40K Knights March to War

My Knights got in their second game today. It was a short but brutal fight.

My Knights were investigating some ancient ruins at the behest of the Adeptus Mechanicus from Stygies 8 when we were ambushed by a formation of Emperors Children.

I deployed, with the skill and wisdom of the French King a Agincourt. I was banking on winning the go first roll  and then promptly lost the role to go first.

Pete responded by dropping in his prepared combo of terminators daemon prince and sorcerer. He then cast Precience on the terminators giving the +1 to hit and with re-roll 1s from the daemon prince he proceeded to roll 15 out of 16 hits the first time then played his strategy card which allowed him to have another round of shooting.

Terminators and possie arriving early for the party. Surprise.

Then everyone succeeded in making their charge rolls to assault me. The Daemon prince attached first and scored enough wounds that I was just above the second bracket. My knight struck back and smashed the sorcerer out of the sky with his chain sword. "What do you mean your close combat weapon does 6 wounds sure its not D6?" Nope... I then tap danced on the terminators and killed another one. The Terminators had lightning claws, which are great at shredding infantry but not so good against knights.

Pete's Warp Talons assaulted a unit of Skitairi and playing country music from their helmet speakers so confused the Skitarii that they could not overwatch. The Skitarii all died on the points of the lightning claws

In my turn one I pulled the wounded knight out of combat and my Enginseer healed him for 4 points of damage (selection of the optimal warlord trait and a strategem card) allowing me to heal twice and heal a bonus wound each time.

Supported by the white Errant knight we went to work on the Emperors children. We killed the surviving terminators the last wound on the champ being taken by the Skitarii rangers. Pete command pointed the save for a reroll and rolled a second 1 to fail. The White Errant then charged the daemon prince and got a chainsowed attach through. This did 5 wounds to the daemon prince. Pete command pointed a reroll on the daemon princes invulnerable save and this time his luck was better and he rolled the 5 + he needed.

My Black Knight was trying to get past the cultist screen to get at the juicy marines but could not quite kill enough to blast a hole through.

Turn 2 saw the continuation of the fight between the daemon prince and the White Knight. The knight took some wounds but not enough to  cripple him. I attacked the supporting assault squad and squashed several. The Noise marines shot at the Black knight and did some damage but not enough to matter.

The Grand Melee erupts in the middle of the table.

My Enginseer got assaulted by the Warp Talons and took 3 wounds, in return he killed one with his blessed axe. My Turn 2 My Engineseer logically computed that he would be better off out of combat, so ran away. He then healed the knight for another two wounds.

After another round of shooting from the Red and White Knights the Noise Marine close combat squad was no more then the White knight charged in a killed the daemon prince with a swing of his chain sword.

At that point we called the game because Pete had lost all of his big hitting pieces and 2 blast masters were not going to hold back three knights for the rest of the game.

I learned a lot about the game from this battle.
My deployment was very sloppy. I made the assumption that I was going to win the roll to go first and deployed like it.
I did not think Pete could do the alpha strike he did. The Red Knight was lucky to survive. In future I need to get much better at positioning my Skitarii so they cover the flanks of the knights and don't allow people the drop within 12" of the knights so they can plasma gun me to death.
Overcharged plasma guns are nasty. Loads of 2 damage hits are bad. being able to have a second shooting phase is brilliant.
Stacking buffs and supporting characters are great.

The Adeptus mechanicus are starting to feel like the pit crew for the knights. Their job is to patch them up and the infantry die saving the knights from scary things like assault terminators

So I am inspired to keep painting the army and I might make a few small changes to the list to drop some points and squeeze in another unit of Skitarii to allow me to cover the knights better.