Weekly club report: fourth week in August 2011

1500 points, my ever-lovin' Brazen Claws vs. Grey Knights.

I've never played against Grey Knights, but the general consensus is that they are the "super-elite" army of the 40K roster these days.   1500 pts. sure doesn't buy a lot of feet on the ground in a GK army, that's for sure.

I also have no idea what my opponent fielded.  I'm pretty sure I faced

• Brotherhood Champion
• Inquisitor
• Grey Knight Terminators
• Grey Knights
• Stormraven gunship
• Dreadknight

I fielded

• Captain with the relic blade/storm shield
• Dreadnought w/MM
• Dreadnought w/assault cannon
• Tac squad w/rhino
• Tac squad w/razorback (combat squadded)
• sniper scout squad
• landspeeder w/missile launcher and meltagun
• devastator squad
• devastator squad

In the beginning, only one of the Grey Knights and the Dreadknight were on the table, which gave me a chance to try to dismantle them before the rest of the army showed up.  In perhaps the greatest moment in the game, the multi-melta dread kicked three wounds off the dreadknight before being destroyed, and then the dreadknight in turn was wiped out when my opponent rolled two 1's on the armor save when it was hit by the missile launchers from the landspeeder.  Kiss 300 points goodbye, while I only lose 105 points on the dread, and it tied up the dreadknight for three turns.

When the rest of the army showed up on turn three, I was able to light up the Stormraven with a lascannon hit from one of the devastator squads.  Another moral (and point-heavy) victory.  From there the game became a grind as I threw everything I had at this remaining units, but the dice just turned against me to the point where onlookers began to comment.  My captain had a good showing, taking a lot of hits to his storm shield before finally losing the last of his three wounds.  But in the end (of turn 7, sigh) I couldn't staunch the onslaught of his terminators and their hammer-hands and their psy-cannons and the no less than three different grenades that they carried which would lower toughness, initiative, and prevent one guy (usually my sergeant with a power fist) from attacking in the assault phase.  Bleh.

But it wasn't a bad loss, I made a good showing of it, and even though I didn't get there until almost 6:00 PM I still managed to find someone to play in a game that went almost to 9:00 PM when the store closes.  So I'm feeling a little better about the 40K situation than I was yesterday, even if it might be nice to put one win on the board some time this year.