1,500 point battle against Codex Space Marines: Working out Storm Troopers

So, with the turning of the New Year, I decided to head down to Dark Sphere's new shop and gaming centre to get some 40K in. I decided that now I have two fully painted Storm Trooper squads, I wanted to try out deep striking large squads of them to cause mayhem in the back field, as historically I've had a lot of problems projecting my force into my opponent's side of the battlefield.

1500 Pts - Imperial Guard Roster

HQ: Company Command Squad
Medi-pack; Regimental Standard; Lascannon; Astropath; 2 Bodyguards; Master of Ordnance; Officer of the Fleet

Chimera
Hull Heavy Flamer; Extra Armour; Hunter-killer Missile

Troops: Infantry Platoon
Platoon Command Squad
Meltagun x4

Infantry Squad
Meltagun; Autocannon; Commissar

Infantry Squad
Meltagun; Autocannon; Commissar

Conscripts Squad
20 Conscripts

Troops: Veteran Squad
Flamer x2; Grenade Launcher; Demolitions

Elite: Storm Trooper Squad
10 Storm Troopers; Plasma gun x2

Elite: Storm Trooper Squad
10 Storm Troopers; Meltagun x2

Elite: 5 Ratlings

Fast Attack: Valkyrie Assault Carrier

Heavy Support: Leman Russ Demolisher

My opponent was in the process of changing his Dark Angels over to being Codex Space Marines. His forces consisted of a tactical squad on foot, a tactical squad in a rhino, some scouts, some Sternguard in a Razorback with his commander, a Devastator squad, then a Storm Raven and two Storm Talons.

I was a little worried about this. I'd skimped on the Hydra, and my Valkyrie isn't well suited to putting holes in other flyers - particularly not three of them with pretty heavy firepower themselves!

We got the standard objectives mission, and I deployed my Command HQ on the left flank in their Chimera, one squad on top of a building to get some good lines of fire, the conscripts wrapping the Demolisher to protect it from assault, while the second infantry squad took the right flank.

His Sternguard, HQ and Razorback went on his far right flank, with the foot Tactical squad in the rocks in the middle, with the Devastators in some ruins with the Rhino and second Tactical squad hidden behind the ruin.

He then put a Scout squad with sniper rifles into the ruins on his far left flank.

Meanwhile, my Ratlings found a nice spot to shoot some pesky power armour. We then remembered to roll for night fight and even remembered to use the rules - but we then forgot to use Warlord traits. I am totally going to write myself out a cheat sheet at this rate.

The conscripts advanced up the field, heading towards an objective in the ruins. I was worried about how much fire they would be able to weather without having an independent character with them to prop their leadership up.

On my left flank, I felt a bit nervous and isolated, with few good targets available for the command HQ lascannon without moving and forcing it to snap fire - so I hit the smoke launchers.

The Guard on the ground floor of the building advanced a little into the building, but left the heavy weapon stationary to allow it to fire accurately.

A good choice, in the end, as the Devastator sergeant ended up taking a lucky autocannon shell to the face.

Play passed to my opponent, and his Razorback advanced and proceeded to blow the Chimera to tiny pieces, smoke or no smoke! The bodyguards didn't make it out of the explosion, but everyone else piled out of the wreckage.

I advanced my command squad onto the board from reserve, where I'd left them by mistake. Rookie error, I know. You'll also notice my opponent had managed to knock a hull point off the Demolisher.

The Valkyrie roared onto the field and ineffectively threw some fire about doing nothing in particular.

The first Storm Trooper squad with lots of melta guns dropped down in between the Razorback and the tactical squad. Looking back, I'm not sure this was the best idea - they weren't quite in a good place to do a lot of damage to either squad, and I was uncommitted to sorting out either unit properly - although keeping them back from the Tactical Squad was wise, as it meant that running back would take them far away from the objective they were heading towards.

The conscripts advanced up to the objective, and the "mysterious"-ness resolved itself as a shooty fire nexus of some kind - allowing me to re-roll 1s to hit.

I took this photo of the Tactical Marines. I assume it means I got a casualty or two. Maybe I should take better notes!

Unfortunately, at this point, one of the Storm Talons decided to turn up and "Have Words" with the Storm Troopers.

