#46: Horus Heresy Battle Report 1000pts - Salamanders vs. World Eaters

Well, it's battle report time! It has been quite some time since my last bat-rep, so I thought what better way to re-enter Battle Report territory than with a campaign game from a local Horus Heresy League! This was my first game of the league, and I found myself facing down against a thousand points of World Eaters, who deployed a list that caught me quite off guard!

Using the Onslaught Formation (considering my inexperience in all things 30k, I could be completely wrong, as I'm still wrapping my head around the ins and outs of detachments and RoW), my opponent had fielded significantly more armour than I was expecting from a traditionally infantry-heavy assault Legion. The force was lead by a Delegatus with a power sword and a plasma pistol, who was accompanied by five Veterans in a Land Raider Proteus, forgoing the assault ramp in exchange for the more forgiving price tag. A Sicarian Tank was going to cause me some serious woes if I couldn't disable it early in the game, and a pair of Contemptor Dreads offered serious threats to my infantry; one sporting a fist and plasma cannon, while the other had two fists, one of which housed a Graviton Gun.

My list was a little more well-rounded, with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I'll lead by confessing that it pained me to play with unpainted models, but as this army is only a few months old, I made the exception and am currently scrambling with the brush to finish things off for the next stage!

My army was led by a Delegatus, who was equipped with a power sword and artificier armour, and opening up the Covenant of Fire RoW. Two 10-strong tactical squads filled out my Troops choices, with an artificier-armoured Sarge with a power fist, and each squad carrying a nuncio-vox for a bit of artillery assistance. Speaking of, I've taken a Whirlwind Scorpius. These tanks are, in my mind, too good not to include in every list I write! S8 AP3 blasts are very versatile in many different situations. As you can see, I'm not using the actual FW Scorpius model; mostly because I think it looks a little... goofy. The Space Marine Hunter was a perfect stand in, with it's extra armour plates and stabilisers adequately representing it's 13/12/10 hull (how this tank has heavier armour than a Vindicator is beyond me).

Side note; I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Do's and Don'ts of proxying GW main range models in place of FW!

I purchased a Contemptor with a Multi-Melta (seemed like the Salamander thing to do), an Apothecary, a Dakka-Pred and two Rapier Platforms with Laser Destroyers. I'm excited to try out these little gun platforms, as they seem to pack a real punch and have the staying power to take some heat, while being really affordable and reliable. Time and dice will tell... 

My deployment was pretty straight forward. I was guaranteed turn one thanks to my opponent's formation (I think...), so I deployed accordingly. the Dread and my Delegatus' squad stood front and centre to apply pressure and take up residence in the ruins. The Predator stood guard over my heavy firepower hunkering down in my right hand side ruin. 

My opponent, painfully aware of the Rapiers searching for a soft target, deployed quite conservatively and using intervening ruins to protect his armour. 

With most of his big threats out of sight, my opponent wasn't giving me any free passes.

Turn one, I moved and ran my two central units into the area terrain, hoping to at least get cover saves against the Plasma Cannon-toting Dread. Past that, my movement phase was pretty unexciting, but my shooting phase was outstanding for the situation. My two rapiers could just draw a line over two buildings, and in a stroke of luck, blasted the Plasma Dread and managed to Immobilise him in a truly unfortunate position. To add insult to injury, my Scorpius fired a volley of rockets high overhead and stripped two hull points off the Sicarian. 

After a pretty threatening opening salvo, my opponent launched into action. All units that were still operational pushed forward, and prepared to unleash his considerable arsenal. This turned out to be less terrifying than I was expecting. The Sicarian unleashed its accelerator cannon into my Rapiers, and managed to kill a gunner, while the immobile Dread fired the Plasma Cannon at the only thing it could see, scoring a glancing hit on my Contemptor. I felt as though I was in control, but it was still early days. 

Turn two; My oh-so-brave (some would say differently) Contemptor stepped out into full view of his entire army, and raised his Multi-Melta at the almost-dead Sicarian and failed to even glance... with two dice... That's ok, I thought brashly, I'll just charge it. 

Nope. Failed that too. This was going to hurt...

The rest of my army performed. Not well, but they achieved more than old mate in the middle of a firing range. The Rapiers turned their attention to the other Dread, glancing it once, but failing to slow it on its impending rampage. The predator fired at the same target through a gap in the ruins, but to no avail. To close out the turn, my Scorpius opened up once more on the Sicarian, but being out of sight of my Nuncio-voxes, the shots scattered wildly and achieved nothing. Time to brace myself.

With only two hull points remaining, this guy was as good as dead, or so I thought. In a sheer barrage of luck, this one, solitary dread soaked up and entire army's worth of heavy weapons (Lascannons, accelerator cannons, plasma cannons, the whole nine yards) without so much as a scratch. That 5+ Invulnerable proved to be too much for the big guns to handle. 

