Battle report: 2000 points daemons versus Dark Angels

this nice battle report from our roving reporter darryn soaking up the sun in that tropical nordic climate :)

So I had my usual list plus the goodies I recently got. I dropped skulltaker in lieu of some more bodies on field. 20 plaguebearers, 6 flamers and 6 screamers and some change after shuffling around stuff. I lost seekers and flesh hounds though. I got my finecast riddled bloodthirster out and about for action (going to replace the darn thing on thursday! curses) and a nasty tzeentch daemon prince. My opponent, one Aartu, fielded 25 terminators in 5 man squads, led by belial, with 2 ven dreads and a land raider to back it all up. We got the mission with one objective in either deployment zone with the diagonal version. We couldn't work out the proper names for these, and i'm too lazy to get my book out. I won the dice roll and chose the side with the most amount of impassable terrain, clearing my intended DZ. 

Turn 1: 

I chose my deployment (gribbly fliers first to ping tanks) and the chaos gods disagreed with my choice, sending in my much weaker (to shooting) assault troops and soul grinder. I had hoped to knock out a few tanks before coming in, but oh well. Most of my stuff ended up hiding this turn, except the suicide bomber flamers, who were supposed to gimp termie squads marching up field. They instead decided to surround a land raider and melt it into all sorts of psychodelic colours. After 3 templates, it looked much more like the beatles tour bus than a fearsome war engine of the machine cult. 3 hull points in 1 turn, boom! 

For my sins, I had all the terminator squads turn on the flamers, which was not so bad in retrospect. The 69 point squads died horribly (and managed to pull down 2 more terminators from overwatch) while my soulgrinder laughed at the pitiful attempts to scratch his paint. 

Turn 2:

Well half my gribbly stuff arrived despite me needing it. Some plaguebearers oozed onto the far objective and the thirster gloriously arrived from deepstrike. Note that if you chose to glide in, you ignore all terrain, meaning you can pretty much deep strike whereever you like. My screamers and daemon prince were still busy playing backgammon in the warp, and were delayed. The soul grinder and horrors opened up some whoop ass on the terminators, but coloured lights and daemonic phlegm do nothing to tactical dreadnaught armour. The thirster ran (how does one run whilst flying?) and set himself up for some vector strike goodness next turn. 

The plaguebearers obviously insulted Belials fashion sense since most of the terminators turned around and opened fire on the poor dudes. They didn't last long but between them and the bloodthirster buzzing around, all the fire for this turn was pretty much ineffective. One squad of terminators tried to charge the soul grinder and failed, leaving them helplessly in the open for next turn. 

Turn 3: 

So now my gribbly stuff is all in. Great. The prince arrived near the landraider whilst the screamers deployed in the biggest open space I could find. The rest of my dudes howevering around the far end of the field now began their long slog to get to the other side. The shooting phase was topsy turvy. Vomitting and shooting his harvester gun at the terminators in front of him did nothing for the soul grinder, whilst the fresh prince (see what I did there) melted the fun bus and made the 2 termies inside walk. The thirster flew over a dreadnaught and hacked off one of its arms. The assault did not go well. Soul grinder charged in with 5 attacks which all bounced off the termies storm shield, and got immobilised for his efforts, ouch. I must say, screamers turbo boosting 24 inches on the turn they deep strike is the absolute bee's knees, long live 6th ed!!!!

The terminators milled around some more. Assault cannons tried in vain to bring down either the thirster or prince, but it was simply not enough fire power to do anything to them. The soul grinder died in his turn, and the consolidating terminators set themselves up in the midst of tons of daemonettes and bloodletters. Some terminators learnt the hard way that if you punch a glob of tentacles, its hard to get a vital organ, go tarpit horrors go! 

Turn 4: 

Now it gets juicy. The thirster and prince descended from on high to tag team belials squad whilst the screamers wheeled around to go rip some dreadnaughts a new exhaust vent. The daemonic horde that was my left flank descended on the hapless terminators (12 in total) and began the process of dismantling them over the next turns. The prince popped a few termies before jumping at Belials squad but between him and a raging god of war, they did zero wounds! Also took zero in return. biggest flop epic fight in history. Suprisingly 40 something rending and 45 str 5 attacks failed to take down 5 terminators, wtf. Screamers with the new update (str 5 armourbane ap2) made absolute mincemeat of the one venerable dreads. 

