Escalation Game #2

After losing the last game I moved on with little thought of winning but a few lessons learned.   The next game is against a vanilla SM player who is using Lysander in a pretty standard list.  Hes running 2 rifleman dreads, a TLLas Pred with some guys and a techmarine.  Lysander is in a pod  with some sternguard. and a speeder.

Game is spearhead with 5 objectives.  Most of the objectives are clustered on the right hand of the board circled almost directly on the 12" non-deployment  ring in the center of the table.

My list adds another 5 man GKSS with psycannon, rifleman dred, and fills my termie blob out to 10 full bodies and another psycannon.

Once again I get to deploy second and choose to deepstrike my two squads of GKSS troops.  The termies get some cover and spread over my corner of the table with the dreads in hard cover.  1 failed attempt to sieze and its on.

This game rotated around a large LOS Blocking ruin in the center and another in corner opposite me in the long edge which has an objective and a squad of scout snipers.  Turn 1 he shoots off 7 termies !  7!! Oh crap there goes the bulk of my army.  He has a squad in cover on an objective in his area, just on the edge of table center line.  There is another opposite it, I move termie remains to the building his snipers are in and start shooting stuff with the riflemen dreads.  Park his pred with one of them (trying to open the thing up) and shoot a little more but nothing major.

Turn 2 proceeded the deep striking fun.  He drops in his pod with Lysander and co., shoots at my termies who nearly retreated off the board last turn.  He manuevers a little, fixes the Pred but fails to do much else. I on the other hand have some fun.  Thrawn gets back up (love this guy!) and proceeds to go meet Lysander to hold him up.  Thrawn is an awesome multitasker.  Speed bump, scoring unit, fearless phoenix style termie.   Like a bad toe fungus he just keeps on coming back, can't ever really get rid of him.  The Libby and remaining termies run for cover and my GKSS both come in.  One between the two ruins on his side of the board, both holding objectives and the other in my deployment area to hold one in mine.  Thrawn and Lysander meet for a coffee break as neither of them are successful in doing anything.

Turn three sees some shooting, notably my Libby gets gibbed by lucky heavy bolter fire.  Thrawn gets dropped in his turn letting Lysander wander off but gets back up to run over and contest the objective his Sterngard are sitting on.  Between my squad and Thrawn's assault that set of sterngard is down to a single dude.    To his side my GKSS shoots and then assaults him off the back objective, while my remaining termies move through the building to catch a third.  So at the end of turn three we are low on time and I hold 3 and contest 1.  Time is running short at this point, the next turn at best has him contesting  3 and holding 0, to my holding 1 and contesting 3, either way a win for me.  We call it there, interesting game.