Weekend at Burnie's 3 - Round 1 - Chaos Space Marines vs Craftworld Eldar

Lockdown may have delayed it, but Burnie's still the life of the party!

Speaking of delays, I have been exceptionally tardy with writing up these battle reports (unlike Pootle, who attended the same event and turned in his homework on time). This weekend landed during a hectic few months when I had no time to slow down the hobby train. 

But now I can alight onto the platform, get a cup of tea and a curled sandwich, and organise my recollections.

Weekend at Burnie's is a Warhammer community event that I'm very fond of. The last two events were absolute humdingers and have grown from a dedicated core of sixteen hobbyists to a massive eighty players. Narrative is the key to event, as is having fun. No-one's really interested in who wins it (and I should know - I've previously won it!)

Having previously played in Bristol Independent Gaming, this event was to be held at Factorum, a very impressive hobby store/workshop/venue deep in the West Country. 

The Evil Warriors - Chaos Space Marines

Being a narrative event, I wasn't planning to take a competitive army - I wanted to shoehorn my unruly collection of Skeletor's Evil Warriors into a playable army. I did this by picking my Chaos Space Marine units and then assigning a suitable character to lead them. I also took an Imperial Bastion as terrain (I'm not sure the meta has caught up with this idea yet).

I took the army as the generic 'Renegade Chapters' (it didn't seem right to take legion traits) - so I got the advantage of advance+charge. I was also left with about six stratagems I could play - so that will keep things simple!

All the weapons loadouts were WYSIWYG, because I was going to confuse my poor opponent enough, and it boiled down to my having a couple of large troop containers, with combat units to run out and more robust units (with a single wound!) to take objectives.

I'd also geared Tzeletor up to be effective in melee and have the chance to turn slain characters into Chaos Spawn (so you may now have guessed my hidden agenda!)

Renegade Chapters - Vanguard Detachment

• Tzeletor - Master of Possession (HQ) (Warlord)
  Bolt pistol Force stave, Frag & Krak grenades
  Warlord: Exalted Champion
  Psychic powers: Cursed Earth, Possession
• Psi-Klops - Chaos Lord (HQ)
  Power sword, Bolt pistol, Frag & Krak grenades
  Relic: The Murder Sword
• Brazen Beast-Man - 8 x Khorne Berzerkers (Elite)
  2 x Lightning Claw, 7 x Bolt Pistols, 4 x Chainaxes, 3 x Chainswords, Frag & Krak grenades, Icon of Wrath
• Myphitic Mer-Man - 7 x Plague Marines (Elite)
  Plaguesword, Power fist, 4 x Boltguns, 1 x Blight launcher, 1 x Flail of corruption, Blight & Krak grenades, Icon of Despair
• Evil Lynnquisitor - 9 x Rubric Marines (Elite)
  Force stave, Inferno Bolt Pistol, 4 x Inferno boltgun, 4x Warpflamer, Icon of Flame
• Clawful - Greater Possessed (Elite)
  Daemonic mutations
• 7 x Possessed (Elite)
  7 x Horrifying Mutations
• Spawnlash - Chaos Spawn (Fast)
  (held in reinforcement points)
• Trap-Jawsmith - 3 x Obliterators (Heavy)
  Crushing fists, Fleshmetal guns, Mark of Slaanesh
• Chaos Land Raider (Heavy)
  2 x Twin lascannon, Twin heavy bolter, Combi-flamer, Havoc launcher
• Greyskull - Bastion (Fortification)
  4 x Heavy bolter, Icarus Lascannon

Points: 1750 | Level: 91 | Battle-forged - Vanguard - Fortification Network: 8 CPs

Game 1: Craftworld Ulthwé 

My opening battle was a first for me - I've never faced Craftworld Eldar before, so this would be a treat (and mercifully, the weekend happened just before their new codex took effect, so we had a level 8th Edition playing field)

My opponent was Chollie, and his Craftworld Ulthwé had a very neat backstory: he was due to attend Weekend at Burnies 2 but had been foiled by car trouble - so this Craftworld had been lost in the webway all this time!

