Turn it up to Eleven: Ultramarines vs Chaos Daemons

It's time! 

New rules, new detachments, new missions, but it's the same middle aged blokes throwing dice at each other as it ever was. Kraken here, ringing in the new with Kasfunatu. He hosted and picked the teams, trying out the Daemons under Belakor; I'm trying to shoot them before they reach me with Ultramarine-themed Crypt Angels. 

I have to admit, I'm kind of excited! 

Crypts Lorraine

Kas has given me an Armoured Spearhead, so I'm starting the new edition as I finished the old. 2000 points of ceramite-clad, gun-toting, tournament-ready Astartes, and I even kind of know what to do with them!

You're looking at:

• Marneus Calgar - to earn command points and look good doing it
• The Wardens of Ultramar - a miscellany of marines and marine-adjacent do-gooders, quite a brick of wounds to add as a command option to help out a squad somewhere (here, the Intercessors)
• Biologis Apothecary - Beefs up the Aggressors with a relic granting them sustained hits on top of the lethals he already gives them
• Justiciar - here to lead the Bladeguard as usual, and giving them and their Land Raider a scout move with Tip of the Spear
• 5 Intercessors - hold objectives and shoot surprisingly hard
• 6 Aggressors - the bolter ones, shooty and punchy, camping in the Land Raider Redeemer
• 6 Bladeguard Veterans - bodyguarding the Justiciar 
• 6 Eradicators - can and will do hideous things to large targets, flying around in the Stormraven today
• A Brutalis Dreadnaught - also in the Stormraven, can punch anything the Eradicators can't finish off
• A Land Raider - big steel death box
• A Land Raider Redeemer - big steel death box, extra hot flavour
• A Stormraven Gunship - big steel death box, now with wings
• 5 Scouts - I guess there were points left over, or maybe they can do an action at some point?

The detachment lets the troops spring out of the transports extra far. It's caught a couple of sensible nerfs since last I saw it, but coupled with Oath of Moment, it can put angry men with guns where they need to go at a rate of knots. It's a Take and Hold disposition, it wants to run out there and grab objectives. 

Shadow Hax

Kas is trying out a blended detachment. This is a combo of Shadow Legion (Belakor's lot, lets you take Chaos Space Marines although he hasn't, gives all the daemons a god-appropriate bonus) and Cavalcade of Chaos (lets daemon Cavalry assault, shoot and charge). 

Who's here?

• Belakor - the shadow boss himself, a huge melee beatstick with some nasty psychic shooting
• A Bloodthirster - yikes, you know what these can do
• A Fateskimmer on Screamer Chariot - leading a unit of 3 Screamers, it's got a bit of flexible anti-armour shooting and is fast
• A Rendmaster on Skull Throne - a Khorne chariot that can super-enhance one nearby Khorne unit's melee to appallingly violent levels
• A Skullmaster - a bigger-than-average Bloodletter on a Juggernaut, leading a big pack of his chunky pals
• A Bloodmaster - the foot soldier version, leading Bloodletters this time
• 10 Bloodletters - daemon infantry, fast and capable in melee but pretty frail
• 6 Bloodcrushers - very fast and very capable in melee, not remotely frail
• 3 Bloodcrushers - jeez there's more of them
• 3 Screamers - manta daemons with nasty bites
• 3 Screamers - more of the same
• 5 Flesh Hounds - Khorne dogs to go
• 5 Seekers - Slaaneshi cavalry daemons, here to represent their faction and hold objectives while other stuff does the killing
• 3 Nurglings - something had to make the Scouts look good

I'm no expert on Chaos Daemons, but I can see a bunch of small utility units backing some extremely fast and nasty melee threats in the form of the Crusher packs and the big Daemons. I know where I'll be concentrating my firepower!

This is a Purge the Foe detachment, you'll never guess what it wants to do. 

Mission

As I'm sure you all know by now, the new edition has a clever table thing to match up your armies and give them something to do. Purge the Foe versus Take and Hold gives us this:

I'm the Immovable Object in this equation, I mostly have to make sure I hold the middle at all costs. Unstoppable Force definitely sounds like a Khorne-heavy cavalry army. They're going to come and kill me, aren't they?

Kas has availed himself of some nice new footprints for the terrain. They look great! (coughcoughpaintyourruinsKas) 

This is going to be a super-legit tourney-style game. I'm throwing myself in at the deep end, as usual. It's not even Kas's first try at this! If you've read many, or, well, any of our battle reports over time, I'm sure you can make your early predictions as to how this is going to go. 

FIGHT

Not much in the way of photos, I'm afraid. I did try and snap a couple of progress shots from the Zoom call, but they didn't work.  

We set up, all hiding behind ruins as you'd expect. The Daemons got turn one and after that it was just all blood everywhere all the time. 

Bloodcrushers that can advance and charge after a scout move turn out to be quite capable of one-shotting a Redeemer. That's exactly what the big unit did, with the rest of the warp-born hanging back round in ruins to watch and the Nurglings plopping about nearby to box me into the south-east corner. 

The Bloodthirster sat in the main ruins, taunting me, with Belakor nearby to provide assistance. The Bloodletters managed an assault and charge to scrag the Scouts, who'd been hoping to grab the middle building - my silly fault, I could have left them in the backline and snuck them in later with their uppy-downy sneaking. 

My turn saw everyone pile out of transports and try and fix this mess. And I did pretty well, Oath of Momenting the Bloodcrushers into bolognese and then clobbering the Nurglings too for good measure. But in the middle, the Bladeguard bit off more than they could chew. 

Despite some good shooting, the Bloodthirster wasn't quite dead, so I'd rammed the Land Raider into it, chucked grenades from the Bladeguard and then charged. Belakor promptly counter-charged me and made it in, and then I whiffed the combat a bit to leave the Bloodthirster alive. It killed the Land Raider without apparently trying, Belakor wiped the Bladeguard, and then Marneus tried to lift the Bloodletters by himself and died as well. 

That left me with a lot of problems - I wasn't on the middle like I needed to be, I was stuck down in a corner and missing a lot of valuable units. Kas made sure I stayed where I was, zipping more Daemons in from all directions and then smashing through the frontline with Belakor and the Bloodthirster, who pureed the Aggressors, Intercessors and Brutalis in short order. 

Turn three, and I at least managed to Eradicate Belakor, but it was already too little, too late. Various Daemonic riders converged on my position, and we called it halfway through round three. Oof!

Takeaways

It was pretty one-sided! So much so, there wasn't a lot of time to take in new rules and missions. What I saw, I liked, I have to say. Little tweaks to cover are a bit niggly but mostly common sense; several over-used strats like Overwatch and Tank shock feel more like useful options rather than essentials. 

Fighting over scenery feels much nicer! I do have reservations about the mission system, though, I think some of them might be a bit uneven. This is apparently one such, according to online gurus of strategic wisdom, but I took such a beating in round one I didn't really get a chance to find out. Nothing to do with the mission at all, that, just the speed and ferocity of the Juggernaut cavalry.

My daughter came and rolled the dice for me for a bit (a mean insect was infesting her room, she couldn't sleep). The destruction of the Bloodcrushers was all her doing, and once she'd gone, my usual tepid dicing re-established itself pretty quickly. Plus ca change. 

I will definitely be playing more. Trying to do it over the net didn't help me, I think, I misjudged distances a bit. Sticking the Scouts in the middle was silly too, but that's a matter of experience. Hats off to Kas, he certainly has a handle on the game already and explained changes and tactics admirably throughout. I already dread to think what he'll do with the Thousand Sons I'm painting for him!

More soon!