It all started this way with a post on our local gaming groups Facebook page...
The Challenge from Steve Yorkrite:
Inquisitor Jaxeena has been secretly studying the Mantis Warriors for signs of heresy. Having been turned down for samples of recent geneseed she has enlisted the aid of Captain Alphaeus. Under the guise that the Mantis Warriors have worked along side a renegade planetary governor, Alphaeus has agreed to help..."
Steve's Blood Angels:
HQ: Captain - iron halo, artificer armor, Valour's Edge
HQ: Command Squad (3) - combi-meltas (2) + champion w/
PS & shield + sanguinary novitiate in pod
EL: Dreadnought in pod
TP:
Tac Squad (9) in pod w/ melta gun & heavy flamer + vet srg w/ combi-melta &
PS TP:
Tac Squad (9) in rhino w/ flamer & missile launcher + vet srg
TP:
Tac Squad (9) in rhino w/ flamer & missile launcher + vet srg
FA: Baal Predator
FA: Assault Squad (9) w/ 2 melta guns, vet srg w/ combat shield & power fist
HV: Land Raider
Inquisitorial Detachment:
HQ: Ordo Malleus Inquisitor -
lvl 1 psycher, incinerator, power sword, power armor
HQ: 3 henchmen (acolytes)
I had to respond of course:
Azhara Redth, Chief Librarian of the Mantis Warriors stood quietly on a low rise, watching the annual marksmanship challenge unfold on the plain below. Large gatherings like this were rare as the Chapter was still severely depleted after the completion of their crusade against the "Red Corsairs". However the divine mercy of The Emperor had shown down upon them and they had been reinstated, resupplied and given a new home-world from which to recruit future generations. Of course there were those faithless who did not trust in the Emperor's wisdom. Petty power-brokers & bureaucrats jealous of the resources given to the reborn chapter. It was the character flaws of wretches like these that led to the Badab Rebellion over a century ago.
As he stood in careful contemplation, he heard quick, resolute footsteps approach from behind.
"Master Redth, an ultimatum has arrived from the Inquisition. Inquisitor Jaxeena summons you into her presence to answer to accusations of Heresy and fomenting rebellion against the Emperor."
"Let me see the missive." Replied Redth. He took the ornate parchment, noted the broken seal, and for long moments stared intently at the page, occasionally making deft rolling motions with his hands to advance the viewable region of the document.
"She's backed by Alphaeus of the Blood Angels." mumbled Redth. "That is... unexpected."
"What are you going to do Sir?" asked his attache'.
Redth did not answer immediately, but stood silent and motionless... gazing across the plain at the assembled might of the Chapter. Far below, a distant loudspeaker blared out "Pull!". A targeting sphere launched from somewhere below and streaked skywards, its scatter-field blurring it's image and making it appear to shift position slightly in space as it arced across the sky. A peal of barely audible pops rippled across the valley and the bright tags of sniper practice rounds appeared along the sphere's surface. Brighter flashes of light played across the sphere a moment later, followed by the distant crack of bolt gun fire. The sphere, now nearing the apex of it's arc... began to slow, to vibrate violently and to finally collapse in on itself. The sphere plunged straight down into the earth at terrific speed, shattering rock and spewing earth in all directions from the force of the impact. As the dust settled, a low whine could be heard, building and building as if the turbines of a huge dam had just sprung to life. A series of blinding flashes came from his left, without his helmet he had to shield his eyes, but his ears were left unprotected. A cacophony of sound swept over them and echoed across the plain like the coming of the end of the universe. "Venator" he whispered, as if afraid to speak it aloud, lest he draw its ire. The ancient engine of war had disintegrated the sphere and everything else within a 10m radius.
"What will I do?" asked Redth, turning to his attache'. "I'll pray for them of course."
