Well, I took out my army for the first time against a new opponent at my recently discovered
FLGS. (Bandit Paintball and Hobbies, for those of you in mid-Michigan) Fully intent to win, I took my list that got put together from a few posts here on Dakka. Here's what we've got.
HQ:
Shadow Captain Jacen Ferrax (Uses Shrike Model and Shrike rules)
Master of the Forge Pandion - Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol
Elites:
Terminator Assault Squad - 3
LCs 2 Thunder Hammers
Troops:
10 Man
Tac Squad - Meltagun,Lascannon,Rhino
10 Man
Tac Squad - Plasma gun, Plasma Cannon, Rhino
5 Scouts - Heavy Bolter,Snipers
Fast Attack:
Land Speeder - Missiles, Heavy Bolter
10 Man Assault Squad - Power Fist, Plasma Pistol
5 Man Assault Squad - Power Fist, Plasma Pistol
Heavy Support
Dreadnought - Assault Cannon,
DCCW, Drop Pod
Dreadnought - Lascannon, Missiles, Drop Pod
Dreadnought - Plasma Cannon, Missile Launcher, Drop Pod
Death Guard
Daemon Prince - Warptime
Terminators - Icon of Nurgle, Heavy Flamer, various
CC weapons
Dreadnought -
TL Heavy Bolter,
DCCW
Dreadnought -
TL Lascannon,
DCCW
Predator - Lascannon, Heavy Bolter Sponsons
5 Plague marines - 2 Plasma guns
3 Rhinos chock full o' 10 Plague marines each, with a mix of meltaguns and plasma guns in.
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Incoming Transmission...
Incoming Transmission...
Incoming Transmission...
File corrupted. Debug?
"May the power of the Omnissiah render this message pure..."
Message Loaded.
DISTRESS SIGNAL
CADIAN 53RD ARMORED REGIMENT
STATIONED ON NERESTI - SEGMENTUM TEMPESTUS
FROM: GENERAL BRAKKUS - CADIAN 53RD
Reinforcements requested. Any nearby Imperium unit reply. Plague wiped out the 323rd Airborne last week. Came from nowwhere. Living dead walking the streets. The stench of chaos is strong. Reinforcements requested to purge the planet of the heretics. Should that fail, Neresti is to be given the exterminatus. This plague must not spread.
Be forewarned. Fallen Astartes seen outside the Hive. Too many. We will not last the week. Hurry.
MESSAGE END. READ AGAIN?
"No. Sleep now, machine. Your work is appreciated."
Master of the Forge Pandion stood up from his console, disconnecting the multitude of wires that were connected to his spinal cord. Finishing his honor of the machine spirit, he strode out of the comms room, nodding to the crewman whose station he had borrowed. The naval officer saluted as the Master left. Moving quickly through the ship, Master Pandion arrived on the bridge of the Strike Cruiser
Eye of the Raven. The two ranking members on board turned towards him. Shadow Captain-in-charge Garrick Vortellis motioned Pandion towards him, while Shadow Captain Jacen Ferrax, the junior commander of Task Force White Gauntlet, stood off to the side staring out at the crew.
"What have you learned Master?" Captain Vortellis said softly.
"A plague struck Nerestii. Chaos is involved. The Planetary Defense Force are in need of reinforcements."
"Is that so? Then we shall go wipe their taint from this segmentum. Captain Ferrax, if you would?" Vortellis finished, gesturing to his junior. "Gather the men. Master Pandion will brief you on your way to the hangar."
Captain Ferrax nodded. "May the Emperor be with us." Then, silent as always, he moved out of the room, followed by Master Pandion.
Captain Vortellis turned back towards the crew of the Strike Cruiser. "Take us out of orbit. We have a planet to save, and Chaos to crush beneath our heel. They won't know what hit them."
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With that bit of fluff out of the way, I feel like I can write up this report now. :p We drew annihilation, and Dawn of war. I won the roll off, and elected to go first.
Oh, and also: The Tau devilfish is a rhino, the jump chaplain is a
MotF, and the Ironclad carrying two arms around on it's base is my plasma cannon,
ML dread.
I forgot to take a picture of the board, empty, before we started. Anyway, I deployed snipers in a ruin, and a combat squadded tactical squad in a ruin and a rhino to open. He deployed his demon prince behind some trees, and two rhinos on a nearby road. I elected for Shrike, the
MotF, and the A-Termies to outflank. Everything else would come in on my turn. Now, the Raven Guard's first turn rolled around.
And my land speeder flew up to the top of the building the rhinos were next to. There was some truly dismal night fighting rolls on my end, then he entered the board. 5 Plague Marines, a Dreadnought, and another Rhino joined his other two rhinos on the road... with the Demon Prince, this was most of his army. However, back on the left flank ((where my dreads, snipers, and my small squad of assault marines sat)) he drove a predator and a dreadnought up.
One failed roll from his dreadnought missed my own and the predator....
Dreadnought - Didn't there used to be a Drop Pod here?
Turn 1 Ends = Ravens - 0 Death Guard - 1
My rhino moved up and popped smoke, while my (Tau) rhino let it's occupants fire i their lascannon at his dreadnought! Hit... Penetrate... stunned. (This happened a lot.) My army opened up on his, every ranged weapon, plasma cannon, and Krak Missile I had pounding away. Out of maybe 4 penetrates, I got stuns on everything. <_< My plasma gunner in my rhino did shoot one of his plague marines in the back down. Now here's the kicker. Shrike/Farrex comes in, outflanking on the left flank (FAAAR away from the 35 plague marines in rhinos and their big friend) appearing...
