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The first match between my Space Wolves vs my brother's Blood Angels can be found here.

Keep in mind that my brother is a BA noob and that this is only his 2nd battle with them.


SPACE WOLVES (My list)
Ragnar Blackmane
Rune Priest Blackheart - Chooser, Boltgun, Jaws, Living Lightning
Rune Priest Loki - Chooser, Hurricane, Living Lightning
Rune Priest Goldmoon - Jaws, Tempest's Wrath

Inquisitor Ally - Bolt pistol, CCW, Emperor's Tarot, Targeter, 2x Mystics
8x Wolf Guards - 4x w/2x Combi-flamers & 2x Combi-meltas & Powerfists (attached to Grey Hunters), 4x w/Combi-meltas in Drop Pod

10x Grey Hunters - 2x Meltaguns, Power weapon, Wolf Standard, Drop Pod
10x Grey Hunters - 2x Meltaguns, Power weapon, Wolf Standard, Drop Pod
8x Grey Hunters - Meltagun, Power weapon, Wolf Standard (Ragnar + WG here)
6x Grey Hunters - Meltagun, Power weapon, Wolf Standard, Rhino (RP + WG here)
6x Grey Hunters - Flamer, Power weapon, Wolf Standard, Rhino (RP + WG here)
6x Grey Hunters - Flamer, Power weapon, Wolf Standard, Rhino (RP + WG here)

6x Long Fangs Alpha - 5x Missile Launchers
6x Long Fangs Beta - 5x Missile Launchers
Land Raider - Extra Armor, Multi-melta (Ragnar's unit here)

Total - 2499


As for my list, I've made a minor modification. With the plethora of deepstriking armies out there - Blood Angels, Tyranids, Drop Pod armies, Chaos Daemons, Mechdar, etc., I've decided to add a little deepstriking defense as well as my secret weapon (or rather, wargear).


BLOOD ANGELS
Astorath

Furioso - Blood Talons
Furioso - Blood Talons
Sanguinary Priest - Jump Pack

10x Assault Marines - 2x Meltas, Power Weapon
10x Assault Marines - 2x Meltas, Power Weapon
9x Death Company - Infernus Pistol, 2x Power Fists
9x Death Company - Infernus Pistol, 2x Power Fists
9x Death Company - Infernus Pistol, 2x Power Fists
Death Company Dread - Blood Talons

Stormraven - TL-Multi-melta, TL-Assault Cannon, Extra Armor
Stormraven - TL-Multi-melta, TL-Assault Cannon, Extra Armor
Stormraven - TL-Multi-melta, TL-Assault Cannon, Extra Armor

Total - 2500


Analysis:

Space Wolves:
Honestly, I feel this may be the weakest of the 4 lists. He's got about 600pts+ tied into each stormraven. I just can't see those stormravens surviving long, even with their cover. Destroy them and I control the tempo of the game. He's got no psychic defense against any of my powers and he's in for a rude awakening if he dares deepstrike anywhere near my units. If he deploys his stormravens but don't get 1st turn, he's screwed. If he reserves his entire army, he risks taking on my full force with just a portion of his army. He's screwed in objectives games unless he can kill all my scoring units. I just can't see him winning. Even trying to just get a draw would be tough for him. I'm hoping I don't under-estimate his Death Company but I think he's in for an uphill battle.

Now this is all assuming I can disable his stormravens before they get close.


Blood Angels:
He needs to protect his stormravens at all costs. His best case scenario is that he gets first turn. Either that or Dawn of War deployment when they all come in on turn 1. He has to be careful going flat-out within range of my Tempest's Wrath. If he should immobilize himself doing so, he's just lost that entire unit - the raven and all those embarked. If he deepstrikes, he needs to make sure he doesn't DS too close to my mystics lest he eats 5 missile launchers. And if he goes all-reserves, he risks coming in piece-meal.

