fan of.

And along those lines, NoVA missions themselves represent a lot of thought being put into a format that attempts to be as evaluative as possible and doing so by providing the fairest method of evaluation for all armies in 40K. The real genius behind Blackmoor’s list, though, is that it is specially designed to game the NoVA system, and it does so beautifully.

The NoVA format consists of 3 mission types:

Kill Points: This is a standard kill point game, but to win, you must lead in kill points by at least 3.

Objectives: This is a standard seize ground mission with 5 objectives all evenly spaced in quarters and he center of the board.

Quarters: In this mission, the goal is to hold table quarters, and to do so, you need more Victory Points in the quarter at the end of the game. The caveat this year, though, and this is huge, is that Troop choices count for full points even if they are below half strength.

Further, only one objective is the primary for a game. All other objectives become tie breakers down to just a straight victory point.

Lastly, and this is very important, NoVA put some seriously awesome work into its terrain this year, and the product of that was a LOT of LoS blocking terrain for infantry models.

So, how does Blackmoor’s list almost perfectly game this format?

First, lack of kill points. His list only has 8. 3 are fairly easy to get being Dreadnoughts. The others, not so much. The reason? Given the amount of LoS blocking terrain, it’s very easy to hide infantry. Extremely, even. So, if he had to, he could very easily hide his weaker strike squad, shunt the interceptor squad somewhere safe, and last but not least, ever tried killing 10 Paladins at range with cover and shrouding? Combine this with Draigo’s psychic communion ability and reserve denial, not to mention Draigo’s ability to also just hide behind terrain, and you have a beast of a KP denial list.

Second, and this is critical, the “full point troops” in quarters. One thing to note right away is that Blackmoor has three massively expensive units in his list. The first, Paladins topping in close to 800 points. The second, a 10 man interceptor squad. Third, Draigo. The next thing to note is that Draigo’s grand strategy ability means he can nominate d3 units to become troops. Then, Draigo already makes the Paladins troops. With a roll of a 5 or 6, Blackmoor could actually make all but one Dreadnought in his list and his HQ, troop choices. Combine that with the same issue of being able to easily hide infantry models, and what you have is a genius recipe for quarter claiming. Well, you finally managed to kill 8 of my Paladins? Shame. Guess I’ll just walk them out of LoS behind this hill and still have an 800 point scoring unit in the quarter. Dang, that quarter looks kind of empty. Shunt my one remaining Interceptor and now I have nearly 300 points of troops in that quarter conveniently out of LoS. The thing is, you can argue that perhaps you need to be more aggressive to combat this, but there is only physically so far most armies can move in a game of 40K to try and catch up to something. Then, when you combine reserve denial with this strategy, it’s awesome. You can’t push to far into any quarter because you don’t know where you might need to end up holding quarters.

And after all, he’s probably going to auto-win on Kill Points anyways. So, he’d be more than happy to tie.

Third, the objectives mission is definitely his weakest mission. However, he can combat squad at will to make more scoring units, combined with Grand Strategy. His goal here is not to win but to tie the objectives. If he can do that, he’ll nail you on Quarters and Kill Points.

Lastly, there is the propensity to be able to withdraw to win. Because of the above strategies, his army comes built in with the basic strategy to be able to withdraw on the field to deny you the ability to kill him. His optimal range is 24 inches at all times. Since the most efficient way to kill units is usually assault, he can withdraw to avoid it. After all, in most cases, he only needs one model left in the unit to win the game. And of course, let’s not forget the psychological aspect of that list…. The aspect that tells most people “this list looks bad, I should under-estimate it”.

That’s why it’s my favorite list of the event. He establishes what most of us wish we could do, a solid thought process on how to best tackle the format rather than just another army.

NoVA Battle Reports: Games 3 - 4

I came into game 3 with 2 very strong finishes. One thing I've noticed thus far as well is that my list doesn't give up Victory Points very easily. A big part of this is because my list is such an "msu" monstrosity that nothing is really worth much. The only thing that has many points in it are my Ven Dreads, which very rarely die, and my Librarian. This has meant that my victories thus far look a lot more lopsided on paper than they really were. The reason I'm saying this is because this is going to help me get into the 4-0 bracket on Day 2.

Round 3

I was actually playing on the table next to my round 3 opponent during round 2. When I was eyeballing his army, I was thinking, "man, I hope I don't draw that guy because I'm going to be in trouble." Well, I drew him. As an aside, I think that from now on, I will not wish to "not draw" any particular person anymore because this tournament seems to prove that this thinking guarantees that I will play that person next.

Here's my Round 3 opponents "basic" list from memory:

HQ:

Coteaz - 100

Elites:

2 x Ven Dreads w/ TLACs

Troops:

3 squads of Death Cultists and Crusaders. Maybe some other stuff.

