Friday 21 June 2013

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines

I have just realised how behind I am on my battle reports. I have three queued up to go, and I'm planning to go fight another battle tomorrow at Dark Sphere's 40K night (I'm writing this on a Tuesday evening).

This is from a battle I had against Chaos Space Marines with Traitor Guard allies. We had rolled up Big Guns Never Tire. I was experimenting with taking the brave and noble Captain Al'Rahem. My list was pretty standard for me, with a big platoon, some veterans, a couple of Leman Russ tanks and a Valkyrie.

The other player had a few squads of Chaos Marines, a flying demon Prince, some Chaos Terminators and a Defiler. He then had an allied psyker, veteran squad and a Valkyrie.

The early battle involved me being beaten brutally about the head by the demon prince - murdering my command HQ to death, in particular.


In the centre, my Veterans jump out of the back of a Valkyrie and murder to death a Chaos Marine squad holding one of the objectives. His Valkyrie, having dropped off his Guardsmen, starts pursuing mine with the aim of shooting it down.


Al'Rahem and his platoon rock up from outflank and between them and a Demolisher, turn the Defiler to a small smoking crater.


On the right flank, a Leman Russ encourages his Marines to stay in cover and do very little.


Meanwhile, his demon prince bears down on the Veterans to seek a bloody vengeance for the destruction of the Chaos Marine squad. This was also the hilarious moment his demon prince threw psychic lightning at the Veterans, and the telekinetic dome caused it to ricochet off the Veterans and knock a hull point off his Valkyrie.

It then all got a bit frantic on the left flank. Al'Rahem's squad got out of the Chimera, successfully used Like the Wind and melta gunned the Terminators to death before ducking back behind their Chimera. The infantry platoon caught the Traitor veterans in the open and gunned them down


The flying demon prince swept across the table in an attempt to deal with the mass of guardsmen bearing down on his flank.


A slightly blurry shot shows my Demolisher trying very hard to be inconspicuous away from the demon prince.


His Valkyrie went into hover mode in a desperate attempt to deal with the Demolisher a little too late (it survived the game, remarkably, although it was immobilised)...


The demon Prince managed to destroy the Chimera, and shortly after this last shot was taken, cut down Al'Rahem and his squad - I don't recall if it made it through the game in the end, but I was holding enough objectives to scrape a win!

This was my first introduction to flying psychic monstrous creatures, but it was not to be my last. They are incredibly dangerous this edition, and are now making my list of "things a list needs to be able to deal with".

3 comments:

  1. Well done; well fought!

    I've never yet worked out how to put up any sort of a defence against monstrous creatures of any sort.

    I suspect it is possible, but without profoundly changing my play-style or my army to something overy competitive? - Meh. It's not going to happen.

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    Replies
    1. You don't need to massively change an army list to have some level of defence. They are definitely challenging for the Guard to deal with, but you can make small changes to improve things.

      I'm planning a blog posts with a few tactical thoughts when I'm through my battle report backlog - and I'd also be happy to take a look over a typical army list of yours and give you a few thoughts on how you could make minor changes while still keeping in with your play style and theme. You can take a step towards "able to deal" without going all the way to 'competitive'.

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  2. 'flying psychic monstrous creatures' yikes! I haven't had to deal with that yet - luck me.
    Nice write up and walk though of the battle. I too am behind on my battle reports... Hope I don't get demoted!

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