Allegiance: Khorne
Leaders:
Lord of Khorne on Juggernaut (General, Violent Urgency, Gorecleaver)
Slaughterpriest (Talisman of Burning Blood)
Slaughterpriest
Battleline:
6 Mighty Skullcrushers
6 Mighty Skullcrushers
6 Mighty Skullcrushers
5 Flesh Hounds
5 Flesh Hounds
Units:
Chaos Warshrine
Battalions:
Brass Stampede
Judgements:
Wrath-Axe
2000 Points
1 Command Point
142 Wounds
Looking at that, I knew I had my work cut out for me. The Juggers, Priests and Wrath-Axe can dish out a horrific amount of damage. The scenario was Shifting Objectives, which is great for Khorne, because they can stay in a compact formation and just steamroll things. I was genuinely expecting this to be a pretty quick game. But oh, how wrong I was!
Knowing that whatever moved onto the objectives would be the first thing to die, my Warhounds were (once again) pushed forward as the sacrificial screen, making sure that there was at least one body just within 6" of each objective. I knew that it was going to be a hard fought battle, and that I would need every point I could get, so an easy 5-point turn straight up was crucial. I did make a mistake, however, in that Gammie didn't need to commit to combat to take those objectives off me. He could simply push up with units and get two bodies in range to steal it. I should have flooded each objective with at least 6 bodies, forcing him to commit on all three objectives if he wanted the points.
And that is exactly what he did. Seeing no need to over-commit in the face of my guns, the Khorne force shuffled forward on each flank, while six Crushers pushed into the middle. the central unit of Crushers found themselves bottlenecked between the ship and Skull Altar, as Ash Storm had crippled their mobility. The Warhounds on the right hand side took some damage from Blood Boil, and thanks to their mediocre Bravery 4, saw all but two either killed or run off the board. Gammie capped all three objectives in return, and prepared for priority.
Much to my dismay, I lost priority in a turn where I could have really dropped the hammer on multiple units. But it wasn't to be. In a catastrophic swing of events, Blood Boils and the left Crushers' charge damage wiped out all the remaining dogs, which meant that the Crushers on the centre objective were free to slam into both the Taur'uk and the K'Daai with impunity. With the unit being 6 or more models, and the Brass Stampede guaranteeing the trigger, the impact hits did 6D3 mortal wounds to the Taur'uk and killed him in a spray of blood, along with more than a couple of Fireglaives! The Crushers on the left used their pile in to punch on with ten more Fireglaives, but with pitiful results that would come back to haunt them later.
I was now in a very precarious position. While I had the right hand objective held with numbers to spare, the other two (one of which was worth 3 points) were just being bulldozed by the Khorne. Going second each turn left me with the opportunity for a double turn, but every time there was a window for me to counterpunch and control the flow of battle, the turn went Gammie's way. Some games, that's just how it goes. While I was only on the receiving end of one double turn, I didn't get one back, which made it tricky to force my way back in.
My K'Daai were caught out of position in a combat where only half the unit could attack, and I was very hesitant to retreat, as losing a priority roll would just mean taking another beating at the hands of the Juggernauts' brutal charge. But I wasn't about to go down without a fight.
Seeing a gap, my Skullcracker decided it was time to unleash some carnage. He charged into the full unit of Skullcrushers that had spent the battle so far suffering the effects of an Ash Storm. The plan was to get in there and drop them below six models, while also blocking them out from the objective. This turned out to be in vain, as I was just short on my charge, giving them room around the ship side of the infernal colossus to pile in around him and within 6" of the objective. The embattled unit of Crushers fighting my K'Daai were slowly being ground down. Bronzed Flesh made them almost impossible to wound, but whatever attacks did get through were doing D3 wounds, which had taken its toll in the battle of attrition.
On my left objective, the survivors from my 20-strong unit, now free of the central combat, moved to assist their Fireglaive comrades, making sure that it would be several turns before the solitary Warshrine could kill it's way through to a numerical advantage. The shooting from the two units was pretty lacklustre, but at least they were chipping off wounds here and there.
Thanks to the horrific power of the Magma Cannons, Fireglaives and the Daemonsmith's grenades, against all the odds, the riflemen outlived the Juggernauts on the left objective, now only having to handle some measly Flesh Hounds.
It should be said around now that between Blackshard Armour (one of the most underrated allegiance abilities in the game!) and some of the luckiest rolling in the world, my army just refused to die. There were multiple instances where killing a single rifleman would have lost me an objective, I'd be facing four wounds at rend 1, pop three fives on the dice, and ignore the last with Blackshard.
Much to my dismay, Gammie won priority again, and kept a huge amount of pressure on all three objectives. Blood Boils wiped out the full-strength Fireglaive unit on the right, while the Warshrine charged in to try (but not succeed! Huzzah!) and kill the survivors of my big unit. Realising that the Warshrine was going to need some help, one of the Priests began the march over to lend his martial support.
But elsewhere on the battlefield, things were a little more dire. The Wrath-Axe finally went off, and wasted no time in cleaving the slightly damaged Skullcracker in half!
On the left flank, my ridiculous saves were keeping me on the objective...
...but Gammie dropped the hammer with full force. Free from being locked in combat with the recently nuked Skullcracker, the still-full-strength unit of Juggernauts slammed into the K'Daai, shattering their strength, and finally breaking the unit down. The Lord on Juggernaut was forced to commit to the combat between the Fireglaives and Flesh Hounds, but thanks to some bad rolls on Gammie's behalf, and some truly insane ones on my behalf, the riflemen held.
Much to the disgust of Khorne, the remaining Fireglaives on the right objective absolutely refused to die, even in the face of the Warshrine and Slaughterpriest. Could they kill three riflemen to claim the objective?
No.
Despite my most resolute efforts, and after the Fireglaives and Flesh Hounds took each other down in a cinematic moment of mutually assured destruction (with some help from a grenade from the Daemonsmith), the Skullcrushers proved why they're so mighty and crashed into my artillery. In the face of such an onslaught, the Cannons were all but doomed and, with a pathetic 3" move, found themselves unable to even retreat from combat. The Daeomsmith and Sorcerer Lord were dragged down, and with that, the game was lost. I gave away almost my entire army to try and claim a win, and while I was in the thick of it from turn one, Gammie ran away on the scoreboard in the last turn and a half to claim a major win for Khorne.
For a game that I was expecting to be over in two turns, it turned out to be fought on a knife's edge. Any one of several priority rolls could have completely shifted the flow of battle, but the dice are fickle, and there's no point getting hung up over rolls that neither player can influence. In this game, I just got outplayed. Gammie didn't make any mistakes and never let the pressure off, and it showed. I made a few movement errors, like stringing my K'Daai out too much and giving away my Taur'ruk too cheaply, but I can't be too upset. With three turns of truly godlike save rolls, I was in the game far longer than I was expecting.
After losing to Khorne, this left me on 1-1 going into game three. I was alright with this, as it left me squarely in the middle of the pack with three games still to play. In a pool of 90+ players, I was at the mercy of the draw to a degree, so I had my fingers crossed that I wouldn't be hitting one of the many, many FEC players too early in the weekend.
As luck would have it, my game three opponent was playing Gloomspite Gitz, an army that I hadn't faced before, but was very keen to play! But I'm getting ahead of myself. More on that in the next battle report!
As always, thanks for reading,
Gabe
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