However, if his stormravens make it to my lines, he's even more killy than me. I have nothing that can really hurt his dreads in assault. If he can get them into assault, he's got the advantage. He still probably won't win, but he can force the draw unless we're playing Kill Points. That's where he may have a slight advantage over me.


Mission: Seize Ground - 3 objectives
Deployment: Spearhead
Initiative: Space Wolves

Deployment:
There is a large area terrain in the middle of the board. On both its left and right are an impassable terrain that blocks LOS. There are 3 other smaller patches of area terrain - 2 on my side and 1 on his. We place 1 objective in my deployment zone (in a crater w/my long fangs), 1 about 13" from my objective near the center of the board and 1 in his deployment zone behind the impassable terrain far away from the other 2 objectives.


I deploy 1 rhino (Goldmoon's) behind the impassable terrain. I then deploy the other 2 rhinos behind my Land Raider so that they have LOS and cover. I place 1 squad of Long Fangs in the crater with my objective and the 2nd LF's outside of the crater to the right of the 1st LF's. The Inquisitor w/mystics are also in the crater. My pods are in reserves.

He reserves his entire army and doesn't try to seize the initiative.


Space Wolves 1
My Wolf Guards drop near the center of the board, just outside the large crater. 1 squad of Grey Hunters drop in near the center but more towards his deployment edge. All my vehicles move forward about 12".


Blood Angels 1
Nothing happens as everything is in reserves still.


Space Wolves 2
I advance my vehicles slightly. Goldmoon's rhino immobilises itself on the center crater. He casts Tempest's Wrath. All my vehicles pop smoke.


Blood Angels 2
Despite his re-rolls for Descent of Angels, only 2 units arrive. The assault squad w/Sanguinary Priest and 1 stormraven w/Furioso (and without Astorath). His power weapon sergeant, Sanguinary Priest and 2 regular assault marines die due to failed dangerous terrain tests from Tempest's Wrath. My mystics also spot them and has my long fangs fire 5 missile launchers into that unit. Another 3 assault marines die. Ouch. Before they could do anything, they've already lost their Sanguinary Priest, sergeant and 5 assault marines but they pass their morale.

The stormraven only moves 12" so that the furioso and death company may disembark and assault. The stormraven fires at Goldmoon's unit with it's multi-melta and assault cannon but I make my cover saves. The furioso makes it into assault (he has the Red Thirst) with my podded-GH's and kills 2. Another dies to No Retreat.


Space Wolves 3
Loki's unit moves 12" and they disembark. In shooting, my LR immobilises his stormraven (I'll call it stormraven #1). Goldmoon casts Tempest and Loki fails to cast Murderous Hurricane on death company (fails his psychic test on 11). The long fangs wipe out the rest of his assault marines. In assault, another 4 GH's die to his furioso, and I lose the power weapon and 1 melta to No Retreat (only 1 melta left).


Blood Angels 3
The 2nd assault squad and his stormraven #2 with Astorath comes in. His assault squad lands near my LR and again, 4 die to Tempest's Wrath (2 meltas + 2 regular). We have a slight discussion over whether to resolve the mystics first or the dangerous terrain. If we had resolved the mystics spotting the assault squad first, then I would've been able to fire at them with my long fangs, but we ended up deciding that the dangerous terrain tests should be resolved first and after removing the "correct models", my mystics ended up not seeing them by a fraction of an inch.

Stormraven #2 moves flat-out 24" and makes his dangerous terrain test due to Tempest. It then uses Power of the Machine Spirit to fire 1 missile at Loki's rhino but fails to do anything. The assault squad, who just lost their meltas, decides it was quite useless to try to take down my LR with bolt pistols and opens fire on my combi-melta-toting Wolf Guards instead but doesn't kill anyone. Death company, who had to move towards my drop pod as it was the closest unit, misses at point point blank with their infernus pistol and so assaults it instead and wrecks it. The furioso kills the last melta-GH and consolidates towards Loki's unit.

