In the end, Adam’s Hive Fleet Kraken Tyranids won a minor victory. Particularly as I was playing AdMech for the first time, I was pleased with how it all went.
The mission was Storm the Lines from Vigilus Defiant. Essentially, Adam’s aim was to have at least one model in my back line at the end of the game. I had to stop him; however, his destroyed units could come back at his edge of the table.
In retrospect, my list wasn’t great. I hadn’t looked at the missions, and built something to use my new toys (AdMech, plus the Tempestus Drop Force specialist detachment from Vigilus) and ended up with a list that would have been better playing as the attacker with its good mobility. It would have worked for one of the traditional missions with objectives to be captured, I think When I realised what we were playing, I had to redo my tactics on the fly. As I wouldn’t need to send my Kastelans forward, I changed the Forge World to Mars instead of Stygies VIII.
The original version of this list had two tanks without sponsons. I decided to scrap one of them, and use the extra points to pile extra weapons on the first Leman Russ and give my Scion Command Squad plasma guns. In retrospect, that was a mistake; more of that later. While fun, I’m not sure how much use the Valkyrie was.
The company commander and troops basically stopped Adam from being able to deepstrike into my end zone. That alone probably stopped him scoring a major victory. One squad never got close enough to the enemy for First Rank Fire! Second Rank Fire!. The other two did solid work slowing down the oncoming Tyranids. I think I’m going to outfit each squad with a heavy mortar, rather than just one, and take sniper rifles for the special weapons for their range as much as anything else.
The tank commander didn’t work very well. It put out a prodigious amount of damage, what with a Punisher gatling gun, lascannon, two plasma sponsons, and heavy stubber. However, that made it a huge target, and Adam made short work of it at the start of his second round once he’d seen what it could do. Basically, there aren’t enough wounds on the Russ to justify taking all that kit and, with Grinding Advance, the turret weapon is just vastly better for the points.
The Scions ended up getting dropped on top of a building. Safely out of melee, they were pretty handy at weakening some of the big gribblies that came towards them. I’m not sure the plasma weapons on the Command squad were worthwhile; I think I’d have preferred the extra shots, even at 9″, from FRF!SRF!.
The Valkyrie dropped the Scions off on their perch atop the battlefield, and then delivered the Astropath and Ministorum Priest to support the Crusaders that held the middle of my end of the table. It provided some useful shooting, but the mobility was wasted as I was essentially static. The Taurox again proved very useful both as a battlefield taxi and then being surprisingly durable and putting out decent damage.
The Crusaders lasted a couple of rounds. The Astropath’s attempts to support them with Psychic Barrier failed, and the beta Acts of Faith rules mean that instead of fighting twice on a 2+, they fight twice on a 5+. Without any Devotions from Sister of Battle, the Crusaders are much less useful than they used to be. I may end up going for Bullgryns, even though I much prefer the flavour of the Crusaders, because they are just not as good as they were. That said, the AdMech probably object to Bullgryns less than other parts of the Imperium, so maybe they do fit.
The AdMech were a lot of fun to play with. The long range attacks from the Dunecrawlers at the back did plenty of damage. I had expected them to take a lot of fire, so I sat my Tech-Priest Dominus between them. As it happened, there wasn’t a single shot against them, while my Kastelans were taking a beating from a Trygon, some Venomthropes, and, iirc, some Tyrant Guard. I ended up moving the Tech-Priest forward to repair the Kastelans, and should probably have done so earlier. Having a Cybernetica Datasmith would have been useful to change protocols, but spending a CP to change and lock them worked perfectly well. Nevertheless, I felt the Kastelans gave a good account of themselves. I might try using them with Phosphor Blasters instead of Kastelan Fists next time, and I’ll certainly take a Phosphor Blaster on the shoulder instead of the Incendine Combustor. I’m tempted, at some point, to pick up some more Kastelans for a larger squad.
I’m very much not up to speed on the AdMech stratagems (and forgot that I could have spent 1CP to repair a Kastelan twice) or dogmas, and went for Mars instead of Stygies VIII at the last minute (as rolling twice for canticles seemed like a solid choice). Together, that meant I was less effective than I could have been.
Adam ended up winning a minor victory based on having a higher power level in my forward deployment zone than I did. That was a bit of a screw-up on my part; I could have moved both the Taurox and the Valkyrie into that area, but didn’t think about it as I was focused on taking out the Trygon. Nevertheless, he did play well, particularly taking out my main source of anti-infantry fire in the Leman Russ so early in the game and keeping me on the back foot throughout. We both enjoyed the game, though, and I do like the flavour of having AdMech alongside Guard.
Next up in the Vigilus campaign will be Colin’s Genestealer Cults. I’ll revise the Astra Militarum part of my list and hopefully have some AdMech troops to bring, too.