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Woo! My first game against chaos' and my opponent has 25+ terminators. Boo.

SoB

Celestine
Flying Canoness with all the trimmings

2xSoB in rhinos with F, HF, Book.

Dominions in Immolator, 4xflamer, combi-flamer.

Seraphim with 2 hand flamers, veteran with eviscerator and book.

2xExorcist

CSM

Abaddon
8xCSM terminators -Lightning claws, combi-flamers, HF, Mark of Tzeentch.

10x CSM terminators -2xTL autocannon, 4xcombi-melta.

10x CSM terminators -2xTL autocannon, 4xcombi-melta.

10x CSM - no upgrades

Deployment is pitched battle, mission is annihilate :( Terrain on the table is packed near the centre with a few out-lying hills.

I win the roll to go first and take the lead, deploying my exorcists on the left flank and the other vehicles in an 'n' shaped formation with the seraphim and HQ's hiding in the pocket.

My opponent puts Abaddon and friends at the front of his deployment zone ready to charge into the fray. Everything else hides from the Emperor's favourite daughters in reserve. He tries, but fails to steal the initiative.

Turn 1
SoB
The transports and Seraphim advance on the centre of the table hoping to set up a close range massacre with their boltguns. One exorcist speeds down the left flank, the other rains missiles into abaddons group, killing one traitor.

CSM
He moves forward into the centre and takes potshots at my transports, achieving sod all.

SoB 0 - 0 CSM

Turn 2
SoB
The immolator and one rhino drop their troops in front of his one visible squad, the other rhino scoots off to the left to try and attack from behind next turn. Both Exorcists manoeuver to get clear shots. Seraphim and HQ's hide behind the wall of disembarked sisters. Despite successful acts of faith from both SoB squads, I only manage to kill 4 more terminators and put a wound on Abaddon. Meh.

CSM
He rolls for reserves. Gets reserves. All of them. :( the regular CSM come on at the back of the board and take cover behind a mass of rock. One squad of terminators lands near Abaddon and blasts my dis-embarked SoB squad, reducing it to 5 models. The other CSM termies scatter onto a rhino and are delayed for a turn (phew). Abaddon and his remaining buddies assault the dominions and seraphim; the dominions are shredded by the terminators lightning claws whilst Abaddon downs both Celestine and the Canoness (not good). My remaining Seraphim hold their ground, but i forget to Hit-and-Run away.

SoB 0 - 2 CSM
Turn 3
SoB
Things not looking good. One HQ gone, the other back in the reserves. I really need to deal with the newly arrived terminators to stand a chance. The second rhino disgorges it's girls behind the newly arrives termies, rapid-firing bolters reduce them to 5 models, combined fire from the exorcists leaves a single terminator standing. Unbelievably, the Seraphim manage to put 2 wounds on Abaddon, taking none in return; he fails his fearless saves and returns to the warp! I continue to ignore the CSM struggling through cover in his back field.

CSM
The last squad of terminators show up intact, despite scattering into a fence, and proceed to wreck an Exorcist with their meltaguns. The lone terminator vapourises the Immolator, killing a Seraphim into the bargain. the remains of Abaddon's original squad assaults the seraphim with neither side causing any damage, the girls use this to H&R towards his regular marines. His CSM's fire ineffectually at the newly dis-embarked SOB unit.

SoB 1 - 4 CSM
Turn 4
SoB
Both SoB squads get back in their transports and run away from the unharmed terminator squad. The remaining Exorcist backs off and downs three terminators with it's shooting. Celestine DS's back into the battle near the CSM squad. The seraphim waste a couple of marines with their shooting and kill a further 5 in assault, losing one of their number in the process.

CSM
The lone terminator assaults the rhino but fails to glance with his PF The latest arrivals manage to wreck a rhino with their autocannons, spilling out the full squad of Sisters. The ongoing battle between the Seraphim and CSM ends with no further casualties.

