To view other battle reports in the Blood Conquers All series, click
here.
As the temperature continued to plunge and the holidays approached, the number of people showing up at the local gaming store started to thin. As such, this game is the epic rematch of the
last one -
El Cheezus II: The Revenge of
El Cheezus.
I was so impressed by my opponent's special maneuvers last game, that I decided to build on the List 6 series to the logical conclusion of shenaniganry.
THE CHALLENGER: You say foot, I say tread...
1500 pts.
melta
CCS
5-man melta stormies w/ chimera
5-man melta stormies w/ chimera
Plasma vets w/ chimera
Plasma vets w/ chimera
Plasma vets w/ chimera
Vendetta w/
HBs
Vendetta w/
HBs
Hellhound
Demolisher
THE DEFENDER: ... let's call the whole thing off!
1500 pts.
melta
CCS (Daxos), astropath
eviscerator priest
eviscerator priest
5x plasma stormies
5x plasma stormies
melta
PCS, Al'Rahem (Rhamael)
20-dude power blob with meltabombs, 1x flamer
20-dude power blob with meltabombs, 1x flamer
melta
PCS
20-dude power blob with meltabombs, 1x flamer
20-dude power blob with meltabombs, 1x flamer
lascannon Sentinel
lascannon Sentinel
... that's right, I've got 58 infantrymen and two vehicles popping up out of nowhere over the course of the game. Huzzah!
The mission was Capture and Control, the deployment was Dawn of War. I won the roll to go first and took it.
At deployment, the field looked like this:
With one objective on the left, and the other in the center, I'm clearly going to have a leftwards bias with my deployment. Basically, I'm going for the same hammer and anvil strategy of
game 23. The blob in the center will spread my opponent out and hold them down while Rhamael shows up from the side and beats them to a bloody pulp. Hopefully, this will all happen quickly enough for me to charge onto the objective.
When my opponent deployed, I realised just how much I overestimated how much he would be deploying...
TURN 1
Raust Melios Carissander - Commissar, Daxos Group
After months of brutal fighting, I could now finally claim total and unyielding victory over my enemies. My personal command over my men, involving making ample example out of the cowards and traitors in my own ranks, had seen our wretched opponents break and flee from my onslaught.
Over the past several days, I had held a perimeter highway against repeated attempts to thrust an armored spearhead straight into our ribs. The breastplate of the Emperor, may His Bureaucracy be Ever Blessed, was strong, and the will to resist instilled into the men even stronger. The attacks had begun to slow to a whimper. Whether we were fighting the last, dying, phlegm-choked gasps of the enemy, whether this was all a diversion while the cowards continued to flee, or if they were delaying to reinforce, our intelligence officers could not say. I personally destroyed one of them for their failure of their duty with a type of poison that causes the victim to violently defecate themselves to death.
Without full knowledge of the enemy's disposition, there was no choice but to lead a frontal assault straight into the enemy, wherever he was. I chose just before dawn to attack, so we would have all day to slaughter our helpless and pleading prey. Despite many attempts by Sir Daxos the Pathetic to push the time of the assault back "to a more gentlemanly hour" (whatever that means), my plan was firm and my word was final.
Early the following morning, our men gathered at the highway and, though confusing their positions in the dark most cowardly, the assault met a glorious, if someone jumbled and staggered beginning.
The game begins with my second blob maneuvering onto the field while the front blob strikes it forward. I try my best to get as much cover as possible between the building, tank trap, and hedge, while moving up with the
PCS to prepare to melta something next turn. The squad spreads out to threaten my opponent's objective while also shifting left to entice my opponent towards getting Rhamaeled over there. Exactly the same move as in game 23, except this time there won't be so damn many flamers...
After this point, the field looked like this:
As expected, my opponent spends his turn 1 all-in (except the stormies, who he had decided to deepstrike and use his chimeras as flame tanks). As hoped, my opponent placed his scoring units over by his threatened objective while his serious guns deploy further over to the left in order to plaster my forces hidden there.
Shooting starts with the chimera he had on the field picking off a guardsman with a heavy flamer. Unfortunately, because it had a searchlight, my front blob is now lit up like a christmas tree. Thankfully, because everything had moved, the amount of firepower is less than I'd feared, and I have cover against basically all of it, meaning casualties were sustainable.
