A game at last!

Its been a while since my last game, too long really but that's life, but I finally got one in. It was a 2000 point game and I was facing an Ultramarines derived force containing three Tac squads with rhinos, one with flamer/missile launcher. one with plasma cannon, plasma, and combi-plasma and one with lascannon, melta and combi-melta and also a well kitted out Company master with shield eternal and burning blade plus a full Honour Guard with a mix of power mauls, swords and axes, all mounted in a LR crusader. In reserve there was also a stormtalon escorting a stromraven.

No pictures I'm afraid, didn't even think about it at the time, was to excited to be getting a game in!

The game itself was an Eternal War mission, The Emperors Will, and we only got three turns in, mostly because we spent a long time chatting and not so much time playing. My opponent was also looking towards KotN as well, so that was the focus of most of the discussion.

Anyway, my force was composed of my Hjaltland L.I. but modified by dropping the third platoon and including a SM force of a captain with combi-plasma, a sternguard squad with combi-plasma and a basic 5 man tac squad. I got to deploy first and took first turn after my opponent failed to seize. We both forgot about night fighting, not the only rule we got wrong!

I deployed in two sections, the majority behind my Aegis on my right, and with a platoon out on the left in a ruin with the SM tac squad in a ruin in the centre by my objective. He deployed his Raider on his left with two rhinos nearby, and the third off on the right by his objective. In the first two turns he moved his vehicles forward popping smoke where possible, while my first two turns were spent trying to take out the vehicles and destroying a scout squad with my wyverns. I ignored the raider as I had little that can deal with it apart from my Vendetta, but I managed to take out one rhino and damage another in the first two turns. Turn three I took out the other two rhinos, and started chipping away at the squads inside. The wyverns again proved their worth taking out the scout squad turn one and taking down a number of marines. The MoO also managed to take down a few marines as well!

The Raider meanwhile had disgorged its payload right in front of my Aegis and had assaulted, almost taking itself out of combat in the process. My opponent forgot to roll for his power mauls, if he had he would have inflicted enough wounds so that even with my initiative move and pile in he would have taken us out of combat! As it was, I managed to get one model in base to base and also a number in to support for a reasonable number of attacks. With casting Misfortune on the Honour Guard also made a difference, especially on turn three when I managed to get a large number of my units in to combat, at one point rolling 7 6's to wound! Well, that's the advantage of 30 man squads, even after a few wound they can still throw out a good number of attacks, especially when your priest is doing his job and issuing his war hyms.

The OotF was also doing his job and kept the Stromraven and Stormtalon  off the table for the entire game. By the end of turn 3 I had eliminated all three rhinos, claiming first blood in the process, destroyed 2 combat squads and whittled the others down to half strength at best and I had wiped out the Honour Guard leaving just the Chapter Master in combat. Unfortunately I still lost, 4 (obj + Line breaker) to 1 (first blood). This was partly my fault, I placed my objective very aggressively towards the edge of my half and then got carried away and didn't issue orders or consider my options properly. The main mistake was using units in the wrong order, which allowed a small SM unit to contest my objective. If the game had gone in to one more turn then I would probably been able to claim a win, as I think I could have removed the last two wounds off on the chapter master to deny line breaker and claim Slay the Warlord, and I would have moved the left platoon, which was pretty much intact up to deal with the marines contesting the objective. The only issue would have been the raider and the fact that the SM fliers would have been on automatically. I can see that this game would have gone to be a case of the fliers and Raider running around destroying my army as I ran around and tried to survive.

So, overall I'm happy with my performance. I just need to be more logical and think through my options before just jumping in. I think my deployment was good and my Sternguard in the vendetta worked well and will be tried again next game as well. Hopefully, I will have enough jump packs to try out the BA Vanguard Vets formation as well.