SoB 1 - 5 CSM
Turn 5
SoB
The exorcist backs up again and takes down 3 more termies with it's rockets. The sisters from the wrecked Rhino reduce them to one lone terminator. Celestine and the Seraphim wipe out the remaining CSM and consolidate towards the centre of the board. The smaller sister squad disembarks and blasts the terminator who tried to kill their rhino.

CSM
His lone terminator tries to kill the Exorcist, but fails to glance. The 2 terminators left from Abaddons squad move towards Celestine but are out of range for an assault.

SoB 3 - 5 CSM
We roll for another turn and get it.....

Turn 6
SoB
The remains of my army shoot at the three remaining terminators killing 2, the final one kills a seraphim in assault before being splattered by the vet's eviscerator.

SoB win by annihilating the enemy

This was a great game for a number of reasons, not least that my opponent has been playing with his army for a long time and rarely loses, or that i was giving up more than double the number of KP's he was. My initial plan was to try to concentrate all of his forces into the middle of the board, hopefully sacrificing a couple of squads/vehicles in the process, then to run away and blast him from range. It looked like all was lost as early as turn 2 when i lost both HQ's to some horrible rolls and poor judgement. Had my opponents terminators not scattered into mishap territory I'm pretty certain i would have lost very quickly. As it happened, i was able to weather the early losses and use my mobility advantage to the full; once i got the seraphim into his back-field along with my remaining troops, i was able to take on his army a piece at a time, removing his terminators with weight of fire and some fortunate rolling on my remaining Exorcist.

(Wo)men of the match were the Seraphim: Killing Abaddon, wiping out a full squad of CSM almost single-handedly, then squishing the final Termie. They burn through the faith points but give the army a wonderfully hard-hitting and mobile assault squad capable of either holding up elite troops or butchering more standard units.

Fail of the match was me and my generally rubbish use of acts of faith. I get a bit nervy whenever i play against DSing armies and this contributed towards me burning through a lot more faith than i needed to and consequently not having enough when i needed it :S In future, I'll be a little more conservative with the stuff.

C&C welcome

If you want a more detailed army list, check my earlier battle report: It's exactly the same

Great report. My heart kinda sunk when I saw the results of pouring all that fire into Abaddon's unit.

I'm amazed that that Assault went as bad as it did though. Your cannoness at least should have been able to weather the storm from Abaddon (especially with him splitting attacks). Even more spectacular was your Seraphim taking him down!

Great job.

Interesting match....

Did he only have one troop choice or was it 2x 5x man squads?

I have to say though I think that you should have milked the Exorcists for a bit longer and avoided getting close... It was hard to tell positioning without pictures so maybe you couldn't avoid the assault that soon?

If he is going to DS his army, caste it up! Put in traps (areas that are in-between your army that look tempting, but with ANY deviation cause mishaps) and get sacrifice units to the foreground.

Now I know in this he was on the ground, but with those exorcists and his lack of mobility, I might have castled still and FF abbadon's squad and rushed the closest terminator squad once avalible.

Good job of using your mobility to the full advantage, that is where he was MAJORLY lacking!

Yeah, my wounding rolls in my first round of fire were abysmal; i think i got 3 regular wounds and 2 at ap1 from the whole turn (also, pesky 4++ Mark of Tzeentch saves) :(

The Canoness died thanks to my stupidity (and Abaddon getting 9 attacks); i used the simulacrum to get invulnerable saves in the shooting phase, then whiffed to get it in the assault. I put it down to nerves

It's stupid that the Seraphim minus Celestine and Canoness still managed to romp through the rest of his army. I still maintain that, used correctly, they are one of the best choices in the whole WH book. My opponents have tended to try to kill my exorcists first, and worry about the Seraphim later; whilst Exorcists are very good, a squad of seraphim loose in the opponents back line is a)hard to kill in assaults and b)always shooting and assaulting on it's own terms thanks to the wording of H&R in the WH codex


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@EzeKK: Yes, he had 2 five man squads of CSM, which were just close enough together to multi charge.

