Opponent: Coulton (Chaos Space Marines)
Deployment: Vanguard Strike
Mission: The Emperor's Will
Point Level: 1300
Typhus
Daemon Prince w/Mark of Tzeentch
7 x Chaos Space Marines w/Plasmagun,
Mark of Nurgle, Rhino
7 x Chaos Space Marines w/Plasmagun,
Mark of Nurgle, Rhino
7 x Chaos Space Marines w/Meltagun,
Mark of Nurgle, Rhino
5 x Terminators w/5 x Combi-Melta
5 x Havocs w/2 x Lascannon, 2 x Missile
Launcher
5 x Havocs w/2 x Lascannon, 2 x Missile
Launcher
You would not believe how grateful I
was not to see a Land Raider anywhere in that list. I don't know
what it is about Land Raiders; Imperial or Chaos, I just cannot shoot
those darn things down. And I've run into no small number of Chaos
players who bring one of those mobile bunkers along as a terminator
delivery system, which pretty reliably ruins my day.
We rolled off and I got to go first,
which pleased me to no end. I deployed along the lower-left corner,
rich in hills and forests, an ideal defensive area even before I
spread my Aegis line out through it. I went with my standard
arrangement, XV88s in the wings with a squad of Fire Warriors and a
Fireknife team, my Hammerhead, the third Fire Warrior squad, my
commander and Deathrains in the middle, and my Pathfinders deployed
as the opportunities of the table present themselves. In this case,
they ended up midway between the middle and lower-right wings, with
their Devilfish sheltering that XV88. In return, Coulton laid out a
line of Rhinos, Marines huddled inside, around the centre of his
diagonal, the two Havocs on a ridge along the right table edge, the
Daemon Prince sheltering behind the tanks and Typhus and the
Terminators in reserve. Each of us laid down our objective, my just
behind my Aegis on the upper-left diagonal, Coulton in a forest along
his board edge, and with no help from Night Fight and no success on
seizing, we were off.
I got off to a respectable enough
start, wrecking the Rhinos with the combined fire of pretty much
everything I had that could draw line of sight. One of them
exploded, but failed to wound anything inside. The only real
exception was my Hammerhead, which managed to drop a submunition
dead-centre on the heads of one of the Havoc units, costing them
their sergeant and one of their missile launchers. Somewhat
staggered by the savagery of a proper Tau alpha strike, Coulton's own
first turn was rather lacklustre. His Havocs fired on my Devilfish,
which had a 4+ Flat Out cover save, and achieved precisely nothing.
His Daemon Prince rumbled forwards, along with two of the Marine
squads, while the third headed up towards the objective. With no
small amount of reluctance, he handed the game back off to me.
Turn 2 was significanatly less
impressive, for the simple fact that I'd run out of big, fragile
targets, and was stuck dealing with small, fragile targets instead.
The Rhinos had been fire magnets, targets as obvious as they were
incapable of surviving such a beating. The dismounted Marines, on
the other hand, were a lot better at obscuring lines of sight,
leaving parts of my army unable to draw a decent bead on anything.
Still, I gunned down the upper-left Marine squad, and took down the
Daemon Prince, while taking a model or two out of the squad moving
for the objective. Coulton's admittedly rotten luck continued, as
Typhus and the terminators, attempting to deep strike close enough to
pose a very serious threat to my army, managed to land on the heads
of a few of my guys. They weren't lost in transit, a result for
which I would not have blamed Coulton for flipping the table in
frustration, but all that meant was that they landed nice and safe in
the far back corner, no threat to anyone for several slow,
foot-slogging turns.
As the game continued, the losses grew
steadily more one-sided. Coulton's Havocs just could not perform,
failing to hit the Devilfish, or to penetrate, or just being
frustrated by the Flat Out cover save. In fact, he invested
considerably more effort into destroying it than it really warranted,
particularly since the Hammerhead was still flying around, dropping
submunitions on the Marines in the trees. His second Marine squad
was gunned down, leaving me basically in control of two-thirds of the
table. Unfortunately, this wasn't a kill points mission, it was an
objective game, and I'd forgotten one very important detail; Chaos
Space Marines are Fearless. No matter how often I plinked away a
model or two, the survivors would not break. I would absolutely have
to shoot them clear off the objective, and I realized I didn't have
the firepower to do it. But that was okay, since I had First Blood,
and Linebreaker is notoriously difficult to achieve in Vanguard
Strike. All I had to do was hunker down and wait.
But apparently Typhus was more than a
little upset by being left out of the game for so long. Finally
charging into the fight, he and his terminators managed to catch my
commander and a squad of Fireknives, who I'd been moving up to try
and put more pressure on the Marines in the woods; a telling
miscalculation on my part. Typhus of course easily dealt with a
couple of battlesuits, wiping them off the board before they even got
a chance to strike, and earning Coulton Slay the Warlord. Seeing
victory slip through my fingers, I tried to bull my Hammerhead across
the open space for Linebreaker, but it had been hanging around the
rear area, and covering that space was just too much for it,
especially since I still needed it firing on the off chance it could
deal with the objective-holders. No such luck, however, and when the
game ended it turned out that, despite having lost nearly everything
he'd put on the table, Coulton's tenacity had managed to earn him a
solid draw. Both of us had a single objective, and both of us had a
secondary, with the tiebreaker unclaimed by either player.
Let this be a lesson, then. No matter
how well things are going, no matter how clearly the dice are
favouring you, you can never be too prepared by an appearance from
good old Murphy and his law.
Running Total: 2-1-1
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