#59: 40k Battle Report - Titans Game Two Grey Knights Vs. Sisters of Battle "Superior Sisters"

Coming off the back of an upset game that I probably shouldn't have done as well in, my spirits were high and optimistic leading into round two. And I was matched against the rarest of all armies...

Sisters of Battle. 

I'd never actually played against Sisters, and while I knew they had some aces up their sleeves, I was confident that I could outplay them. Beside Boltguns, they had next to no long ranged firepower. My plan was to gun down units one by one as I marched up the board claiming objectives.

Unfortunately, the lovely ladies across the board had other ideas.

We were playing lengthways on the table, so I only had a 48" wide avenue to stem the tide of Penitent Engines, of which there were nine! Backing them up were a ten-strong bare bones unit of battle sisters and a twenty-strong unit joined by Uriah Jacobus and Saint Celestine! And to lock it all down, he had two Melta-toting Dominion Squads outflanking in their Immolators! 

Now, for most armies, Penitent Engines are not much of a concern. They only have armour 11, the only shooting of note is a pair of Flamers, and they're not very fast. 

But for me, the only guns capable of putting any serious hurt on them were Psycannons. And I did not have enough to drop them all before they hit my lines. Worse yet, I couldn't charge in and smite them in combat because they had something ridiculous like six S10 AP2 attacks EACH! Even my Dreadknights couldn't weather that! So it was going to be an interesting game...

My terminators and Knights deployed at a safe distance, where their guns could still cause some damage, wary of getting too close to the raging death machines. I was going to have to play a keen-edged game to pick up the points needed to claim victory. 

I wasted no time in dropping a unit of Interceptors behind enemy lines in hopes of drawing some Engines away from my valuable units, and in doing so, managed to kill a few sisters (not enough!). 

With few safe locations to deploy, the remaining squads dropped in beside my existing units, determined to create a stalwart Battleline and pick off as many oncoming threats as I could. One squad had to content themselves with Deep Striking into ruins on my back table edge to hold a crucial endgame objective. My shooting was largely ineffective, either being out of range or completely impotentin the form of storm bolters against the armour of Engines... For an army that is designed to cause horrific damage in the first two turns, things were not going well. I'd killed of of three models and none of them were important!

Just when I was concerned that things weren't going as well as I would like, 10 ladies and two tanks showed up on my flank to remind me I had teeth by systematically kicking them out all in one hit. Both showed up turn two, on the same flank, in front of the same Dreadknight. And they torched his face off in a display of infernal firepower that would put our sun to shame. 

In a slightly misguided idea of target priority, I dumped mass firepower into the Saint's unit, which she tanked with ease, until a Psilencer punched a hole in her soul. But the Saint, being the Saint, gave zero cares and stood back up again. The frustration was real...

To make things worse (I know, it gets worse!), I Perilled with Draigo, took a wound, and my Gate of Infinity mishapped and put me in reserve (lucky considering the whole unit could have just materialised inside a concrete wall and died).

The sisters in the backfield (the one with next to no upgrades) killed all my interceptors, demanding a second unit to finish them off, while the Penitents continued their relentless advance up the board, denying access to each objective in a frustratingly effective act of board control. 

As we progressed toward later turns of the game, the Engines started getting to grips with my army. One by one, my squads got eviscerated in a horrific onslaught whirling saws and gore (yeah, things got bloody. Fast.). The Dominion squads continued their impersonation of an apocalyptic solar flare and disintegrated everything in sight. With very few points on the board, and even fewer units, the hope of victory had fast begun to fade. 

Draigo's unit finally returned to the game in time to have no impact whatsoever, while my last Dreadknight crushed a unit of Penitents, but was in turn butchered mercilessly. 

This game was not even close to how I thought it would turn out. I had expected to have at least killed a few more models of my opponents army, but when the smoke and blood-haze had cleared, all that I'd killed was a squad of Sisters and a unit of Penitent Engines. Two measly kill points. 

Needless to say, this was a crushing victory to my opponent. 

Great to see a rare army perform on the table!

What could I have done differently?

Gabriel