It seemed a very good all-round Craftworld list: a collection of hover tanks, jetbikes, wraith constructs, squishy infantry and all-powerful psykers. they spread out across the board, ready to dominate the objectives on the snow-capped hills.

I loaded up my transports where I could: Tzeletor, Psi-Klops, Clawful and the Possessed inside the Land Raider; Berzerkers and Obliterators in the Bastion, Plague Marines and Rubric Marines footslogging it.

Chollie took the first turn and moved forward onto the central objectives, while gunning down most of my Plague Marines, and chipping away at my transports.

My response was an aggressive one: what remained of the Plague Marines staggered towards on squad of Guardians, while the Berzerkers burst out of Greyskull and headed for the Jetbikes. 

Even the Rubric Marines fancied their chances in combat and used the Chaos Familiar stratagem to switch out the mini-Smite for Warptime and race to supper the Berzerkers.

The Land Raider trundled down the centre, but I was keeping its passengers safely inside for another turn, as there was a chuck of Wraithguard waiting inside the Wave Serpent for me to make a move.

The combats went as expected: the Brazen Beast-Man tore through the Jetbikes.

Evil Lynnquisitor and her Rubrics beat up some Guardians, though not enough to force them off the objective (suddenly having no ObSec units in my army seems like a daft idea).

Poor Mephitic Mer-Man lost the rest of his Plague Marines to Overwatch, but completed his charge to begin what turned out to be an epic struggle with a full squad of Guardians.

The Craftworld's second turn took an interesting direction: my Land Raider turned into a goblin!

This was one of the random twist cards that the TOs were doling out freely - and with the stats of a goblin, my heavy tank didn't last long against Eldar firepower. And, as all the Possessed staggered out of the wreckage, they were also chewed up by shuriken and wraith cannons.

The Farseer attempted to wipe out Mer-Man but (since he is still an old datasheet Plague Marine), he managed to shrug off the mortal wounds and continue to knock down a couple more Guardians.

The rest of my army had been spared the remaining firepower, since the Craftworlders had mostly been falling out of combat. Although I think it was at this point that Greyskull finally succumbed to heavy artillery, Trap-Jawsmith and the Obliterators falling out of the ruins.

Left decidedly short on minions, my three characters decided to go for broke and attack everything.

Tzeletor and Clawful took down the Farseer on jetbike, while Psi-Klops ducked past the Wraithlord and went straight for Eldrad Ulthran.

Having broken through the left flank, the Berzerkers and Rubrics were now rampaging through the Craftworld back lines. Meanwhile the sole Plague Marine continued to defy fate as he smashed one Guardian at a time.

Meanwhile, the Obliterators eschewed their Fleshmetal guns in favour of melee and charged into the Wraithguard that had made a play for my home objective. The conflict wasn't earth-shaking, but it did put enough bodies on the objective to contest it.

With the Craftworlders up on victory points, but running low on assets (the random appearance of a Baneblade to gun down a Wave Serpent didn't help), the aim was just to cling on.

Tzeletor hadn't read the script on this one, and ran straight to Eldrad after juicing up his havoc staff with Possession...

A few swift whacks later, and I had a new Chaos Spawn for my army!

There wasn't much left for the Craftworld by this point (although that nearby Wraithlord is looking ominous for Tzeletor), and with time running out, we did a quick tally a realised that I just didn't have enough turns left to rack up victory points on the objectives I had taken.

The Craftword Eldar's foresight had saved the day - and they took the victory!

... the melee with Mer-Man and the Guardians continued to the last. In the end, I think the survivors decided to shake hands (or tentacles) and call it even,

It was a cracking opening battle against a great opponent - I was very happy with my choice of army, which resulted in total mayhem on the tabletop.