I finally managed to make it down to overlords HQ after a month or so away due to exams and Christmas and whatnot.
I got a game in against Skew and his traitor marine blood angels (meaning strangely, that we both took BA, but neither of us actually took blood angels). I’m going to dispense with the normal game synopsis as we recorded a video battle report which was pretty cool and helped Inquisitor Steve out with his youtube content addiction.
This means I can get straight to the meat of my post and do my usual unit ratings rundown. (I should probably say that I am writing this a few hours after the game but won’t post until the video is released so I don’t spoil the ending). The video batrep can be found here
Reclusiarch – 6
Most of the good work he did was as a force multiplier. In the interest of cinemacy (is that even a word? Spell check says not) he made challenge both the enemy HQs, a librarian and another reclusiarch. He managed to get a wound off on the libby in the first turn of the challenge, but as Skew lost the combat and only didn’t run off due to ATSKNF, the challenge had to be reissued a which point I had him cower at the back in the next turn as I was worried he would either get force sworded to death or just fail to win the combat quickly enough. He then made it into a challenge with Skew’s reclusiarch taking two wounds off him but eventually took a mace to the face and died.
Death Company – 8
Did what they do and smashed some faces in combat, claiming a tactical squad, a librarian, a reclusiarch and a couple of assault marines. Most of these were superfluous to the game at that point but their threat bubble kept Skew penned in his corner at an important juncture.
Landraider – 8
Deep striking land raider for the win! Dropped down on time and more importantly on target(ish), projected a threat bubble across a large part of the middle of the board with the death company. Also did it’s most important job of ferrying the death company around and keeping them from getting shot up without fuss (and without failing any difficult terrain tests like it normally does).
Tactical Squad (flamer) – 7
Thrown under the bus today slightly today. Dropped down in front of skew’s assault marines with the reclusiarch and managed to kill a couple of with the flamers and bolters, but more important withstood the return shooting and the charge. They then managed to tie up the assault marines up for at least 2 game turns and chipped away at them meaning the death company could arrive in time to see them off without them getting too close to my objective.
Tactical Squad (plasma) -7
Did perhaps the most important and unspectacular job of all. Scored my objective without taking any casualties (mostly due to hiding for the whole game), although they were pretty average in terms of their own damage output. Plasma cannon missed with both of its shots, and they needed help from the devastator squad taking out a 5 man marine squad to score me first blood. Overall a decent showing.
Furioso Dreadnought – 7
I have mixed feelings about how the dreadnought performed today. It had a pretty atrocious start to the game. Dropped down to flame up a 5 man assault squad to get me first blood and take out some of skew’s melta capability but completely whiffed and failed to kill any of them. At that point of thought it had really screwed my game plan, happily Skew managed to do equally badly with his melta and failed to kill it off, meaning it was again free to stomp around his deployment zone, hulk smashing units with relative impunity. Probably deserves a better mark for how much of a headache it gave skew, but only gets a 7 due to the brown pants moment it gave me in turn 1.
Devastators – 6
Suffered a bit from lack of viable targets, Skew rolled +1 to cover saves in ruins which was a bit bonus in this game, meaning I spent most of the game trying to frag his devastators. Did manage to kill off the final couple of sternguard which won me first blood.
Predator – 6
Had the same problem as the devastators but to an even greater extent. Skew went with an all foot list (minus a droppod) meaning that it was restricted mostly to pot shots at marines in 3+ cover. Did manage to kill off the final assault marine on his objective increasing the margin of victory at the end but a bit of a square peg in a round whole for this game.