The only serious victim was the
PCS, which was inferno cannoned down to just a meltagunner, who broke and ran.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 2
The beginning of my turn began with Rhamael and a single squad of stormies coming in from reserve. The roll has me bringing them in from the right. I reroll and get to choose.
As I bravely led my men forward in the general, yet stunningly arrogant direction of the objective, the air suddenly burst open with gunfire from the right.
I quickly took control of my forces and led them through the darkness straight into the stinking maw of the enemy.
Also my stormies arrived and scattered, but in an acceptable direction for an acceptable distance.
Shooting sees my reserve blob rushing forward. At this time, I had it in my head that I didn't actually need to claim my own objective. If I could push him off of his and hold it, I would probably win, on account of how few scoring units my opponent brought.
I then use "like the wind" on Raust's blob, as a fleet will undoubtedly get the priest in to eviscerate the vendetta. Unfortunately, the squad fails the test. As such, Rhamael is forced to
BiD on himself with the second order to take down the hellhound right in front of him. The resulting explosion kills a couple of guardsmen and the meltagunner who took it down.
Shooting continues with the stormies wrecking the chimera that had started on the board with plasma. The remnants of the center blob had moved forward hoping to flamer the vets that staggered out, but unfortunately they were all but too far away. I could either run them (behind cover), or just go for some casualties before they got horribly butchered. Figuring they wouldn't survive, I unload on the vets, with the flamer just barely having a hit, killing one vet, while everyone else in range failed to do anything.
Everybody else just takes some bad run rolls.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In response, my opponent circles the proverbial wagons, and prepares to meet the threat of my onrushing horde head on:
While he gets both of his stormies in, planning on doing some back-field carnage.
Shooting begins with one of the vendettas targetting Rhamael, my opponent correctly identifying "like the wind" being the most dangerous thing to his army. The first vendetta rolls really crappy, and I have cover, leaving one chump with a chainsword and Rhamael himself. This forces my opponent to use all of the firepower of the other vendetta to wipe it out. The demolisher shoots at the top blob, but the shot scatters almost straight into the middle of the "no large blast templates, please" bubble I set up, causing minimal damage. What little he has left to shot on the top strafes my center blob again, but doesn't wipe it out. The stormies don't fare as well, getting wiped out by a single heavy flamer blast.
Shooting ends with the stormies on the top rolling REALLY poorly, and taking out only a single guardsmen while the stormies on the bottom clean Daxos down to just a single meltagunner, the astropath, and a wounded commanding officer.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 3
I peered around me through the darkness. From everywhere reinforcements were trickling in. Our vile enemy had no idea the awesome power that was about to slam into his puny attempts at resistance. Others would also be attacking as well.
I directed units as best I could, but the confusion of the pre-dawn hours saw the battle quickly evolve to terrible knife-to-face fighting. Everywhere my men were grabbing throats and kicking testicles.
Turn three saw the rest of my reserves come in. I deepstrike aggressively with the stormies, wanting to get some rear-armor plasma against the demolisher. Unfortunately, neither die rolls a hit, and both of the directions and distances sees me on top of enemy units. The mishap occurs and thankfully they're just placed back into reserves.
Movement then breaks out into a carefully choreographed ballet of military maneuvering. On the top, things run in as best they can, taking full advantage of cover, while the priest in the center blob, realising that his companion's days are numbered, jumps proverbial ship and attaches himself to one of Rhamael's blobs.
I once again consider simply abandoning my objective and moving my blobs forwards, but the stormies are a thorn in my ass, and are going to wreck a bunch of stuff if they survive (to say nothing of possibly doing unsustainable casualties to the blob itself). As such, I bring my blob back in. I figure that I'll be able to pretty easily wipe out just 10 stormies, and then they'll be able to go back to their work.
Shooting begins with both of my sentinels shooting at the left-side vendetta. I hope to immobilize it for the priest. As it so happened, one of them hit and penned and just flat-out wrecked it. The rest of the shooting is confined to sporradic fire against the stormies and a single flamer blast against the veterans in the middle.
Then came the massed charge.