The surviving Tactical Marines also turned around to express their displeasure about being shot in the back.

The other Storm Talon decided to do something about the Valkyrie, and the Rhino advances...

The firepower definitely took its toll on the Storm Troopers. They tried to pull themselves together to do something useful but were shot to pieces before they could do anything else of note.

In return, my second Storm Trooper squad decided to put a more significant hole in the Tactical Squad. Team Storm Trooper - shooting Space Marines in the back since M40...

The Valkyrie decided it was in a bad place, so ran off the board, dropping the Veterans on the way. They scattered badly, only just surviving, with one of them ending up as a casualty.

Lets see how this shooting goes...

Ah, that's much better than the last set. Although, sadly, it shortly went south as the Marines charged the Storm Troopers down and cut them down to a man after the Storm Trooper Sergeant's challenge with the Marine Sergeant ended badly, and the rest of the squad panicked and fled, being cut down as they ran.

The Rhino then exploded spectacularly (probably of Demolisher), causing some quite significant damage to the tactical squad inside it, before an assortment of crossfire whittled them down further.

At this point, a massive wall of flying death finally turned up, the Master of the Fleet finally delaying him no longer...

He also brought a friend to help deal with the pesky, pesky Demolisher...

And lo, was there much, much cursing over the survivability of the Leman Russ chassis.

And bloody vengeance was wreaked on the veterans, causing them to flee into the cover of the dank pond.

The surviving Tactical Marines carefully got into the ruins - and discovered they had a sabotaged objective. Cleverly, they stayed a level below the objective - within 3 inches, but immune to any explosions from the objective.

The Valkyrie pottered back on and shot up the Storm Raven for no damage. I forgot that its missiles are Ordnance and so fired both at full ballistic skill, but fortunately, given my rules mistake, it did little but scratch the paint...

The command HQ spread out a little bit to better survive the oncoming storm...

A Storm Talon came over to say hello to the infantry squad.

Flyers pass each other, criss-crossing the battlefield.

The Leman Russ was finally wrecked, I think by the Devastators - the Valkyrie came around behind the Storm Raven, opened up with the multilaser, and it all just bounced off...

I don't remember if they went to ground or got pinned, but the Veterans weren't going anywhere!

The surviving infantry squad advance through the building to take a pot shot at the Storm Talon... (Although sadly, the difficult terrain leaves them too far away to claim the objective!)

And the melta gunner gets that lucky hit he needs - the Storm Talon plummets to the ground in flames!

The command HQ cower out of sight in the depths of the ruins while the Razorback advances on their position. Only three survived the massive hail of fire from the flyers!

And at this point, more or less, the game ended as we rolled for it not to continue. We both held one objective, no-one had Line Breaker or Slay the Warlord, but he had First Blood from destroying my Chimera, so narrowly carried the game!

If only my Veterans had rallied earlier or not fled in the first place, I could have drawn with Line Breaker! If only I'd advanced my squad up earlier, or they'd got a better difficult terrain roll, I'd have taken a second objective and won...

But . . .

I do feel I had a lot of learning points from this game - while there were points I was unlucky, there were also bad mistakes I made. Remember that squad out on the far right flank? They did practically nothing all game and were miles from an objective. The squad in the centre could have advanced on the objective earlier had I been minded to.

Both I and my opponent played this one pretty cautiously - there were units that did little, but also, in turn, took very few casualties. It was like the forces were reluctant to engage and risk heavy casualties, which is an interesting feel to a game - actually relatively realistic in many ways to a lot of real engagements.

The Storm Troopers did pretty well in causing casualties, but were pretty quickly wiped out in turn - the need to deep strike into open ground does penalise them a little. I still definitely have more to do with them in terms of learning how to use them effectively.

Army list wise, I do need some more units to better deal with a flyer heavy list. The Hydra is very anti-flyer specific, which is a downside when you're trying to trim points for other things. It can be very ineffective if your opponent isn't bringing any flyers or skimmers. Also, the "stock" Valkyrie doesn't have much firepower - it is primarily a troop transport. I'm not sure about it's merits as a troop transport, either. I've not been having the greatest luck with shoving people out the back at high speed - is there a time to consider hover mode?