Positioning the exorcists was tricky; if i kept them too far away from my other forces, i risked him DSing both his squads near them and wasting them. If i kept them too close, i risked them being assaulted by Abaddon and co. I could have maybe held off his assault for another turn or so, but the positioning of the terrain and the fact he had stuff in reserve made me want to get his 'alpha' charge out of the way as soon as possible. Didn't think it would be as effective as it was though :(

I did kind of castle, but left a couple of tempting targets for him to go for (an exorcist and the dominions). Happily he took the bait and, despite heavy losses early on, it paid off

He was a fine opponent, and chatting afterward we agreed that once he failed to wipe out the bulk of my army in the centre of the table, i was able to run rings round him. Once the remaining exorcist started backing off and firing, it took out 3 terminators a turn until it ran out of things to shoot at

I never thought Abaddon COULD lose in CC. Especially to Seraphim! I feel sick...... Nice job! (Very lucky though )

Yeesh, talk about an impractical CSM army.

But I don't know anythin about SoB, so I can't crtique them

TBH, i have often seen Abaddon cause more damage to himself during a game than his opponents ever could.

Yes, my Seraphim were very spawny to come out of that combat alive, never mind taking down big, bad himself. How i laugh when i remember that i forgot to H&R out of combat the turn before.... Ahahaha


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ZacktheChaosChild wrote:Yeesh, talk about an impractical CSM army.

My opponent built his army around the idea that they were Abaddon's personal guard that he brought in to crush the last vestiges of resistance in an assault; hence the massive amount of terminators. Impractical yes, but horribly intimidating when he can have 30ish Terminator armoured psychos dropping into your lines.

But I don't know anythin about SoB, so I can't crtique them

This is a common theme with all my opponents; no-one else in the area has played SoB since 3rd edition. They all try to kill the cool-looking tanks at the back and ignore the real threat: Masses of rending boltguns/flamers (my force can put down 10 flame templates a turn), Chainfist wielding characters with jump packs, and periodically invulnerable armour saves.

At some point, they'll cotton onto this. Until then i'm quite happy to table all the armies i play

Abaddon at 1500 points is just asking for you to lose... hes such a huge points sink! Yeah, hes worth it, but the fact you want him with a squad of 8 khorne + land raider to make him super effective means that your spending at LEAST 600-700 points on one unit ><

Anyways, glad your SoB kicked butt! it was a well deserved win

J.Black wrote:
They all try to kill the cool-looking tanks at the back and ignore the real threat...

I noticed the exact same thing. Exorcist's are decent but they garner way more attention than they should. I run all my SoB squads with Flamer H Flamer combo and getting into position to maximize them means intact Rhinos. They completely ignore transports to take down Exorcists.

I also occasionally field some penitent engines and man do they attract fire!!

Good battle report.

Ouch, losing both the Canoness and Celestine in assault hurts!

I hope I never have to face as many Terminators as you did.

Shouldn't the chaos player have a second troops choice?

J.Black wrote:TBH, i have often seen Abaddon cause more damage to himself during a game than his opponents ever could.

Only cos noone else can hurt him!

Heh, yea A good SoB player has always been a hurdle for me.
Against (what I would call a good SoB player) I've consistantly tied against this guy...it's almost boring to suggest a game as it ends up in a grinder...but turns out most enjoyable with respect to reacting to each other.

But yea, Abbanoob in 1500 is really passing the ball into the opponent's hand.

It's really easy to get drawn into a grinder scenario with the SoB: If you don't kill what you're going after at the first attempt, you will lose a squad. On the other hand, it's very easy to overkill what you're shooting at if you pull off all your divine guidance rolls.

I do really struggle in objective based games; i just don't have enough troops to attack with and expect to survive long enough to capture anything. The pesky Seraphim (Amazing as they are) would probably get dropped in a tournament as they cost a silly amount of points which would be better spent on troops.

I think the thing that I had to go to for objective games was an IG Platoon. PCS with Chim and LasC (110), 2 Squads with Autocannon (60pts ea). Dirt cheap (230 total), holds my objectives and bubble wraps my Exorcists.

Really helped out because you're right, you end up running out with all your girls, potentially getting killed and then having nothing to keep your home base secure.