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3000 (four players with two 1500 armies per side) Emperor's Will - Vanguard Strike

I had a day off today so I roped in MarsNZ and our mate Quinton, and Quinton's mate Elliot for a big rumble. Elliot has ordered a bunch of Blood Angels, but they hadn't arrived yet, so we ended up using a bunch of Quinton's spare Dark Vengeance Dark Angels and proxying some Dark Angel's instead. I was a little sad, it meant our Lost and the Damned weren't going to be fighting the Twilight Marines this time... Maybe next time!

So, here's a few things that happened:
- I rolled Unbreakable Hide, Daemonic Resilience and Dark Blessings for my Keeper of Secrets, Aggelos. It took quite a lot of firepower to take a wound off that guy!
- My Flying Daemon Prince, Morpheus, with Souleater got knocked out of the sky, taking two wounds in the process and lost another to Overwatch on his charge. From that one wound he made his way back up to four wounds by the end of the game, slaughtering Grey Hunters as he went.
- Ezekial was the one who downed my Daemon Prince, with Mind Worm. Man, the Characteristic Drop that spell causes was a surprise!
- A Herald of Slaanesh, Krazda, rolled Touch of Uncreation and Aetherblade, resulting in some hideously one-sided challenges.
- MarsNZ's Chaos Lord rolled Shrouded for his Gift of Mutation and Hatred for his Warlord trait. This meant that the 35 cultitsts he was with were a hateful, fearless, scoring unit with a 5+ cover save...
- A five man unit of Deathwing Knights chose to deepstrike in turn one, only they chose to do it right in front of MarsNZ's Vindicator, Obliterators, Plasma Chosen and Plasma Chaos Marines.
- A ten man unit of Deathwing was kept from participating in the game due to MarsNZ's Level 3 Sorcerer consistently casting Enfeeble and Hallucinations on them. They kept getting pinned by the Hallucinations and MarsNZ's mass of Cultists carrying his HQ's walked on by.
- The Sorcerer finally made the Deathwing stupid and so he charged them, with his Chaos Lord finishing off Belial in a challenge (Belial was accompanied by one Deathwing and had only one wound left after all the fire they had weathered by this stage). MarsNZ Promptly rolled Dark Apotheosis on the Boon table, resulting in the second game out of four I've seen where he's done this...
- My unit of ten Seekers was wiped off the board by Turn Two, as usual. Still haven't figured out how to use those...
- My Keeper killed the last Rune Priest with Psychic Shriek. I like to imagine it had been a mental duel, with the Daemon coming out on top...
- My unit of five Fiends, though arriving relatively unscathed to combat, were unable to do much damage to a unit of Grey Hunters who fought back hard. After Overwatch and two rounds of combat I was reduced to one Fiend with one wound who lost combat. He promptly rolled Boxcars, which would normally have destroyed the remaining unit. I hope I don't roll that Instability test again for a while!
- My Keeper must have displeased the gods, as they took three wounds off him in the first turn due to a poor Warpstorm roll... Nothing else caused a wound on him in the entire game.
- The game was over at the end of Turn 5, with MarsNZ's freshly raised Daemon Prince charging the last four Dark Angels Tactical marines and finishing them off. With that, immediately before rolling for Random Game Length, we had tabled them.

Sorry to spend so long on the achievements of the Chaos side, but it was my perspective after all I'll have to ask for some key memories from the other side next time. Should probably try to get some photos of the really dramatic rolls / situations too!

MarsNZ and I agreed that we would have had a much harder time if they Loyalists had deployed further back and stayed back. They tried to advance but did it in a piecemeal fashion, allowing MarsNZ to deal with one threat after another with his big guns. I assaulted in to their objective and also suffered from a somewhat piecemeal attack, but once Daemons are in combat, it's hard to root them out. We especially thought that all the terminators should have been deployed from the start, on top of the objective as they are scoring. The small unit of Ravenwing bikers could have Turbo Boosted out of sight and tried to wait for a late Linebreaker. Then they would have been able top mop up my daemons while MarsNZ tried to get close enough to cause some damage.

Any questions or curiosities? Remind you of classic moments from your games?

I love reading reports from the CSM perspective! If this were a more traditional battle report I feel it would have been more exciting, it really had the makings of an awesome report.

It sounds like an interesting game though, I look forward to many more.

Cheers, glad you got something out of it!

I shall have to try and make more of a report from the next game.

Looked pretty 1 sided. I prolly wouldtn bother writing it up if its not an interesting one. Lookes like the csm/cd guys synergised well together, played well and had some pretty fortunate rolling.

gg

We'll try to get a few photos next time, they would really tell the story a little more clearly. To see the table at the bottom of turn one you'd think we (team Chaos) had our work cut out for us. Top of turn 2 however sees demons materialising all over the Imperial backline sending those who were to follow the terminator speartip frantically scrambling back to defend the objective instead. A pretty grim day for the Dark Angels in particular, Belial and a fair chunk of 1st Co. abandoned to a bloody fate in the table centre, Ezekiel faces a bleak eternity as the plaything of Aggelos.

I think our opponents were a little overconfident in their Deathwing alpha strike strategy, whereas we were both quite pleased with the synergy of our two forces, despite previous grumbling about us not really being proper battlebrothers. My personal man-of-the-match would be my sorceror, 3 turns holding the Deathwing in their deepstrike position at -1 S/T. It still took 3 turns of serious firepower followed by an assault (once I knew Belial wouldn't be able to strike) to finally finish them off.

Also my army finished the game relatively unscathed. Until I factor in the lost wargear from dark apotheosis, my army actually experienced a net gain in value by the end of the battle, losing only cultist chaff while the lions share of Imperial firepower was directed at the Daemons.

That's a good point, hindsight shows the battle looking easily ours, but it was by no means certain until the last turn or so. The Grey Hunters and Long Fangs watching over their objective put a serious amount of firepower into my daemons, leaving my with only a few remaining on the objective by the end.

Although we were surprised by the Deathwing landing right in front of our guns, if we hadn't been able to keep them stuck there with Hallucinations they would have been able to wade into the Chaos Marines pretty quickly, protecting them from the gunfire that surrounded them.

I've been wary of photos, given the unpainted nature of our troops, and some of the proxying that we use at the moment, but it really would have given some more of an overview.

Reread my post- i sound like im saying that wasnt worth doing. Just to clarify: What you wrote was great- it gave me an insight into the game and engagements without you having to do the whole thing. Id just do a post analysis of a battle with a one sided result (which is pretty much what you did) rather than a full official battlereport.

Just a detail
Hallucinations can't pin down Deathwing Terminators as they are fearless, they can suffer from 3-4 and 5-6 results though

TK - Man, thanks for pointing that out. I double-checked and your totally right!

That would certainly have turned the battle drastically if we'd made the connection. That's part of the problem of playing with an army your unfamiliar with, isn't it? Neither of us Chaos players know what rules apply to the Dark Angels, and it was our friends first game, so he didn't know either!

Opponent didn't know rules? Just as planned heh heh heh...

I really enjoyed your highlights of the match it made for a good quick read to get a feeling for how the match went and what game changing events occurred, I think that photos and a complete battle-rep are nice, but it's also nice to have a summary before hand to explain what happened