ALRIGHT so without further delay...
We met. It was a Saturday evening, last, to be exact. We discussed, we deliberated, and we soon...deployed.
Oh, the wonders of skype and VASSAL. This gentleman is currently living in the South, and I reside in Cincinnati, so I highly appreciate the opportunities granted to us through VASSAL.
As usual, Andilus Greatsword oversaw, although he juggled a game of his own as well, perhaps he'll post a batrep for that too.
Our game began with rolling for mission and deployment and.....
we got..
We rolled for initiative, and I won. I decided to go first, and we deployed as such
I don't mind dawn of war so much ever since I started moving my raven flat-out and not acting like firing storm bolters from my rhinos will do anything worth a gak on the first turn, instead using smoke rounds when I come up to enemies early on.
*ahem* so yeah, my movement phase goes as follows:
TURN 1:
ATLAS I set up my incoming units as such -
It's quite nice, really, as I'd throw my raven in, get flat-out, maybe kill something in the process, and take one of the objectives with my combat squad, while I move my other assault squads to take over Ricedaddy's objective.
I moved...
Nothing extremely noteworthy here, just thought I'd make use of my overactive (and at a couple times, sporadic) snapshot-taking. My rhino popped smoke, moved up to the building, ready to unleash hell. I chose to
DS my Furioso and death company, figuring that I'd wait and see where my opponent would place his other units before sending in my second anti-infantry powerhouse.
Shooting phase....
Yeah, it would seem that I hadn't captured the pic after the shooting. But visualize most of those
tac marines in the line killed by plasma cannon, Death Company and drop pods and furioso fired as well, killing two to four more. Basically, I fired on them not expecting to put down the entire group, especially considering how he laid them out...very anti-cannon-ey. Their numbers were pretty low by the time I got to assault though, and I did well against their armour saves, come to think of it.
Onto assault!
As you can probably guess, I only had one option for the assault at the moment, Mr. Mephiston. He did just that, putting down remaining
tac marines and scoring some damage onto Calgar. Tough mofo, must say, who in turn put a wound onto Mephiston.
His squad looked like this at the end of the ordeal:
And as such, the turn ended with me holding Calgar up in assault.
RICEDADDY (incidentally, now I've got....that song by Vanilla Ice stuck in my head. If you don't know what I'm referring to, stop reading this batrep and get back onto modern warfare 3 you prepubescent child...)
*ahem*
Movement phase went as follows:
Ricedaddy first moved on his ironclad dreadnought. I had never faced one of these before, but Rice didn't grant me too many opportunities to try out the more effective means of destroying them (melta....oh lord melta..)
- Just look at him. More on that later..[/spoiler]
I didn't get the after shot of his movement phase, but I'll just describe it - lots of tanks. He kept a vindicator in reserves and moved one other to prepare for a bombardment, as well as deep striking (nearly off the board) his other ironclad, poised to contest my objective. The closest razorback to my sanguinary priest squad popped smoke so as to get cover from potential attacks in my turn, and he moved his thunderfire cannon with techmarine below the ruined building with his objective, to get ready to unleash attacks in the coming turns.
Shooting phase -
He had lots of shooty gunz. I shall simply say that. He successfully killed a member of my death company and fired several other shots although luckily for me the death company marine was the only one to die on that phase.
Assault phase -
hoo boy....this was where he made up for his losses. He sent that ironclad, and I learned just how much a furioso with S6 and blood talons does NOT do well against a decked out ironclad with seismic hammer.
In short - he got blown to bits, easy peasy.
I should mention that although he's hard to see, the shooting phase shot has the Epistolary in the picture, he's just under the model info box. He joins the assault though. Noteworthy - He cast the Quickening on himself, which granted him the initiative, and could have caused some trouble against Mephiston...
In the other assault with Mephiston, Calgar put the hurt down on him, scoring three more wounds, staying alive for one more turn, with Mephiston wounding him as well. Not too shabby.....also, Mephiston also killed the Epistolary, directing two attacks onto it and having high success there. Mephiston managed to avoid any wounds from the librarian, who without the quickening would have had to wait for Mephiston to make his move and might not have gotten a shot. A close call, for sure, and the Lord of Death consolidates (there's a little blood spatter in the upcoming image that's hard to see, but that's where the Epistolary joined, it's clumped with another spatter from a
tac marine)
I didn't expect this first turn to go slowly, and I was right not to, but still, lots of things happened already, considering it was Dawn of War. This is how the map looked at the end of turn 1 -
Bloody. And more to come...
