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Ahoy folks! I just completed another battle at the Game Empire store in Pasadena California.

We decided to do a story driven campaign that focuses on the current state of the Golden Throne. The summation is as follows:

The Tech Priests that are charged with maintaining the Holy Throne have discovered additional irregularities that are compounding further failures in the operation of keeping the god Emperor in his permanent state of Undeath. A wave of panic runs through the administarum. At what could be the worst possible timing, the varied Xenos races through the galaxy individually decide that this is the perfect time to make an all-or-nothing blitz on the holy throne of Terra; they wish to Deliver a Knockout blow that would finally cripple the Imperium of Man, and throw it into complete disarray. Chaos Forces begin to pour forth from the Maelstrom and the Eye of Terror, the forces of the Tau decide now is an opportunity to further expand their third sphere of worlds, the orks...well the orks just want a good fight....and so the embattled forces of the Imperium of Man, along with as-of-yet unknown intentions of the enigmatic Eldar, furiously scramble to mount a line of defense. It is no longer about bringing the fight to the enemy, now they must await the fight barrelling towards them and win, for if they fail....the Imperium will have no future....

So yeah, that's pretty much the fluff for the battles. Each battle had special conditions attached to it and we were distributed "Strategic Asset Cards" that gave us some special doohickey that we could use during the battle. I didn't end up using mine but I'm sure it could come in handy.

So there we were, our mission was entitled: Ambush!

Essentially a Chaos Demon spearhead attacked an outpost of marines based in a swamp. There was heavy amounts of area terrain, but the board we played on was quite tiny...only 6'X10' so it definitely felt quite cramped.

The Scenario had special conditions:

The attackers (the demons) had the special rule of ambush and that they could reposition up to two pieces of terrain to suit their liking, they also could place "ambush" tiles to signify possible false positions for their units. (However since my opponent was playing demons and deepstriking everything, we ignored that 2nd part).

2nd, my objective to win this scenario was actually to get my troops over to within 12" of his deployment zone and try to keep more of my troops alive then his. This objective came back to bite me in the arse as I really didn't read and comprehend what the objective was, (I thought it just required me to keep more troops alive than his), and really tooled my list badly for something like this.

We set up our armies as follows:


My Army:

HQ

Chaplain in Terminator Armor
Attached to Terminator Assault Squad 5xLC, 4X SS/SH
Attached to Land Raider Crusader Dedicated Transport

Elites
10x Sternguard Squad w/2 Combi-Meltas w/ Drop Pod
9xTerminator Assault Squad 5xLC, 5X SS/SH

Heavy Support
2x Vindicator, 1 is Upgraded with Sergeant Chronus
1x Thunderfire Cannon w/ Attached Techmarine

Troops
2 Tac Marine Squads with Powerfist Sergeants 2 Rocket Launchers, 2 Flamers
10x Scout Marine Squad with Heavy Bolter, 8xSniper Rifles and attached Sergeant Telion

His army:

(Note I'm not too familiar with how a Force Orginization setup works with Chaos Demons but this is what he brought to the table)

1x Soulgrinder
1x Greater Demon of Tzeentch (Demon of Change)
1x Khorne Champion
1x Slanesh Demon Prince with Lash of Submission
1x Nurgle Demon Prince
12x Khorne Bloodletters
10x Khorne Fleshounds
12x Nurgle Plaguebearers
3x Tzeentch Flamers

The game began and he rolled for deepstrike deployment.

My sternguard were still sitting in reserve so they didn't come onto the board. (Incorrectly as I later found out, if you slap a drop pod onto a unit, they can drop in on the first turn! D'oh!)

I placed the crusader and the vindicators together in a spread arc formation with the Crusader in the center of the table and the vindies taking the left and right flanks. The termies were snug inside and unfortunately did not do much this game.... :(

My sniper scouts were placed in some swampy area terrain and with their camo cloaks got their cover save bumped up to a 2+.
My tactical squads were clustered near the rear of the map covered by the left flank vindicator.
My Thunderfire cannon simply parked itself in the rightmost rear corner of the map, since it had a 60" range I really wasn't worried about it being out of range of hitting something.

Things pretty much went bad for me right from the get go. His Nurgle Prince and Tzeentch demon landed smack dab right in front of my scouts with sniper rifles that I had hidden in the area terrain....

Several Breaths of Chaos later and they were toast...gah they didn't even survive first turn...!
His flamers also deepstruck and landed right next to my two tac squads and toasted 8 out of 10 from a single squad after one round of firing, damn breath of chaos....
His Soulgrinder parked himself behind some cover so he didn't do anything that turn.

The Bloodletters landed but they pretty much were placed smack dab right out in the open. Time for some payback!.....or so I'd hoped.... :-/
I decided to open up with my thunderfire cannon and my right flank vindicator. 5 combined Blast template shots later......3 Bloodletters were wiped out....out of 12...yeesh.
Thankfully, (and most annoyingly), my crusader was in range with its Assault Cannon and Right Sponsoon Hurricane Bolter. After opening up I managed to splat 4 more.
My left vindie decided to turn and open up on those Flamers, however it only managed to destroy one. A couple of well placed frag rockets managed to get another one down.

