Captain Harkol sat in the Chimera, uncomfortable, cramped, stinking of grease and smoke. He waited patiently for his orders as the rain battered off the hull of the tank. The pilgrims had been flocking to the Sepluchre of St Josiah for months now. Thousands of dirty, ragged peasants, each searching for some kind of redemption. Pick up a lasgun and join up thought Harkolius, then you can serve the Emperor properly. The Dark Eldar raids had become more frequent. Swathes of pilgrims had been found butchered and mutilated but far more had simply vanished in the misty forests surrounding the ruined church. Harkol feared the darkness. He feared the Dark Eldar more than any other foe, to fail... to lose was to endure pain and suffering beyond imagination. The pilgrims, stolen away to some dark realm, it sent shivers down his spine to think of it. His thoughts were interrupted as the comms crackled with the unmistable harsh voice of the towering space marine commander. Harkol's blood ran cold as the marine spoke 'They are coming'
Mission: Deadlock!
Both teams start with 6 tactical objectives, each turn reducing the maximum amount of objective cards you can have by 1. So turn 6 = 6, turn 5=5 and so on. The key would be scoring objectives quickly!
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| The Battlefield - The Sepulchre of St Josiah |
Team Imperials -
Black Scorpions (BA) - Sanguinary Guard with a priest, 6 death company marines, 2 flamer tacticals in pods, 1 furioso in a pod and one 5 man heavy bolter death company.Imperial Guard - CCS w/chimera, 25 man platoon w/commissar, Grenade launcher veterans w/chimera. 2x griffon mortars, 3x thuddgun artillery teams. Aegis line with a quad gun. A vulture gunship would provide air support.
Team Dark Eldar -
3 venoms with blaster-born, 2 ravagers, wyches, warriors, an archon, razorwing jet, talos, wracks and a haemonculus. Aegis Line with quad gun.
Turn 1
The Scorpions and their guard allies won the roll off for going first and deployed in a heavily fortified line around the ruined church. Artillery, Griffons and a Devastator squad hunkered down along with a 25 guardsmen and the Command HQ Chimera. A formidable battle line ready to hold the line. On their left flank was a Death company in the ruined church along with veterans in a chimera. On the right, a squad of Sanguinary Guard with a priest stood ready to sally forth. Two tacticals and furioso dreadnought awaited in orbit above the planet!
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| Artillery ho!!! |
I drew 6 objective cards. I had to claim: a single objective in my own lines, another in no-mans-land and another in Jack's deployment zone. My sanguinary guard were in range to take no-mans-land with a jump move + some lucky running. The next objective forced Jack to nominate 2 objectives that he HAD to keep away from me... a lucky draw seeing as I had drop-pods coming in. He chose the two he had most heavily defended. These two objectives were potentially D3 + 1 Victory points.
The opening move was 2 drop pods containing a flamer tactical squad and a frag furioso slamming into enemy lines. The tacticals roasted a venom and it's occupants. First Blood!. The furioso clambered out of the drop pod and annhiliated 5 warriors and their quad gun with a double burst of frag-cannon fire. A brutal result!
My artillery let loose. The amount of available targets were few, I decided to try and take out Jack's two ravagers as they presented the nastiest targets. I'd be needed 5's and 6's to glance. I managed to take off 2 hull points of a ravager and 1 off the other. OK but not really the result needed.
My heavy bolters reduced a scourge squad to 1 man, other shooting from chimeras and guardsmen was either saved by the night-fighting cover save or failed to hit. I did remove a single wound from the Talos Pain Engine.
I had claimed the 3 objectives required, scored First Blood and taken the two vital objectives from Jack with my drop pods. I rolled a D3 and got 3 victory points for a whopping 7 victory points on turn 1.
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| Death! |
It was Jack's turn to respond. He drew his 6 cards and got a whole pile of crap. Cause moral checks, cause casualties from 3 different units, claim objectives in my deployment, destroy a gun emplacement and destroy a character. His objectives were possible, but very hard to accomplish. His talos and scourges behind the church moved closer to my lines. His ravagers stayed put in useful cover. His ravagers opened up on my command chimera, They scored a couple of glancing hits but were saved by cover saves. His scourges tried the same against the chimera in the church scoring a single glancing hit.
The venom in his backlines, containing blaster-born took shots at my furioso. Bad-rolling resulted a few misses and cover saves removed a few too. A couple of shots found their mark and blew off the Frag-cannon. The other venom unloaded many poisoned shots on my tacticals killing 4 marines. They held their ground and refused to run.
With Jack's turn over, few casualties caused and zero objectives claimed, this Dark Eldar raid was looking like a potential massacre.