Starting looking very bad for the marines at this point as everything was stuck in assault, my field of expertise. I finally pulled down the one terminator squad and got started on the next, whilst the thirster decided he was going to get skulls for the skull throne and started to lay into belials squad. A neat trick was when the prince got charged in the rear by a ven dread, he used smash, not much you can do against str 10 hits coming your way. 2 penetrating hits but it still lived on. 

Turn 5: 

Mopping up. Belial's head was added to the throne of skulls along with the rest of his cronies. The prince died but took the dread with him, and the swarm of daemons finally clipped off the skulls of the last few terminators on the left flank. All but 2 of 25 terminators were remaining. 

End result: Objective + killed walord, 4 points versus first blood 1 point. Win to me! 

It was agood game but I really felt the pain of not having the right weapons to go through terminator armour. Man they are tough. Stormshields are even tougher! I like how things work in the new edition, if you are not using funny wound allocation stuff, the combats go much more swiftly, and there are many new rules to use. Its nice when they are named (smash etc) as it helps you remember you can do it. 6th edition is looking to be very friendly to daemons so far, so really loving the change!

battle report, sunday 12/08/2012

hello all. your favorite roving reporter here, hmmm, some might say raving, but i don't listen to the voices in my head all that much anymore, so without further ado, news from the front lines

my second 750 points 6ed game of 40k

my opponent today was travC, and his blood angels took on my dark eldar

capture the flag mission, sorry relic mission

both of us rolled and got zippo for warlord traits, and travis decided i should deploy first. 2 ravagers behind a building and my 2 big troop squads, each one with an attached hemmie, one mostly in some area terrain and another on a hill. he deployed some scouts in a ruin with the jump pack squad next to the ruin with the termie squad in front of them. his speeder hid behind a building also. initiative was not stolen and turn 1 nightfight began. yes nightfight, the thing all dark eldar and tau armies pray for. and it's not that hard to get. you have a 1 in 6 chance on the warlords table combined with a 3 in 6 chance of getting it from the night fight rules also. someone who can actually remember his school maths can work out that combined percentage for me please :)

turn1

dark eldar shot and killed 2 scouts, they fell back behind the ruins they were in.

blood angels termies and jumpers advanced, speeder popped out and tried to pot shot a ravager but was just over 36" away so couldnt see it so unleashed some frag doom on the one troop squad. only 2 died thanks to a 3+ cover save and 5+ fnp save. not enough to run away til the librarian fear of fluffy bunnied them and they ran like little girls. all of the 3 inches back from where they advanced from initially. sigh. at least it wasnt off the table.

turn2

even with premeasuring and sufficient movement one ravager stil was short on 2 of the 3 dark lances, so only 1 hullpoint taken off the speeder. second ravager didn't do squat, with 3 guns in range.

termies came around the pumphouse and was joined by the sanguinary priest, ready to charge the dark eldar on the hill. charge was declared, 48 poisoned splinter snap shots and 3 str 5 ap 2 liquifer shots later and the lead termie and the priest was red paste. charge failed.

turn3

took both ravagers to finally bring down the speeder. both dark eldar troop sqauds hozed the remaining 3 termies with splinter fire, something like 60 or 70 shots worth and termies are left unscathed. grrrr 2+ armor save grrrr.

termies advanced making ready to charge, jumpers with libby jumped onto the flag, blood lance was aimed at the one ravager but alas the witch, she was denied. so the ravager was assaulted. interesting point, it looks like you might actually have to declare that you are multicharging before you charge. ah of course, for overwarch purposes. now i remember. anyhoo, so only 1 ravager was charged and got the snot krak grenaded out of it. it went boom but nothing else died. termies charged hill dark eldar squad, lots of snap firing left no termies dead but i think the dark eldar managed to kill one termie in close combat. dark eldar lost combat and ran away a few inches. think it was like 3" again.

turn 4

jumpers received some poison lovin, killing all but the libby who got dark lanced to death.

hill dark eldar regrouped, snap fired lots at remaining 2 termies but nothing happened.

termies charged dark eldar again, more snap fire, more nothing, another 2 or 3 dark eldar dead and thems running again. a few inches.

turn 5

we called it a day here, i was ahead in killpoints so game to the dark eldar. game took us about 2 and half hours for 750 points. eesh, need to practice. but that was with lots of talking, setting up terrain and neal popping by to say hello and show us his awesome skyscraper and necron breakfast snack