Welcome to game 5 of the Blood Conquers All series. The league continues with a new special mission, and a new list.
To view this series' battle report registry, click
here.
THE CHALLENGER: Mechdaaaaaaaaaaaar......
1850 pts.
2x autarchs (melta pistol, mandiblaster, power weapon)
(deployed with dire avengers)
Dire avengers + exarch in wave serpent
Dire avengers + exarch in wave serpent
Dire avengers + exarch in wave serpent
Dire avengers + exarch in wave serpent
Fire dragons in wave serpent
Fire dragons in wave serpent
2x war walkers with 2x
EML's apiece
2x war walkers with 2x
EML's apiece
THE DEFENDER: Power blobs, or no blobs!
1850 pts.
I used list
5-1850-b this time. Basically, I dropped my 2 mortar HWSs and used the points to turn my third troops choice into a power blob.
So, the mission this time was strange. To begin with, it was a capture and control knockoff. However, instead of the objectives being planted, the objectives were CREATED on the spot of an
HQ choice when it was wiped out. Furthermore, lots of units had bombs that you could use to blow up one of your own units in order to basically take down one of their units in close combat. The little colored dots you see everywhere are bombs (some of them were duds, which is why they look blank on the top - you had to flip them over). I rolled spearhead for deployment, and won for first turn.
At deployment, the field looked like this:
Rather than deploying as usual and hoping for an initiative seize, my opponent just left everything in reserve.
So, I wasn't really sure how to play this one out. My best bet, I thought, was going to be to throw basically my entire army into the giant piece of area terrain in the middle. Hopefully, he'd rush at me, bladestorm for little damage, and then I'd run out with blob squads and kill one of his autarchs. In any case, I was secure in that if he killed my
HQ, I would have a COMMANDING control over the objective.
TURN 1
Raust Melios Carissander - Commissar, Daxos Group
Due to lack of faith in the Emperor and hundreds of individual acts of cowardice, a well-prepared imperial position had fallen to an unknown xeno power in the middle of the night. The mission of the Daxos line was to reclaim the lost positions and to capture any enemy leaders (as if xenos follow leaders) to discern any plans (as if xenos are capable of planning) that their forces had for this area. Magistrate Marshal Clinton saw it fit to assault the positions by a needlessly complex pincer attack on a ruined ministorum building.
So, my turn begins with moving everything up:
Lots of "go go go!"ing ensures.
With nothing to shoot at, the turn ends pretty quickly.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In his turn, nothing shows up from reserves.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 2
Due to the laggery of the marshal to which I was assigned, my troops arrived late - only to find that the Magistrate Marshal had already seized the building.
To see a monument to the blessed imperial bureaucracy brought down to such disarray only increased my anger at the foul xeno. The cowards they all are! They had already broke and fled, abandoning their position before even the mere rumor of my presence as an assaulter. My intimidating presence had yet again brought forth total victory for myself and the Emperor's forces.
My turn begins with Rhamael outflanking. I get to choose which way to show up, and I choose the right side. This way I have field coverage covering the entire board. I also try and get as many models touching the edge of his table quarter as possible to limit his deployment options for his war walkers.
Meanwhile, the rest of my forces run all the way into the building and "incoming!" is thrown all around.
With good field coverage, and with a majority of my forces dug in tight as a tick, I'm pretty confident with my ability to handle whatever goofy flying around stuff he may throw at me.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In his turn, he turns off the + reserves feature on his autarchs, and the officer of the fleet prevents most of his army from getting in.
That which does come in is a wave serpent with avangers+autarch, and a wave serpent full of fire dragons. The come in off their table quarter and run as far away from my stuff as they can.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 3
As far as I'm concerned, my opponent still doesn't have anything on the board. No point in risking my nice position just to chase after a couple of skimmers when the rest of his force is waiting off the board.
As such, I "get back in the fight" my "incoming"ed units who creep forward a bit more in cover. Meanwhile, my other side spreads out even more to maximize field position. I still want to block him off from entering in his table quarter, but I also want to have units closer to the dead space on the right so that I can charge things quickly once they arrive. Plus, extra spacing won't hurt against the impending 8x missile barrage.
My artillery does shoot at his vehicles, and despite a surprising number of hits, the wave serpent shields+
SMF causes him to shrug off all damage.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In my opponent's turn, he turns on his autarch super reserve ability for +2 to reserve rolls. Needless to say, nearly everything made it on the board.
And then, suddenly, there they were. Filthy, filthy xenos. They arrived in forces small and straggley. All of them were contained in wraith metal coffins - afraid to fight our forces filth-to-man.
I immediately ordered my troops to press the attack.
So, my opponent starts with outflanking his war walkers (some proxied with wraithlord). He tried to get them in to
EML my artillery, but the officer of the fleet caused him to reroll, which forced him to come in on the other side of the board near my Rhamael squads. As such, he brings in a couple of units of avengers (one with autarch) on the right along with them. The other unit of avengers goes with his other side's forces. His army list is now nearly perfectly split into two groups on opposite sides of the board.
Shooting on his part is light, as he's trying to move as fast as possible with his skimmers. The only thing which is able to shoot is his pair of war walker squads. He primes 8 eldar missile launchers, and targets my outflanking power blob. Of course, my spacing was excellent, and the only place he could get even 2 hits with a successful "hit" was way over on the table edge. Needless to say, about half of his shots scattered off the board, and those which didn't found targets to be very sparse. In the end, I only lost a few guys to what could have been a murderous barrage. Instead, he may well have been better off firing the
EMLs in krak mode...
