The Wildrider Host: January 2011

Sorry it's taken so long to get around to it, but here is the batrep for the third game in my recent tournament win. This game saw me matched up against another Eric. He was running Blood Angels as well, but he was using the vaunted Razorback spam variant that seems so popular on the interwebs these days. So here we go, Eric vs. Eric. Blood Angels vs. Blood Angels. Time to determine once and for all which is superior Descent of Angels or Razorback spam! (ok, so probably not :-D)

His list was as follows:

2x Librarian with Shield of Sanguinius and Fear of the Darkness
2x Assault Marines with Flamer and Razorback with Lascannon and twin linked Plasma Gun

2x Assault Marines with Razorback with Lascannon and twin linked Plasma Gun

3x Baal Predator with Assault Cannon and Heavy Bolter sponsons

1x Predator with Auto Cannon and Lascannon sponsons
1x Predator with Auto Cannon and Heavy Bolter sponsons
My list once again, (since it's been so long!) was as flollows:

Librarian with Shield of Sanguinius and Blood Lance
2x 10 Assault Marines with 2x meltaguns and power weapon
1x 10 Assault Marines with 1x flamer and power weapon
2x Sanguinary Guard with 1x infernus pistol and 1x power fist
3x Sanguinary Priests with jump packs and power weapons

The mission was a simple kill point mission using the pitched battle deployment. In addition, if you had captured any of the servitors in mission 2 you were allowed to assign them to scoring units in your army. It was an option and noone was required to do so. If you chose to they counted as being whatever type the unit they joined were (ie. infantry, jump infantry, bikes etc.) They had their own statline and came with a weapon with the following profile. 24"range, Str5 AP5 Assualt 2.

Eric won the roll to go first and deployed his entire force keeping. I of course reserved everything to come in via deepstrike. A priest with each assualt squad and the Librarian with the flamer unit. Turn one saw little happen. In turn two he moved his vehicles out spreading out a bit and popping smoke on all of his vehicles.

Turn two saw me getting in both of the Sanguinary guard units and the flamer unit. Not exactly what I would have liked to be sure! I dropped in the 1st of the Sanguinary guard unit behind his Autocannon/Lascannon Predator. This was a nice juicy and dangerous target and was near a building that would provide some nice cover from the rest of his shooting but they scattered big time and landed right on the Predator! The roll on the mishap table was kind though and they were only put back into reserves. Undaunted by that I tried the 2nd Sanguinary Guard in the same spot and got a 'hit'. Then the Libby and flamer squad deep struck nearby one of his Razorbacks containing a librarian and trying to line up a couple of vehicles for Blood Lance. I scattered poorly here too and moved 6" straight back from where I wanted to be. The shooting phase saw the Sanguinary guards infernus pistol miss and the infernus boltguns, despite having rear arc, failed to get a single glance on the predator. The librarian managed to get Blood Lance off past his psychic hoods and managed to stun one of the Razorbacks containing one of his Librarians.

In his turn 3 he maneuvered to get some line of sight to the Sanguinary guard and managed to wipe them out. He also moved up to shoot at the Librarians squad, I passed my psychic test for shield, but he managed to shut it down with his psychic hood. The rest of his force managed to wipe the squad out though and I was now sitting in a 4-0 hole in kill points.

In my 3rd turn I saw both of my remaining Assualt squads show up. I put one of the Assualt Squads over on his left flank. I dropped the other assualt squad out in front of his force. With one of the squads I managed to only destroy a weapon on one of the Razorbacks and chose the twin-linked plasma gun. I also managed to destroy another Razorback.