Mantis Warriors:
HQ: Chief Librarian Azahara Redth
HQ: Tech Marine
EL: Sternguard (10) in pod - 2 plasma cannons, srg w/
PF EL: Tactical Terminators (5) - assault cannon, chain fist
TP: Tactical Marines (10) in pod - las cannon, flamer, vet srg w/ power sword
TP: 10 Sniper Scouts w/ vet srg
TP: 10 Sniper Scouts w/ vet srg
HV: Siccaran Venator w/ ceramite armor & dozer blade
HV:
Dev Centurions - 2x grav cents w/ bolters & srg w/
TL LC &
ML + omniscope
FT:
ADL I think Steve's been playing
40k as long as I have (since
RT) and we thought it would be fun to have a fluffy, marine on marine battle. Unfortunately when I saw the picture of his
BA army my mind went in an extreme direction (have a couple of weeks back been completely wiped out by Dante's death-star) so I went with a double centurion build. Once I got there however... I found out that he hadn't taken anything like that, so I borrowed some termies and a tech marine in order to replace the second cent squad. We decided to play a maelstrom mission using the Adepticon modified maelstrom cards. Normally I like playing the maelstrom cards but with the vastly superior mobility of Steve's Blood Angels. I also knew he was going to be in my face from turn 1 on.... not a happy thought for the shooty army I'd put together. We rolled hammer and anvil deployment and the mission where you draw up to the turn number in cards each turn... so point acquisition begins slowly and escalates as the game goes on. I'd also set a task for myself to kill the Inquisitor.
Sorry for the poor quality of the photos. I'd forgotten my good camera and was left with my phone camera, which isn't particularly good.
Deployment: Nothing much novel about our deployment. We both deployed forward... the Blood Angels because they wanted to engage and the
MW because they wanted to preserve their firing lanes and take advantage of the natural cover of the town. The gutless Inquisitor sat cowering with her retinue in the land raider at the
BA rear.
Neat shot of my gun line taken by Steve. I tried to deploy my scouts in bunches around the back of my lines to make it more difficult for him to bring his pods on.
Blood Angles - Turn 1: Steve had resisted my two attempts (thanks to Redth) to steal the initiative and went first. He predictably took advantage of his mobility and drove hard to capture some mid-field objectives. He also brought two pods down.
The first pod came down right in the middle of one of my scout units. Stupid pods autocorrecting makes a mishap impossible unless they scatter off the table.
The second pod dropped a dread right next to the vulnerable side armor of my venator.
Lucky for me the shooting phase was pretty anti-climatic. The dread whiffed on its multi-melta shot into the venator, and other shooting resulted in only a few sniper scout and two sternguard casualties. The Inquisitor tried to cast a psychic power and periled, taking a wound. Guess the Emperor wasn't with her... that's what she gets for playing his Astartes off on one-another. I don't think she tried to do anything for the rest of the game.
Mantis Warriors - T1: Since obvious threats have presented themselves... the Mantis Warriors do the obvious and try to deal with them. The sniper scout squad on my left flank closes in on one of the combat squads that came out of the drop pod.
My drop pod comes in near objective 5 (one of my cards) and the troops disembark in the hopes that the venator will pop the rhino so they can shoot at the marines inside.
The venator rolls back a bit in order to give the centurion squad a good shot at the threatening dreadnought.
On my left, the scouts shoot their bolt pistols and then charge, killing 2-3 marines. I was pretty happy about that outcome.
On my right... it takes everything I can muster to kill the rhino (crack grenade thrown from the squad finally does it), so I get first blood but now have to deal with two more combat squadded tactical marine squads. The venator had hit and penned 3 times but Steve made all of his cover saves.
Back on my right flank (rear)... all the shooting I can muster just knocks the dreadnought down to 1HP, meaning the venator will have to weather another melta shot and an assault.
In desperation, the nearby sniper scouts charge the dread and put the last, glancing hit on it with their crak grenades. Way to go boys!
Here's a summary of the action at the end of turn 1 showing movement and after casualties have been removed.
Blood Angels - Turn 2: The rest of the
BA force comes in on turn two. A pod with the command squad arrives in my deployment zone, a large squad of assault marines deep strikes left center and an outflanking Baal Pred comes in middle right to support the two short squads of
BA marines from the wrecked rhino. Everything else (except the Inquisitor cowering in her land raider) moves up.
Assault marines arrive and are ready to go... through they were nearly a foot off-target in the wrong direction (lucky for me).
The
BA command squad advances under cover of a derelict building to harass the Mantis Warrior right flank from behind.
During shooting, the sternguard on my right flank lose a man and fall back. The sternguard were very popular targets. Also (not pictured) my pod gets taken down by the Baal Preditor.
The second marine combat squad from the first pod to drop closes in and ultimately charges into assault with the Mantis Warrior scouts.
There are casualties on both sides, but the scouts are still hanging in there. The fact that they've held this flank up this long has been a welcome surprise.