Space Wolves 4
The last drop pod of grey hunters drop near the BA objective. Loki's unit re-embarks into their rhino and Goldmoon's unit gets off (Goldmoons splits from his unit). Both Goldmoon's unit and the wolf guards go after the furioso. 6 melta shots at double-melta range later and the furioso is still standing without a scratch. WTF! Are you serious!?! The land raider shakes the furioso. Loki's Living Lightning shakes stormraven #2 (w/Astorath) and the 2 long fang squads only manage to destroy its multi-melta. Goldmoon casts Tempest's Wrath.


Blood Angels 4
The death company dread gets off stormraven #2 and fleets towards Goldmoon's unit. Stormraven #2 then flat-outs towards the long fangs. The assault squad moves towards the long fangs as well. Immobilised stormraven #1 explodes Goldmoon's empty rhino, killing 1 grey hunter from Goldmoon's unit. Stormraven #2 uses PotMS and shakes Blackheart's rhino. From there we go into assault as both dreads charge Goldmoon's unit and wipes them out. The assault squad wipes out 1 squad of long fangs as well and consolidates half the squad into the crater.


Space Wolves 5
Blackheart goes after the assault squad. Loki's rhino backs 12" and they disembark. Blackheart also disembarks from his rhino and joins Loki's unit. His rhino then moves to block off the furioso from advancing. Ragnar's unit disembarks from the LR and gets ready to assault his death company squad.

The grey hunters shoot down 3 assault marines. The long fangs destroy the assault cannon on stormraven #2, 2 Living Lightnings only manage to shake it and my LR destroys 1 bloodstrike missile. Wow. I am stunned that it could survive all that. The LR also uses PotMS to fire its multi-melta into the furioso and immobilizes it. Goldmoon jaws death company but they all pass their initiative tests. Ragnar's unit drops 1 death company (they were in cover in the middle crater) and one of my rhino's stormbolters kill another DC.

In assault, the grey hunter charge the assault squad and wipe them out, losing 1 in the process. Ragnar's unit furiously charge DC, using their wolf standard, and proceeds to wipe them out without taking any casualties (Ragnar himself kills 6). They consolidate away from his DC dread.


Blood Angels 5
Stormraven #3 finally comes in and moves 12" towards his own objective (which my podded-GH's are claiming). The furioso disembarks, popping smoke. His DC dread moves towards Goldmoon due to rage (I moved him there to make sure the dread can't go after any other unit). Stormraven #2 moves 12" and disembark DC and Astorath separately so that they could go after 2 different targets.

DC dread meltas Goldmoon to death. Stormraven #2 fires off a missile but misses. The immobilised furioso wrecks a rhino with its melta. Finally, stormraven #3 takes off the stormbolter from my drop pod (the one contesting his objective even though he didn't have any troops to claim it).

In assault, his furioso assaults my drop pod in order to get within contesting range of his objective and wrecks it. Astorath charges my 6-man grey hunter squad (the one that wiped out his assault squad last turn) and kill 3, with another dying to No Retreat. He got real lucky as he made both Invuln's against my 2 Pfist wounds. Death company charges Blackheart+Loki's unit. I kill 6 DC's but he kills Loki, Blackheart (both to Pfists) and 4 grey hunters. They then fail morale and run off the table. Ouch. That hurts. Now I have no scoring units near my own objective to claim it.

It is currently a tie as he has 2 objectives contested with dreads and he's just wiped out both my scoring units on my objective. We roll to see if the game continues and it does.


Space Wolves 6
I need to do some major damage and I need to do it now. Ragnar splits from his unit and his unit goes after the DC dread. The pod-GH's go after his contesting furioso.

My shooting finally comes through this round as Ragnar's unit blows up the DC dread, the pod-GH's blows up the furioso contesting his objective despite smoke, my LR blows up the immobilised furioso and the long fangs finally blows up stormraven #2.

In assault, Astorath finishes off the grey hunters and consolidate towards the middle objective.