His turn 4 turned out to be fairly innefectual. He only managed to kill a few assault marines from the assualt squad in front of his force. With most of his Plasma destroyed or shut down he was unable to do much damage to the other Assualt Squad. He disembarked both of his Librarians and attemped to use Fear of the Darkness, but I passed both of those tests and then passed my regular morale test for 25% casualties.
In my 4th turn I got the other Sanguinary Guard unit back. They dropped in behind his lines near my assault squad. When they scattered out of infernus pistol range of a Razorback they instead chose to shoot at the Librarian. When the infernus pistol both hit and wounded the Librarian Eric decided to go to ground and actually made the 6+ cover save, saving the libby's life! If he couldn't take out the Sang guard though the libby was sure to fall to mass power weapon attacks in my next turn. Meanwhile the assualt squad out in front of his force moved up and shot at the Razorback that the other librarian had disembarked from but missed with both meltaguns. I did manage to set up the multi-charge with his librarian though and managed to immobilize the Razorback and failed to kill the librarian, getting stuck in safe from his guns for his next turn.
The other assault squad moved up and popped one of his Baal Predators.

In his turn 5 he turned a Razorback on the Sanguinary Guard shooting the lascannon and double-tapping with the plasma gun. Unfortunately for him he managed to roll three ones! With the plasma being twin linked though he picked them up and rolled again... getting 2 more ones! Five dice and five ones. The only other guns he had with line of sight and range to them were auto-cannons, heavy bolters and assault cannons. These proved no match for the artificer armor of the squad. In the assault phase I managed to finish off his librarian and consolidated towards the bulk of his force.

In my turn 5 The Sanguinary guard moved up and spread out to set up the multi-charge on his Librarian, it's immobilized Razorback and the assualt squad that had spilled out of the Razorback I had already destroyed. I managed to kill the Librarian, some of the assault squad and wiffed against the razorback despite auto-hitting with a power fist. His assault squad managed to kill one of the sang guard, lost combat but passed morale and we were stuck in. The assault squad in the the back of his force moved up behind a hill but was out of range to do much of anything that turn. Meanwhile the other one moved up and shot at and charged his last working Razorback, but only managed to stun it. With both of his Librarians dead, a Razorback destroyed and a Baal Predator down the game was now tied 4-4.

In his 6th turn he turned his guns on my already weakened assault squad and managed to wipe it out, taking the Sanguinary priest out with them. I managed to completely wiff again in the assault phase and he passed the turn to me once again in the lead with the score 6 kill points to 4.

In my turn the assualt squad moved up and finished of the immobilized Razroback while the Sanguinary Guard (finally) finished off the assualt squad in the close combat. With the game now tied 6-6 we were drawn, but the game continued to turn 7.

In his turn he did his best to take out the assualt squad since it was already weakened but all of his good ap weapons either failed to hit, wound or find the range and they survived. Now all I needed to do in my turn was secure at least one kill point and the win would be mine. In my turn I moved up and destroyed one of the remaining Razorbacks and then just in case of a miscount I assualted and wiped out the assault squad that spilled out of it. This put me up in kill points and the game ended with me winning 8 kill points to 6. Neither of us had secured any of the secondary or tertiary objectives though and I only secured 10 battle points for the win.

This was a very close game the whole way. Having one of the Sang guard squads bounce back into reserves and not getting the melta-gun assualt squads in early really slowed me down to begin with, allowing him to jump out to a nice lead. Once I was able to shut his plasma guns down though I was able to start rolling and once I got going there was simply no stopping me. Assualt Cannons, Auto-cannons, and heaby bolters are just no match for Feel No Pain marines and stray lascannon shots will kill marines, but do little to units.

In the end the 10 points I got for this victory was enough to secure me the tournament. In fact, after seeing the final scores a draw would have been enough and would have actually gotten Eric 2nd place. I think he knew this too as he seemed really dissapointed. Brent, my 2nd round opponent instead ended up finishing in 2nd place.

All in all a pretty good tournament. The missions were fun and worked together for a fun little overarching story. They need some tweaking and clarifying before Adepticon, but that's what we held this tournament for. To test them under fire.

For my efforts I got a $60 gift certificate to the Warstore.com. It's actually over a month since the tournament and I still have not spent it. With the new Furioso dreadnought kit coming out soon it won't last much longer!