Crimson Fist thoughts from Misty Mountain.

Probably the worst table there for terrain. Good thing the next two had good coverage.

So after spending this week going over how I thought my army did, I came to some good conclusions and some mistakes i need to change.

My list this weekend as follows.
Pedro Kantor
Librarian with null and machine curse
ironclad dread in drop pod
5 assault termies- 2 th/ss
10 sternguard- 2 melta, 2 combi melta, sarg with lc. assrazor
2x 10 tactical- missile, melta, sarg with pf, razorback with psb
speeder with 2x HB
speeder with mm and HF
3x predators- las sponsons

The first thing I realize is I really need to work on my deployment. I'm pretty sure I lost game one due to it, and game three, I was behind the eight ball for the first half of the game due to it. Game one was dawn of war with deployment zones being halves. My opponent was DE, and he deployed 20 hellions at half court. He also deployed a homunculus close to them to give them a pain token.



DE first turn.

 Ok so at this point I have a 5 man combat squad on the far left in the forest with missile launcher. On the right out of sight is their razorback (HB and PSB) with the sarg, melta, combat squad. My thinking was to pull the 20 man hellions away from the center as it was an objective. Not too bad a plan. He is really spread out and I'm only risking a razorback on the right and a 5 man on the left. I lucked out and he was out of charge range. This influenced my deployment.

I chose to split my forces and brought my sternguard, 2nd tactical squad and transport in on the left. I brought my preds in on the right. Speeders came in on the left with the dread dropping left of center.
Because the hellions were not in assault, I took the bait and wanted to wipe them out with shooting. Due to night fighting I deployed to far left with my Librarian and razors. I wiped most of the hellions out, but it cost me table positioning that I never recovered from. In the end my librarian was out of position for Null zone and my squads were unable to push the center.

Here is the board after turn three. My predator that came in in the center was blown up. I lost 4 termies to disintegrator fire (str 5 ap2) from the razorwing fighter. My sternguard had killed off the hellions in the middle and his witches on the right lost combat and were running. Key part here is, I failed to move the razorback on the left with the librarian more center. I was simply to far left to win, and he was controlling the mid board. My units were not supporting each other and he was able to concentrate his firepower left or right.

Ok so that is the bad. Here is the good I learned.

Pedro is good. Not for his killy power, but the +1 attack bubble he puts out is awesome. Stubborn is also way good. I already knew this from playing sister's and there 5 point book of stubbornness.

Null zone is good, if you have him in the right spot. After having my opponent make several +5 flickerfield saves, I was very aware my librarian was out of position. Still not sold on a second power. Going to try a couple different ones.

Sternguard are good, but it's how you use them that is important. Drop pod suicide squads may work to kill a tank or two, but a squad in terrain with Pedro's bubble +1 attack and they are nasty to move. They easily took out the remaining 9 hellions plus baron on their charge. 5 of them with one lightning claw termie. Love these guys. I was going to build another 10 man squad of them, and I do have the bits for it on hand, but I'm going to reduce it to just 5 with special weapons and combi's. The other 5's bits are going to another project.

I really like these guys. I like the mix of 3 LC and 2 TH/SS. This gave them enough attacks to take on semi hoard units and still have enough 3++ saves in the unit to survive most shooting. I put them at MVP of game 2 for drawing all the firepower of the tau and letting the sternguard win the game with the objective.

I did waste points on the assault cannon. I thought it would be very killy and prove my gut feeling wrong but it was not to be. The 35 points could have been better spent on more combi weapons for the sternguard and just took a twin HB.

The predators proved to be effective. They also proved to be harder to deploy and use to their full potential than I had figured. I am glade I went with 3 and not 2 plus a vindi. I do think the vindi would have made maneuvering harder and hurt my army.

The tactical squads were good but I don't think the value of the missile launchers is there. I think for the Bugeater, I'm going to break one squad down to a 5 man with a Sargent and a razorback, and add my next project with the points saved.

With Pedro in my army, I can take a honor guard. After looking at these guys and seeing some cool modeling possibilities, I'm adding them into my force. I plan to write up my Bugeater list and where I see this army is going.  Future projects also include my display board witch I will be starting Sunday. Till then, that's my 2 cents.