So. 1750 pts Word Bearers vs 1750 Biel Tan Craftworld Eldar. Mission - 6 random obejctives, 1 and 2 are objectives, 3 and 4 are worth nothing, 5 and 6 are booby traps.. So taking objectives could be a kill surprise!
Secondary mission - recon.
Jørn wins the roll of and decides to go first. Deploying a strong right flank with 2 vindicators, a landraider with his chaos lord and berzerkers, and 1 sqd of marines in a rhino. The center is reinforced with terminators in another landraider, supported by 10 marines in another rhino. Hard as nails!
So what to do? Well. Vindicators - don`t like them. But with only 24" range and deployed on my far left flank... easy. Just keep out of range. So I deploy my forces on my right flank, using range as cover for my vehicles.
Jørn starts by advancing with his whole army towards 4 of the total of six obectives, claiming 2. At the end of the movement phase it`s time to take a look on what the objectives are. The berzerkers aren't afraid of anything, and with bravado picks up the counter and. Ka-booom!! Booby trapped! D6 WOUNDS on the unit, and he rolls a 5! 2 berzerkers bites the dust. The rest of the berzerkers tries to warn their fellow bretheren about to pick up another counter... Ka-boooom! again!!! Another 5 wounds this time on a chaos marine sqd, killing another 2. What a great start for me! Shooting. No surpirse the vindicators are well out of range and both landraiders deployed smoke in the movement phase.
My turn. Hold it, holdt it. Not much to say in the movement phase, jut som minor adjusments, and time to open fire. My first fireprism targets a vindicator/landraider/rhino/marinesqd all crammed together with focus on the vindicator. HIT! S 9 vs arm. 13. Penetrating hit - no cover. Destroyed! My next prism targets the same bunch minus a vindicator, but only manges to wound 3 marines, who in turn makes 3 coversaves. Brightlances and starcannon on rhino in senter. After a bit of shooting - destroyd! the landraiders are sadly intact as their smoke grenades dissipates and Jørn picks up the dice.
With two burnig wrecks and more objectives close by, Jørn continues his advance. The berzerkers and chaos lord embarkes their land raider and starts to close the gap to the eldar line of vehicles. The so far unscaved chaos marine sqd moves up to another objective, aaaand... Empty! Now I have two obejectives close to me, and one is close to berzerkers in their landraider. Jørn fires his twin lascannons from his second landraider which remained stationary, clipping one fireprism, but protected by it`s holofield only suffers a crew sheaken.
Eldar turn 2. both my reinforcements arrive. 2 warp spidersqds. One with exarch, the other only 9 spiders. Fast jump infantry with a bucketload of S6 shots. The sqd without the exarch scatters 5 inch of target, but it looks close enought to - yes you guessed it :) rear armour of the second vindicator. Armour value 10... The other one tries to get in range of the chaos sqd at the center of the table, but scatter 8 inch and into difficult terrain... And the only one to fail his dangerous terrain test is my powerblade shooty sniky exarch... and they are out of range.. That said, time to reduce som armour to molten slag. 6 Firedragons get their opportunity and the pilot of their waveserpent takes them well within range of the landraider containing the blood crazed berzerkers. Other movement. My shaken fire prism manouvers out of the way to give a clear line of fire for my second one. It targets the chaos marine sqd with a dispersed blast, killing one unfortunate marine. My two twinlinked brightlances does nothing to the second land raider so its up to the dragons. Who as usual lives up to their reputation of beeing a surpreme tank killing unit, exploding the land raider, killing another two berzerkers, leaving an angry chaos lord, walking for the rest of the game. What an insult for a Mon-keigh in terminator armour. And unsuported, my fire dragons looks kinda small compared to the massive bulk of the Chaos Lord.. ouch time...
My 9 warpspiders behind enemy lines, are all found to be in range of armour 10 - rear armour, vindicator. After the dice have been tossed Jørn is left with - a piece of terrain. Immoblised, and weapon destroyed. The next best thing to wrecking it.
