Planetary Empires: Don't Get Cocky

‘Great, kid. Don’t get cocky.’ Some sage advice there from Han himself; well - I got cocky. I got full of myself and I didn’t pay attention during terrain set up, and during deployment I made some mistakes. I didn’t think through the objectives and I ended up chasing my tail for 4 rounds while my opponent basically drove in reverse and picked me apart at range while I struggled to catch up. I made all my mistakes early and my list simply couldn’t make up the difference.

Why did this happen? Well to be perfectly honest my Space Wolf list is close combat heavy. Actually it’s completely assault. My list is designed to run forward and punch you in the face, repeatedly. If you have armor, I will pop it with Melta or I will assault it; both of which occur at ranges of less than 12 inches. All my squads are designed to be redundant, I have no specialized squads designed to do one thing; there are no Terminators or Speeders. My squads are all Grey Hunters and Long Fangs, that’s it. My only armor support comes from one Venerable Dreadnought with an assault cannon and close combat weapon, even my armor wants to beat your face.

Now this is not to say that I always win at Warhammer, quite far from it actually. My Imperial Guard army sadly gets its tail kicked allot and by allot I mean allot. Yes, when everyone was running around beating face with Imperial Guard I was losing with them or getting draws. I had to work hard for each victory and plan things out. Deployment and objective placement were key, planning movements and vehicle placements each turn were crucial. Then I dusted off my Wolves and put together a list for our Planetary Empires campaign and something odd happened. I tabled my first opponent, and then the next and then the next. In fact out of my first 7 games with Space Wolves I tabled 5 of them. I became completely oblivious to objectives because they didn’t matter, wipe your opponent off the board in 5 turns and who cares what the mission is; right?

Right before getting hemmed up in the Kill Zone...

Well it caught up with me and a much better prepared army whopped my tail. My opponent prepared for the fight, deployed much better than me and had a much better plan than mine. My opponent hit me in the gut and then fought a text book perfect withdrawal across the board picking me apart as he went and I just couldn’t catch up. It was a humbling experience, one I very much needed in fact. This loss brought me back to Earth and make me realize that while my army can absorb allot of stupid mistakes, it can’t absorb everything and I need to think things out more clearly. Better preparation, better planning and a greater appreciation for everything that happens before the first shot is fired. In this case the game was lost before I fired my first krak missile; thankfully I am learning from it and will be better prepared next time.

Like Han says: ‘Great, kid. Don’t get cocky.’

still practicing_

Tallarn