The action started on the bottom as the stormies were charged by the power blob:
while the newly-arrived priest went in with the second blob against the chimera which had wiped out my stormies the turn before:
while the center blob, finding itself surprisingly still alive, goes after the vet squad in the middle:
The stormies, unfortunately, didn't go down nearly as fast as hoped, with power weapons doing less than expected, and the carapace armor rolling well against the regular attacks. The end result is a drawn combat.
The chimera on the left, meanwhile, was horrifically mangled by eviscerator and meltabomb attacks. The resulting explosion rolled low and the damage caused was light.
Finally, the remnants of the power blob turn the vets into goop, the lone survivor fleeing, but getting caught in a sweeping advance.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In return, my opponent smartly reorganizes his forces down and away from mine, over on his objective. Basically, this game is turning into a dead repeat of a couple of games ago, except my opponent is better with movement.
Shooting sees his demolisher shoot and scatter slightly again. Cover helps ensure the damage is ho-hum. The rest of his shooting boils down to two multilaser turrets, one of which stuns one of the sentinels, and the other two, along with the nearby melta
CCS, finish off the last of the center blob. Meanwhile, the last chimera popped smoke, and the other vendetta moved so far as to only get to shoot with one lascannon, which missed despite the twin-linking.
Assault sees me polish off the remaining stormies with little fuss. I roll well to consolidate, and carefully weigh my options. If I charge forward, I'm staring down a vendetta and mechvets out in the open. There was a narrow, but very real chance that they'd break through and actually claim my own objective with a scoring unit. As such, I decide to abandon my grand plan with them and retreat them back onto my own objective.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 4
My turn begins with my stormies showing up for round two of deepstriking. This time, I play them a little more conservatively. The first attempt sees them scatter way away straight onto an enemy model, yet again. The reroll sees them scatter nicely into a gap between the two chimeras, but then I roll for distance and they go the EXACT wrong number of inches.
I wriggle and squirm, and try my best to keep everything out of 1". Uncertain if I had succeeded, I ultimately let him decide if they're in or not. Unable to decisively determine himself, he gentlemanly hands it over to a 4+, which sees them stay.
Meanwhile, I continued rolling cruddy for difficult terrain, but get in to about 4" of his
CCS with one of the squads. This would provide me with the movement boost I so desperately needed.
I continued to order my men forward, making them utterly aware of what fate should befall them should they use the receding darkness as a chance to desert.
We were forced to carefully pick over the blasted ruins of the enemy's vehicles, causing even further confusion as soldiers lost their footing in the darkness. Eventually, the front of the columns cleared through and began to charge the enemy.
Shooting saw the chimera I was going to target with vet plasma getting hit by the non-stunned lascannon sentinel and wrecking! Without a good target on that side, my stormies turned around and unloaded into the vet squad nearby, causing serious casualties with hellguns and plasma. Scared witless by imperial guard supersoldiers ambushing them from the hedgerow, they broke and fled in a panic. To make things worse for my opponent, he also failed his pinning check with the other vet squad.
In close combat, I roll for difficult terrain, really hoping to snag the
CCS with a power blob, but don't manage to get above a 3, thus leaving me wishing I'd just run them instead.
After this point, the field looked like this:
My opponent's turn sees his nice, neat consolidation utterly ruined by my sentinels and stormies. Movement, in return is rather muted, with each part of his force deciding to fend for themselves.
Shooting sees my opponent's senior officer throw down some "get back in the fight!"s to stop the retreating and pinning of the previous turn. This allows the demolisher to hit for a few casualties through cover while the recently-retreating vet squad prepares the bubble wrap.
Meanwhile, in a repeat of the earlier performance, a chimera wheels around and heavy flamers the stormies, this time, one survives. The vets open up with plasma and roll COMICALLY poorly, seeing all three plasma gunners fry themselves with no wounds to the remaining stormtrooper.
Shooting ends with the vendetta opening up with 3 lascannons and a heavy bolter against my sentinel, seeing a shaken, stunned, weapon destroyed, and immobilized result. Not the wreck that should have resulted, but that sentinel's definitely not doing anything else this game...