Chaos turn 3. Jørn is forced to react on the eldar incrusion behind is lines, and the cost for beeing a bit uncarefull with my warpspiders will cost med dearly. The Land Raider with terminators backs about 5 inches and 5 terminators disembark, looking at 9 warpspiders who I kinda forgot to move out of harms way. Damn Damn Damn!!!! The chaos marine sqd on Jørns right flank turns on it`s heels and goes after the second sqd of spiders. The Chaos Lord leaves the berzerkers who in turn, makes it to the fourth objective marker. And it`s nr 1. Scoring objective.
Now I have to find the one closest to me to at least draw the primary objective.
Shooting. Twin lascanon ws waveserpent. Shaken... Chaos marine sqd vs spiders. 3 dead from pistol fire. Assault. Chaos lord with twin lightning claws vs 6 firedragons. Run away after loosing 3 dragons. Terminators vs 9 warpspiders. 8 dead spiders!!!!!! ouch and the last one... runaway!! 9 chaos marines vs 6 warpspiders. 6 dead spiders. So in one fell swoop I lost 24 aspect warriors. That`s what you get when your highly specialized elite warriors, are challenged with somthing outside their aspect.
Things are looking up for Jørn..
My turn 3. Time to get Jørn back in his corner, or at least keep him there. What do I have left. 2 twin linked brighlances, 2 Prism cannons and 1 twinlinked starcannon currently shaken. Oh and by the way, 10 dire avengers and 10 stormguardians with flamers/warlock w/heavy flamer. So - take out his remaining armour - Land raider. My two waveserpents move into position and both troop sqds disembark, both in range of the last two objectives. And luck is on my side, the storm guardians picks up the right one, leaving them stationary for the remainder of that turn, but my Dire avengers are now free to fire.
fragile guardians. Only chaos marines left, who are close enough given 2 turns and a rhino. The rest of the chaos army is just too far away:)
Turn 4
Jørn moves up towards my deployment, trying to get as much as possible inside my deployment. But without transport in the vicinity, it is slow work.
The remaining Rhino pushes on towards the eldar guardians, but is a bit too far away. The fleeing warpspider is thank shocked and destroyed. The two remaining marines tries to get closer but is stranded in the middle of... Oh shit land, but close enough to assault my starcannon waveserpent. Assault - no hits... thank you.
Turn 4
Securing a d.... no maybe a victory!
The farseer dooms the remaning two marines, cast fortune on his wavserpents and the Dire avengers embarks, and the serpent promtly moves totally out of harms way and ready to move into Jørns deployment in turn 5. A bit close to his terminators who are stranded back there.
One Fire prism also sees this and moves flat out and up to the speeding serpent. The second prism hangs back for dealing with the rihno. My storm guardian now takes with them the objective and moves away. My empty wavserpent blocks the path for the rhino targeting it also with its twin brightlance. The now fully functional wavserpent with starcannon positions its self targeting the chaos marines left in the open - doomed. Death by starcannon.
Turn 5 Jørn tries to get inside my deplomyent, but only his berzerkers makes it. I move flat out with 1 fire prism and one waveserpent, securing 2 units in his deployment. The last Fire prism moves across the table and is left out of harms way but outside Jørn`s deployment. Jørn rolls for random game length and the game ends.
Eldar victorious!
That was close!!
I've taken the liberty of going in and editing Trond's blog post to add a few pictures I took during the game.
ReplyDeleteGetting back into 'normal' 40K again after focussing on the Big Game last month was really nice! We should be testing out the other WW8 missions over the course of the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
Don't forget to check out TSBs new Twitter and Facebook profiles, as well as our Ustream page where the above game can be watched in its entirety.
I agree – Jørns Chaos list is ”Ultra hard” (pun intended)! But if it is one army with the tools to bring it down, it must be Eldar ;)
ReplyDeleteThis game seems to have it al! Plenty Random factor (for instance - 2 objectives blows up turn 1), tactically challenging and heroic moments (for instance – chaos Lord taking out the Fire Dragons). You have captured the spirit and development of the game very well Trond!
Models and terrain looking good, but Trond – it seems your Warp Spider unit # 2 lacks the same finish as the rest ;) - interested in a painting cession?