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 4
Well, now that his forces are divided, the only thing left to do is "and conquer". I focus on the right side as I have the most forces there.
Movement starts with my peeking out meltagunners to engage his wave serpents:
Followed by the rest of my army mass-charging as best as it's fumbling difficult terrain rolls can make it. I'm still a little pensive, though. I want to get out and grapple with his stuff, but I also want to keep close in cover so as to not lose my whole force to bladestorming. Meanwhile, I make sure to split off a small part of my force to distract his left side.
In shooting, lots more artillery and some meltaguns finally take down a wave serpent, piling out an autarch and his avengers (and stunning the other one). I throw a frag grenade blast on the survivors and hit 9, but only manage a single wound through the armor saves.
With one of the xeno's sorcerer wagons brought low by the blessed artillery of the Emperor, I finally saw my chance to get my hands on them and wring their filthy necks. I shouted out for a mass charge. Death began it's slow, crushing grasp on their army.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In his turn, his last wave serpent shows up and joins a complex dance over on the left side of the board. Meanwhile, his first fire dragon serpent flies up and unloads:
Meanwhile, his avengers rush forward into my jaws of death.
In shooting, his dragons easily off one of my manticores, and the serpent's cannon manages 2 pens on the basilisk, ending that vehicle as well. He tries to shoot his
EMLs from one of his walker squads at my other manticore for an across-board shot, but it's out of range.
The rest of his shooting sees his other
EML battery doing even less damage to my blob squad than he did last time (this time there was no way to get more than one model with a single hit). His avengers unload on my plasma
SWS which had been out of range the previous turn.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 5
Now that he's committed his
HQ to battle, I can fully commit my army to taking it down. I start by launching a huge right-side assault.
In shooting, I manage to take down the dragon's wave serpent with meltaguns on the left, while the manticore fails to hurt the remaining wave serpent on the right.
I kept on shouting to press the attack, leading from the front while the rest of my men timidly followed my awesome example. Shouts could be heard from my right as my other bretheren in the commissariat also showed their iron-clad faith by charging in, their own men in tow.
A great cry blasted across the field as a hundred guardsmen shouted in unison as they closed on their prey.
Naturally, I got into the fray before anybody else. I immediately picked out who I could only assume was their leader as the rest of my men crashed into those that remained after flamer fire.
The enemy xeno whirled and danced, but their squad was caught utterly flat-footed, my men were upon them like hyenas on tripe.
So, everything that could run, ran. Most of my stuff wasn't able to make it into close combat, but he was definitely looking at a LOT of guardsmen on him turn 6. As for the charge, I had astonishingly bad luck, missing on almost every single to-hit roll. Thankfully the priest helped rectify some of that, but then I had equally horrible luck in that virtually none of my power weapons wounded. Enough choppy power to kill his squad three times over and I basically only manage to kill 2 eldar models.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In his turn, my opponent attempts to consolidate his position a bit by moving things in a predominantly towards-the-center direction.
In shooting, his 4
EMLs cause a surprising glance and a pen on my left side manticore. Thankfully, it only immobilizes and shakes it.
In close combat, I bring everything to bear on the autarch. More terrible rolling with my power swords means that, despite the flurry of blows, the autarch stays standing.
After this point, the field looked like this:
At this point, my opponent rolls to continue, and flips up a big, fat snake eye.
FINAL RESULTS
Nobody claimed any objectives, as there weren't any on the board, for a draw.
- This is the second game in a row that I was stripped of victory because of a single last-turn die roll. This is highly frustrating. To be fair, my opponent did have something to do with it as, given that nothing came in until turn 3, it was basically a 2-turn game. Not a lot of carnage can happen in that short of a time.
- Special missions are great and all, but I'd kind of like to play a regular game of
40k. This is the second time in 5 games I played an objective match, and both times objectives could fly around in skimmers...
- I'm curious as to what the verdict is for my officer of the fleet in this game. On the one hand, it let him get basically all of his army in on the same turn late into the game. On the other hand, it prevented him from deploying his entire army on the left side of the field. So far I haven't been all that particularly impressed with him (unlike the astropath).
- It wasn't until after the game that I realised something. I could have used a bomb to blow up my own
HQ and turn him into an objective which I then held. I feel kind of silly for not thinking of this really obvious mission loophole in advance.
MVP: Raust's power blob. It was the only thing that stood a chance at taking an objective, even if it horribly failed to do so.
Hero of the Game: My artillery. Bravely ignoring speeding fire dragons to complete the mission by attacking his transports on the other side of the field definitely took guts.
After a few mighty swings, I had easily dispatched the xeno monster I was fighting. No information can be gleaned form the dead, but it is in my professional opinion that it only would have spoken lies anyway.
After my brutal charge, the xeno fled in their fast vehicles like the cowards they always were, and always will be. The glory of the immortal Emperor has shone on me and those in my charge. Efforts to restore the ministorum building are underway at my personal insistance.
I eagerly await my next assignment. In faith,
-Raust Melios Carissander, Imperial Commissar
I hope you enjoyed game 5. Look for game 6 next week!
.....Bay Area Open GT 2013 - Best Tyranids 
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