Escalation League - Session Three Final Week
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Warhammer 40,000 – Escalation Leagues are typically a sneaky way to get people to finish off a force or get a reasonable amount of models painted. Which is great because typically you win the war against gray plastic thorough escalation. Tying it into a campaign system is just a bonus.
This week saw the last of our 75PL/1500 point games. Chaos only controls a single planet due to my painting diligence and dumping all those wins into a single planet. I'm the only chaos player who's been able to play most weeks and as such I'm typically facing off against 2 other players in a 1v1v1 game that is really more of a 2v1 and maybe I'll shoot at you when the opportunity presents itself. As a reward for their "hard-earned" victory I let the Imperial players chose the mission for Pike's Pitfall (the one planet Chaos controls). They of course chose one of the Imperial Fist missions from Altar of War (7th edition) ... oh what fun.
The mission is really simple the defender sets up 2 objectives (at least 12" apart) in their 36" wide x 24" deep deployment zone. To win the game they have to control both objectives, anything else is a loss. To help them last a little longer the defenders get Stubborn (+1 leadership for tests), It Will Not Die (at the end of the turn for every multi-wound model roll a D6 on a 5+ you regain a wound) and Feel No Pain (6+). BecauseI control Pike's Pitfall I get D3 Fortifications. Should be easy right?
The Attacker deploys In an "L" anywhere outside of the Defenders deployment zone. Their TROOPS come back as reserves from their board edge the turn after they are destroyed. Because of the planets they control the Imperials can once per game return a vehicle that has been destroyed with D6 wounds remaining, they can deep strike D3 units and once per game they can re-roll to hit with D3 units so long as they didn't move. Oh yeah there's two of them facing me, as well as each other. They can only win if I don't hold the two objectives AND they kill the most units (Each unit is worth it's PowerLevel in VP). Oh and one of the Imperial Guard player had a fit about the Shrouded in Darkness Planetary Rule (-1 to hit for units more than 9") so we instead changed it to Night Fight on a 4+ for the first turn which he promptly "forgot to roll."
The fist two battle rounds I got the pleasure of going last. Which mean I lost my Decimator before it could do anything, I lost a Bastian before it could do anything, and my Forgefiend lost half of it's wounds before it got to shoot. When I did get to go I killed a bunch of Guardsmen and decimated a unit of assault marines (who walked right back on the next turn).
When it was all said and done we made it to the top of turn 4 before calling it. Sadly the two units I had left were 4" away from the objectives 1" more than they should have been so once again Chaos takes the loss.
Next Session we go to 2,000 points/100 PL. If we have to play 2v1 games I'll be bringing a double list and hopefully gain back some ground.
