Friday night game (Salamanders vs White Scars battle report)

So last night I got a chance to play a game with that Salamanders list I put up earlier in the week. My opponent had a very nicely converted White Scars list featuring a Captain and a Master of the Forge, each leading full bike squads with melta attack bikes and loads of grav-guns, a drop pod sternguard squad, scouts in a landspeed transport, 2 stalkers, a thunderfire cannon and a pair of storm talons, converted to look like helicopter gunships. We played the cloak and dagger mission using the objective cards and the end to end deployment. 

Really nice pair of choppers my deployment

I went first and had a productive turn, scoring 2 points for claiming objectives and moving my rhino, landraider full of terminators and Knight into position to do serious damage next turn. My shooting was somewhat ineffective thanks to cover and jink saves but I was feeling positive. He dropped his sternguard down in position to attack either my tanks or my devatators and moved up his bike to shoot my knight and landraider. All this firepower did little to my Knight and devastators but the sternguard's melta gun wrecked one of the rhinos and left the tactical squad inside pinned. One of the bikes squads also got lucky with a grav-gun and immobilised the landraider. End of his turn yielded him one objective point and a point for first blood.

The landraider being stuck didn't phase me too much as it was close enough for the terminators to get out and charge a bike squad this turn and the knight was going to charge the other. A good size chunk of his sternguard fell to a sunburst from my librarian and more fell to a volley of krak missiles from my devastators. I had planned a similar fate for his bikes but, thanks to jink saves, my knight, a tactical squad, terminators and landraider killed a total of one bike! The assault phase didn't go much better, the terminators fluffed there charge, (to be fair, charging a unit holding a grav-wave generator and sitting in cover was perhaps to much to hope for) and the knight killed just a single bike and the then rolled a one on each of its stomp attacks before the bikes scarpered with hit and run. 

His turn 2 was when it all started to go wrong. The scouts turned up and there speeder took out the other rhino. Both bike squads with support from the thunderfire and recently arrived stormtalons made a mess of all three tactical squads, two of whom fell back. The assault phase offered a slight upside as the remaining 2 sternguard charged the devastators, losing one to overwatch and the other in melee without hurting the devastators. But it mattered little as he revealed 2 + d3  points worth  of objectives scored this turn, and promtly rolled a 6 to claim a 7 to 2 lead.

things starting  to go wrong

Turn three was probably going to be my last chance to get back in the game, my cards gave me the chance for 4 points if I could beat both bikes in combat with the knight and terminators respectivly, killing his warlord (the captain) in the possess and shoot down at least one stormtalon. The devastators started well and downed one of the storm talons but despite the tactical squads re-grouping and the landraider, knight and razorback still having plenty of firepower between them, I still could barely scratch the bikes thanks to those accursed jink saves. The Knight did a bit more damage to the bikes this time around when it assaulted, but still not enough to break them or kill the captain and once again they used hit and run. The terminators managed to make there charge this time around, but lost two on the way in to snap-firing bikes. They won combat and my librarian killed the master of the forge but alas combat ended in another hit and run that left the bikes close enough to still contest the objective I wanted. 

His next turn ended it from a competitive point of view, with the terminator, all the tactical marines and the devastators getting shot to bits and him claiming more objective points. Two more turn of mopping up followed which left me with just the knight and immobile landrider by the end of 5. All in all a fun game against a good and fair opponent, dice didn't go my way but that's not to take anything away from his win.

Here's a few things I learnt from this game:

-Shooting white scar bikes is almost a waist of firepower unless you ignore jink saves and in combat you need to smash the in one round, a very solid unit and something to fear in future games. 

-If you have two big power units the outcome of the games will likely come down to how well they perform.

-My list is lacking a bit in mobility and a faster list can give me the run around when it comes to objective claiming.

-Even dedicated anti-armour firepower will still struggle to take down a knight.

Hope you liked this bat-rep, let me know if you want more of this.