Welcome to game 29 of the Blood Conquers All series. To view other reports in this series, click
here.
As the Rules of Engagement escalation league continued to round 2, my opponent came up as our resident goateed chaos player.
THE CHALLENGER: Chaos for the Chaos god!
750 pts.
Chaos Lord
-
MoT, demon weapon, other upgrades
10-man
CSM squad
-
MoK, upgrades
- Rhino, demonic posession
10-man
CSM squad
-
MoT, upgrades
- Rhino
THE DEFENDER: Blobs for the Blob throne!
750 pts.
CCS
- Master of Ordnance, lascannon
Zonhaim Assassin (Marbo)
PCS
- autocannon
PIS
- power weapon, commissar with power weapon
PIS
- power weapon
HWS
- 3x missile launchers
PCS
- grenade launcher
PIS
- power weapon, commissar with power weapon
PIS
- power weapon
HWS
- 3x missile launchers
Strangely enough, deployment once again came up as spearhead. My opponent's mission was to hold more of the objectives on the board than me. Mine was to hold two objectives that were randomly determined. For sanity, I put the ones I needed to take in blue and the ones I didn't in pink. I rolled to go first and took it.
At deployment, the field looked like this:
My deployment was basically a copy of what I had last time.
CCS in the middle, blobs on the sides, and PCSs on the wings. My home objective would be pretty easy to take, as all I needed to do was mosey a
HWS downstairs once the rhinos were sufficiently neutralized. Naturally, the other objective would receive the focus of the rest of my army. My secondary was, like last time, to have two units in my opponent's deployment zone. Like last time, given that my opponent had so few units, this would be an understandably difficult chore for him.
My opponent, on the other hand, had a much more uphill battle. He didn't just need to keep me off the center objective, and keep my units out of his deployment zone, but he needed to break THROUGH my mass of troops, and do it with enough time and resources to be able to clear me off of a second objective. This he needed to do while still leaving one of his two troops choices back to hold an objective after the breakthrough. Needless to say, a seize ground style mission was going to be very difficult for my opponent on this one.
My opponent fails to seize the initiative, and the game is on.
TURN 1
Report concerning the action on: 17 Theos
Daxos Line
The preceding week had seen the woefully tardy collection of my forces. Day by day, new "companies" were brought up, with delays in supplying the men already present holding up the arrival of the rest of the men. This raw and terrible spell of un-punctuality is the very epitome of the hellishness of war.
In the mean time, I had been spending the week engaging in sporadic skirmishing action around the base of hill 413. The occupation of this sub-height would be a necessary step to the advance up Mt. Cos in the succeeding days and weeks. This probing action found the enemy disposition lax. It appeared to me that they had little intention of holding this outer perimeter, despite what I would naturally and most excellently consider to be a position most strategic.
After a week of relative inaction, my men were finally assembled. Eight entire groups, fully armed, and ready to advance up the low slopes of the mountain side. It is times such as these that a man can be no more proud than if he be a commander marshall of the forces of the Emperor, and his faithful servant, the king of Folera. I took a war council on the night of the 16th, and prepared my groups for an assault on the hill.
I spent the morning before the attack personally cleaning and polishing my whistle. After several prayers and incantations placed thereupon, I was ready to launch the assault. When I approached my position, I was met by an artillery forward observer. It seemed that one of the many reforms as of late had been to ensure that infantry units were accompanied by appropriate supportive firepower. It was about time.
My troops gathered, they awaited only my signal to attack.
The game began with understandably little movement on my part. I'd have plenty of time to get to the center objective. What I wanted to make sure I did was to get onto the objective on my own terms.
Shooting saw a missile launcher team pass its
BiD order on the khorne rhino and hit three times. Unfortunately, they couldn't see the front armor of the rhino, which means they hit the side at a 3+ cover save. The hits put down two pens and a glance, but the cover save killed both pens, while the glance shook the vehicle, which did absolutely nothing due to possession.
I then BiDed again on the
CCS. Yes, there would be 3+ against the lascannon, but it would help the
MoO hit its target, and the rhino wouldn't get cover against that. The lascannon hits and pens and is stopped by cover. The
MoO calls down a barrage wildly off, but the reroll scores a scatter, but only 3". Unfortunately, the scatter is against the side, so it does nothing.
Meanwhile, the other missile launchers attack the Khorne rhino, but only score 1 hit, which fails to even glance, while the
PCS autocannon shakes the Tzeentch rhino.
After this point, the field looked like this:
Having spotted with field glasses a perimeter force hiding near where my men were assembled, I decided to soften them up with a polite barrage of artillery fire. I pointed out my target from my perch high upon the ruins, and soon the enemy was drawing fire from my men. While I personally directed the fire of my lascannon, I could hear the master of ordnance mumble some coordinates into his radiological system.