Realising now that my untouched dread could be in a position to cause horrific damage if left unchecked, my opponent was left with one option. Charge on in! As if to add to his frustration, the charge resulted in a brutal Overwatch in which I managed to land a hit with my Multi-melta and blow his Graviton Power Fist clean off, seriously blunting his assault, which ended in a harmless draw. 

In my turn, I pushed my second tactical squad up to support my Delegatus, but otherwise, it was a largely uneventful turn. My backfield failed to do any damage, which was a little disappointing. At the end of the turn, my Contemptor finally fell to the fury of the World Eater Dread, who consolidated toward my marines lurking in the ruins.

I was in some trouble now. The Sicarian roared through the ruin, narrowly passing a potentially fatal Dangerous Terrain check, and blasted my Predator to oblivion with complete impunity. The Land Raider pushed up and disintegrated one of my prize Rapiers. To top things off, the Dread continued its rampage, launching into my Delegatus' unit, and started ripping heads off. Not too many heads however, as a sneaky Power Fist got an uppercut in and toppled the giant. 

Understanding that I was losing units, and fast, I knew it was the time to act! My Delegatus swapped squads, joining my Apothecary in order to avoid an unpleasant end likely to befall his original squad, who had taken it into their own hands to punch out the Proteus, or at the very least, force out the squad inside. Alas, the sortie was ill-fated, as I did zero damage, and now found myself in view of the crippled Contemptor who had been warming up his Plasma Cannon for the better part of the game. In my own half, things were going just as terribly. The Scorpius scattered long off its target. The last Rapier had an uninterrupted shot into the soft side armour of the heavily damaged Sicarian, but its twin-linked laser destroyer missed. I also failed the charge with my marines at the same tank, in a hope I could use krak grenades to finish it. 

My opponent piled out of his land raider and unleashed a volley of bolter and plasma, joined by the plasma cannon wielded by the nearby Dread, and after the smoke settled, I had two boys still standing and they passed their leadership check with ease. 

On the other side of the board, the Sicarian whipped around the ruins and sunk as many shots into my Scorpius, stripping a hull point and Stunning it, making it's missile launcher useless for a turn. 

In my turn, I charged my remaining marines, Apothecary and Delegatus into combat; a combat that would prove to drag out for three rounds of combat. The two survivors of my first tactical squad died a horrible death, but in return, I managed to wipe out his Veterans, and would have splatted his Delegatus with a power fist if it weren't for a cheeky Refractor Field. 

The last significant event of the game was my last remaining Rapier punching a hole in the hull of the pesky Sicarian with ease, blowing it up harmlessly and neutralising the potential for Line Breaker. 

Despite all my efforts, though, I ended up losing by a single point. It was disappointing, but it was a great game, and one that flowed back and forth as we struggled to dominate the centre of the field. A good game and a great opponent. Always a pleasure playing against a fully painted army on a fully painted table. 

So what did I learn? I haven't many games of 30k yet, maybe five or six at the most, none over 1500 points, so my experience is not as abundant as many others. The upside of this is the enjoyment I get from trying out each new unit as I get my hands on it.

The Scorpius proved to be a huge threat, and one that my opponent couldn't afford to ignore.

The Predator didn't really do anything all game, but I'll definitely give him a few more runs, as he didn't really have any good targets to sink his mid-strength high rate-of-fire arsenal into.

The Rapiers! I was really happy with the Rapiers! The Laser Destroyers are reliable and consistent at damaging armour of any level. I'll definitely be keeping them in lists to come!

So, the next stage of the Campaign jumps to 1500 points. What do you think I need? What do you think I should cut? Am I missing any essentials?

As always, thanks for reading,
Gabe

#45: Learning the ropes...

Well, this past weekend, I attended the first 40K tournament in quite some time, bringing an unfamiliar army in the form of Tau, and getting few practice games in beforehand. The force organisation was quite demanding, having one compulsary choice from Elite, Fast and Heavy on top of the usual 1 HQ 2 Troop. So, after changing my list about four times, here's the one i ended up taking.

HQ:
Cadre Fireblade

Troops:
7 Breachers with EMP Grenades in a Devilfish with Smart Missiles and Disruption Pods
10 Fire Warriors with a DX8 Tactical Turret (SMS)

Elite:
Riptide with an Ion Accelerator
3 Crisis Suits with 2 Plasma Rifles each
3 Crisis Suits with 2 Cyclic Ion Blasters each

Fast Attack:
6 Pathfinders

Heavy Support:
Broadside with High Yield Missiles, Smart Missile System, Early Warning Override and two marker drones

The significant changes from the list from a previous post were adding some marker drones to the Broadside as extra pinpoints as well as ablative wounds for the surprisingly fragile suit, and swapping out burst cannons for Ion Blasters on the second crisis team. Wow, Ion Blasters! These guns are unbelievable, and the same price as all other premium Crisis weapon options. For 30pts a suit (bringing the total cost to 52ppm), they can dish out 6 S7 AP4 shots a turn, or can choose to overheat the gun to make it S8 AP4 small blast. I had great success (for the most part) deep striking these guys and dumping 18 S7 shots into the soft rear armour of a tank, wrecking it with impunity!