Fast:

3 x Storm Chickens

Heavy:

3 x Dreads w/ TLACs

The reason why I am afraid of this list is because it sort of out shoots me. Worse, we are fixing to play Kill Points. And to make it even worse, he gets first turn. I'm thinking my tournament ends right here.

Here's what I think he's going to do. He'll turbo-boost the chickens up. I'll come on the board and try to take them down. He'll fly in with multi-meltas and get clear shots on my normal dreads to take them out. Then, he'll tie up my Ven Dreads with his Assassin squads. Then, he'll rack up kill points on my Razors with his Ven Dreads. GGWTFPWNED.

He didn't do any of these things. What actually happened was he took a look at my list, and he was thinking that I would outshoot him. I think he psyched himself out. He did come forward with the Storm Chickens. I blew one up on my Turn 1. Then, he ran away to hide.

I was slack jawed at this point. I really wasn't sure what to make of it. So, I pulled my entire army up behind some terrain, started using shrouding to get a 3+ cover save, and we started trading shots with our Dreads. I won the shoot out. He came forward near the last turn to claim objectives, I shot down the Storm Chickens, and I won the game on Kill Points. It was very fast. We were probably done in an hour.

It was definitely an interesting, psychological game. I think with more practice with his list, if he had seen what I saw, i think he should have stomped me. Next time I will not be so lucky against this opponent, me thinks.

Round 4

This round I drew a very soft spoken but extremely skilled GK player. Turns out, this is the guy who will end up on Table #2 in the 4-0 bracket. By definition, that means I lose this game. But oh so barely.

His list approximation was this:

HQ:

Libby

Coteaz

Elites:

1 x Ven Dread w/ Multi Melta + Flamer Fist

Troops:

2 x Acolyte squads, one with trip melta, one trip flamers.

2 x Large squads of Death Cultists and Crusaders

1 x 5 man Strike squad w/ Psycannons

A few psybacks

Fast:

Storm Chicken

Heavy:

2 x Dreads w/ TLACs

Land Raider Crusader

I'll admit, coming into this game, I was over-confident. I did not recognize my opponent from anywhere, and I do not like his list. Boy, was I in for a shocker. Having now met and played with the guy, he's awesome to play with. Real laid back. He's very, very good as his finishing shows. He plays very smartly.

Game starts with him giving me first turn. This my first surprise. Not really sure what I was in for, I set up my army in a pattern to defend against reserves, using my Razors for cover, blowing smoke etc. I managed to immobilize his LRC, which he did deploy in cover, on Turn 1 which really helped my game.

His whole army come on in Turn 2 save for the LRC + Assassins/Libby he already had on the board. He came in my extreme flank/corner. He flew the storm chicken straight up and immobilize one of my Dreads facing the wrong way. Otherwise, he didn't do much.

My turn, I took out the Storm Chicken, but it took most of my Dreads to do it. Luck of the dice. I didn't get the explode result I wanted, and his DCA unit/Coteaz + the Ven Dread bailed out. On his turn, I got the witness how awesome the concept of that Ven Dread actually is. In fact, I want to run them in my list now. They really are brutal coming out of a storm raven. Really, his Ven Dread didn't do that much other than contest an objective (which did win him the game in a way), but it was the fact that I had nothing to really deal with it. I could have rerouted Smiley and the girls to MoT him down, but I needed them in board center to claim.

We go through a couple more turns of shooting each other up. His DCA unit gets held up by one of my Ven Dreads. The game is definitely starting to unfold in my favor as I shoot up his Dreads, his Strike Squad gets mauled, etc. I lose my DCA to his flamer acolytes that are with Coteaz, and my other pack are on the mid objective. A long Razorback has traversed the whole board to claim a corner objective.

We get to the fated turn 5. At this point in the game, I'm definitely winning. Indeed, to seal the deal, I need to only make a few simple moves and it's over. Then, through a calamity of dice rolling, the game slips by me. Here's how it works.

First, to seal the deal, if I can cook his DCA squad that is with his Libby, he won't have enough troop choices to tie me on objectives. This is easy since my Purgation squad is definitely within range. All they have to do is drive over, bail out, and roast them. They go to move, and I get immobilized in terrain. They don't make it.

Now sweat, I have a Razorback still in range to contest one objective his acolytes are on. All I need to do is make it, and I still got smoke launchers. He makes it. All he has to do now is survive a few BS 3 melta guns under smoke. It's not the best situation, but favorable odds. He won't survive as on his turn all 3 melta guns hit.

Before that, I still have Coteaz to contest. However, he dies to a pummeling by the LRC which rends on him, twice, and then I roll snake eyes to save. :(

Still, we got this, so long as it goes to Turn 6, I can handily extract him from mid and win.

He rolls and the game ends on 5.

I lose. When looking at the stat sheet, you see how close we are. The closeness of this game combined with my 3 big wins, is what will propel me into the 4-0 bracket on the next day.