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Well, this is my first shot at this. I've had some success with this list recently, so a friend of mine challenged me to put me in my place, so to speak. It was a roller coaster ride of a match, and both of us enjoyed it. Excuse the iphone camera, I'll be using a much nicer one soon.

The armies:



Primaris Psyker (biomancy- iron arm, life leech)
5 Ogryns, Chimera, stormbolter
Vets, 3x plasma, plasma pistol, chimera, heavy stubber
Vets, 3x melta, plasma pistol, chimera, heavy stubber
Vets, 3x grenade launcher, chimera, heavy stubber
Leman Russ Punisher, heavy bolter sponsons
Leman Russ Executioner, plasma cannon sponsons
Leman Russ Demolisher, heavy bolter sponsons



Lord of Change, 2 greater rewards (something that causes instant death and it will not die) divination- prescience, precognition, perfect timing
Bloodthirster, 2 greater rewards (not sure which)
20 bloodletters, banner, champion, lesser reward
20 bloodletters, banner, champion, lesser reward
20 daemonettes, champion, lesser reward
20 plaugebearers

Big Guns never tire on Dawn of war. I deployed first. The little derp trees are objectives.



The Daemons deploy, with the plaguebearers in reserve.



Turn 1:



He fails to seize so I get the first turn. Turns out it's night fight. I scoot in range of the Russes and light up some bloodletters. Multilasers manage to put three wounds on the bloodthirster before it gets airborne. The executioner whiffs, failing to wound (or even really hit) and melts a hull point off itself.



The bloodthirster vector strikes and whips the ogryns' chimera, causing it to explode. The rest of the daemons move forward and the Lord of Change gets perils of the warp and then does this:



And lands where I can't hit it with my five blast templates. Then it regenerates a wound from it will not die. Go figure.

Turn 2:



The ogryns move away from the bloodletters, as I can't charge this turn. The plasma vets move towards the bloodthirster. The melta vets move towards bloodletters, supported by the demolisher. The grenade launcher vets hop out of their doomed transport and prepare to shoot daemonettes. The punisher immobilizes itself on terrain in an effort to back away from the bloodletters. The ogryns down the daemon prince without wounding him, and the plasma vets tear him to pieces, taking his last two wounds off. The melta vets kill a few bloodletters and the demolisher kills a whopping four. The Executioner tries (and fails) to kill some bloodletters before the lord of change shows it where the wild goose goes. The grenade launcher vets do this:



But luckily their frag grenades and the punisher make up for it and whittle down the daemonettes.

The daemons respond with this:





Plaguebearers drop in the most open space available, in front of the melta vets. The warpstorm drops a brass skull on top of the plasma vets, killing the useful ones and immobilizing their transport. The survivors run off the table. They pull off three huge charges and charge all three russes and the surviving four daemonettes charge the grenade launcher vets. The vets are swept and both the punisher and demolisher russes get wrecked. The Lord of Change blows up the executioner and one of the daemonettes in the process. The end of turn 2 looks like this:



Turn 3:



The melta vets and chimeras finish off the demolisher-killing bloodletters while the ogryns shoot and charge the other squad. The chimera kills all but one daemonette of the remaining three. The ogryns shoot and charge the bloodletters, and kill them to a man, losing two wounds in the process.

On the daemons' turn, the warp storm spawned a handful of lesser daemons. They dropped in front of the ogryns and the Lord of Change swooped to assist. The lone daemonette almost wrecks the chimera. The plague bearers charged the melta vets and utterly destroyed them. It looked like this:



Turn 4:



The ogryns get closer to the fresh daemonettes and shoot them. I don't roll well yet again, and kill only two. Two chimeras on the right shoot hopelessly at the huge squad of plaguebearers, while the other finally kills the lone daemonette. The ogryns charge and fail to finish off the squad, locking them in combat.



The Lord of Change charges in to the ogryns, and the primaris psyker challenges to save the ogryns from instant death. I win the combat somehow but lose my psyker in the process. The daemonettes die but the Lord sticks around to beat up the ogryns. The plaguebearers charge and begin to slowly beat the two chimeras to death.

Turn 5:



I'm stuck in close combat so there isn't any movement. The chimeras unload into the plaguebearers to no avail. The Lord of Change kills all but the bone 'ead and one ogryn and they pass their stubborn leadership.

On the daemons' turn, the two chimeras somehow stay alive and the Lord of Change finishes the ogryns.

We roll a dice and the game ends. I gave up first blood, line breaker, slay the warlord, an objective, and all three of my leman russes. I have absolutely nothing. 9-0 daemons. In the beginning I felt pretty good about gunning down loads of daemons and the blood thirster but as the game went on, I just ran out of luck and options.

So for my first battle report, how did I do? Thanks to anyone who checks this out!

I think it makes the grade.

Solid report, good work. Sorry to see that happen to your armored column but thats how the Guardsmen game goes. Unlike the tau style glass cannon i think armored guardsmen are like big shooty walnuts. Tough shells, soft meat. Try starting further back and being patient (pre-measures makes this easy) or cluster your vehicles more (I don't care for the board stretching lines myself) and advance some of you chimeras in order to create waves of units for your opponent to chew through instead of offering him limitless assault opportunities. Again, great report, do another.

