Battle Report: 1500pts. Chaos vs Inbred Dogs

 By: Chambers

Hello my name is Chambers, long time reader first time poster...

Chosen1 (not chaos) decided that his blog, other than being horfically slow to update, needed to be a little bit classier.  Yea about that, not sure why he let me in.  Maybe his plan is to make every else look better by comparison.

At any rate ‘ere we go…

10,000 years of "keeping the blood pure" has not been kind to the Imperial side of the family

The local league is currently running at 1500 points, which works out great for me as it gives me a chance to play and get used to my Adepticon Friendly list, now if work would just cooperate as well.  After missing the first two weeks of the League I was finally able to get my toy men on the table top last Thursday night.  My opponent was SeeJay87 from The Lonely Havocs.  A great guy despite his unnatural obsession with a dead body rotting in a chair, kind of creepy really.  

At rate below are the lists:

I took CSM with no allies

Terminator Lord with Mark of Slaanesh, Burning Brand, Power axe, Melta bombs and a signal of corruption. (War Lord)

5 CSM terminators with MoS, Icon of Excess, 4 melta guns and an assortment of close combat weapons.

2 – 6 man noise marine squads with 1 blastmaster and 2 sonic blasters

1 – 12 man noise marine squad with 2 blastmasters, 7 sonic blasters and an Icon of Excess on the champ.

1 –  hell drake with the hades autocannon

2 – Single obliterators without upgrades

1 –  “imperial” bastion complete with quad-gun

His List (from Memory) was also straight codex, Space Wolves to be exact

Rune Priest with runic armor and a chooser of the slain (War Lord)

4– 10 man grey hunter squads in drop pods with a single melta gun in each unit

1 – 10 man sky claw unit

1 – Max long fang unit all with missile launchers and a lascanon razorback

1 – Fire Raptor Gunship

PREGAME:

The deployment was short table edges with Kill points as the mission.

My warlord trait was Black Crusader, which would be pretty clutch this game.  While SeeJay87 rolled something that never came into play so we will just pretend that it never happened. 

I won the roll for placement and promptly took the side that would not have me rubbing asses with the next table, luckily for me the terrain was pretty even, not that it would have mattered if it had not been.  SeeJay87 won the roll for first turn.  There was no night fighting on the first turn.

Yea I get it "Road to Nowhere" what can say they are glued down

 

SeeJay87 deployed along his deployment edge as far forward as he could.  The razorback tucked away on the other side of the chapel.  I responded by counter deploying in north west corner of my zone so that when his grey hunters fell out of the skyin their stolen technology my units would be able to support one another.    As a note the two models laying down represent which units are in which buildings.   At this time the large squad has pretty good line of sight to the Long fangs which is not clear from the pictures so I attempt to seize hopefully knocking the missile launchers out for a turn.  I failed to seize and SeeJay87 proceeds to his first turn.

TURN ONE:

Two of his grey hunters squads come down on target and his sky claws move forward to secure a second turn counter to my response.  While he pours most of his firepower into my front noise marine squad I make a ridiculous amount of saves and loose only four marines to the combined weight of fire from his army.  The one shot that wasn’t put into the front noise marines came from the lascanon razorback, which he then manages to one shot my obliterator on the top of my bastion, Lady Luck is a fickle lover indeed.

 

Luck be a lady tonight...

 

My first turn is also pretty quick my only movement is to bring the final two noise marines from the first squad into coherency.  I decided to leave my terminators in the building for now, I wanted to wait until SeeJay87 was fully committed with his podding troops or at least until he was closer.  In the shooting phase my large squad did what it does best, deleting a unit of troops from the board.  The rest of my shooting knocked out a couple of long fangs but that was about it.  At 1500 points I feel that I am overspending on my terminators and on the large squad to the detriment of the rest of my army.  I should slim them down and drop some of the extras, but I probably won’t, I like sacred numbers and besides the models are painted. 

Luck if you've been a lady to begin with...

TURN TWO:

All of SeeJay87’s reserves come in and his pods scatter into better position than positioned and his flying gunboat screams up the side in order to lay waste to my large noise marine squad.  His sky claws move in and his remaining grey hunter squad from the first turn shuffles around in order to do some cleanup work on the 2man noise marine squad.  Remember what I said about Lady Luck? This was my roll to glance/ pen after SeeJay87 elected not to jinx.  I knocked out his turret heavy bolter closest to me, locked its velocity and shake it.  While the rest of his shooting is only average at best, manages to clean out the 2 man squad and half of the 12 man squad, the razorback again manages to one shot the remaining obliterator even after he went to ground. 