One of the two
BA combat squads shoots, then charges into the large
MW tac squad in the ruined building.
On this flank the battle is definitely going my way, with my
PS sergeant taking out his along with another marine. There are more Mantis Warriors in this fight, I just forgot to move them out from under the ruin.
Mantis Warriors - Turn 2 In my half of two, the much needed terminators come down. I opt for a fluffy deployment rather than an intelligent one and try to go after the she-bitch Inquisitor. I deep strike into the largest open space on the table, directly in front of the land raider. The terminators scatter into a ruin (not bad on it's face), but then the ONLY terminator that is well equipped to deal with the land raider (assault cannon and chain fist) fails his dangerous terrain test, then fails his 2+ saving throw. Nice way to start. The rest of the terminators run into the cover of the ruins. Bollux. The venator lines up to deal with the rhino that's just emerged from behind the tower. Two S10 AP1 & 2 S9 AP2 shots later.... there's a smoking crater in the ground and a number of dazed marines wondering what just happened. The scouts who charged and destroyed the dread now decide they need to charge and destroy the
BA command squad. Cheeky buggers... The sternguard behind them decides to back them up with supporting fire and a follow-up charge if need be. The lone survivor of the center-most sternguard squad takes aim at the marines who were just blown out of the rhino and turns 1 or so to goo. I feel like the centurions did something too. Looks like they might have chewed on the tactical squad in the center foreground. I think the las/
ml guy shot uselessly at the land raider.
The scouts on my left finally succumb to the
tac squads, but not before reducing one of the squads to one member (who spends the rest of the game hiding behind a wall out-of-sight).
The other scout unit piles into the command squad & while taking losses, holds it's ground reasonably well. The outcome here is inevitable... but it's buying me some valuable time to do some housekeeping elsewhere.
Blood Angels - Turn 3 I'm afraid I don't have a table-sized shot of this half of the turn. I'll have to piece it together as best as I can. The newly freed
BA combat squad on my left started moving towards my center in-between the town and the aegis line. More annoyingly the melta gun started taking pot-shots at the side of my venator.
The melee between the command squad and my scouts continued... Things were looking grim indeed but the young lads were hanging on tenaciously.
On my right things were looking a bit better and my
tac squad had just about mopped up. The remnants of the sister combat squad to the one I was in melee with moved over by my downed drop pod to claim an objective.
Ah yes... and here's the evidence of the real tragedy. Let's sum up shall we? The terminators deep struck and deviated into this ruin, where-in the most expensive and well equipped terminator died. The rest of the squad ran in to the ruin as to take advantage of a better cover save (4+). The
BA then jumped the assault squad over and move the
LR so both could shoot at the termies. They kill 2 with shooting. The rest fail morale and run. The
BA assault squad then charges them. The termies fail morale AGAIN and are destroyed without ever firing a gun or swinging a blow. Nice use of 250 points. My only solice is that they were borrowed terminators and not actual Mantis Warriors (like that would have made a difference).
Mantis Warriors - Turn 3 And here's where the pictures and the memory all kind of fall to pieces. The sternguard (far left) move up to support the scouts... who finally get slaughtered in assault by the command squad. The venator moves out into no-mans-land to take some perfectly aimed shots at the side of the land raider in hopes of taking both it and the she-demon down in one firey ball of promethium. Alas, the shots just thrum off the hull. The centurions move towards the center and split fire between the tactical squad in front of them and the partially damaged squad hiding behind the tower. The melee in the lower right is finally resolved and the
tac squad consolidates through the ruin towards objective #5 (which is also on my maelstrom list) and the last two remaining Blood Angels.
Blood Angels - Turn 4 Amazingly enough, we're both running low on guys at this point. Steve's still in a better position though as he's got more units & is still dominating 3/4 of the board, allowing him to score maelstrom points nearly at will. Once he gets done shuffling around, he owns 5 of the 6 maelstrom objectives. The Baal Pred lines up and puts a wound on a centurion with it's heavy bolter. The land raider shoots back at the venator but does no damage. Amazingly, his command squad shoots at but does not charge my sternguard squad, allowing me to live another turn.
Mantis Warriors - Turn 4 Now that most of the brown-trouser moments are over... I can start acting aggressively with what I've got left. The venator moves to it's left, putting the tower in-between itself and the land raider while lining up all of it's guns on the Blood Angel predator. Behind it, the centurions sweep across, looking for something to shoot at. On my far right, the remnants of my tactical squad zero in on the last to Blood Angels who currently own objective 5. Lastly, not wanting to tempt fate, the sternguard back off and get ready to unload on the command squad.
