Mission type: Big Guns Never Tire
Deployment: Dawn of War
Objectives: Five
Mission parameters: We're trying to play in a TSHFT style of missions where victory is determined by primary objectives only. Secondary objectives just get you battle points.
Warlord traits: seaphoenix - move through cover, stealth in ruins
bogalubov - re-roll reserves
Night-fighting: No
First turn: bogalubov
seaphoenix gets to place objectives first and he puts two behind his defense line an one behind a large ruin in his board half. I place mine in the center ruin on my board half and one closer to the middle. I figure that I need to get to his side of the board to make the majority of the weapons that the chaos marines carry useful so I might as well put the objectives there.
I set up my 4 rhinos full of marines in the center of the board with one unit of oblits with my non-
hq lord in the central ruin. The
hq-oblit unit and heldrakes are in reserve. The plan is to drive the rhinos 12 inches and then fire off smoke. Hopefully this allows me to advance far enough to make the transports useful and the smoke hopefully manages to soak up some firepower so it's not directed at the marines that crawl out of the broken rhinos. Then together with my reserves that come turn 2 I can bring some serious dakka to his side.
seaphoenix places one blob of cultists behind his defense line with the warpsmith attached in front of the vindicator (leman russ), predator (chimera) and the helbrute with plasma/missile launcher. The havocs are behind them ready to take control of the quad gun. A unit of noise marines with the blast master are behind the big ruin. Doom siren noise marines in the rhino are in reserve with another blob of cultists, the heldrake and the mutilators with the lord.
TURN 1
seaphoenix rolls to seize...and he does. Crap. In movement the noise marines scale the big ruin while the havocs grab the quad gun. His first round of shooting knocks out one rhino while stunning another one. I move up my two functional rhinos up the middle towards the objective there. My obliterator shooting at the predator does nothing.
TURN 2
seaphoenix has all his reserves come in this turn. The mutilators land next to the exploded rhino. The cultist blob runs from the board edge to control the objective there. The vindicator shuffles around to get a shot at my rhinos in the center. The heldrake vector strikes one rhino and explodes it. The mutilator lord In the shooting phase The predator explodes the stunned rhino and all but one marine are killed by a blast master shot from the noise marines on top of the ruins. The survivor decides to hang out. The heldrake roasts part of a squad whose rhino was wrecked on the first turn. The vindicator kills one or two marines from the rhino exploded by the heldrake. The helbrute kills one obliterator.
In my half of the turn both drakes come in and so does my lord. The heldrakes vector strike the enemy heldrake but only manage to take one hull point off. My lord-obliterators land within multi-melta range of the vindicator and ensure that my lord does not get a date with the murder sword that is now across the table from him. With a chance to change my fortune I shoot the brand and multi-meltas at the vindicator with the brand hitting 4 havocs a few cultists. The multi-meltas hit and both roll a 3 for penetration with two dice. Doh. The brand kills one cultist. That was a colossal whif. I was expecting to get two pens which he would save with a cover save, but this is even more depressing. Now the lord and his obliterator buddies will eat a vindicator pie plate. The hades autocannon on one drake stuns the enemy drake, but does not bring it down. The other drake finally does something and kills enough havocs to cause a leadership check which they fail due to the death of their champion. Other shooting sees one mutilator be brought low with a melta shot.
TURN 3
While being stunned the heldrake flies off the board. The big blob of cultists shuffles around to get more pistols into range on my lord with his obliterators. The lord with the surviving mutilator moves into charge range of a remnant of a melta squad. The noise marine rhino drives up field. In shooting the vindicator scatters and only hits one model in the lord/obliterator squad. Being instant death to all involved I try to pass off the wound to an obliterator. I roll a one so the lord has to take his 4++ and for once I get lucky and pass. The squad does not escape unharmed though as the hell brute kills one obliterator. All the cultist shooting does nothing. In the charge phase the mutilator and lord charge the marine squad and kill all of them before they swing thanks to the murder sword being a daemon weapon. All in all things did not go too awfully for me.
