Legion Imperialis - Battle for Honour

Game two of the weekend, was knights with some marine support against a vehicle heavy Auxilla force.  In this game we played that all knight melee weapons have engine killer (1). Two damage worked well, and the combat still took more than one turn to resolve, just not the entire game. Generally, The engine killer is an essential skill if you are playing against knights and titans.

This game was a bit more straightforward, and it developed into a standard pin wheel.  However the Knights in the bottom of the picture had more success then the heavy vehicles in the top of the picture and the game ended with a Knight/Marine victory.  The Shadowswords did some early damage on the Acastus but when the knights shifted to their left and the shadow swords didn't chase them the Acastus was then able to show its worth by destroying or helping to destroy two detachments of tanks. This game also showed me the limitations with Auxilla who are out of command range and unable to receive First Fire orders, when they are providing Advancing Fire they will start losing tanks before the full weight of their fire can be felt.  

Transport detachments are incredibly powerful, not because they kill anything but because they give a strong slingshot movement to transported forces (This seems to be the intention), but also they can act as dummy activations if you are waiting for your opponent to commit to something, and can also act as mobile fences to prevent your enemy moving into some areas of the battlefield with vehicles or infantry. I am not sure these last two effects were intentional and they definitely make 10pt rhinos well worth their cost.  They probably should be required to receive the same order, and activate at the same time as their transported detachments and there could be a special trait that required lightly armed transports to receive only fall back orders once their cargo was unloaded.

 

Auxilla infantry are probably where they should be for points/power level, they hold objectives just fine but don't do much else, and die quickly unless garrisoned.  Marine infantry seems also to be quite sensible with them all having a distinct role, terminators are an anvil not a hammer IMO.  I have come around to Ogryns and Veletari, initially I thought their Rend rule was too strong (it is strong), but without it Auxilla forces would have no way of defeating garrisoned infantry except by collapsing the building so from a game play perspective they make sense.

I need to build some roads 🙁

Legions Imperialis - March of Titans

This weekend I squeezed in two games of Legion Imperialis. Both were approximately half sized games.  In the first one I wanted it to be just titans and some infantry, for scale.  The second was Knights vs. tanks but more on that later.

The mat was 3x3 and it does seem small but the game played fine. Deployment zones were 6 inches in and just toeing on to the mat was acceptable. Being on top of each other did not seem to hamper the game much, perhaps it was just a very dense sector of the battle.  Both sides were almost mirrors of each other based on an Axiom Manipule, (one of each Warlord, Reaver and Warhoud) with five infantry detachments and four knights each.  No formation special rules were used but the faction rules for Imperial Fists (Accurate when on First Fire), and Auxiliary Chain of Command (can only use advance orders if not within 6” of their commander) were.

First two turns were a general advance with cover being provided by the Warlords and Legion Gryponicus Reaver.  The traitor Reaver had a melta weapon which forced it to move more aggressively to get into range. There was a battle between the warhounds and a knight, top of the picture, which ended in mutual annihilation, thanks to some supporting fire from the Marine Devastator detachment.  By the end of turn two, both Warlords were also destroyed.

The third turn had an interesting situation where one Cerastus charged the Acastus.  Since the acastus had 4 wounds (not to mention it can heal), they were essentially stuck with the Cerastus always winning the fight but only doing one wound so the Acastus died in the last round of the game..   

Eventually the Loyal Reaver destroyed the traitor and the remaining marines were able to secure sufficient objectives to give the loyalists a victory.

Some observations were.  Titans should have titan killing weapons in their load out and should make use of cover (the -1 does help).  I think the best load out for titans is the long range stuff.  Being out of range with 30% of the guns of a 400pt detachment (Reaver) is not my idea of a good investment.  Things like heavy barrage missiles and gatling cannons are great for knocking down void shields and then a volcano cannon to seal the deal seems like a pretty cost effective selection.

The devastator marines are very versatile as they are able to garrison structures and destroy vehicles. Their frag missiles also do a good job of killing other garrisoned infantry at long range, for infantry.

Initiative was a big deal, but not because of activation order. But rather, when setting up the combat for garrisoned forces.  This refers to a previous comment of mine about “gerrymandering”.   Essentially the person with initiative can get mileage out of a detachment with models with different CAFs, even if it is not their detachment.  For instance 6 Assault marines charge a detachment of 4 Auxilla and 4 Ogryns garrisoned in a building.  If the marines have the initiative they can pair the auxilia and marines one to one and the four remaining ogryns then smash the two remaining marines.  The combat should be a 4 to 2 victory for the marines and result in the Auxula detachment being pushed out of the building.  If the Auxila have the initiative then the Ogryns are paired one to one with the mariners and the four auxilia pair up on the last two martines.  This should result in all 6 marines stands being destroyed and 2 auxilia being destroyed simply because of who has initiative (this only works when one unit is garrisoned, anywhere else the pairs are determined by movement).  Maybe it is a corner case, but if you play with a lot of structures it will come up, so try to charge structures when you have initiative.