Sandcastle: Emperor's Children vs Alpha Legion

As promised, it's a trial run for Kas's new army. Chaos on all sides, who is the most chaotic?

I'm Becoming More Like Alpha

Not going to lie, I'm totally out of practice. Parachuting myself straight back into a 2000 point battle with objectives, missions and rules all over the place is going to be a hilarious deathtrap. Hurrah! That's what the Alpha Legion do best. 

I do have a vague grasp of CSM still, and I like Oaths as a thing, so I'm building for that around this list right here. It's the shifty Deceptors, lots of moving around and early infiltration, which is probably a terrible idea against a fast assault army. Reckon I have a decent chance at shooting big holes in it, though, and I've got more armour than he does. Thin, easily killed by Noise Marines armour, but armour all the same!

I'm also bringing my own Noise Marines, to prove that new model syndrome is a real thing that you can capitalise on during a match. They have a 110% chance of surviving this victorious, I guarantee it. Otherwise I've got kind of a grab-bag of units (very much what's in the collection). This means I'm definitely not tournament strength, but I do have a small advantage over Kas in terms of small, rubbish squads to score objectives with or claim board quarters. 

Not the Children of the Khorne

Kas is, understandably, bringing all the shiny new toys. That's the whole point of this! He did ask if he could borrow three Rhinos, which would be a very sensible thing to bring for his assault troops. Luckily I don't have three Rhinos, and the one chaotic one I do have was already in my list. Looks like he's footslogging it!

Here's his list. It's a Coterie of the Conceited, and they look like exactly how I'd tool up this selection of models too. It's the Contract Whist list - the Warlord predicts how many units you're going to kill, and if you get it right, you score army bonuses up to a horrifying combo of reroll ones for everything, lethals, sustained and crits on 5+ at the top end. I'd better hope I'm already dead by the time he reaches those levels of horror. 

Mission

We're using the newest set of cards, which I sort of vaguely understand. Some sort of challenger thing where the loser gets a bonus to catch up? Sounds right up my street. 

The game is an Asymmetric one, and here it is along with the mission. 

So you score 3 VPs per objective, unless you hold all your home objectives. Then you score 3 for each of those and 5 for any others, which makes for a nice advantage for the attacker. Balancing that is the suggestion that the defender needs a nice fat defensive stronghold to look after, so let's see what my terrain collection can make of that. 

It's a beach landing! 

After a bit of rolling and deciding, my Alphas are the attackers, coming in from north and south, while the Emperor's Children are chilling out in their beach huts, listening to Blue Swede and chugging on brewskis. Can my chaos waves wipe them out, or will they merely don their sunglasses and play volleyball with our skulls?

The AI decided that five objectives weren't enough. Like I don't have enough to worry about without hallucinatory goals.

Deployment

Kas leaves a few drop-ins as reservists - the small unit of Flawless Blades and unaccompanied units of Infractors and Noise Marines. Everything else is strung out across the middle, huddled in cover as much as possible and alarmingly close to my assault positions. 

I've gone for a smaller force to the north. Cultists, a Rhino full of Possessed with a MoP, the DP and the Disco Lord. Terminators with their Lord and the Obliterators in the warp, everything else wading ashore from the ocean. I know I have the first turn, so I'm generally aiming forwards and hoping to find cover on the way in, D-Day style. 

Using my army tactics, I can sneak Cultists on to both the No Man's Land objectives and then sticky them immediately. That might force those pesky kids to come out and fight me!

Turn 1

Off I go - my draw is two cards I can't score (and redraw), getting Cleanse for the midfield objectives and something I discard later as a bad lot. 

The Cultists were going to sticky and run, but they get to cleansing instead, making some nice chaotic sandcastles as everything else pounds forwards. The only ones hanging back are my Noise Marines, who I need to hold my home objective. They also don't have any targets to hand, so they may as well wait a bit. 

The tag team of Disco and DP aim for the nearest enemy objective and the clutch of Infractors hiding round the corner. Both of these two have big moves, so I've got easy charges to hit that squad hard. 

Shooting isn't too bad for the little I can target. The Venomcrawler murders half a squad of Noise Marines with some help from the Helbrute's Dark Pact aura, but I decide not to open up with the Daemon Prince or the Discordant, it'll make their charges harder. 

This proves to be a wise plan, as they both fail utterly. I reroll the DP in, he squishes two marines with his mortal bomb and then whiffs pretty hard, barely killing another one. At least the Infractors do just as badly, managing nothing at all despite their Lord Exultant's best efforts. More than the Disco Lord is doing, the lazy git. Still, I've got some easy objective scores and a toehold in enemy territory. 

Kas promptly butchers everything he can reach. The big unit of Flawless Blades hurtles halfway across the field and mulches the Disco Lord before he can even look startled, while a combination of Noise Marine weapons turns my Daemon Lord into a pink cloud. Spare Infractors rush the Cultists to the north, so I use Relentless Pursuit, a 6" reaction move, to leg it. Turns out their pursuit is more relentless than mine, they catch me and I'm instantly just so many giblets in the wind. 