Assault saw my opponent charge in against my lone stormie. I wasn't paying attention, and didn't call my opponent out on the whole shoot-with-rapid-fire-then-charge nonsense. Thankfully, luck had a little pity on me, and my stormie masterfully stabbed two guardsmen, who couldn't even land a wound with their handful of attacks.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 5
I begin my turn by rushing everything in, except the sentinel, of course, which hides from the vendetta.
Shooting begins with said sentinel taking a shot at the nearby chimera's rear armor, but missing.
As the sky finally began to lighten with the approaching dawn, I climbed up onto a rocky outcropping. The utter ruin of my enemy stretched out in all directions before me.
I shouted at my men and they charged in, crushing into my enemy with nothing short of utter brutality.
Assault saw me wiping away the demolisher's popcorn like it wasn't even there, while the other blob, finally free from cover, is able to get a solid charge in. Several hits are scored, and most of the squad is wiped out, but my opponent's commanding officer makes a pair of armor saves. Meanwhile, the eviscerator gets three hits in on the chimera, for two pens and a glance, with the end result being merely an immobilization and a pair of shakes.
Having lost combat by several, my opponent rallies true heroism in his troops, and the
CCS stays on the table, while the vets end the turn by finishing off my last stormie.
After this point, the field looked like this:
In response, my opponent brings his demolisher over to save his objective from my capture, no matter how many hills, ruins, hedges, and possibly infantrymen he's got to run over to get there:
He also turboboosts his vendetta over, but can't quite reach my objective.
Shooting sees a heavy flamer from a chimera ace a couple of guardsmen. That is all.
In close combat, I pour down liquid carnage on his
CCS, but in a freak round of rolling, he bounces off 3 power weapon attacks and two regular wounds off his armor and refractor field. The end result is an officer who passes his morale test. This was fatally bad, as I was really looking forward to charging my opponent off his objective next turn.
After this point, the field looked like this:
I roll the die to continue, and flip a 6.
TURN 6
So I've been given an extra turn, and I really need to make it count. I start by moving in the sentinel, hoping to bag the other vendetta:
The rest of movement finally sees me get some good difficult terrain, bringing me in charge range of the fleeing demolisher.
The enemy was utterly broken, and fleeing in panic. I climbed on top of a burning wreck and personally shouted orders, picking out who should die, and who should die even deader.
I commanded the priest, in his righteous zeal to attack and destroy the enemy tank, which had tried to flee in terror from my ruinous grasp. The clergyman lunged forward, ten-foot-long chainsaw sword whining in the chilly air. With superhuman strength brought on by superhuman faith in our divine God-Emperor, the frenzied man hacked and slashed ruthlessly at the vehicle until he hit one of the fuel lines. One last stroke sent forward a shower of sparks.
With as much ferocity as the priest had attacked it, the vehicular monster exploded in a massive fireball, shattering the pre-dawn atmosphere. Flaming shrapnel was projectile vomited everywhere, like a dog desperately attempting to eject flaming thermite from its belly before being utterly consumed by the molten flames.
While the meltabomb and frag grenade attack on the top chimera saw only an immobilized result, the priest threw down three hits on the demolisher for three pens, easily blowing the vehicle up. The resulting blast went 5", hitting 12 of my men and killing a horrific 7 of them! The vets on the other side? Not a scratch.
Close combat finished with my blob doing to his commanding officer what it should have done the turn before, consolidating with its few, ragged survivors onto the flaming wreck of the demolisher and onto my opponent's objective.
At this point, I would like to note that of the 22 models I brought in that blob (which now had the commissar, a sergeant and the priest remaining), I lost only a couple to close combat and a couple to demolisher fire. The other roughly roughly 12 of them were all killed in vehicle explosions.
Meanwhile, on the other objective, the officer had brought the blob defending the flag back into the fight (he had used incoming! on them the turn before). Unfortunately, the lone remaining meltagun missed, and the lascannon sentinel hit, but the shot was stopped by cover.
I then assaulted in, and lots of frag grenades put a glance on the vehicle, but it just shook it, while the meltabomb and two sentinel attacks also missed.
After this point, the field looked like this:
My opponent spends turn 6 by moving the shaken vendetta over towards my objective. It didn't have "tank" so it couldn't have tank shocked, but because all of my guys moved in to assault the previous turn, he now has an opening to be within 3" of the objective and out of 1" of any of my models.