TURN 2
ATLAS So I knew that I should probably do something about that ironclad. However, I made probably a costly error, opting to disembark my librarian's squad and letting them move to shoot and assault the dreadnought. In retrospect, a lucky plasma shot from my combat squad could have done the trick....oh well. I was also unlucky with my melta shooting, so there's that as well. Either way, I wanted not to lose my other objective, and while I could have used the multi melta on the raven to perhaps add more chances of popping the bastard, I shipped it another 12 inches into the trees, to provide another target and give it cover. I probably should not have bothered.
.............
I disembarked my sanguinary priest squad, ready to unleash hell, and moved the rhino backwards to give room for the other rhino who subsequently stopped at the ruin and popped smoke.
Here's the end of my movement:
Shooting phase -
My librarian's squad failed to do anything to the dreadnought other than shake it. Pathetic.
The sanguinary priest's squad successfully whittled down the opponents guarding the objective, thanks to a little help from melta and plasma, and went in for the assault. Remember earlier, my shame about not keeping my stormraven to put the squeeze on the ironclad? Well...I made use of where he was and bloodstrike-shot the razorback nearest Mephiston and successfully stunned it, which is what I needed, thank the dice Gods. He also used the melta and only immobilized the other ironclad...meh. Good enough, for now.
Assault phase -
Mephiston had likely only one chance left to finish Calgar, otherwise being faced with the deadly, dual-power-fist opponent's wrath. The Death Company, who were forced to move into the assault thanks to black rage, made this a more reasonable possibility. They won, death company consolidating and making a wall not that different from the slaughtered pigs hanging on meat hooks you have to navigate through every once in a while in video games, in other words, they are there to not only get in the way, but to also piss people off incessantly.
I was making a lot of moves to protect Mephiston, interestingly enough.
But the worst part of this assault was by far the result of my fight with the ironclad.
You see, I successfully got unleash rage and sanguine sword, which was great. It was the only way I could score a pen hit in the assault and quickly remove this threat. But...
He scored the penetrating hit, but only shook it!
In return, he targeted my librarian, scoring three hits with a highly powerful assault weapon! Come on invul saves!
FAIL. DEAD. The assault squad was thus stuck in with this dreadnought, librarian bleeding in the corner like *insert abused celebrity wife's name here* - the assault squad was epically screwed at that point, whose only hope was to hold the dreadnought at bay long enough so that it wouldn't cause a problem for my combat squad.
That was a reasonable assault phase, although my terminator armour for my librarian did not get a very positive christening.
My other assault squad finished off the
tac marines combat squadded over the objective and consolidated to the edge of the ruin, just enough to get cover saves in case they were faced with fire.
RICEDADDY Movement phase - I didn't leave the fella with many options for movement. He disembarked one of his razorbacks and prepared those
tac marines to shoot at me, and had the other razorback head for the trees for cover. His scouts shuffled a bit behind the razorback, and prepared to unleash some rending shots at the death company.
Meanwhile, he deep struck his land speeder, in a rather risky move, to the top left corner of my map so as to try to shoot out a few marines!
Did he succeed, or deep strike off the board?
Shooting phase -
He had quite a few options here, all of which he exploited. Firstly, he decided to make up for the kills I got against his
HQ and decided to burn my upper combat squad.
He did just that. He fired his flamer, which was in range, and his melta, and the drop pod's storm bolter. Thankfully, he only killed off two of my guys and they were able to avoid being forced off the board.
Meanwhile, his vindicator decided to attempt to destroy my stormraven. On a stroke of luck, it did not do anything noteworthy on this shooting phase, but I knew this luck would run out.
His
tac marines, and razorbacks, fired upon my assault marines, and with such powerful combined fire I lost...
Finally, he killed a member of my death company, and I believe that was the first attack from the thunderfire in this game. Due to experience from a recent game against another friend of mine, I have been somewhat......wary, or even afraid of the shooting phase, and my opponent definitely was equipped, to say the least. Let's just hope the dice Gods continue to smile upon me in the coming turns...
Assault Phase - Little to report here. His scouts didn't assault the death company, which was pretty wise, as they'd just kite towards them in the next turn as well as the razorback, so this was a well-played delay here. The major flaw of the Death Company at work, ladies and gentlemen.
The ironclad up in the north....actually, funny story, I didn't even bother doing my rolls XD there was NOTHING left for assaulting that could have even done a thing against it. He missed all but one of his attacks, so I was able to not worry about my guys running off or being killed for another turn, losing only one marine.