Blood Angels 6
His 3-man death company unit goes after a rhino. Death company #3 disembarks from stormraven #3 and move towards my grey hunters. Uh-oh. Stormraven #3 then flat-outs towards the middle objective. Astorath moves towards Ragnar's unit (without Ragnar, who split off), trying to tie them up so that they can't reach the middle objective. Stormraven #3 gets a lucky shot on my LR with its multi-melta and manages to blow it up. 1 GH dies in the explosion and Ragnar takes a wound.

In assault, Astorath is just out of assault range of my GH's. His 3-man DC blows up my rhino and his healthy DC #3 wipes out my grey hunters on his objective.

There is no one contesting the middle objective, but my grey hunters aren't quite within claiming range yet. He just wiped out my grey hunters claiming his objective. If the game ends now, it would be a tie.

We roll to see if the game continues and it ends as a

DRAW.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Even though the game had ended, we decided to play turn 7 just to see how it would end with 1 more turn.


Turn 7
Basically, in order for me to win, I have to both destroy his stormraven and kill Astorath, as they are both in range to contest next turn. With just one squad of long fangs, I was unable to wreck or immobilise stormraven #3. Also, my grey hunters were not able to spread out far enough to try to prevent him from contesting. Thus the game ended in a tie again.

However, Ragnar did manage to kill Astorath in assault.


Post-Game Analysis:
That was a tough game. He had a lot to overcome:

- He came in piecemeal. 2 units on turn 2, 2 units on turn 3 and his last unit on turn 5.
- He lost most of his assault squads on the turns they came in due to Tempest and my mystics.
- He lacked any ranged shooting.
- He had no psychic defense.
- Stormravens don't have smoke launchers?!?
- He risked losing his entire stormraven unit every time he went flat-out while my Tempest was raging.
- Lack of scoring units.

Despite all that, he played a great game and hardly made any mistakes. With a little luck, he pulled off a draw, and that's an upset in my books.

I think I've analyzed my units to death so for this batrep, I'm just going to analyze the Blood Angel units.

Astorath: B+ - a solid HQ choice. Though he didn't see much action, he did wipe out a squad of 6 grey hunters.

Furioso: A - they are tough to kill and very threatening. I can't move my infantry anywhere near them unless if it was to melta it. Otherwise, I just can't damage it in cc. One of my favorite dreads in all the armies. Though it only killed 1 squad of grey hunters and a rhino (and drop pod), it changed my entire strategy as I couldn't move my guys towards the center objective until I dealt with it.

Sanguinary Priest: C - potential to be an A grade unit, but didn't do anything at all this game. That's just the grade I give to units with "not enough info".

Assault Marines: B+ - despite the "rough welcoming" they received upon arrival, they still managed to take out a squad of long fangs and threaten my objective. Imagine the carnage they would do if I didn't have any deepstriking defense and his sanguinary priest had survived. A solid scoring unit.

Death Company: A - a very good unit. At first I thought DC would become extinct with their exorbitant cost and their inability to score, but their killiness almost makes up for it. So far, I'm very impressed with them. Skip the jump packs and put them in transports like stormravens or land raiders and they really shine. Still have to watch out for rage. On turn 2 (or was it 3?), his death company had to move towards my drop pod instead of towards my other more valuable units due to rage.

Death Company Dread: A - a very good and killy unit. Not as survivable as the furioso, but ignoring stun/shaken results is awesome. It went through my grey hunter squad like a hot knife through butter and then melta'd my rune priest for desert. Again, the only drawback is rage, which I took advantage of to keep my scoring unit alive (though by sacrificing my rune priest).

Stormraven: B+ - the stormraven did well in this game. Part of it I attribute to my poor shooting, but the fact that it survived as long as it did meant that it did what it was supposed to do - which was to deliver its payload of ultra-killiness and draw a lot of my fire.