And that pretty much ended turn one.


Turn two went little better for me, I managed to mop up the Bloodletters with the Vindie and thunderfire cannon, however his 2nd wave of deepstrikes came in and landed all around my rear flank. This pretty much spelled the death for my remaining tac marines as they were crushed between the flamer some long range shots from the Tzeentch demon and a squad of plaguebearers that landed right behind them.

Since I had no remaining troops left I was basically tabled after turn 2. Gack.


Overall Thoughts on the Battle -

Obviously the first thing I should have done is analyzed the mission structure better, I completely missed that I had to move my army to his side AND keep my troops alive till the end, not just keep my troops alive...

Though to be honest, I'm not sure exactly what I could have done with such a small board and 100% deepstriking army, to keep my troops alive. Those breath of chaos attacks just vaporize everything they touch (**** un-saveable template attacks right up the buggery-doo)

Even though I'm still relatively new to this game, I'm still having difficulty fielding a SAFH army, be it mechanized or infantry. There just seems to be too many ways for enemies to close the distance with me and render my big guns useless. Hell, my 2 vindies felt more like pea shooters (this may have been due to bad dice rolls or something but honestly I'm not sure....)

Chaos is repeatedly proving to be a PITA to deal with. Between lash and those breaths, and lots of deepstriking enemies, trying to reliably keep range to light up my targets is something akin to repopulating the Dodo bird, it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen.

Also once again, bugger those bloody scouts. I couldn't get a single damn thing done with them...AGAIN!

*sigh* sorry for the rantish tone with this report, but I have to admit, getting tabled in just under two turns is quite disheartening to say the least. I keep looking at assault marines, vanguard veterans and assault termies (hence why I had them in this game) as ways to tie up enemies so I can reposition my shooty units, but I can't seem to get them in such a way that forces the enemy to deal with the CC units without just bypassing them and heading straight for the squishy bits, or my troops in this case... -_-

Ah well, so much for this match, hopefully the defense of the imperium can continue onwards in the campaign!

Thanks for the read, and any comments or criticisms are welcome!

Wow, rough game for you. How many points was that? Both lists look small for 2k - but that is what the title says...

Also sounds like he must have had some lucky rolls - he shouldn't have had more than half his army on turn 1. Also, daemons don't have lash - they have pavane which is 18" range and only 1d6" movement.

A great way to deal with daemons is to spend your first turn moving and try and put no more than 4" between your units and spread your squads out to the maximum coherency. This will greatly limit his movement from his first strike. Then pull away and start shooting - don't stop shooting at something until it is dead - but make sure you are shooting the right thing.

SAFH are really impossible under the new ruleset - run takes care of that. What you can do, however, is a really shooty army with a countercharge element - or, with the new marines, remember combat tactics - take the charge, fall back and then rapid fire.

your 9 man assault terminator unit is a huge chunk of points that will do next to nothing to daemons - most of our army only has an invulnerable save and we have a ton of way of getting through your 2+ armor - in that list you posted, the only things that you would get saves from are the plaguebearers and the fleshhounds. So at that point you are really paying a ton of points for models that are no more resilient than scouts.

Anyway, stick with it you will get the hang of it and don't take daemons as the baseline - as an army they are just really good against marines.

Oh yeah, the break down for his list would be:

HQ:
1x Greater Demon of Tzeentch (Demon of Change)
1x Khorne Champion
Troops:
12x Khorne Bloodletters
12x Nurgle Plaguebearers
Fast:
10x Khorne Fleshounds
Elite:
3x Tzeentch Flamers
Heavy:
1x Soulgrinder
1x Slanesh Demon Prince with Lash of Submission
1x Nurgle Demon Prince

Ahhh I see, thankee very much mate, that definitely at least gives me direction how to re-tool my approach with regards to my force, and thanks for the clarification regarding the demon's FOC, I wasn't sure what exactly was what.

That then beggars the question, for a shooty oriented army, besides using combat tactics would making liberal use of say vanguard squads or even just plain ol assault marines help out in this respect? Tie up the assaulting biggies and force the enemy to deal with them whilst the gunline plinks away methinks.

Granted I'm not sure exactly how to implement something like that, but it definitely bears looking into...

Wouldn't sterguard be better? Not only can they drastically improve your shooting, But they can also do ok in CC.

Vanguard are really expensive, and though they are really good, I don't think that they will do that well in the role that you'll be using them. Assault marine units would serve better imho.

@The greatcow, You are Andrey, right? I saw you playing the Demon army. I can play you this week with my Orks and maybe help you inprove your army. I will be there Tuesday for the second week of the campaign.

Darrian

Aye that's me I'll be sure to be there tomorrow!

space marins rule!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you're looking for the way to beat psychic or Daemon armies, spending 1 HQ slot on a Daemonhunter Inquisitor Lord with 3 mystics is the best way to make it happen. If you're opposed to this for any reason, then good luck.