TURN 3:
ATLAS Movement phase -
I rolled to see if I could successfully deep strike my remaining reserves (failed earlier) and they did! yay!
My empty drop pod dropped near the enemy's objective to be a general annoyance and possibly provide cover fire, and my other dreadnought......
well...
With that in mind, I moved my stormraven into further protective cover, and got ready to fire upon the vindicator, as I imagined it would be perhaps the bigger of the threats due to its range. Death Company huddled up to multi-assault and shoot the razorback and scouts, and my regular assault combat squad finally disembarked, and with the other sanguinary priest squad, moved to unleash hell upon the right flank. I was prepared to take that objective if at all possible, and luckily I'd get the charge necessary to do so.
My other combat squad turned to deal with the prominent contesting threat of the land speeder, confident that their plasma gun would do enough damage.
Finally, Mephiston, the only assault player capable of putting down that pesky dreadnought, ran in to make the attempt.
- How the movement phase looked in the end.
Shooting phase -
Very successful shooting. I shook the razorbacks on the right, and stunned the land speeder (and destroyed its melta), and wrecked the vindicator by melta. *phew*
Assault Phase -
The Death Company unleash hell. They kill all except for Tellion, the lone sniper, and stun/immobilize the razorback. The right sanguinary priest squad crushes a razorback and kills the
tac marine squad to two men. The regular assault squad.....can't do anything cause they fired their plasma gun! I had hoped they'd have destroyed it in that shooting, but oh well.
Mephiston narrowly dodges being killed, and shakes the ironclad in return. If I get one more #$!* shaken in this game I'll lose it.
The top assault squad loses no men this time! Wow!
End of assault!
RICEDADDY So he needed his other vindicator in here, pretty badly. He successfully rolled for that reserve, and brought him in there. He took his remaining shaken razorback into the woods. There was no other movement he wished to perform, so onto the shooting!
He got to use his thunderfire once again....and much to my chagrin it succeeded!
- Had to make use of this shot.
As you can see if you look closely, his vindicator also successfully destroyed a weapon on my stormraven, and he destroyed my multi melta, so that really got to me there. His poor land speeder was stunned previously and out of flamer range, and there was a number of jokes exchanged such as lighting cigars or marshmallows on the flames. So it was taken well
Assault phase -
The Death Company quickly cleaned up and consolidated, although they'd go right for the razorback anyways. The topmost squad lost another member to the dreadnought but successfully kept him at bay for another turn, making an effective although unintentional tar-pit. My Sanguinary Priest squad quickly dispatched the remaining
tac marines and consolidated to take the objective from the techmarine's (hopefully) cold, dead hands.
His Dreadnought on the bottom, fighting Mephiston?
....nothing. More shaken. Mephiston stays in the battle, unable to do more then shove the dreadnought around, even with sanguine sword it would seem, due to poor damage rolls.
That's the end of that...
TURN 4:
ATLAS Movement Phase -
Not much to report here. I moved my combat squad to once again attempt on the land speeder as it would once again be posing a threat, and my sanguinary priest squad moved to finish the techmarine and thunderfire. The right combat squad also moved to shoot at the razorback. The Death Company proceeded to attack the razorback once again.
The shooting phase was highly successful. I was lucky enough to take out the thunderfire despite the odds being in favour of the techmarine taking the bullet, although I knew I wouldn't be able to assault in this turn. The chances are something was going to die though, as I had two rhinos, drop pods, and a slew of marines ready to pop these guys. It should also be noted that I was getting get's hot all game and successfully saved against those.
The Stormraven managed to use combined arms fire and immobilize the vindicator, although it remained a threat.
My combat squad didn't do squat to the razorback, and was now in danger of getting killed.
Finally, I immobilized the land speeder, neutralizing the threat. *phew*
Onto the assault:
Assault phase -
My Death Company finished the razorback, making it explode, even killing a
tac marine in the process! Wow.
My marines held up in assault against the dreadnought, losing one more but holding strong.
Mephiston shakes the other ironclad. Whoop.
Game's starting to close in on a conclusion...
RICEDADDY Movement Phase -
So Ricedaddy at this point was in trouble, and was basically aiming to stop me from claiming my objective and pretty much fight to preserve a tie. He moved his
tac marines out of the wreckage of the razorback, and prepared to fire at the death company.
Elsewhere, his last remaining razorback pushed through my assault marines, and they deftly got out of the way.
Onto shooting....
Shooting phase -
Ricedaddy had a few things to do here, and he was able to put the hurt on my infantry. He killed a Death Company man with melta, and in the other side he fired his
TL plasma gun at my marines, killing two but they stayed in the fight. He managed to also kill one of my combat squad members with his drop pod, but they managed to keep fighting.
