Weekend At Paul's - Day 2

The Weekend At Paul's continues... 

...and with five different homemade curries to fuel us, Saturday was looking spicy.

Battle #3 – Blood Angels vs Death Guard and Creations of Bile

The first game on Saturday was a 2v1 – Chewie had returned with his Blood Angels and my Creations of Bile had paired up with Steve (NotRob) and his Death Guard.

We played the Open Play mission Stand Off (three objectives – score 1VP for the home objective, 2VP for the middle one, 3VP for the enemy one) and deployed in Hammer and Anvil style.

The Blood Angels set up a castle of Razorbacks, supported by a Librarian Dreadnought, with Stormtalons racing forward and a deep strike surprise in the form of Terminators, Sanguinary Guard, Jump Chaplain and The Sanguinor.

The bad guys formed a core of Possessed, Venomcrawlers and characters, supported by the Daemon Prince, Bloat Drone and Blight-Haulers. One squad of Chaos Space Marines were elected to hold the back objective, and some Blightlord Terminators went into deepstrike.

The Blood Angels started, but not very promisingly. A barrage of lascannon shots failed to kill the Bloat Drone, and the Stormtalons were left open to being charged. In return, the firepower of the Blight-Haulers cleared away all three Razorbacks in a couple of turns and the Warp Talons and Daemon Prince took a Stormtalon each.

It was not all plain sailing, as the Daemon Prince failed his charge, and the Warp Talons were rudely interrupted by the arrival of The Sanguinor. The heretics gave it their best shot, and ripped the Exemplar of the Host down to his last wound (if I hadn’t lost one to Overwatch, I would have had him!) before The Sanguinor killed them all.

Meanwhile the huge pack of Possessed were steaming upfield, having grabbed the central objective in the first turn (Bile’s boys move fast!). This was answered by six thunderhammer Terminators, but they failed their charge and got countercharged by the Possessed, who killed four of them and (due to my Taken Alive stratagem) sent another one fleeing back to the teleportarium (that's the second Blood Angel I've dragged back to Bile's laboratory).

The Librarian Dreadnought charged in to save the situation, but with the characters and Venomcrawlers lending their support, the rest of the Blood Angels were swept from the centre.

In the chaos rear lines, things were less comfortable: both Stormtalons had flown there, together with the Sanguinary Guard and Jump Chaplain. 

The Chaplain charged into the Chaos Space Marines, wiping out half of them – but then suffering nine wounds back from the champion’s lightning claw! (I rolled four Death to the False Emperor’s in my first attack – I’m going to miss that ability). The invulnerable save just about held the Chaplain together on one wound, and the backfield was looking very shakey.

The Daemon Prince reversed direction to come and support the backfield, but as he was chopping down a Stormtalon, The Sanguinor popped up again and the two combat monsters killed each other.

In the Blood Angels’ backfield, the situation was equally dire – the Blightlords had landed and, with only one squad of Tactical Marines holding the home objective, it was claimed within a turn.

As the battle closed, both sides had essentially flipped – they were in firm control of each others’ deployment zone, but with the centre held by Fabius Bile, the points tally was unrecoverable. Victory to the heretics!

Battle #4 – Thousand Sons vs Grey Knights

This game was my toughest test: Winters SEO had a competitive Grey Knights army for my to try my luck against. It had all the usual Grey Knight units plus a hard kernel of ten Terminators, backed up by Drago, Librarian and Apothecary – when everything fell right, this monster unit could get rerolls, 4++ invulnerable saves, and 5+++ shrugs.

Going against this was my best list that I’d used to demolish the Brotherhood of Martyrs the previous day. I’d learned from my last fight against Grey Knights and had plenty of backline firepower (that could be buffed out of deny range) as well as Spawn and Tzaangor to act as a Smite screen.

It turned into a fair old contest – as Grey Knights vs Thousand Sons always seem to – but I’d made the decision to challenge that Terminator death star with my own block of resilient, resurrecting Scarab Occult Terminators. Both forces spent the battle tearing chunks out of each other, and by the end of the battle, there were only three survivors in each squad.

Guron the Unfavoured was in charge of the centre.
I never learn.

But while I’d been pouring my attention into the central fight, I’d been bleeding points on the flanks. With Grey Knights units deepstriking in (and making long charges), there were able to clear out the units holding the flank objectives and effectively shut down my scoring.

I ended the battle with far more of my army on the field than last time – but about 20pts behind on VPs and with much to think about for next time.