zaterdag 25 november 2017

Emperor's Children vs Astra Militarium: 1500 points Battlereport

Aaaah, the Guard, how I loathe them.

To play against that is, I always loved the looks of the massed tanks and rank upon rank of Guardsmen mind you.

But tonight I had to face them, and to be honest I was pretty scared at the prospect.  The list i build for my tastes had not enough models.  I needed to focus on quick combat initiation, so I took Terminators and a Lord, a Raptor squad with melta and a winged daemon princess with Warptime for that.

For a solid firebase, I had two full squads of Marines, a small cultist unit to claim some forlorn objective, a Quad Bolter Rapier, and two havoc squads.  One had a lascannon and three plasmaguns, the other 2 heavy bolters and 2 autocannons.  Supporting this base was a Sorcerer whose most important job was keeping Prescience up

And then my opponent arrived and he kept unpacking... and unpacking... and unpacking.  Spread over three detachments, he had Cadians, Valhallans and "non defined".  A couple of lords, two psykers and an additional astropath, two assassins, a squad ratlings, a big blob of conscripts, heavy weapon teams of lascannons and heavy bolters, drop troopers, three guardsmen regiments, a flamer tank, a missile tank, the gatling russ and a standard russ... oh boy.

My plan was to engage and keep the tanks occupied in combat, forcing them to disengage so they couldn`t shoot.  And hope for the best... which happened with the scenario as Cloak and Dagger included the -1 to hit penalty for shooting over 18 inch.  Something my marines can better cope with then the guard.

Deployment was done, and I felt like a tiny pink dot across a wall of lasguns...


I had turn one, and my daemon princess made perhaps the most important roll of the game.  She managed her warp time, and was in one move within a few inch of the Russ on his flank.  The Terminators and lord materialised on the other flank to take on the gatling tank, and took out the heavy bolter squad to net the point for first blood in the process.  They charged the gatling tank and it escaped with a single wound after some furious battling.  But on the other flank, the daemon princess massacred the Russ and paid back her points already.



This caused Marc, my opponent, to make a capital mistake he admitted on later in game.  By spreading out, he was now forced to split his army in two to deal with the two slaughtering characters on his flanks, leaving my firebase in the middle able to support where needed.

His drop troops arrived, and it took all the firepower on the flank to take down the Terminators, but the lord survived so he could go on for another turn.  The same happened on the other side, with the daemon princess only receiving a single wound...

Turn two saw the Lord shoot down the gatling tank with his combi melta though, while the daemon princess and raptors engaged the Guardsmen, thirsting for the blood of their general.



It took all the firepower of the Guard in the second turn to finally bring down my Lord but that was after he mauled the assassin behind him, and then again mostly due to Smite.  The daemon princess however survived against all odds, including desperate charges by the Guard, and his Ogryn bodyguard went down while his lord was wounded.


By this point, I had all three my objectives on my side, and Will of Chaos, which I had drawn at the start of this second turn, would every time come up with one of them, feeding me easy victory points.  At  7 - 3 and his army in big trouble and tanks taken out, the game was already netted by this point to be honest.

In my third turn, his general was ripped to pieces by Bar'Ba'Ra the Seductress, and while the rest of the force dwindled down his units in both close combat (the Raptors versus the Conscripts) and shooting (the annihilation of his snipers), he needed to bring in all his psykers to shoot down the final wound from the princess at last.



Turn four, which would be the final one, saw my few forces that where on the move push forward, and my Marine squad with twin flamers was annihilated as they failed every save against the Hellhound`s firy death... yes, that`s 7 on 7 fails for a 4+... that hurt, as was the final raptor smited down.  But it was to little to late, as the result ticked out on a 11 vs 6 victory for the forces of Slaanesh.


I admit, I was helped by the scenario, but the gamble I took to charge in on both flanks turned out excellently.  His psyker force was a thorn in my side, costing me the daemon princess, but she was without a doubt the star of the battle, slaughtering about everything that came near her.  And shrugging of volley after volley...

A good game, but this doesn`t solve my `fear for Guard` in any way...


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