The unique and fantastic thing about the tournament was the stipulation that all models in each army must be painted. This meant that on the day, there were twelve gorgeous armies playing games on 6 exceptionally painted tables! The organisers went above and beyond what was expected of then, and hosted a truly memorable event.

Now, I will preface the following by apologising for lack of photos. I was so focused on the games and not stuffing up rules with a new codex that it wasn't until half way through game two that I realised I hadn't taken a single snap. I will however, give you very quick run-downs of each battle, and include photos of my opponents' armies thanks to the TO!

My first game was against a fellow rocking an infantry-heavy Space Wolf list. While a lot of points were poured into gearing his list toward combat, the mobility and superior firepower offered by Tau, particularly the Riptide, caused no end of problems for my opponent. This was only amplified when my two Crisis teams arrived via Deep Strike, landed perfectly, and unloaded their potent arsenal with devastating effects. The Ion suits tore through the rear armour of a looming dreadnaught with ease, while the Plasma team obliterated a unit of Long Fangs who found themselves isolated from the rest of their aggressive force. After several turns, I managed to neutralise all units but a drop pod, and held four out of the five objectives on the board and securing a Major Victory.

The second game was against a good friend of mine, who was running a mechanised Ultramarine list. The army was exceptionally well painted, weathered and based, and is a credit to my opponent's hobbying skills. The scenario was Maelstrom of War, which typically focuses on objectives over slaughter, but this was by far the bloodiest game of the day. I got through the first few turns relatively unscathed, and did horrific damage in return. I crippled several of his vehicles early in the piece and was optimistic about gaining control of the board. Things seemed to sway further in my favour, when my plasma suits killed four Sternguard and left his Captain on a single wound. Then all hell broke loose. Thanks to some well timed doctrines, clever moves and three battered marines taking their combat blades to three unfortunate suits, the spine of my force was shattered, leaving both players with a handful of battle-weary models at the end of the game, only having five points to each of our names, and suitably enough finishing in a Draw.

Then came the interesting part. Thanks to the Draw, myself and my Game Two opponent managed to keep ourselves in the top half of the pool, without reaching the top table. This meant that I ended up facing the gentleman below me on the ladder, who was sporting a pretty scary Ork list, in a straight Kill Points mission. The photo is pretty self-explanatory. His army also looked fantastic on the board, with highly detailed swamp bases, great weathering and a terrifying and monstrous Ork Warboss on a trike! I knew I had to shut down the battery of Mega-Kannons if I had any hope of victory, but it wasn't until after deployment that I realised that his Bikers were in fact Nob Bikers, accompanied by his aforementioned Warboss and a cheeky Painboy! Now I had a fight on my hands...

I opened the scoring by easily disposing of four Deffkoptas and managing to hide pretty successfully from the guns on the other side of the board. The dense ruins in the centre of the table offered great protection, but in turn gave the hulking Bike unit an unimpeded course across the field. Things got real when I failed my Nova Reactor test on the Riptide to boost his Invulnerable save the same turn that he found himself on the wrong end of four Power Klaws. I spent the next two turns trying to gun down as many bikers as I could, as well as dropping my Ion suits next to the Mek Guns and failing to cause an impossibly difficult leadership check on the cowardly crew! The crew subsequently turn their guns on the newly arrived battlesuits and blew the unit off the board in a single salvo. My plasma suits managed to scrounge a few kill points (in combat, mind you) before getting shanked by Gretchin wielding broken glass and screwdrivers. My army was being torn apart, and while I couldn't take down the guns, I did manage to pour an obscene amount of fire into the bike unit, leaving the Warboss alone and on a single wound, and leaving me one kill point behind my opponent.

In a stroke of sheer, undeniable luck, I was gifted with a turn six, in which my four remaining models (three fire warriors and the Fireblade) did the unthinkable and gunned down the Warboss with the final shot! In return, only one Mek gun could see my now-exposed Warlord, but the dice had their way, and the blast scattered wide. The Warboss gifted me with another Kill Point and Slay the Warlord, pushing me one point ahead and handing me a Minor Victory!

This was enough to just scrape in at 3rd place! A very satisfying result from a great day!

Next week, I'll be publishing a Horus Heresy Battle Report between my Salamanders Legion and the bloodthirsty World Eaters! Keep your eyes peeled; it's going to be a great game!

As always, thanks for reading and for your continued support...
Gabriel