Round 1 'Ardboyz Semi-Final Battle Report - IG vs CSM

For the semi-finals reklawsj and I traveled to Greenville, SC to a store called Borderlands.  It was about the same distance to drive as Charlotte but was a fairly large store with plenty of game tables and mostly good terrain, even if some of the boards were on the heavy side of to much terrain.  I think 28 people showed up for the tourney. 

In the first game I drew a Chaos Space Marine army and the ice board shown above.  His listed consisted of:

2 Winged Lash Princes

1 Greater Daemon

2 Units of 3 Obliterators

1 Vindicator

3 Chaos Dreadnoughts with 2 CCW each

2 Units of 10 CSM with 2 melta, powerfist, Icon of Chaos Glory

2 Units of 10 CSM with 2 flamers, powerfist, Icon of Chaos Glory

1 Unit of 6 Raptors with 2 meltas

My list was a slight variation of the one posted earlier, with the Hydras and changes to how my infantry were arranged.  We rolled for first turn and of course he won it, but DEFERRED to me.  Alright, I like going first, so I thought.  I deployed in my corner like the pic above and he only started the Oblits, the 3 Dreads and 1 of his CSM units on the board.  The Oblits took up firing positions in far corner on hill and the others hugged the center behind a terrain feature.  All else was in reserve. 

The mission was “Da Fog of War” Scenario which set up in spearhead deployment, but with fog in non-deployment quarters that could dissipate with dice rolls in subsequent turns.  The objectives were in center table and one each center of opposite quarters hidden in the fog.  The center objective was worth 2 and the game was 6 turns.

Turn 1

During the first turn I fired everything I had at what I could see and did zero damage.  Either because he made cover saves on obscured vehicles or my Catachans were freezing. 

Luckily, he did no damage in return, though he did move forward with evertything and frenzied one dread getting 6” closer.  I guess marines get cold to.

Turn 2

Second turn my reserves in the form of Marbo and 3 Sentinels come on the board.  Marbo appeared behind 1 of the Obliterator units and demo charged 2 of them into oblivion.  The sentinels came on board firing and wounding 1 obliterator.  The Medusa also fires across the board and kills 1 Obliterator from second unit.  However, all my other shooting phase rolls were awful, including both of my plasmaguns overheating and killing the firing model. 

During his turn his Raptors are the only thing coming in from reserve and they fly up to right objective.  His remaining Obliterator, from one unit, turns and twin-link meltas Marbo to the face.  The other unit fires at my Hydras and wrecks one of them.  This turn both of us were rolling horrendously and neither of our armies were hurting because of it.  Though him only getting 1 unit of raptors out of 8 units he had in reserve would start to make a difference soon.

Turn 3

This turn I moved a couple Chimeras around and began my shooting phase.  Pask fired the Vanquisher first and smoked a Dreadnought finally.  A heavy weapons team finally wrecked a Rhino forcing the unit to disembark.  I had hoped for this and had already unloaded my Platoon Command to be ready.  The 3 flamers and a heavy flamer cooked the majority and the rest were finished off by a nearby infantry squad.  My veteran squad was in position to fire from the hatch at the Raptors killing the majority of them.  The Heavy Bolter squad finished off the unit.  Also, the Ratlings put 3 wounds on his Obliterators killing 2 of them.  Now my dice were finally heating up a bit.

His were still pretty dismal and he did little besides move the dreads and miss some shooting, because only one unit of CSM in reserve came in this turn.

Turn 4

This turn I again moved little just easing over toward some objectives.  At this point I controlled all of them, but half his army was still off the table.  First, I melta’ed a dread with my Vets then destroyed another with Lascannon fire.  I finished off one unit of the Obliterators with a Hydra from across the board.  My other vet unit exploded the other Rhino full of CSM.  I attempted to wipe them, but killed only 9 with Soulstorm from my Psyker Battle Squad.  The only one left was a Champion, Doh.

In this turn, his reserves finally come in with 2 units in Rhinos coming in on my left side, the Lash Prince, Vindicator on the right and also the Greater Daemon.  The GD popped into the only Champion on the board who was the last man standing from his unit.  The prince lashed a unit of infantry forward and the GD charged them and ran them down. 

Turn 5

In my turn I had a Lash Prince 1 inch away from a Chimera full of Vets and a Greater Daemon in my lines.  I concentrate the Vets fire and Lascannon fire at the Prince and send him back to the Warp.  The GD I decide is a small threat so let him continue rampaging through my lines.  The other Veteran unit destroys one Rhino, forcing the unit out.  I then use Weaken Resolve from PBS on this unit and pour some Sentinel fire into them before they run for the board edge. 

This turn his other Lash Prince comes into the same spot as earlier beside the Vets Chimera.  He charges and destroys it leaving the Vets sitting in the smoking crater left behind.  His only unit of CSM make run for middle and flamer my Vets to death before camping about 10 inches away from objective.  His demolisher fires at my advancing Special weapons squad missing them.  The GD destroys Medusa this turn in combat, exploding it and killing several guardsmen.

Turn 6

At the beginning of this turn I am sitting on left objective with a Platoon Command in Chimera being screened by my 3 sentinels, with no way for him to contest.  I am also camped in my Chimera crater with a full Veteran squad, though with a Lash Prince 2 inches away.  I have an advancing infantry squad about 10 inches from center objective, with 2 partial units of CSM in striking distance of it.  First off, the vets kill the lash prince with one volley.  Next I attempt to suicide the Special weapons squad on the Vindicator, but the meltagun misses and one demo charge comes back killing 3 of the unit and the other demo charge only shaking it.  It is within tank shock range of my Vets on right objective, but I can’t immobilize it or anything helpful.  I try to move and run for the center objective but only run 3 inches needing 4.  I also try to block one unit of CSM off from center using Chimera but it is immobilized on a wreck from earlier Rhino kill.  However, it is within 2 inches of objective.  The missile launcher team destroys the last rhino, taking cover from nearby unit.  I then use Weaken Resolve on unit of CSM closest to center and run them out with heavy weapons fire, putting them out of reach of the objective in center.  Then I just had to sit and wait on his moves.

The vindicator rolled over difficult terrain and tankshocked my Vets.  They promptly rolled 11 and ran for it instead of getting one last melta shot to destroy it with Death or Glory.  His only remaining CSM moved for center and used a charge move to assault my Chimera.  Even though it moved 12 inches in the previous turn it became immobilized on the wreck so he hit automatically with lotsa krak grenades and a powerfist destroying it easily.

So at games end, he had the middle objective and I had one other while the last was only contested with a Vindicator.  We each had 1 objective so the draw went to player with most killpoints.  Luckily, I had 14 and he only had 10, giving me a Minor Victory.  I also received Bonus points for killing his highest point scoring unit and keeping mine alive. 

Overall, this was a good game with a good opponent.  It would have been a lot closer if his reserves would have been a little more reliable.  I know he would have started more on the board if he could have known how bad my rolling would be in the first couple turns.  Our rolling collectively for the first couple turns was so bad we were both laughing about it.  Once my rolling started getting better things started to die and I could tell my opponent got a little discouraged while watching me roll dice for 20 minutes per turn while he removed models from the board.  It is a little boring for both players when playing IG for that reason.  This is one reason I stopped playing with them for so long and just started doing more armies that had character and cool units that went with the fluff.

 I was happy with the changes I made to my list taking the Hydras and the Psyker Battle Squad.  Both performed great in this game.  I was still learning things to do and not do with this army, being only the 4^th game I had played with this codex.  Scoring 15 points for the game put me barely in the top 10 players going into the next game.  Next battle reports pits me against Horde Orks.