In general, it was a very enjoyable, close fought game, and I'll be glad to play the same chap again.

Progress of a sort - one bit at a time

With another week passed, I haven't managed to finish anything.

This isn't as bad as it sounds - I've still done a lot, and in some cases the end is in sight, but the real fact remains - nothing is finished yet this year.

I'm really starting to feel the Arbitrator is coming together. I've redone his legs in blue, and I think that's helped in breaking up the colour blocks on the model. I don't think I'm going to go for this combination on my final ones though - there's just not quite enough armour, and Guard flak vests are really distinctive.

As before, the first level of water effects ended up shrinking down and not being flat, so another, second layer has been added and is still drying. This is the frustrating thing with these swamp bases and water effects - I don't know if I'm "finished" until several days later when I get to see the models with everything dry.

I've also completely assembled an Imperial Guard squad. In a sense, the assembly is finished, but the miniatures are not finished finished. Also, in order to complete the Hobby Progress Challenge with any chance of success I need to get two squads done rather than one!

So hopefully, I will be well into the assembly of the second squad by the end of next week, the Arbitrator will be as good as finished and the Wicked Dolls will finally be done. I'm really feeling like I've got some momentum!

First week of painting for a new year

I spent the first couple of days of the New Year completely clearing off my painting table, as it had gained an awful lot of junk I wasn't working on. Once it was finished, I took the opportunity to lay out all my current Kanban board on the table so I could see all my work in progress.

Then, after a little more procrastination, I sat down and tried to start doing a little bit each day.

I started work on the head swaps for another five Guardsmen for the Independent Characters' Hobby Progress Challenge. I'm quite happy with the chap with the rebreather and the Bretonnian head.

And a couple of them needed a little green stuff to make the heads work with the bodies.

I picked up the Chaos Champion, too, gluing him to his base and filling in the hole with green stuff, as I've decided to try out Agrellan Earth on this chap! Not much more than that yet - but he's moving a little again.

I've started painting the Arbitrator. I'm worried there's a bit too much red on him, but I think that's down to the choice of parts I used to put him together. I'm trying to decide if I should break up the massive amount of red with something else, like changing the trousers to Dark Blue or something similar.

The armour is going more to what the leg plates are like rather than the helmet - that missed a few stages as I sorted out his face. Trying to decide what colour to make his gun - whether to go with some sort of particular case colour, or mostly gun metal.

And finally, three Wicked Dolls are pinned and glued to their bases, ready for water effects! The end of the road is in sight with these chaps. This makes me inordinately happy - they've been an absolute pain for ages.

Fiction: Decisions and Justifications

In the darkness of the shattered building, Captain Newman cursed under his breath and holstered his laspistol. Leaning up against the wall, he cautiously brought his fingers up to his left shoulder before wincing in pain, and they came away dark and sticky. The medical orderly, sweating profusely, fussed over him, hurrying a field dressing into place while the two surviving Tallarn Guardsmen carefully brought the field gun to bear on the wall corner from which the enemy would most likely appear.

He could hear their engine now - a lighter tenor sound to the bass rumblings of the tanks he was used to. It was close, but there was enough time to take stock and make a decision.

The pickets had made contact with the enemy just before dawn, with power armoured infantry spotted moving into the ruins, and at least two APCs advancing between the rubble. As they refused to answer to the encrypted codes of the day, Newman had ordered a general advance on the remaining industrial buildings to take control of the remaining technology within, with orders to engage at will.

While this might have seemed strange in any other battlefield without identifying if the unknown Chapter was loyalist or renegade, the local situation was confused at best. A number of nominally loyalist chapters had been operating in the area independently, and more than one had not been at all shy at engaging fiercely with Guard regiments who got in the way of their own, unknown objectives.

As expected, they had been met with Marine resistance, although both forces had been cautious, avoiding the risk of over-commitment. It had become confused early on as Newman's command Chimera had exploded in a fiery wreck, although he hadn't identified which of the enemy's anti tank weapons had done the deed. The explosion had cost him the lives of both of his assigned bodyguards, which made him nervous, although the rest of his squad and staff officers had managed to scramble from the wreckage, mostly due to the bravery of the bodyguards in pushing everyone else clear before seeing to their own safety.