Luck be a lady tonight!

The Raptor is not dead yet, just with all the traffic coupled with
an unstable table it seemed prudent not to tempt fate.

At the bottom of two my drake decides to stay off the board so I disembark the terminators from the building that they were bravely holding.  I use the burning brand coupled with black crusader to good effect and drop the grey hunter squad behind the short wall down to a single model.  My large squad manages to reduce and pin the other fresh hunter squad that had been targeting them.  While the squad inside the bastion decides they would rather debase themselves than contribute to the fight. 

 

Bravely bold Sir Robin
rode forth from Camelot.

TURN THREE:

On SeeJay87’s turn he shifts his gunboat and homes in on the terminators killing two while the remaining heavy bolter knocks out another noise marine.  Bolter fire accounts for a third terminator but in another stellar display of rolling SeeJay87 comes up short on his charge.  Meanwhile the large noise marine squad, or what is left of it, does their best impression of a John Woo film dodging almost every missile, mind-bullet, and wrench throw at them, two drop to SeeJays87’s firepower but both heavy guns are still up and active as is the Icon of Bad Touch. 

At the bottom of three the drake phones in to let us know that he is still running a bit late and won’t show up this round either.  Other than that, the dice rolls went my way more than not.  The large squad of noise marines shuffle to get out of sight from the remaining long fangs while still gunning down several of the remaining grey hunters surrounding them.  The terminators manage to multi-charge the sky claws and a pack of grey hunters killing all but one sky claw who then decides to stick around despite needing snake eyes on his leadership test.  To top it all off the quad gun fires on the Fire Raptor on automated fire and still manages to remove the last hull point sending it crashing down.  In fact the only thing that I can’t seem to hurt is the razorback, all my shots directed at it wildly miss. 

 

Looks like there's dirty work afoot

TURN FOUR & END GAME:

At this point is just clean up, while SeeJay87 has more victory points than me at this point he doesn’t have much left on the board.  I start the process of by killing off a lone marine and dropping a pod with melta from the remaining terminators.  Brave Sir Robin my lord decides that bunker in the back without windows/ fire ports needs to be defended in case of a sneak attack.  The remaining two terminators shrug off missile fire and mind bullets to wreck the drop pods scattered about my deployment zone thus insuring that I will have more victory points at the end of the game.  The drake finally decides to show up and only accomplishes a couple of hull points against the drop pods.  Once again he fails to show up until the fourth turn and when he does fire off his gun he only hits with one shot of the four. 

On the northern hill there is a slap fight between three grey hunters and six noise marines that will go on for the rest of the game with not a single model dying in the process.  Maybe I should spend the points to upgrade the Aspiring Champion with a power weapon of some kind, but I already feel like the unit is bloated.  It takes two additional turns of combined fire from the unit in the bastion and the helldrake but I am finally able to strip off the last hull point from the razorback.  At this point SeeJay87 who has been keeping track of victory points declares that he can no longer win and calls the game. 

 

Brave Sir Robin ran away.  Bravely ran away away.
When danger reared it's ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.

POST GAME THOUGHTS:

MVP – the MVP for my side has to go to the terminators with the lord.  

While they hid for the first part of the game they ended up accounting for two squads of hunters, the sky claws and a couple of drop pods thus securing the game.  Recently I have stopped treated this unit as a shock unit and more like a group of school yard bullies.  While I was always happy with their performance before, they are now starting to win me games.  More and more I am becoming convinced that their roll is not to take on the enemy death star units hoping to buy a turn or two, but rather to go after the soft targets that can score. 

Goat – without a doubt the goat for this matchup has to be the hell drake

By the time he decided to show up the game was all but over and even then he failed to do more than strip a couple of hull points.  I have also continued with my streak of only hitting once with the hades autocannon every time I fire it, I have decided that all this means is that when I do get to Adepticon the Puff here will hit 3 or 4 times every round, maybe even five.  That is how maths works, right? 

On the whole no new revelations with my army.  It is a very static shooting army that is surprisingly resilient and wins in the long game.  Now that I can no longer take an escape hatch for my building I am at a loss for how to add mobility to this list at this point level.  Honestly unless I come up with something in fairly short order it will be too late as I am a very slow modeler and even slower to paint. 

Thoughts?  Comments?