In my half of the turn I move up my
HQ-obliterators to flame and charge the cultists. The bale flamer drake flies over to the noise marines on the ruins while the other one flies off the board while vector strike wrecking a noise marine rhino. The lone functional rhino drives up towards the defense line while my lord-obliterator move up to shoot and charge the enemy warlord and mutilator. In shooting I kill 10 cultists with flamers, the heldrake kills 4 out of 5 noise marines including the blast master and one mutilator is killed by obliterator melta. My lord of course whifs on his combi-melta shot and now I need to decide if I want to charge his warlord while being down a wound with the lord. In assault I make it into combat with the cultists-warpsmith unit with my
HQ. I decide to gamble and charge his
HQ with my second lord hoping that my 4++ would be better than his 5++. The warpsmith and my
HQ fight a power axe duel (although now that I think about it, the warpsmith was about a foot away from the fight so I'm not sure if that challenge was possible that turn) with each taking a wound. The obliterator kills one cultist and takes no wounds (this was another error, seaphoenix forgot that all his cultists had a pistol-
cc weapon so he only attacked me with half of possible attacks). In the other duel, my lord took two wounds off seaphoenix's
HQ while taking one wound back.
TURN 4
The damaged heldrake comes back on the board and again manages to knock out my rhino with one pass. The occupants try to pile out of range from the vindicator. The noise marines hopped over their rhino with no casualties in charge and doom siren range of the squad that just got out of their smoking rhino. The survivor of the noise marine squad jumped off the ruin and ran toward the aegis line. In the shooting phase the heldrake killed the whole squad cowering in the crater of their rhino. The vindicator and noise marine doom siren whittled down the newly disembarked squad. Not much else happened, but now I am down to a 5 marines spread across 2 squads, going to be pretty tough to hold any objectives now. In assault, the doom siren noise marines make into a fight with my chaos marine squad. This fight would continue until turn 6 when the noise marines finally finished off the regular marines. The warp smith and my
HQ lord killed each other at the same time. The obliterator won combat against the cultists and caused them to flee. They managed to stay on the table by a millimeter. In the fight between seaphoenix's
HQ and my second lord, seaphoenix decided to use the murder sword at initiative 5 figuring that he could do enough wounds that I would roll a 1 for armor saves from at least one before my lord got to swing his axe. He managed to put 1 wound on my lord which I saved (with a 2 I think). In return I put him down with a power axe and get nothing on boon table.
At the bottom of turn 4 my hades hell drake came in, unfortunately it was out of vector strike range of the enemy heldrake so I would be forced to try to shoot it down with the autocannon. It never got the chance though as the drake was blown out of the sky by quad gun fire which was firing on auto that turn. I did not make a single invulnerable save with the drakes all game. With my other heldrake being on the other side of the board and not being able to turn easily I would have no recourse against his baleflamer next turn. Not much happened in the shooting phase. In assault the noise marine-chaos marine slap fight continued with no wounds on either side. The obliterator assaulted the hell brute (due to two shooting weapons the hell brute attacks would not be AP2) and nothing happened.
TURN 5-6
I will wrap up it up at this point. seaphoenix managed to kill all my troops and my second
hq squad over the next two turns. At the end of the game the only things alive for me was a one heldrake and an obliterator locked in combat with a helbrute. Seaphoenix had 3 objectives and won 2-1 on destroying heavies. It was a total ass whipping.
Lessons learned: This game went down hill for me very quickly after seaphoenix got the majority of the objectives meaning that he did not have to go to my side of the board and I had to run into his guns to contest his objectives. This was worsened by the fact that he seized initiative and prevented me from pushing my marines up the board together. This made his target priority much easier and ensured that I did not have the weight of bodies to get to the other side. I think if I was smarter the more conservative strategy that might have worked better would have been to camp in my deployment zone out of range of his guns and sight with my two objectives. Then pop out with obliterators to shoot lascannons at his heavy support choices. Then try to use my heldrakes to kill his troops and perhaps go after the heavies. I could have conceivably tied him if I killed all 3 heavy supports from his side without losing any on my side. There was no way he would venture towards my side of the board so if I got lucky and didn't lose any oblits it could have worked.
The issue I have right now is that I spend too many points (800+) on my troops and they can't do anything outside of 24 inches. Their transports are necessary because outside of them they get bale flamed, tesla-ed or shot with other things that kill them pretty efficiently. Plus if I lose 3 in a turn they might break. So I have 800 points in things that don't do anything for a few turns and then the rest are in deep strike/reserve so they don't affect the game on the first turn either. Perhaps a defense line, cultist as troops approach is the way to go if I'm going to have useless troops.
This game once again shows that this is the shooting edition and you better not bring a bolter to bale flamer fight.
Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man. 
: 6000 
: 2000 
Word Bearers 4500 Points 
Bran Redmaw's Great Company 3000 Points
