Mission – Emperor’s Will/The Scouring
Army Lists
CSM/Daemons
HQ
Lord - khorne, bike, axe blind rage, sigil corruption (Warlord – soul blaze, Boon – Shrouded)
Sorcerer -
lvl 3, terminator, familiar
(Invisibility, dominate, psychic shriek)
Troops
6
CSM melta, combi melta
6
CSM flamer, rhino, dirge caster
Elites
Land Raider Proteus (armored ceramite, twin linked hv bolter)
Heavy
3 Obliterators, Nurgle
Fast Attack
Heldrake
Allies
Bloodthirster –
(4+ FNP, portaglyph)
10 Plague Bearers
Army Lists
Dark Angels
HQ
Samael (land speeder)
Tech Marine (bike, power field)
Troops
5 tactical marines – plasma cannon
5 tactical marines – flakk missile
Elites
5 assault terminators – storm shields, power mauls
Heavy
Land Raider Crusader
5 devastators – 2x lascannon, 2x missile launchers
Fast Attack
Dark Shroud
4 bikes – 2x melta, 1x plasma, 1 multi melta attack bike
3 bikes
Fortifications
Vengeance Batteries – battle cannon, punisher cannon
Deployment: Dawn of War
Night Fighting: Yes
First Turn: Dark Angels
Pregame Analysis: My pregame rolling gives me everything I want and then some. I get invisibility for the sorcerer,
FNP on my blood thirster and to top it off, my biker lord gets shrouded. My opponent’s list isn’t putting any terror into me either. He has assault elements that will make him move forward and that will just allow me to assault him in return. He does not have any cover ignoring weapons to threaten my lord and he doesn’t have the weight of fire to bring down the blood thirster. Finally, he has no real answer to the heldrake, but he does have plenty of juicy targets for the drake. My opponent was also fairly new to 6th edition and does not have a ton of experience. So basically this game is the exact opposite from my last game from the start.
My plan is to control the center of the board with my
HQs and then send my plague bearers to grab objectives in my opponent’s deployment zone. I imagine that by the end of the game my opponent will not have much in the way of troops thanks to the turkey, so my token troops should do just fine winning on objectives.
Setup
The picture was taken after the Dark Angels did their first turn move.
The emperor’s will objectives go into our back lines with the scouring objectives scattered around. The 4 point scouring objective is close to my reserve board edge. We both have a 3 point objective in our deployment zones as well.
My opponent sticks his land raider in the center with the rest of his forces littering his deployment zone. I countered deployed across from his land raider, hoping that he would run forward the first turn and we’d have a satisfying bout of fisticuffs at the bottom of turn 1. I reserve my oblits to send them either after Samael, the land raider or the gun batteries. The rhino marines and plague bearers are also in reserve. My opponent reserves some bikes that are outflanking.
Turn 1
Oddly enough my opponent pulled his land raider back while moving up his bikes and shrouded land speeder. Samael and an empty rhino go to the right side. I’m not sure what the rhino was supposed to do there. Shooting is denied by night fighting and cover saves.
In my half of the turn, I cast invisibility on the thirster and he flies towards the shroud. Before he does, he chucks the portaglyph and it ends up close to a 3 point scouring objective. 4 pink horrors come through and move to the Emperor’s Will objective. The land raider and bikes move closer to the center.
Shooting sees a pen on the shroud, but cover saves it.
Turn 2
The bike squad stays in reserve. The crusader changes its mind and starts coming back to the middle of the table. The shroud and bikers advance on my land raider. Samael zooms forward as well. The shooting proves to be mildly effective. Somehow I lost 3 hull points on the land raider. However, instead of trying to finish it with Samael’s assault cannons, the turbo boosted bikers with their 2+ cover save (thanks to shrouding) get shot. The shooting phase killed 1 biker total.
In the assault phase, the biker’s melta bomb bounces off the armored ceramite of the proteus.
In the bottom of the turn, the turkey comes in and vector kills 2 devastators. The oblits also come in, but once again mishap. This time they are simply placed into ongoing reserves. I manage to keep the plague bearers and the
CSM out. Sorcerer casts invisibility on the bikers. I spread out the bikers to give me options of what to charge and shoot. The thirster is sent after the shroud.
In the shooting phase, the 3 remaining devastators are roasted by the turkey.
In assault I decide to ignore Samael and charge bikes with bikes. The thirster fights the shroud. My lord fillets the sergeant and gets icy aura for his troubles. One more Dark Angels biker is dragged down. For fear of whiffing on 4 Smash attacks with my thirster I decide to swing at his regular charge S7. I only manage one glance. Ugh. The Dark Angel bikes that lived remind me that they have hit & run and leave.
