Battle Report - How I Became Warmaster Bill

FallenAngel_864 and I had our 3000 pt Challenge Grudge Match on Sunday.

Here are some pics (click next to go through all of them about 24-30)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/quintaan/70523685/

We rolled up a Seek and Destroy mission which seemed kind of appropriate. Dave deployed in a spread out area on the 8'x4' playing area, while I placed everything except my Defiler in one corner. My plan was to try and bring almost all of my 3000 pts to bear on a fraction of his force and win by attrition.

The battle was very bloody. We both brought upwards of 50 marines and by the end of the battle there was only a handful left on each side. Both sides brough two big characters each and all were off the table. Vehciles did not suffer too much on my side with only my defiler and predator dying leaving 3 rhinos, land raider, and Helltalon fighting. But on the Blood Angels side of the balance sheet all vehciles except for one rhino were dead by the end of the battle having lost the Land Raider to a duel with the chaos LR, the Baal predator also to the chaos LR, and both dreadnoughts to various enemy weapons.

Highlights

- Turn 2 the BA Terminators land and fire a salvo at the Chaos Terminators. Six normal wounds are scored, and I roll 4 ones on the 2+ saves. Ouch.

- Death company charge and remove a 10 man tactical squad without blinking. I countercharge next turn with my assault squad, sorcerer, and Daemon Prince and kill the Death Company and Chaplin. The Daemon Lord himself killed 6 models.

- Dreadnought droppods in, flames the rear of my predator and destroys it.

- Three multimelta attack bikes blow weapons off of Defiler, so deflier charges and kills attack bikes in close combat.

- Land Radiers duel from across the table and the Chaos LR scores a lucky kill

- Helltalon makes two attack runs on Librarian but Iron Halo holds on.

- Librarian charges Daemon Lord and fails to wound him, taking one in return. Next assault phase without the furious charge he manages to roll a 6 to wound and I fail my 5+ inv save. One soul sucking force weapon later, the daemon loses four wounds and dies.

- Alpha mission so scoring units count. Blood Angels have three scoring units, Chaos only one in the redoubtable Obliterators. Dave throws everything and a kitchen sink at the oblits but fails to kill more than one of them. In return on turn 6 the Baal Predator faces the wrath of the Chaos LR and dies, as well the Dev squad faces the wrath of 3 rhinos and fall below half. With the game tied at one scoring unit apiece we go to Victory Points as a tiebreaker where Chaos has the slight advantage.

Victory: The Black Storm

Analysis: This was a very back and forth game. It had the opprotunity to turn into a massacre for either side but fighting back was the theme of the game. That the game came down to tiebreaker is not surprising, it seemed like our forces were very evenly matched.

The librarian was a hero. Not only did he kill the Daemon Prince, he survived a flurry of attack in return thanks to the iron halo, stopped the sorcerer from ever using his Wind of Chaos power, and then charged and killed an entire tactical squad to boot (killed 6 and made the other 3 run away). He singlehandly almost won the game for Dave.

On my side, my Land Raider performed exceptionally in killing both its counterpart and the Baal pred. The rest of the army performed adequately with the minor exception of the Helltalon who proved he wasn't up to the task of character killer very well.

Great game Dave. It was a pleasure facing you again.