Apocalyptic Battle!

Jørn vs Trond, Word Bearers vs Biel Tan Strikeforce
5500 pts a side!

The weekend is over, the tables have been emptied and and the armies are laid to rest in their respectable storage compartments. So what happend?

Well we did broadcast almost the entire evening on friday at Ustream.com
and after a very intersting meeting with mr Tullamore, we stopped playing after my turn 3, and decided to kick it of agian on sunday afternoon.

That said. Jørn did get the upper hand early in the game, though I managed to take out almost all of the long range firepower of the Word Bearer army by turn 3. As always the two army commanders know one anothers strenghts and weaknesses, and again it turned out just as close as it can be. The mission being played was objectives. The bigges surprise at least for me was range. Well range is range always, but now with 6x8 feet table, range 36 was kinda short.... I even had to check range with my fire prisms with range 60!

When we stopped playing I had all my reserves committed, all but one unit of warpspiders which where delayed in the previous turn be a deepstrike mishap.
Jørn still had about 40 lesser demons and 1 greater demon tucked away in his sleeve, so Sunday was gonna be pretty interesting.

By turn 3 I had gotten rid of 1 defiler, 1 vindicator, 2 landraiders, 1 dreadnought, 10 Berzerkers, 4 Oblitirators, and reduced a noise marine sqd down to 4, a chaos spacemarine sqd down to 2.
My casulaties where limited, but my fragile warwalkers where engaged with both chaos terminators incl a lord, and 1 defiler. (Kept that flank busy for a while :)) I had lost all but one of my firedragons, one sqd of warp spiders, all my striking scorpiones to the assaulting noise marines, half my shining spears sqd and on or two warlocks. All of my 4 wraithlords where down to their last wound. My Avatar also had lost two wounds.

Jørn now controlled 2 obectvies - kinda, and I controlled 1.

Sunday: Nobody gains the upper hand! Jørn summones 40 lesser demons and one greater demon. Suddenly he controlls a lot more... His terminators and defiler finaly finishes of my walkers and turn their attention elsewhere. The terminators are too far away to be of any significant threath to me. The defiler on the other hand worried me a bit. Jørn finished of my Shinig spear exarch and the last member of the sqd with his Slaanesh lord and was set on fighting the Avatar of Khain. On the other side of the table the noise marines and one chaos dreadnought assaulted my vypers and in frustration of the elusive Eldar vehicles the dreadnought rolled 2 sixes to hit - auto pentration S 10 vs armour 10, and completed the cc with rolling another 2 sixes for damage exploding the two remaining vypers.
In addition, all but the swooping hawk exarch was killed, and he decided to leave the battle by launching himself high in to the air and out of cc.
So what to do. Well I had to take out A LOT of lesser demons, and it wouldn`t hurt to take out a greater on either. So my snipers picked of two wounds from the greater demon, my other sqd of warp spiders landed - on target, and in one volley killed 7 demons lurking in some ruins. My farseer on jetbike casted doom on another demon sqd, and combined twin linked shuriken fire took their numbers down to 4. Still a lot of demons to go! My harlequins who finally had rallied used fleet and assaulted the remaning two chaos marines in no mans land. 9 dancing clowns against 2 kinda lonesome marines - We didn`t waste time to roll it.
Now it was time to move. My Storm guardians and Dire avengers where both on board their wave serpents and in the moving and shooting fase used their star engines to gain 4 + cover save and contest 2 of Jørns objectives. The last firedragon looked to the ruines and saw the blood crazed figure of Kharn - not lurking but screaming in frustration of no more victims to slaughter. He moved within range and calmly leveled his melta gun, whispering a prayer to the long dead eldar gods, and fired. Kharn was no more.
The avatar and the Slaanesh lord duelled and the avatar scored 2 wounds on the chaos lord on bike, but 1 was saved by his demon aura. The Avatar look with rage and the ancient enemy that so long ago scattered him across the universe.
The farseer and remaning warlocks assalted and viped the lesser demons. And it came to us that we now each had a pretty impressive force fighting one another over...Well none of us could claim the objective... hq, elite and heavy was the only thing present, and my troops where either too far away, or busy guarding my own obejctive. In hindsight I should have loaded up my empty falcon with 5 pathfinders and at leaste tried to claim the objective. The Autarch had left the safety of fortune and strenght in numbers and was killed outright by 2 assaulting oblitirators.
In the following cc. the greater demon was killed by the farseer and warlocks, who after passing an amazing 11, 3+ armour saves use their whichblades to make short work of the raging demon. The Slaanesh lord was agian wounded by the avatar, but his posessed Blissgiver, Demon weapon of Slaanesh, finaly found a way through the demon aura of the Avatar and vanquished him back to his craftworlds restingplace.

After this we looked at the battle field. We had played 4 turns. At this point Jørn had the upper hand 2-1. But we had not set a turn limit or time limit that we at least could remember from friday night so we decided "simulate" turn 5 and the most likely outcome.

I held on objective deep in my own deployment. As did Jørn. Jørn had more or less controll over on objective in no mans land, and I figured that 10 dire avengers with bladestorm should be able to take out 8 lesser demons. 9 warp spiders incl. exarch with 2 death spinners and powerblades should be able to take out 10 chaos marines with shooting av cc. or keep them out of 3 inches of the obective. The other 2 obectives where contested or not claimed by the other.
So the conlusion was again - Draw.
Pictures?? Well we kinda forgott that part ;)
Was it fun? It was great!