Turn 3
The outflanking bikes come in and blast the pink horrors on my Emperor’s Will objective to bits. The crusader just decides to hang out. Assorted shooting kills 2 bikers despite their invisibility. The blood thirster laughs off all shooting and loses no wounds despite being on the ground. 4+
FNP on a T6 creature is no joke.
In the bottom of the turn, the plague bearers come in and land close to the 4 point objective. The oblits go after Samael and for once don’t scatter. The
CSM decide to stay out. My biker lord goes after a 5 man squad of marines on a 2 point objective in the center. The sorcerer who cast invisibility on himself goes after the two bikers who hit and ran last turn. The land raider focuses its attention on the bike squad who killed my pink horrors. The portaglyph vomits out another 6 pink horrors. My own bikes go after the crusader with melta guns. The thirster wants to redeem himself and follows the shroud.
The shooting phase isn’t as awesome as I want it to be. Samael saves two melta gun pens while the crusader does the same. The only good thing is that the proteus kills a biker holding my Emperor’s Will objective and his two buddies book it 13 inches. The thirster’s whip actually wrecks the shroud so he can’t even punch it. The turkey bbqs the tactical marines that its vector strike did not kill. There are now no scoring troops in my opponent’s deployment zone. In fact, the only scoring units that are left are 3 bikers from 2 separate squads.
In the assault phase everyone makes their charges. The sorcerer kills one biker. The bikers pen the crusader with a melta bomb, but the power field saves the thing again. The lord slaughters another sergeant. This kill is worthy of him turning into a daemon prince. Damn it. That is only marginally better than being turned into a spawn. Now I can only move 6 inches a turn and I lose my daemon weapon. Thanks chaos gods.
Turn 4
Samael moves closer to my Emperor’s will objective, but he’ll still be in charge range for the oblits. The knights finally get out of the crusader and get ready to kill some chaos bikers. The 2 bikers not locked in combat regroup and turbo boost next to the forgotten rhino on the right side of the board.
Shooting kills 4-5 plague bearers and some pink horrors. However, my opponent makes the mistake of continuing to ignore the portaglyph.
In the assault phase the knights make short work of my bikes. The sorcerer kills the last
DA bike he was fighting and the prince/lord kills a few marines.
In the bottom of the turn, the turkey flaps to the last 2 bikes left on the board. The thirster saunters up to the tech marine. Oblits shamble to Samael.
In the shooting phase I immobilize the rhino with a lascannon. Roast the last two bikes my opponent had and watch Samael make more invulnerable saves.
In assault the daemon/lord ends the marines and now
DA have no scoring left. The thirster pummels the tech marine and the oblits put a few fists in Samael’s rear end.
Turn 5-7
The game would go to 7 turns actually, but I stopped taking pictures as it was basically over. The
DA had no real way to prevent me from winning both missions. The only thing of note to happen was the thirster fighting the knights and only losing 1 wound over 3 combat rounds before chopping them all up. At the end of the game, the only thing the
DA had on the board was an untouched crusader.
Conclusions: This game was a slaughter and I didn’t learn much from it. My opponent was inexperienced and did not have an optimized list. He did what most inexperienced players do and split his forces and had no way to support the individual pieces of his army. It’s something I’ve done plenty in my early games. I still need to resist the desire to send individual units on missions without support.
Having regained some self-esteem I decided to skip the third game. I bailed on some friends who were in town to come play in the tournament and figured that if I left then, I could still grab dinner with them. Nothing better than half-assing your gaming and your friends right?
The two games that I did play have certainly did not put me at ease with my list. Although I know I could have played smarter in game 1, I’m still not sure if that could have netted me a win there. This army is top heavy and doesn’t have enough units to deal with fast armies or those with many units. It’s good at fighting marines, so it might be useful in the next month as people dust off their marines. Of course marines might get super powerful with the new codex. So I have some things to ponder as I prepare for the Rose City Rumble in Portland in 2 weeks. I’m mostly at a loss as there are no obvious ways to improve this army before then. However, I welcome any and all suggestions. Thanks for reading.
8th Grand Company (Iron Warriors 8,000pts): 36-11-2
Heavy Rain Cadre (Tau 4,000pts): 9-3-0
Hive Fleet Lunulata (Tyranids 2,000pts): 6-4-0
/
1300pts