Soon, the earth rocked and heaved violently as far-off artillery crashed into my enemy's position. After regaining my precarious footing nearly lost in the start, I shouted grand hurras to my men as the shells pounded our enemy. This, I say, is how it is done by the Imperial Guard!
In return, my opponent unloads his diet khorne berzerkers and with a good difficult terrain roll and a subsequent good run roll sees 10
MoK marines with a chaos lord dug in like a tick across all three levels of the ruins guarding the center objective. The other two rhinos advance towards the center of the field. Both pop smoke.
After this point, the field looked like this:
TURN 2
While my opponent's forces are temporarily split up, I rush everyone forward to hopefully get both blobs on a single
CSM squad and wipe it out (or at least seriously hurt it), before my opponent's reinforcements arrive. Nearly everything would be focusing on those
MoK marines.
That and my Zonhaim assassin showed up.
Because my opponent was able to spread out across multiple levels, I wasn't going to be able to kill that much with his demo charge. Given that my only other target was some smoked rhinos, I didn't have much of a choice. Hopefully, I'd at least get him to draw some firepower away from my blobs next turn. Heck, he might even get to participate in the assault!
With the combat engaged, I withdrew my whistle and gave a sharp blast. I once again personally directed the artillery fire upon my foe. Shell after shell exploded upon them, filling me with great glee and excitement.
My men bravely rushed forward at my command, straight into the jaws of the enemy and friendly fire alike. Hurrah!
Shooting sees me
FomT on a missile launcher squad against the
MoK which passes. Two hits put down a pair of wounds, but one is stopped by cover, even after the rerolls. Meanwhile, the
CCS targets the Tzeench rhino with
BiD. The lascannon hit, but once again was stopped by cover. The
MoO scattered wildly with his first shot, but the order caused him to reroll a hit with 3" of scatter, ALMOST getting a full strength shot on the rhino. The other
ML squad shot at the
MoK marines, but the shots were foiled by inaccuracy and cover. The rest of shooting failed to do anything.
Except for the assassin, who threw his demo charge. My opponent had been able to pick off a marine from the bottom floor due to the
FomT missile strike, and unfortunately, he was spread out too much on the second floor for me to get 4 models. I settled on chucking the bomb at the lower floor guys, and scattering 2", seeing all 3 still hit. All three hits wounded, and cover stopped one.
Having lost 3 models out of his 11-dude squad, my opponent makes a morale check and FAILS. As they have
MoK, they don't get a reroll from their icon, and fall back 8", chaos lord and all!
After this point, the field looked like this:
In my opponent's turn, he prepares to roll to regroup with his
CSM. Due to having to hoof it from the top floor last turn, one of them is still barely within 6" of the assassin. My opponent rolls for fall back and picks up a 7, putting one of his models off the board. The entire
MoK force plus lord is comprehensively sent packing.
With only a single squad of infantry on the board, my opponent has no way to capture or contest more objectives than me, and with me now nearly firmly planted on both my objectives, it's very unlikely that he will be able to stop my uninjured army from completing my primary.
Doomed, my opponent concedes.
FINAL RESULTS
I won.
- That's right, ladies and gentlemen, you just saw me win a game because of luck.
- Otherwise, as mentioned before, this was going to be a tough fight for my opponent, even without that magical 8% chance of failing Ld10 cashing in. At this points level, it's going to be tough for a marks
CSM player to field enough models to be terribly successful on an objectives-based game. Once my heavy weapons destroyed his no-cover rhinos, it would have been up to two squads to do a LOT of carnage in a short period of time. The one nice thing about this is that it shows the other end of the luck range for me. When I have staggeringly poor luck, I can manage a draw or a barely loss. When a single critical die roll turns favorably, well...
- So, this was my first try with the
master of ordnance. He didn't do anything this game, but I was pleasantly surprised by how close he got to doing something this game. Plus, he allows me to draw little artillery explosions on my map.
- As for the heavy weapons, I'm once again unimpressed. I'm spending hundreds of points on stuff that's struggling to kill dozens of points of transports. They're already trying my patience...
MVP: Uhh... Marbo?
Hero of the Game: Marbo! Seriously, did you see how close that chaos lord and artillery fire was?
As the air blasted before me, I saw my wave of infantry bravely assault the ruins. I called a temporary halt to the artillery barrage, in the least so that I could monitor the condition of my men. When the dust cloud blew away in the breeze, I found that my men had broken through onto their objectives, with the enemy nowhere to be found!
Clearly, the traitorous scum realised their position was untenable when faced with the awesome and thoroughly brutalizing power of the Imperial Guard.
The rest of the groups in my line reported similar successes. My forces were now free to begin their trek up the mountain.
In grateful service,
Sir Daxos P. Clinton III - KAP, EKS, ICM - Foleran Armies in his Majesty's Royal Dictate.
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