RIGHT HERE!
However, despite the multiasssault from multiple thunderhammers/powerfists/rending lightning claws... I still only manage to glance the crap out of him.
His turn rolls around... and his spearhead charges forward, popping their own smoke.
FFFUUUU....
Some inneffectual firing later... and the daemon prince advancing some more.... oh, and the terminators
DS'd in next to the Prince. A Plasma gunner mighta cooked himself off. I think there was a wound inflicted on the demon prince from.... somewhere. Oh, and that predator I was punching? Drove away.
This would have been awesome if I could ROLL DICE.
Turn 2 Ends = Ravens - 0 Death Guard - 1
My other dreadnought comes in, dropping behind his Demon Prince's advance with assault cannon primed. My Terminators, thinned a bit by previous assaults but glad his dreadnought had lost it's
DCCW last turn, obliterated the Chaos war machine. The explosion took out two terminators. (I. HATE. DICE.)
Now he really swung into momentum. I lost track of turns here, but the following shooting phases led to me poking his rhinos with enough shakens (Grr....) that he just jumped out, using them as cover, and started rapid firing me. My (actual) rhino got obliterated by his dreadnought, the squad inside about to be smashed. My Assault Marines jumped to the rescue, Sergeant firing his plasma pistol... frying himself. Well, there goes any chance of hurting the dreadnought. Oh, hello Plague marines... RAPID FIRED. This chain of events led to the most insane survival I've ever seen. One tactical marine survived from within the (actual) rhino, managing to fall back from the dreadnought, survive sweeping advance (in retrospect, we might have forgot to roll for that) and managed to get up onto the massive black building where he regrouped. Out of my assault squad, one marine survived, passed his morale check, and proceeded to jump over the building. Round turn 4, this was the corner of the board.
Space Marines... HIDE!
Oh, and as for my other rhino? That squad survived, and started a series of very successful turns where my opponent didn't charge his plague marines (he wanted me to charge him... THAT wasn't happening without power weapons on my sergeants) so I proceeded to make an unhealthy amount of saves, the melta gun and lascannon inside proceeding to pop two rhinos as the game went on.
Before the assault marines died horribly (except for one)
On the left flank, my dreads walked up to the bridge, Shrike moved forward, and my smaller Assault squad thought it might be fun to help out sometime.
We're Space Marines! On a bridge! Hooray!
Now, here's where things went nice. I'd been poking at his Daemon Prince all game, and it was about to charge my tactical squad with the lascannon. However, he failed his move through cover roll... and got blasted by assault cannons and snipers without having accomplished a thing. Then, his terminators performed a hard right, cutting across the bridge and killing a dreadnought. (BOOM) However, here he made the mistake that, combined with my two squads somehow surviving with one man each, turned the game on him. He didn't kill the drop pod on the bridge, electing instead to wait in the cover of the wreckage before charging the advancing Shrike/Farrex and his
MotF and single Terminator. Shrike/Farrex KILLED them. Kill point for the Raven Guard, and the left flank was theirs once again.
The board about now. Note the dreadnought fallen in battle... and the dreadnought in the back where this is waiting:
Darn right we killed a demon prince.
Now, here's what made the game. His dreadnought down the right flank was about to chase down my two weakened squads.... and despite me risking my land speeder to hit rear armor, I couldn't stop it. Then, though, in a game saving roll, it went crazy. Rather than charge my two killpoints (that's all they were worth at this point) he turned around, charging my Speeder and wrecking it. With that, and my combined assault bearing down on him, I popped everything in his army that wasn't a plague marine or the crazy dreadnought. He did kill off that
tac squad with the lascannon with a storm of fire, however.
So, despite all odds.... we counted up the kill points and lo' and behold.
Raven Guard - 7
Death Guard - 6
The MVPs...
Raven Guard: 1.My Plasma Cannon combat squad, who threw a lot of firepower down range, put wounds on
th D-Prince, killed a terminator, and popped rhinos.
2. The lone survivors.
Two killpoints that woulda lost me the game.
3. Shrike and his terminators. 3 Kill points between them. Can't complain. Outflanking terminators ROCKS.
Death Guard:
1. Hordes of plague marines with melta and plasma
2. Hordes of plague marines with melta and plasma
These did all the killing of my forces, accounting for every single kill point (except for 1 by the terminators). Despite the amount of rounds I put into their rhinos to slow them down, I couldn't. Only reason they didn't do more is because I finally started immobilizing rhinos at the end, and he refrained from charging me.
I can't help but feel this could have gone much worse for me. Most of my heavy firepower was on the wrong side of the board, and because I couldn't pop his rhinos, I couldn't kill his plague marines. In the future, I'd definitely make an attempt to get that plasma cannon dread over to the plague marines, where the blast template starts wrecking swathes of them without saves. Also, I think plasma pistols need to go on squad members, not my sergeant. Also, I need to find out a way to use the darn assault squads. They accomplished nothing this game. They had nothing they would charge (everything was mechanized or, well, plague marines) and I totally misplayed them. Honestly, I don't know what I should have done with them. Thrown them out in front of his rhinos to try and pop them? They'd have died but they would have clustered for my plasma cannons. I don't know. I think the list is pretty solid... but it could definitely use some reworking.
So, in the end... your comments are appreciated. If I had taken notes, this would have been more accurate to the turn, but unfortunately all I have are the pictures.
Also....
VICTORY!! (No, I didn't paint this model. I'm just a fan of ebay.)