After this point, the field looked like this:
I rolled to continue, and we did not.
FINAL RESULTS
Both objectives were contested for a draw.
- It was kind of frustrating that some bad luck and a stupid mistake at the wrong moment cost me the win, especially given that my opponent was only one turn away from getting wiped (with just the non-
SMF vendetta, 5 guardsmen, and 2 immobilized chimeras in charge range of eviscerators). Kudos to my opponent for pulling a draw out of this, I suppose.
- In game 23, I had decided to go for broke and only attack my opponent's objective. In this game I waffled back and forth with regards to the same strategy. This game would have seen that strategy take on a lot more risk, but given that I couldn't even defend my own objective, the loss of manpower was unfortunate. This time I had decided to keep my on-field blobs split apart. Perhaps I would have been better off keeping them together in a 40-man blob and just wrecked stuff in the middle. It certainly would have made taking his objective easier, and might have resulted in the greater destruction of his forces.
- Interestingly enough, I think this game demonstrates a problem that I've been slowly starting to see with Al'Rahem. Yes, when he shows up from reserve and trashes stuff that my opponents leave foolishly on the edges (like the hellhound in this game) he does rather well. This time, though, my opponent was much smarter, keeping his forces much better out of range. While the damage he did was less than in the game against sisters, he was able to successfully deny my outflanking blobs a bunch of free 6" of movement with charging, which really hurt this game.
Why did it hurt? Well, the problem with taking Al'Rahem is that he splits my forces up. Yes, decluttering my DZ is a good thing, and outflanking is obviously nice, but it makes it so that in every game, I'm basically stuck spending the mid-game trying to re-consolidate my forces. I'm left to wonder how things would have gone if I would have turned al'rahem and the astropath into a squad of conscripts and had everything start out consolidated on the field.
- Stormies were awesome this game. For those of you who are confused between the role of stormtroopers and veterans, this game was a great example of how to use stormies correctly. Yes, their firepower wasn't super-stellar (440 points of stormies killed about 150 points of stuff), but their ability to accurately deepstrike made a HUGE difference in this game. My opponent's stormie barrage saw me cancel my attack with the bottom blob, meaning that my infantry power attacking his objective was reduced by 25%. Had they gone in after all, I very well would have gotten into charge range with his last vets and probably won the game.
Meanwhile, my stormtroopers clearly effected my opponent's movement. The first group acing the transport meant that a third of his scoring units got ripped apart, and my opponent was required to divert forces from the left AND center in order to deal with them, basically pinning them down for a turn so Rhamael could arrive. The second stormies, on the other hand, wrecked a perfectly good regrouping effort on my opponent's part. Before, he still had a viable force of 2 mechvets, a vendetta, a demolisher and a
CCS. One lascannon shot and the stormies appearing in the middle of it, and my opponent's cohesion was shattered. After they showed up, it was every unit for themselves.
MVP: This award goes to my center blob priest. My priests usually don't do much other than give rerolls, but this game saw him giving rerolls to one blob, destroying a chimera, giving rerolls to another blob, immobilizing a second chimera, and ending the game on the objective. That's a lot to do for a single 60 point model.
Hero of the Game: This one goes to both stormtrooper squads. Their reputation is earned.
With little effort, we were easily able to dismember the remainder of our foes as the rosy-fingered dawn finally broke in the chill morning air.
I was prepared to continue with my headlong charge forward into anywhere, but Daxos, pathetic coward that he is, called off the attack. He ordered the men to return to their positions on the road while he went back to HQ to ask for more intelligence and further orders. I emptied my bolt pistol in his general direction in hopes of a summary execution, but the early morning sun temporarily blinded me.
Bereft of ammunition, I was forced to pistol-whip any nearby guardsman who would dare obey the order to retreat. After inflicting many blunt-force casualties, my arm eventually wore out, and I was forced to return to my original position, in the least to reload and go look for Daxos.
I eagerly await my next assignment. In faith,
-Raust Melios Carissander, Imperial Commissar
5K Points of Grey Knights and Red Hunters 
Grey Knights -2500
D'haran Great Company - 1500
Death Guard 5100 pts.
