Mike is getting better
Well, my schedule change hasn't happened yet so Mike and I met for one last Wednesday (hopefully) before we start gaming on Saturdays.
Mike and I played a 4,000 point battle, a little bit of a pullback from the 6,000 point slugfests we have been playing. It was a somewhat weird feeling limiting yourself after several weeks of bringing everything you have.
Mike started out by surprising me. He deployed a detachment of Terminators in front of his Blitzkrieg objective. Normally they are teleported into battle where they are needed most, but this one time they started out on the board. This almost immediately convinced me to give up going after that objective, which was his plan.
He also deployed his objectives inside of the city that we had set up, guaranteeing a close and bloody firefight.
I immediately deployed two tactical detachments to guard the two objectives on my side of the board, while keeping my third group of tacticals guarding my Blitzkrieg. Mike started pecking away at my tacticals holed up in the buildings, while I moved up other assets, including my titan, to counter and drive him off.
I landed my Thunderhawk, loaded down with assault troops and devastators, and took out his Supreme Commander unit, which was a "Break Their Spirit" point for me. Dontchaknow he needed that SC re roll a couple of times later in the game, but didn't get it because his SC was dead. That's all right, my SC died under a whirlwind barrage about the same time.
Turn two opened with one of his bike units assaulting my tacticals guarding my Blitzkrieg. By a margin of 1, he managed to drive off the tacticals, They didn't rally until the end of turn 4. He also forced both of my tacticals off their defensive positions by assaulting them. He broke one and wiped the other one out completely.
I scrambled around, trying to keep contesting his objectives, which I managed to do, but barely.
Turn 3 opened with another Thawk strike, this time at his bikes holding onto my Blitzkrieg. I managed to wipe them out, but at the expense of smashing a fly with a sledgehammer. I could have used that elsewhere, but nothing else could do the job.
Mike was now the desperate one. He flung remnant after remnant of his forces against my titan and its support forces, only to get swept away. Things were changing. We ended the turn with the score 1-0 in my favor.
Turn 4. Mikes forces were committing suicide against my titan, trying to slow it's inexorable progress. He would block it's path, the titan would sweep them aside. By the end of the turn, Mike was barely holding on, contesting one objective, keeping me from my second point. Turn 4 ended with another 1-0 margin for me.
Now the rules state that each player roll a die, and if the die rolls are the same, you fight a fifth turn. Well, we both rolled a 6. We abbreviated this turn, as Mike conceded I would be able to knock his last contesting force out of the way, and we did a quick see on how the titan would fare against the Terminators guarding his Blitzkrieg.
I offered a draw and he heartily accepted. A magnificent battle, I just wish the batteries worked in the camera so you could have seen it.