Game 3 - Khorne Daemons vs. StJohn70s Sisters of Battle A light gleamed into the warp. It was so bright that Ss'artan had to turn his gaze. It fell upon the lesser spirits of the warp, the manifestations Ire and Malice cowered from it. There was no anger here, nor rage. Simply purity of purpose and faith beyond self.
It was anathema to the entities of the warp and if the warprift were to be maintained then it had to be extinguished.
Army Lists I am going to list my army on each of the battle reports for the
GT - obviously it won't change throughout, but someone who just stumbles upon one will not have to flip back and forth to figure out what I played. My opponent lists are from memory for the most part so there may be some minor discrepencies which are totally on me.
The Warbringers Abattoir - Khorne Daemons 
The Warbringer (Bloodthirster)
Ss'artan (Bloodthirster)
Fury (5 Bloodcrushers (1 rending))
Rage (5 Bloodcrushers (1 rending))
Malice (8 Bloodletters)
Ire (8 Bloodletters)
Spite (8 Bloodletters)
Scy'll (Soulgrinder (Phlegm))
Kharib (Soulgrinder (Phlegm))
Perdium the Kithless (Daemon prince (Mark of Khorne, Iron Hide))
John's Sisters of Battle 
Palatine, Bolter, Book | 5 Celestians, 2 Meltaguns | Immolator,
TL-Hvy Flamer, Smoke
3 x 5 Celestians, 2 Meltaguns | Immolator,
TL-Hvy Flamer, Smoke
2 x 10 Battle Sisters, Hvy Flamer, Meltagun,
VSS w/ Book | Rhino, Smoke
5
Inq Storm Troopers, 2 Flamers
3 x 5 Dominions, 2 Flamers | Immolator,
TL-Hvy Flamer, Smoke
3 x
HS Immolator,
TL-Hvy Flamer, Smoke
Setup and early game I just want to say that I played Sisters for quite a while and am both a fan of them and know what they are capable of. In fact, I traded my Sisters away for daemons because I had to reduce the number of armies I had.
John did the right thing and deployed everything on the table and castled up in a corner. I knew this was to be a wily opponent, though the fact that we were on table 6 should have been clue enough. I figured as long as he was piled in close I would try and keep him in there so attemped to deepstrike in medium range (about 10" away from his units) stacking in heavily on his right flank.
I got my preferred wave (in fact, I got my preferred wave in every single game. Guess that makes up for the 4 in a row during playtesting that I never got it once.) I went for the more beastly units to hopefully survive some of the shooting and then be able to do something against some of the vehicles. Besides, bloodletters and twin linked heavy flamers are not a good combination (at least for the letters.)
My daemons found his faith in the Emperor to be repellant and every unit scattered directly away from him from 7-10". One of the units of bloodcrushers actually lost 2 wounds from trying to appear in the ruined building and so a whole model had to be removed.
Eevrything ran towards him. He moved forward and did a bit of firing causing 3 wounds on my daemon prince who forgot that he was actually still wearing his space marine armor that was issued to him during his tenure in the Alpha Legion (my chaos space marine army) and thus failed every save.
Mid-game to end game I was able to get the charges in with the three monstrous creatures this turn, the bloodthirsters each charging a different immolator and the daemon prince charging a third. I needed 6s to hit and managed to stun one immolator and immobilize another. A unit of bloodletters showed up and I wanted to keep them in my backfield but they scattered directly towards his immolators (d'oh!). The ran to spread out.
John did a lot of shooting and managed to get 4 wounds on one bloodthirster and 6 on the other. The prince took a wound or two as well. I failed almost every single save and had to remove all 3 models. He also used his immolators to tank shock the bloodletters into a nice template shaped formation and then I picked them up. Unfortunately, at this point, I was so into the game that I forgot to take any more pictures.
The bloodcrushers finally got into position to charge and I wanted to declare multiple charges but because of vehicle and unit placement my selection was really quite weak. They did manage to completely remove the immobilized vehicle and chopped down a small unit of sisters.
The soul grinders showed up in my backfield to try and keep him from claiming my objective. One ended up being completely destroyed and the other immobilized but they weathered a LOT of melta and rear armor shooting. They spent most of the game firing at the
IST holding the objective causing a wound here and a wound there but reducing the total number on objective (this was to become a major point later.)
At one point, around turn 3 I had a nice opportunity to charge one of the sisters units (the other had broken off of the table, I believe) but had to go through difficult terrain to do it and had to also charge a couple of vehicles. I was about 4" from the sisters unit but rolled a pair of twos. That was truly the turning point for me when I went from having a chance to desperately trying not to get massacred.
The other unit of bloodcrushers worked its way through a unit of celestians and dominions going for the stormtroopers holding his home objective with ruthless precision. At the end of the game, I had 2 bloodcrushers with the charge on the 4 or so stormtroopers still alive at the objective. John fired everything he could at them and killed one of them. The crusher got the charge off on the stormtroopers who were unable to get through the thick armor of the juggernaut. In return, they lost 3 of their number and fell back off the objective and were unable to rally. Whew, what could easily have been a massacre was just a loss.
After action review It has been said (and rightly so) that you learn much more from a loss than a win. In both of the wins so far, everything basically worked like it was supposed to and I was able to dictate the game. A big difference in both of that was that I felt fairly confident just looking at the matchups and in this case I was on my back foot immediately.
Well, I probably lost the game before I even rolled a single dice. My decision to not bring the soulgrinders on and force him to uncastle was just baffling to me after the fact - I think I was just so intimidated by all the mech stuff that I wanted to hem it in and keep it from moving that I reacted out of fear rather than out of a plan. Khorne was right to punish my cowardice with crappy dice rolls when it mattered.
I also broke one of my cardinal rules for having fun when playing. I was a bit confused as to what exactly was what on the table and what had fired, etc. but instead of asking him to place dice right away I waited until I was already frustrated. It is worth mentioning that I never once suspected shenanigans on John's playing, each unit had a marking on the back of the base so he could tell what was what, and his placement of his models was really good. It came up when I would try and get in a dual charge but was then unable to. His list is a really good example of a denial type of list - he denies you your options while keeping his open. It is very similar to a mech eldar in that regard. I was tired at this point and a little frustrated and hope that I didn't ruin John's good time. He did nothing wrong and played a good game and I look forward to a rematch at some point in the future.
If you play sisters (or against them) and you haven't read his
Mechanized Sisters of Battle tactica, you really should.
I had a few handfuls of really bad dice rolls and a couple of really good ones so it averaged out. The bottom line is that I let panic dictate my game plan and John just plain beat me. I was fortunate to have managed only a minor loss.
Eternal Praise The bloodcrushers were again notable in their achievements and they actually saved me from a massacre loss. Had I not rolled a pair of twos for a difficult terrain check, they could actually have helped me force a draw. I also have to say that the Soulgrinders impressed me with their resilience. I had wanted to get them into close combat but an unfortunate immobilized result kept that from happening.
Prized Skull The unnamed Inquisitorial Stormtrooper who was holding the objective in his deployment zone.
Eternal Damnation All three monstrous creatures (both bloodthirsters and the daemon prince) earned my displeasure this game.
The empyrean still glowed, brighter than ever. The Warbringer felt his unnatural skin warp and blister from the radiance.
While it was true that many skulls had been collected, the faith of these mortals was unbreakable. The Warbringer led his troops away from the light into a more comfortable darkness.