Agreed, good report, fun to read

Solid job laddie - I enjoyed it, you got all the detail and thankfully (for my delicate sensibilities) didn't write a godawful plot-grammar-and-spelling-less attempt at a storyline. Not that you would have, of course, but I actually live in fear of those batreps...


Keep it up and it'll be even more joyful with slightly nicer pics

Thanks for the support everyone. I'll be sure do make another soon, probably this weekend.

The russes I use have such short range, I usually scoot up (if I'm going first) and spend the rest of the game scooting back. I got unlucky with some terrain (and I didn't realize it takes a hull point off when you crash into it, won't be doing that again) and I set up poorly. I should have turtled and crashed maybe three objectives instead of trying to threaten all of them. Silly mistake really.

Again, thanks for checking it out everyone

Yeah concentration of force with your kind of army's quite good - gives you more room to maneuver as well as you have the speed in your mech force.

I don't particularly like these battle reports but this one has quite a good example of using the speed to take serious advantage:
http://youtu.be/dS5TYAcgneI

Sorry about the loss. I agree that concentrating your stuff probably would have helped a fair bit, though, especially with all of your short-ranged weapons.

I also agree that that's part of the problem with russes - getting somewhere to do something. Perhaps you'd consider dropping the ogryn for something that could get somewhere and threaten objectives on your opponent's side of the board?

I think the Ogryn/Chimera are plenty capable of threatening an objective, it just takes commitment to moving them. I played one game with my guard vs DE and I knew that my only hope of victory was to contest an objective on the other side of the board. So I committed 2/3 chimera vets to the task and despite heavy losses I eventually broke through and contested the objective for the win. People get too caught up on individual units in 40k and lose sight of the Meta-game. When your running a non-power armor army (meaning a more challenging one) you have to keep you objectives in mind from the outset of the game and commit to a plan. Think the last battle in Ender's Game. Also its funny Allaros commented because when I saw this

 Captain Roderick wrote:
Solid job laddie - I enjoyed it, you got all the detail and thankfully (for my delicate sensibilities) didn't write a godawful plot-grammar-and-spelling-less attempt at a storyline.

I was about to write, well the Hand of the King series has solid writing and relatable characters and is a good example of where this works.

But Ogryn don't score. In this case, the demon player seemed mostly interested in what objectives the guard player was sitting on. Throwing 300 points out of a 1500 point list to only have the chance of contesting an objective while the rest of your army is getting slaughtered seems of more questionable value.

 BigJP wrote:
Also its funny Allaros commented because when I saw this

 Captain Roderick wrote:
Solid job laddie - I enjoyed it, you got all the detail and thankfully (for my delicate sensibilities) didn't write a godawful plot-grammar-and-spelling-less attempt at a storyline.

I was about to write, well the Hand of the King series has solid writing and relatable characters and is a good example of where this works.

You can see my opinion of Ailaros' batreps in the comments section of his last 30 or so And I don't expect everyone to reach his standard, but I do get a bit twitchy when I find myself looking at reasonable pics, an obviously interesting battle, and OH MY GOD I'VE SEEN FURRY-SLASH-FANFICS WRITTEN BETTER THAN THAT.

Which, my dear Ghastli, is absolutely not the case here, and I doff my hat to you. *doff*

Solid report, wish you better luck in the next.
You might think about getting rid of the sponsons on the Demolisher. Seems like a waste of points when you could drop that and the grenade launchers for another 3 plasma guns instead.

Also I agree with others though you might want to keep your guys closer together as spreading them that far apart I feel you lost a little bit of covering fire from your other units.

The doff is much appreciated, Captain Roderick.

I was thinking of reworking the list to look like this:


Primaris psyker

Veterans, 3 plasma guns, plasma pistol
Chimera, heavy stubber

PCS, Al’ Rahem
Chimera, stormbolter

IS
Chimera, heavy stubber

IS
Chimera, heavy stubber

Veterans, 3 melta guns
Vendetta

Leman Russ Punisher, heavy bolter sponsons

Leman Russ Executioner, plasma cannon sponsons

Leman Russ Demolisher, heavy bolter sponsons

I like the sponsons on the demolisher, I've played many games where I'd rather have 9 hb shots than a possible one or two hits from the template. It is very circumstantial and usually occurs after the demolisher's preferred targets are gone. The ogryns are an enormous point sink, so I'm putting them away for a while.

With this list I only have the three leman russes and plasma vets on the table, so they would deploy pretty close together. The infantry platoon comes on the side mainly to cause a diversion (an expensive one I know, but at least this one is scoring) and take heat off of the melta vets when they drop in. Looking any better?

Looks pretty solid to me. I'd suggest switching one of the naked Infantry squads for the veterans, so you've got the triple-melta in a place it can shoot from without compromising the ride. The squad in the vendetta will just be riding around waiting to get dropped on an objective anyway. I'd also drop all the pintle-mounts on your chimeras in exchange for more special weapons - in Al'rahem's PCS, in the PIS in a chimera.

I think that's legal - and that way you have Al'rahem in a chim and another chim coming in with more firepower from the outflank, a vendetta that can drop off a scoring unit late-game after zooming and shooting for a while, and two mech-vet squads to ride herd on your tanks in the early stages of the game. Otherwise I think with a lot of current armies, your Russes will just be swarmed and obliterated early on.