BT vs Space Marines 2500

So here is a quick run down of the disaster last night, hehe. Here we can see our total forces laid out ready to deploy.

Anthony's list looked something like:
Lysander
Librarian
9 Sterngaurd vets in rhino
10 assault termies (5 claws, 5 hammers) which he combat squaded, Landraider transport
10 marines, las, fist, rhino
10 marines, las, fist, rhino
5 scouts including telion and HB
Land speeder with 2 MM
Land speeder with HB and AssCannon
Vindi
Pred with autocannon and las sponsoons
5 Devastator w/ 2 lascanon

We decided to try out scenario 2 because that's the one I'm most worried about. I won the roll and chose to go second.

Sorry the pics are total crap. The iPhone is great for taking pics of the kid on the fly, but for 40k it is garbage. I had a camera all ready to bring over and left it on my desk at home. :(

Anthony depoyed one scout squad in a building (topish left), and I deployed my two 5 man teams in buildings (center and right most).


Turn 1 Anthony rolls everything up. He's able to bring enough firepower down on my closest squad and get past night fighting to kill of 3 guys. Sadly because I don't have the marshal they break and run them down the ruins. I guess I put them too close for me to be going second and should have been more conservative.
My guys of course recover and I basically move them right back up to the roof. My mistake in the rest of the deployment is I spread my efforts out thinking I'll take on the whole line of Anthony's line, and then bring in pods to support where I need it. Instead I should have just lined up in a spearhead and tackled one side of the flank. Oh well.

Rhinos are on one side and smoke (probably too early), vindi pulls up behind the ruins since it is out of range, pred moves on, and land raider comes on and smokes. I foolishly get greedy with the pred but have no sight with night fighting. I should have totally smoked, lesson learned. My other las squad does nothing.

Turn 2: Anthony moves little of anything. He mows down my remaining two guys in the front ruins, stuns a rhino or two, shakes my LRC, and explodes my pred sitting out in the open like a big fat target.

I land all 3 reserves. I decide to plant my GKT and one drop pod over by his LR with termies and lysander, and drop the other pod right in front of his pred. The guys buy his LR drop pretty close to accurate, the GKT are a little farther than I wanted. The second drop pod scatters way far away from its intended target back to mid field. Now it is blocking my vindi line of sight and my melta and deathwind have 0 range. I just run the guys up to try to get some cover from the hill. My other melta manages to immobilize the LR, GKT try to shoot at a speeder and fail. My vindi moves up and manages to stun his pred and my las squad does nothing to his vindi. My rhinos move up the flank hoping to get some obscure from a good deal of his army. I know I'm not in the best position now.
Turn 3: Anthony unloads Lysander and his termies and get out to maul the drop templar. His second termies move up around to support them. His Sterngaurd rhino move up and get out with the libby to be basically on top of the other drop squad.

His termies maul my squad and I only manage a wound on Lysander oddly. His librarian drops the template power on 9 of my other drop squad. I roll a 6 on my hood roll! Hurray... oh... wait... Anthony managed a 6 to get the power off and nuke 6 guys. The sterngaurd clean up the rest of them. His devs which have moved up in position pop my front rhino and it explodes and of course manages to some how kill off and handful of marines, and a few more die to fire from his rhino/las/bolter and HB/AssCannon speeder, leaving only the EC and 3 guys (and no melta). At this point we know the game is had, but we figure we'll see if I can make a miraculous bottom of 3.

So my GKT move up to assault Lysander and I'm hoping i have range (they do). My LRC moves up and dumps my other 5 assault termies to try to get at his 2nd squad of termies. I move the vindi up to fire on his Sterns rhino, laying the template down to try to get some squad. It deviates a touch but explodes the rhino, but all the Stern make there save, and what guys I had under the template we gave a cover save to and they of course all passed as well.

My EC squad moves up to try to lay some shots on the skimmer (and fail). My second rhino just moves up since it can't reach anything. My deathwinds do nothing again. My las/plas squad does nothing either.

Assualt goes surprisingly badly also. Despite a blistering number of attacks my GKT only manage to kill two terminators, and in turn lose 4. My Furious charge terminators is also surpringly non killy, I think maybe we both lose 1. My EC squad does manage to down the speeder in assault.

If the termie squad's assault had gone well maybe the could have moved on, and even killing lysander would put me in the game for KP, but alas at best we would grind ourselves down into oblivion.

We call it a game. My command squad was horribly out of place, and like would have been popped out of the rhino and shot to pieces. The EC squad would have been blown away as well. Even if I ground down his termies I'd have nothing left but my las/plas and some easy to kill drop pods, and a vindi that would be the solo vehicle threat.

Maybe I could have worked it to a tie (within 4 kp) but really I don't think so. The lessons had been learned from this game and that was really the point.
1) Against someone spread out and turtling focus on one flank, then use the drop pods to antagonize.
2) The drop pod squad are taking up too many points. The squad is gimicky in KP and the deathwinds have done squat. In objectives they pay off better, but I'll probably play more conservatively with them in some of those missions.
3) Smoke needs to be better judged. I smoked the rhinos too early, and the pred foolishly shot turn one with night fighting when way in the back. With the more heavy terrain at our store I'll try to utilize cover turn 1 and hold smoke until turn 2 on night fighting missions.

Had I managed those tactics/plans better then the bad turns of event could have been managed, and things like having a bad assault or failed hood rolls are bound to happen.

So making the changes below to my list, and keeping some of these lessons in mind will hopefully help out this Sat.