Played my first game with Chaos Space Marines on Saturday against Matt up at Excelsior's in Hoover. First off, let me say I enjoyed myself and learned a lot despite the very sound trouncing I received and the game ending in Turn 3. I can officially say this was my worst loss to date yet. My opponent was awesome, showed excellent generalship that he shared with me afterwards along with some list help as well. Definitely learned a lot from him despite the sting of defeat.
Not much of a battle report. He played smart and took out both of my Rhino's, half of Noise Marines, most of 1 unit of cultist and a couple other individual units in turn 1. My response was to take out a few guardsmen and put a dent into one of his tanks (and by dent I mean I scored a single Hull Point on a glance). Turn 2 saw both of us able to bring in our fliers. I managed to take out a few more guardsmen and scored a Immobilized hit on one of his fliers (Vendetta or Valkyrie?). He took out both Havoc squads, the rest of my noise marines, my chaos bikers and the other unit of Cultist by the end of his turn 3. This left me with half a unit of regular Chaos Space Marines, 2 Thousand Sons and a Sorcerer along with 2 cultist. We called game.
There is no doubt I had a weak list - I was bringing a lot of things to try out on the table at once. I did have a couple of things for anti-air and anti-tank. However, with positioning and deployment, I only managed to get off snap shots during the first round and he was in assault by turn 3 with those same units taking them out. This was a major blunder on my part as I didn't have anything to prevent this nor was I in any kind of offensive position to strike from.
So amongst the many things I did learn from this game the things that stood out most that I learned (in no particular order):
- Work on Deployment strategies. I've been losing badly right from the get go in games lately where I go second. I am really suspecting this has to do with poor deployments.
- Bring more anti-tank to the table and protect it. Using this game as an example, I wasted first round of shooting by moving into position instead of already being in position. While I did get a second round of shooting in, it was ineffective due to lack of it nor did I have it protected. This allowed Matt to just drive up his Rhinos and unload his Grey Hunters in easy assault range for round 3.
- OK, yes I'm learning about units but I need to try out 1 or 2 per game not an entire list. My list was gimped from the start and I knew that, but I since I'm still a weak player, I don't need to handicap myself more by playing a list "I" know is weak to begin with.
- Chaos Cultist. Cheap. Numerous. A squad of 10 disappears in a single round very easily. Keep in reserve for as long as possible or at least out of sight. In kill point missions, they are worthless.
- Use LoS against your opponent. Matt was awesome at keeping his big tanks in the back edge of his table side and using lighter tanks and transports as cover from my side of the table. I never had a direct shot at his big guns.
My next game is a 2,500 point, 2 FoC game against Charles up at Bud's Place on Thursday. I took Matt's advice on some of finer points of list building (not taking certain upgrades if other upgrades like icons were in play for example) and think I have a solid list - and I only have 1 unit that is a "let's see how and if this works" in the entire list.
I would list it, but another lesson learned:
Never show your list on the Internet before a game. Poor Matt got the stink eye for awhile because he told me he read my list on the blog here and I didn't know he normally ran a mechanized guard list and assumed the worst, which was not fair to him. I will say though it was a pleasant surprise to see and meet someone who actually reads the blog here - even if I got the wrong idea at the beginning LOL. Turns out Matt is a great guy, an excellent opponent and I hope to play him again in the near future. maybe even offer him a bit more of a challenge next time!
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