The venator lines up on the predator.
... and violent goodness ensues...
The Mantis Warriors sneak up behind the Blood Angels who'se attention is captured by the huge, mucking tank in front of them. A hail of bolter fire later... the Mantis Warriors claim the objective for themselves.
Having nothing better to do, the centurions take down one of the drop pods. The sternguard on the other hand are able to trim the command squad down to 3 members... not bad.
Blood Angels - Turn 5 I should note that at this time (actually since turn 4), we've known that turn 5 would be the last. As it is everyone else in the store is finished and it's really only because the store owner is interested in the outcome of our game that he lets us continue to play things out. (Thanks Ben!)
Knowing that we're running out of time, we focus on those things that matter most. The
BA assault squad moves in to assault the venator while the command squad moves up to take some more pot-shots at the sternguard. The sternguard emerges unscathed.
The venator isn't so lucky...
Mantis Warriors - Turn 5: As luck would have it, I have 4 points worth of maelstrom cards all depending on my killing his warlord... plus slay the warlord of course... so 5 total. I take everything that I can possible get into
LoS and open up on the 3-man command squad. If I can take him out, I think I have a pretty good chance at winning even through he's been out-earning me in maelstrom points all night.
So how did it go??
We count up points and find that I've been soundly defeated... 12 points to 6. Sad panda.
"But wait!" (I say.) "The command squad lost all but one member. The Captain has to take a leadership test!"
So how did THAT go??
Unfortunately, that still leaves me down 1 point... 12 to 11. Steve and I discuss it and while I lost, the victory margin is very low and Inquisitor Jaxeena never left the protection of her little mobile bunker, so there is no way she was going to get her gene seed specimen (even the terminators right next to her land raider weren't Mantis Warrior terminators). We decide that the epic struggle must continue on another night, on another battlefield.
Postgame: Very fun, very interesting game. Certainly Steve had the upper hand until perhaps the very end where my surviving fire power was starting to dominate, but by then it was too late (or nearly so). It would be easy to say the the centurions (with psychic back-up) were the stars as they are just stupid-good. The things that draw their attention tend to disappear. However, I think the sniper scouts get the award for the MVP. Even through neither squad fired a single sniper rifle shot, their chargers were instrumental in delaying the drop podded troops while my heavy fire power was then freed to deal with other matters. They even took down the dread which most certainly would have taken out the venator in the following assault phase if left free to act. I've come to like the venator, not only is it a good looking tank but it's effective without being over-powered. Think of it as a las pred with a stronger main gun (same armor but main gun is S10, AP1, 2 shots) and better rear armor (12). Most of my opponents think it's a bit expensive points-wise, and they're probably right. I just love seeing it on the table too much to worry about the points. I've also been using the
IA Mantis Warrior chapter tactics and character. The chapter tactics are nice. Move through cover for all and hammer of wrath for the non-bulky infantry. You get furious charge (again, non-bulky infantry) when charging out of natural terrain, but so far this has never come into play so its kind of a throw-away rule. The Mantis Warrior chief librarian Azhara Redth is a good support character. He can cast "Mirage" for 1 point on the unit he joins which gives them shrouded (which is why he's always hanging out with the cents) and he's got access to Divination (which I guess everyone does now) so I nearly always take the primaris so I can cast it on either the cents or the venator. The squad, tank &
HQ make for a very potent fire-base on which to build an army. Worst unit was the terminators, who did nothing but fail every test they were given to take and die. I suppose I should have just put them on the table, but I really wanted to go after the Inquisitor for fluff's sake.
I thought Steve played well. I anticipated that he'd be all over me by turn 1, and he was. At no point during the game did I have the freedom to move about unless it was a direct reaction to his attacks. No wonder he'd doubled my maelstrom point totals by turn 5. He had great luck with his psychic denial dice and poor luck with his land raider's las cannon shots. The fact that he'd combat squadded nearly everything worked to his advantage with the malestrom missions but to his disadvantage in direct combat with my larger squads. Last but not least, he's tremendously fun to play against. Most important part of the game in my opinion.
Until next time..... 
Ultramarines, 3rd Co. and friends, 16k+ 
4k 
4k Points
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