To the South, I'm more or less okay - a few wounds off the Venomcrawler but otherwise unscathed, but the North is a mess and I've lost two hefty pieces. Kas has used this to fuel his Conceited predictions, and his army is already going to be rerolling hit rolls of one, and he's also managed to score both of his objectives (take a held objective and kill an enemy unit on one, I think, or something like that).

I've got a bad feeling about this. 

Turn 2

I'm not dead yet, though - the Terminators drop in to the North as the Possessed exit the Rhino and prepare to counter-mulch the Flawless Blades. My southern advance remains general, although the Obliterators now pop into the tower to provide covering fire. My objectives are to grab an enemy objective and do some kind of teleport homer style action mission, which the Cultists and Chosen in the south manage.

The broad plan for the covering fire is to try and neutralise the Noise Marines, which are already proving deadly. This doesn't go great - the damaged squad is reduced to a Lord Kakophonist, but the others escape with a single casualty. The Master of Possession also pulls a mean surprise and snipes half the wounds off a Lord Exultant up north. 

I've at least teed up a couple of reasonable charges for the Venomcrawler and the Chaos Spawn, or so I thought - they fail them both, the idiots. I throw the Rhino at the Infractors at the top, the Possessed smash into the Flawless Blades and I pull From All Sides on the Terminators to get them a decent bonus to their charge. They make it in, at least!

Combat is a mixed blessing. The Rhino drives over an Infractor and loses half its wounds, the Possessed kill half the Blades for about the same in return and the Terminators kill one of their own with a Dark Pact before sending off the wounded Exultant and his Infractors in relatively short order. This means I've nicked one of Kas's home objectives, which reduces his scoring a bit, so I'm in the lead for now. 

Emperor's Children have appeared during my turn, though - a tiny unit of Flawless Blades down on the beach, who now rush the Chosen and start doing unpleasant things to them with knives. They don't all die immediately, at least, and damage the enemy in return, but it's an unwelcome development all the same. 

Not as bad as the other developments, which see me fail almost every single armour save I'm asked to make. The Rhino almost explodes to bolt pistol fire, and keels over when someone nudges it with a sharp knee shortly afterwards. 

Not quite sure which metallic spider creature they killed, but they certainly did a good job of it

Pop goes the Venomcrawler, the spawn prove a tasty snack for the Daemon Prince, the Possessed get shredded before Lucius can even take a go, and the Terminators! The Terminators are the biggest misery of the turn - a single volley from the nearest Noise Marines kills the squad completely with minimum effort, then the Flawless Blades run the Lord over, again before Lucius can have a go. Bully for him. 

My bad feeling has increased exponentially. 

Turn 3

Well, it goes as you'd expect from here on in. What little I have left does at least prove relatively valiant. I put some dents on the Daemon Prince (including a doughty autopistol shot from the Cultists), the Flawless Blades lose a man when the Chosen retreat and grenade them and I kill off a couple more Noise Marines here and there, but Kas is having a lovely time on armour saves right now. I score no missions, but rack up lots of nice CPs instead. 

These don't quite save me - Kas gets a tempting target of the beach objective, and gets me off my home base with the last reinforcement squad of Infractors. He can't quite finish off the Noise Marines, though, and my Helbrute absorbs a DP to the face while the Cultists somehow hold off the last Flawless Blade and allow the Cultist Firebrand (first time deployed in a game, and not a bad piece in fact) a short moment of glory. 

My Obliterators get nuked, mostly by my inability to roll above a two on armour saves, the Legionaries take a chunk out of some Infractors but can't finish them before the guys who were all up North a moment ago speed back down and join in, and I'm all over bar shouting and bad feelings.

Overrun!

Coda

Ouch! I haven't played 40K in months, and it's great to see my dice skills haven't suffered much during my time off. Kas's troops could have fired their guns blindfolded into the air and I'd still have been dropping, that's the kind of armour saves I had throughout. Plus all the sand clearly gummed up my awful awful charges. 

All the same - good game! The Emperor's Children impressed us both. Kas realised he was betting a lot lower than he could have on his Conceits. Using a strat to top them up was a handy way of countering his natural caution, but the army's a lot harder hitting than he realised. I was extremely impressed/horrified by their speed, too. A lot of units were easily moving over twenty inches (including charges) a turn. 

The mission maybe didn't help me? Having to run towards a fast melee army in a heavy defensive position isn't maybe the wisest tactical plot I've yet attempted, but I think I actually did a reasonable job with what the dice gave me. I'll bring bigger guns next time (d20s, perhaps). 

Good to give the new army a nice easy start. They'll be heading back across the North Sea and perhaps appearing on the YouTubes in due course, but you saw them here first!