Escalation League Round 3: Week 3 (oops)

When I posted earlier about week 3, I really meant week 2. I played 3 more games of AIIG goodness.

Game 1 was a rematch against the 8-0 Scrapmeister. Luckily, this time I got a loot counter spearhead. I was lucky to go first.
I proceeded just as I had in our previous match, except this time I was able to kill about 15 orks in my first turn. His run rolls were pretty good (like 5,6) so he did not have to call his waagh for a turn 2 assault. The game was me losing close combats like crazy and firing upon the survivors. Some highlights include my standard bearer with 3 attacks wounding his warboss twice in close combat and killing him. At the end of turn 5, I had one objective and my opponent had none. Out of the 121 orks I faced, 4 survived to turn 5. I had roughly 25 guardsmen left.
Some observations; In this particular sense, I think whoever goes first wins. (that is currently the standing between us) It all comes down to whether or not I get that extra turn of shooting before close combat begins. This is definitely a tough list to beat at 1000 points.

Game 2 was against a young man who was on the top of the pairings, so a match needed to be held. He brought 3 dreadnoughts, 10 space marines, tigurius, a 5-man sniper scout squad with telion, and a thunderfire cannon. The mission was annihilation. Needless to say, my opponent was severly outgunned. He had no real close combat units to speak of, and is relatively new at the game. His list was more designed to face power armor, I think. Thus it mattered not that he had lascannons and multi-meltas for I also had no vehicles. An easy win, but a bit regrettable due to the differences in our forces.

Game 3 was against Drop podding Space Wolves (using the new marine codex rules) Dawn of war capture and control. (thanks dice...) Well, I knew this would be an uphill battle because I would waste at least one turn of shooting. The downsides came when he detactched 2 independent characters from the blood claw squads and sent them towards my lines while the bloodclaws were able to capture objectives out of LoS (behind terrain and/or drop pods) Despite my entire force firing at the IC's, I only killed one. (I thought I had them both, but realized that the wolf lord carried the new and improved storm shield to thwart like 3 Krak Missiles. needless to say he wiped out some scoring units. The flamers in the BC squads did not help either... I lost 1-0 on turn 7. (Had the game ended turn 5, we might have drawn) the new BS4 storm bolters on drop pods is rough as well against guard. I was utterly eaten in close combat as wellas shooting but I did inflict severe casualties on my opponent. A loss for the AIIG.

-Mike