Turn 2
Turn 2 began, I drew objectives and got secure 2 objectives and wipe out 3-5 enemy units in my turn. My last drop pod came in and I planted it squarely amongst my left flank to tackle the scourges and Talos threatening my lines. My furioso flamed and destroyed the venom and blaster-born that had shot at him last turn, my remaning tacticals flamed and boltered the remaining venom. I had cleared out the entirety of the Dark Eldar rear. (gross?) My newly arrived tacticals annhiliated a squad of scourges with flame and bolter.
TheVulture gunship arrived and peppered the talos with punisher fire... I did nothing. It was foolish to try and wound a toughness 7 creature with stg 5 shooting.
My artillery was again short of targets and the ravagers bore the brunt. I downed one ravager with accurate thuddgun shooting.
I scored 2 victory points for securing 2 objectives and D3 for No Prisoners!, "destroy 3-5 units in your turn." My D3 resulted in 2 so, I was at 11 victory points to Jack's 0 so far.
Jack rolled well for his reserves and his archon, wracks and haemonculus and razorwing entered the fray. His archon materialised near an objective he had to take, his wracks and haemonculus materialised behind my aegis line, their mission? Assasinate a character.
The Razorwing zoomed in and opened fire on my Vulture, Two darklances zapped out and scorched deep gouges in the hull of the Vulture but the armour held, no glances or penetrations.
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| A squad of warriors, mowed down by the Sanguinary Guard |
The remaining ravager again opened fire, a miss, one failed penetration and a successful cover save again saved the command chimera from the 3 dark lance shots.
The haemonculus and his cadre of wracks had materialised in front of a Gatling Cannon, it's interceptor protocols kicked in and blasted 2 wracks into oblivion. The wracks and haemonculus in turn let loose with their liquefiers turning my commissar along with a few guardsmen into a steaming puddle of gore. The Quad cannon was also destroyed by the vicious Dark eldar weapons.
The talos finally fell to the deathcompany, a single chainsword thrust deep into it's foul machinery sent it crumpeling to the ground.
With that Jack had scored 2 victory points, destroy a character, and destroy a gun emplacement. He had also claimed an objective with his archon. 3 victory points in total!
Turn 3
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| Fire on my Target! - The Command Chimera directs artillery fire |
Turn 3 was a quick affair. We didn't play it fully out as it was obvious what was going to happen. A single scourge in the church would be gunned down by tacticals, death company and a chimera. The wracks and haemonculus were standing in front of roughly 40 guardsmen, guns ready. The ravager, with 1 remaining hullpoint would most likely die to artillery fire. The archon was charged by the sanguinary guard and priest for an epic final showdown. The warriors were no match for the sanguinary guard, sliced and diced. The archon however, in 1 on 1 combat with the Priest was simply too fast. His darting, stabbing and slicing found all the weak points in the power armour and I rolled a 1, 1, 2 and 4 for my 4 armour saves.
At this point the game was called. All Jack had left on the table was the archon, surrounded by 5 sanguinary guard and the razorwing jet fighter.
Brother Lokius wiped his massive two handed sword clean of xenos gore. The Archon had escaped their clutches and darted off into the dark forest after slaying the Priest. Xenos lay dead and scattered all over the scorched forest. Off in the distance Lokius saw the hulking furioso stand over a burning wreck, charred bodies lay strewn around him. Lokius' was furious at the Archon's escape but was filled with a certain satisfaction. The Archon would return to his realm alone, his forces decimated.
'Come in Lokius, this is Captain Harkol. What is your status my Lord?'
'They are defeated...but steady yourselves.... They will be back'
Conclusion
Brutality! The list I took was, I have to say, perfectly suited to kill Dark Eldar. Drop pods with flamers and frag-cannons are simply DEADLY against open topped transports. The fact that I combined a very solid imperial guard gunline army with a fast, smashy-slicey Blood Angels, alpha strike list was a double whammy of douche-baggery.
My artillery was not very effective simply because I did not have enough targets but they did their job of basically occupying a huge part of the battlefield and holding the line whilst the Marines did their job of taking the fight to the Dark Eldar.
As Jack would say, He's used to being the one dictating the pace of the game. I think the sheer speed of which I was in amongst his forces (drop pods) and the luck of drawing obtainable objective cards was the killer blow. We agreed that the game was a bit boring and one-sided so we had lunch and set up another 1000 pt game which was much more fun. It was a closer game with the victory points going Turn 1: 1-1. Turn 2: 3-3. Turn 3: 4-4 and turn 4: 5-5. The last turn I managed to get slay the warlord and line-breaker winning by 7-5. A much closer fought battle.
All in all a great day of gaming and beer-drinking and some food-for-thought with regards to Jack developing his Dark Eldar army. Powerful and very shooty.... but very fragile. More Talos's'ssss?
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