Meanwhile, his techmarine has quite the arsenal of deadly gadgets, and killed another man of my sanguinary priest's squad. Ugh, but at least that was over.
Assault phase was a bit scary, my top assault squad getting killed to three men, and Mephiston managed to shake the ironclad. Again. Also, however, he managed to remove the seismic hammer, so his chances of dying were now much lower.
- Result of this turn
TURN 5:
ATLAS Movement Phase -
The Death Company once again ran towards the
tac marines, having to take a difficult terrain test through the wreckage but passing. Elsewhere, the sanguinary priest's squad moved to attack the techmarine, and the combat squad went to fire upon the rear of the razorback. The top combat squad turned its fire on the drop pod to get rid of it.
Shooting phase -
Death Company's shooting did little, as did the stormraven (who at this point had nothing but plasma which would do nothing against the vindicator's AV13). Top squad almost lost itself due to gets hot, doing.....nothing to the drop pod.
On the right side of the map, the combat squad successfully popped the razorback, killing a
tac marine in the process. The sanguinary priest's squad finished that techmarine quite handily in the shooting.
Assault Phase -
The Death Company killed two
tac marines, the top squad held against the ironclad losing no men...
RICEDADDY Movement phase -
He had very few options left aside from a last ditch effort to stop my guys from claiming the objective, which could effectively hold up a tie if the game ended here. Oh the joys of capture and control.......:(
Shooting Phase -
His vindicator predictably made wormfood out of Mephiston with its cannon. Gak.
They moved in for the attack -
Assault phase -
He did well, killing two men on my sanguinary priest's squad, me killing two of his men in return. A tie was very possible here. My top squad continued to hold against the ironclad. I also managed to finish the
tac marines with my death company, and they angrily proceeded towards the vindicator.
I didn't capture a shot of the result here, but basically visualize two casualties on both sides for the assault on the right objective.
But would the game end like this? I would have my combat squad claiming the top objective, and the lower being unclaimed, meaning a victory for me!
TURN 6:
ATLAS Movement Phase - Very little to do here, I mainly just moved my Death Company, guided by rage, to the vindicator, and prepared for the shooting phase and assault.
Shooting Phase - Nothing. Like, there was nothing I could to to the vindicator, my only hope was the assault.
Assault Phase - Success, to an extent! I managed to blow off the demolisher, effectively neutralizing the vindicator once and for all! I also managed to win the assault against the
tac marines, and consolidated to my objective! There was an unfortunate loss of another assault marine, leaving just the sergeant and priest left to face the dreadnought.
RICEDADDY There was no movement to be done. He was a trooper at this point, wanting to see what he could bring down, and he did just that!
Shooting phase - Success! He killed my top combat squad, taking off one of my points!
Assault Phase - Ironclad killed another man, leaving just the priest standing.
At this point, Ricedaddy conceded, and thus....
Victory for the Host of Blood!
Objectives:
Atlas: 1
Ricedaddy: 0 Afterthoughts: This game was long.
lol, it was a great game, filled with humour and the hours spent were well done so. I had not faced vindicators or ironclads before, but now, I don't want to again hahaha...scary things, although I probably could have put more melta attention against them.
Ricedaddy had a solid list, and I was lucky to do as well as I did. His ironclads were tough, tough opponents, and if I didn't hold them off I could have been viciously screwed if melta wouldn't work. It's always interesting, squaring off against other marines, as the armour saves make for interesting assaults. That being said, I was able to push through his shooting luckily enough, thanks to Dawn of War, and take the ground quickly.
On the specific note of Dawn of War, Ricedaddy was pretty limited by this, as it hindered his firepower significantly early on, and thus things didn't go according to plan. It's tricky, that type of deployment, for sure, and had we been doing a pitched battle, the result would have been highly different. But Ricedaddy has a solid grip on the rules that I sadly cannot yet boast about, and as such it was probably my personal first game where I referred to my charts instead of Andilus just telling me what to roll
Excellent game though, and I'd be happy to play again, perhaps on a team...................
GG, Ricedaddy, and I hope to work with you again soon.
The Emperor Protects.
No one Provokes me with Impunity
Craftworld Mymeara 
440 points - in progress (....sort of a given 
Lion's Claw
Apologies for the markings, forgot to click those away 
) as well as not being able to fire the Thunderfire Cannon first turn hurt...bad. The snipers never really had a chance to have much of an impact either. I had hoped to punch out your transports early using the long range 