He ran the numbers in his head - his force had been light on armour and air defence from the start - relying on the Imperial Navy assigned back up and the Storm Troopers held back to grav chute in to get them out of trouble. The enemy force was heavy on it's air support - the Warrant Officer assigned as his Naval liaison had managed to achieve their delayed arrival with a Thunderbolt intercept, but the ship based long range support was never going to do anything significant on the field - that was for the Valkyries operating from the Naval base planet-side.

Both his Commissars remained inconveniently alive, so a withdrawal would have to be carefully justified. The conscripts had confirmed securing a working targeting array from one of the buildings, but the platoon's first squad had reported that enemy fire had prevented them finding any working technology in the main workshops. The enemy had clearly secured some barrels of some kind, which he suspected to be Prometheum, but he had suspicions it might be leaking given the cautious distance even the armoured super human giants were keeping from it. He had also been able to see military supplies piled up in the entrance of what remained of the Administratum building, but the open fields of fire had prevented anyone from managing to investigate if they were of any real worth.

So, while in a practical sense, both sides had managed to obtain something of value, it was something that could easily be spun as being in favour of the Guard. Losses were moderate on both sides - he'd lost his staff officers and the regimental standard to a combination of small arms fire and a strafing run from one of the Marine escort fighters - neatly avenging itself on the Naval liaison who had delayed its arrival in the battle. Lieutenant Worthington was unharmed, but every squad in third platoon had taken casualties - but none had wavered, which spoke well of them - not even the conscripts had lost their nerve.

The Storm Troopers had not been so lucky - despite giving the enemy squads a serious mauling, it had not been enough and the counter assault had wiped them out. There were only a few of the Veterans who had deployed by Grav chute from the Valkyrie, either - an unlucky landing had left them in the open and cut to pieces on open ground before the few survivors had managed to hole up in the cover provided by some murky lake. The Valkyrie itself was also fine - all missiles expended, but undamaged.

Among the Marines, there were only a few of their line infantry left standing - if somewhat gingerly near some leaking Prometheum. If the second Lieutenant from the 9th Jovian Artillery hadn't managed to get his face shot off by a bolter while trying to get a better line of sight for strikes, perhaps something could be done, but as it was, they weren't going to be brought out in a hurry. The engine noise reminded him of the armoured APC that was intending to disgorge more super human killers near him soon.

If any of the Demolisher's crew had survived its eventual wrecking, they were on his list for a medal - the central advance of the Marines had been stalled almost entirely through their efforts in taking out first the APC, then causing its occupants so many casualties that their lone survivor had actually withdrawn from the field - something Newman had not seen in his career to date. The enemy's fire support team had certainly gained a couple of serious injuries - a couple would probably need a medic before they would see the field again.

First squad's failure to gain additional supplies would certainly be mitigated by their lucky downing of the second Marine escort flyer. Their weapon's specialist would likely see a medal if he was still alive over there. But still, the first escort and the heavy flyer were still active - due to come back for a second pass any time soon.

And that was it - decision made. He touched his comm bead.

"All units, this is Captain Newman. As ordered, we have obtained supplies from the area. Worthington, have the Whiteshields pack that targeting array up double time. Withdraw in close order, Ratlings and second squad to provide covering fire until the array is clear."

A pause. Then, as expected...

"Withdrawing, Captain?" The metallic sound of Commissar Van Saar's vox unit crackled in his ear. Private channel, thank goodness. He thumbed over to the direct link.

"The hostile forces have heavy air support, and it will be coming back. Our colleagues in the Navy have done an admirable job, but they are outfitted for downing light fighters. We've been lucky to do as well as we have so far."

Another pause, but not long enough for the Commissar to question further...

"To sacrifice our lives now would be wasteful, and throw away the gains we have made in blood. That would be criminal."

When the reply came, it was not the voice he expected. Older, still clipped and precise - perhaps more disturbing with the lack of the metallic tone of the hive-born Commissar's vox.

"As you say, Captain. This material must be safely returned to headquarters, and we cannot hold back their aircraft."

Newman exhaled slowly, and pulled himself upright, nodding to the three men with him to start quietly picking their way through the twisted metal and lumps of plascrete, back to their own lines.