Playing Escalation

Happy Sunday Gents!

Myself and Anthony spent yesterday at Tabletop and decided to have a crack at a 2500 point game of 40K using the Escalation rules so Ant could finally field his Stompa.

Read on for more! 
(Warning: Rather heavy on photos)



We decided to plump for 2500 as that allowed ant to field his regular 1500 point list, plus the 770 point Stompa and had a few more points left to fit a couple more units in.
I fielded a combined Eldar & Dark Eldar list mostly comprising of my usual units (though only two wave serpents!)
We rolled up a regular mission and got Big Guns Never Tire.


The forces amassed:

The set up before turn 1:

Turn 1 action shots:

Turn 2 action shots:

Turn 3 action shots:

Turn 4 action shot:

Turn 5 action shots:

The game ended at the close of turn 5 with a somewhat comfortable victory for the combined Eldar forces thanks to them being in control of 3 of the 5 objectives.

Despite being down on the Escalation product as a whole i have to say this really was a thoroughly enjoyable game, it flowed fairly quickly and there were plenty of casualties on either side.
I think it was assisted in a big way by the fact that the Stompa doesnt seem to be one of the more broken choices (like the eldar titan) in the book. It was able to throw out a lot of firepower (albeit with BS2) and did a real number on most things in assault, but it didnt utterly dominate the game in the way i might have expected.
I will admit i got incredibly lucky with a series of successful jink saves on my ravager and wave serpent in the mid-way point in the game, and i also got incredibly lucky with my wraithknight gambit turn 4.
I had whittled the stompa down to 5 remaining hull points and had several guns pointed at him so took a chance and jumped the wraithknight out within charge distance, the wraithknight whiffed both of his shots and all the rest of the shooting also failed to make a dent, i was all in by this point though so charged the stompa with the wraithknight and managed to take off all 5 hull points with his attacks thanks to striking first and getting 6's on the damage chart following 2 penetrating hits, also luckily the massive blast scattered out of range to do any significant harm to the wraithknight leaving him standing (until he got charged by a unit of boyz with a power claw nob).

In the post game chat we actually discussed whether the stompa is under-powered for his points cost, we came to the conclusion that it probably isnt, it was just a little bit unlucky in this game. One thing we also realised afterwards is how he could be used to carry a squad of lootas, 4 of whom can fire from his hatches in the front, this would make a great way of protecting the fragile lootas who are generally public enemy one and the first target to get dropped. It also gives them great firing lines across the battlefield.

We're intending to revisit this battle soon with a few tweaks on either side and we'll see how it goes next time.