AFTERTHOUGHT: Bringing a Gun to a Knife Fight

I'll be trying to do these afterthought segments after any battle reports that I run, both to help me learn from any mistakes I made as well as provide some feedback on the battle. For this afterthought you can turn to this battle report for reference. Also for reference, the battle map:

I believe overall that my tactics were sound for this mission. I'm not used to so much LOS blocking terrain which really screwed with my firing lanes. I basically had a choice of  where to concentrate my fire, either directly in front of my objective or the rest of the field.

Fortunately for me my opponent obliged me in these matters as with the amount of deployment room that I required he really had nowhere to run. The long range shooters took the wide open battle field while my shorter ranged mechanized infantry chose to defend the objective with help from its limited sight lines.

I believe this battle would have gone very differently if my opponent had simply chosen to rush my objective. Two land raiders filled with Berzerkers would have easily sliced through the combined squad as well as pretty much anything else that they wanted, as the Executioner wouldn't have been able to lend its firepower terribly readily to a massed assault on my right flank. Since he came at me piecemeal and advanced all along the right half of the table I was able to deal with each part with the necessary tools one at a time. Keeping the rhino back at his objective would also have been a decent idea, as with the LOS blocking building I wouldn't have been able to hit him without some drastic repositioning of my units. Still, I can understand the wish to come to grips with my boys as quickly as possible.

MVPs for the match were definitely the meltavets and the Executioner. While my Hearts vet squad failed miserably the Diamond squad more than made up for their shortcomings, adding two land raiders and a Rhino to their kill tally. The Executioner, on the other hand, cleared out heavy infantry like no other, almost single handedly eliminating two Berzerker squads.

Still, even with their stellar records there are parts of them about which I am unsure. The meltavets both had autocannons as part of their wargear, which I'm not certain was necessary. They were mostly added to grant the squad some duality to their tank-hunting career, but I'm not sure how often I'll be holding them still. With the Executioner I've debated taking off their PC sponsons. While undeniably effective I can't help but wonder if I could spend the 40 points better elsewhere.

The other three elements that I have concerns about are the Heavy Weapon Squad, the Platoon Command Squad and the LRBT. The HWS just doesn't seem to do enough for me, rarely doing much damage against the light transports it's supposed to be king against and being rather fragile to boot. The PCS I've never been able to figure out- perhaps equipping it with meltaguns as a psuedo-meltavet would be the best option, as I have anti-horde all over the place already. Finally the LRBT just never seems to hold up its weight. I love large pie plates, and when it hits its magic, but he is still taking up quite a bit of room for his points. Strangely I think adding a second LRBT to its squadron would fix the problem, as at least one of those pie plates has to hit every time, right?

Finally, there's the matter of the combined platoon. AC/GL doesn't seem to be doing enough against Marine armies so I'm debating upgrading to AC/Meltagun to give it some low AP weaponry as well as an anti-Land Raider out.

But, overall I'm happy with the list and I'll probably run it a few more times before making any serious changes. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all tomorrow.