Battle Report, Slow Grow League Week 7: 1,000 pts vs Space Marines

Another week, another battle. This time facing some Space Marines. I was pretty tired after work, and did manage to make a pretty big mistake in deployment.

You may notice I pretty much totally failed to actually deploy my Veterans, instead just piling them up in a heap. Whoops!

As well as the Razorbacks, there was also a small squad of Devastators up in the ruins, with some Tactical Marines on the ground floor.

My opponent had managed to draw Invisibility with his Librarian, which led to a five minute rules discussion before we even started. He also managed to roll "Skyfire Nexus" for all three of the objectives on his side of the table - clearly this flyer heavy force was keen to deny these locations to their opponents.

The Razorback raced out to grab an early objective...

And managed to get itself immobilised on the crater. Still, it did its job, scoring a point for the Marines!

Perhaps in punishment for my failure to deploy them properly, the Marine commander's Warlord trait pinned my Veterans.

The Razorback did not survive the experience of sitting out in the open against a Guard army.

Enter the Stormraven - and this is not the worst I was expecting! Still, the new Firestorm Redoubt was seriously discouraging my opponent from wandering around on my left flank.

Here you can see a tiny half inch of a Stormraven from my Firestorm Redoubt...

And here's the final movement position - flying with millimetres to spare behind the building so the Redoubt couldn't open fire. Still, they're Space Marines, ridiculous super human feats are entirely reasonable.

The Marines in the ruins, though, were pretty much down to a heavy bolter carrying Marine due to the fire from the brave Guardsmen!

And numbers were beginning to thin in the centre ruin too!

Uh oh.

The Fire Raptor is a lethal menace, and something I was really worried about.

Although the Firestorm Redoubt proved why my opponent was nervous about it, managing to graze it and mess up the majority of it's targeting computers for a turn.

Although despite that, it managed to take out the command Chimera.

The command squad scrambled onto the roof as a nearby squad took out the surviving Tactical Marine so they could open up with Skyfire - but to no avail!

The Stormraven and the Fire Raptor converged on the infantry squads, both dropping into hover mode to confuse the Firestorm Redoubt. Pretty much everyone got wiped out in a turn over here!

Now targetting the nearest unit (as all the flyers weren't zooming), a single Scout got the unfortunate job of waving his camo cloak around like a bull fighter in front of the automated targetting systems of the Redoubt, successfully drawing all their fire to him.

With nothing left but the bunker, the Marines closed in to take it out, but it managed to survive - although the game still ended with a solid win for the Space Marines!

I'm definitely impressed with the Firestorm Redoubt from this experience. It's pricey, but a serious challenge to anyone who hasn't planned for AV14. Of course, it's over-costed if your opponent doesn't have much in the way of a flying problems, but in this situation, for this game, it was just about perfect.