Tabling the Ultramarines

 I played yet another game, this time against Ultramarines. Read all about it!

For a 1000 point games against Ultramarines, I selected the second list discussed in my previous post: 

• A Kahl, with Disintegrator and Mass Gauntlet
• A squad of Hearthkyn Warriors, with Ion Blasters, Melee-oriented Thayn, Rail Rifle and Plasma Beamer.
• A Sagitaur with Missile Launchers to split the Hearthkyn squad
• Three units of three Hernkyn Pioneers, each with Searchlight, Scanner and HYLas rotary cannon.
• A unit of three Brokhyr Thunderkyn with grav-cannons.
• A Hekaton Land-Fortress with railgun and bolt cannons.

I thought this list would have a lot of great mission play, but as it turns out it has one glaring weakness towards at least one Leviathan primary mission: Too few characters. The mission we drew was Sites of Power, where you have to have characters standing on objectives to "empower" them in order to score points. My opponents list had three characters to my one, and the difference in scoring was extreme.

Sticky objectives was really useful however, especially as we drew the Hidden Supplies mission rule where an extra objective is placed.

While my opponent took the lead on scoring, mostly because of Sites of Power, but also because of early dominance in the midfield and using the Cleanse mission, the damage output of this Votann list is pretty high - even though I had few tokens to place. The force disparity therefore soon grew, and the Ultramarines were tabled in round 4.

A bit of luck in there as well, as my opponents Redemptor Dreadnought died to a combination of a failed Hazardous test on its own guns and a very lucky Rail cannon shot from the Land Fortress. Had it lived a couple more turns, the Ultramarines would almost certainly have won by a large margin. But 1000-point games are swingy by nature.