MVP's:

BLOOD ANGELS

Death Company - they killed 2-3 squads of grey hunters, 2 rune priests, a drop pod and a rhino. More importantly, they prevented me from winning by getting rid of 2 of my units claiming objectives.

SPACE WOLVES

Ragnar - it was a joint effort, but I'd have to give it to Ragnar. He almost single-handedly wipe out a squad of death company and killed Astorath when it didn't counted. Lol. Basically, I gave it to him because he performed as expected whereas I felt my other units under-performed.

My issue with death company is that everyone can be death company with a sanguinary priest.. so you save massive amounts of points

Except that other units won't be WS5... and lose their FNP and FC if the sanguinary priest is taken out (which is frequent in CC because he gets singled out).

The priest is probably there for the 2 assault squads which are the only 2 scoring units.

It's to bad the list is so tight on points that it can't afford a reliusiarch, I hate to see DC without a chaplain.

Should probably also swap out a pfist and pweapon so the assault squads a power fist and 2 of the DC have 1 power fist and 1 power weapon. DC with a reroll to hit and wound make better use of a power sword than an assault squad, and the benefit of DC diminishes with a pfist compared to a power sword.

Assault squad, or some type of scoring unit, was still needed for objectives games. In our first game together, he used 60 assault marines and no DC. This time around he wanted to try out death company and stormravens.

Because of his scoring units, he couldn't afford a reclusiarch or Lemartes but it sure would've been extremely nasty with Astorath, reclusiarch and Lemartes each leading DC.

He chose dual-Pfists for some AT - 6x S9 attacks in addition to infernus pistols to make up for the lack of regular meltas.

Interesting results. Thanks for sharing - I appreciate the insight into the space puppies, and the peek at the BA, as I don't play against either very often.

One minor point:

The death company dread gets off stormraven #2 and fleets towards Goldmoon's unit. Stormraven #2 then flat-outs towards the long fangs.

This happened a couple times - unless the Storm Raven has some extra rules I'm not aware of*, no one may embark or disembark from a fast transport on a turn it moves Flat Out (p. 70).

*It doesn't sound like he was using the "Deep strike out of the transport!" rule, if he was moving/assaulting afterwards.

Janthkin wrote:Interesting results. Thanks for sharing - I appreciate the insight into the space puppies, and the peek at the BA, as I don't play against either very often.

One minor point:

The death company dread gets off stormraven #2 and fleets towards Goldmoon's unit. Stormraven #2 then flat-outs towards the long fangs.

This happened a couple times - unless the Storm Raven has some extra rules I'm not aware of*, no one may embark or disembark from a fast transport on a turn it moves Flat Out (p. 70).

*It doesn't sound like he was using the "Deep strike out of the transport!" rule, if he was moving/assaulting afterwards.

Yeah, you're right. We both weren't aware of that when we played. It wasn't until I later posted the batrep on LO did someone pointed it out to me.

Oh, BTW, pay close attention to my list, because if you're going to Game Kastle this Sat for 'Ard Boyz, that's probably what you're going to see.

Great report! It sounds like you are doing an awesome teaching your brother how to play & I think that's very cool. I also got my brother into 40k with Blood Angels... Those were some really fun games.

G

Lol. Actually, I'm the noob (only 2 yrs) and he's the vet (10+ yrs). It was he who got me into the game. He doesn't actually play BA but was proxying it to give me some practice (though he was talking about getting into BA so I guess it's practice for him also).

Well you have a really cool bro! Be sure ta tell him I love his army list.

G

Oh wow, I didn't know you had a brother jy2. You've gotta introduce me to him sometime.

Haha werewolves vs. vampires!

Excellent battle report.

SabrX wrote:Oh wow, I didn't know you had a brother jy2. You've gotta introduce me to him sometime.

Haha werewolves vs. vampires!

Excellent battle report.

Yes I do. He doesn't live with us though. He's got his own home and family, though once in a while we get together for gaming along with our gaming group. Lately, though, we've been working more on a game called Ambush Alley building terrain and painting figures.