The Emperor's Will - Cadia

Mission: The Emperor's Will.
Deployment: Hammer & Anvil.
Points: 2000pts.
Warzone: Cadia.

The Death Guard advance has ground to a halt. The chaos marines face the hated Imperial Fists across a wides watch of no man's land. For several days they have exchanged fire with no real shift in the lines. Typhus orders his forces to board transports and charge into the space marine lines.

It has been a few weeks since I last got a game of 40K so when Gary D challenged me with his Imperial Fists I jumped at the chance. Mission was The Emperor’s Will at 2000 points. I still wanted to try the list I played at the Midas Crusade tournament and I hoped that it might do better in a less competitive game.

We both placed our objective on opposite sides of the same edge with units guarding them. I had some CSM guarding mine and he had some strange Horus Heresy cannons (they have some 40k experimental rules) on his. Knowing that he was keeping two units of terminators and lysander in reserve, I kept my hel cult back to help guard my base.

Night fight turn 1 meant that little fire actually hit. Only my Knight managed to inflict any wounds. It would do really well through the game never scattering the thermal blaster the entire game. Once it hit turn 2 his fire power dropped my land raider and both rhinos. The terminators came down mid table to engage Typhus and his terminators. This meant that the hel cult did nothing the entire game.

As usual Typhus died horribly in close combat with Lysander just pummelling into red goo with his silly thunder hammer. He always seems to end up in the wrong combats. Maybe he’ll have better luck next time.

Grave cannons tore the hull points out of my Knight and all game it only regenerated one! It did managed to crush an enemy dreadnought and two of the centurians before it suffered catastrophic damage and detonated, taking out half my plague marines on that side of the table.

The game ended turn 5 with Gary winning 5VP to my 3VP. Close game but he had far better luck with his dice rolls then I did.  I really needed to have my raptors built as I think if I could have deep struck them at the back of the table I might have been able to take his objective forcing him to either pull back or push on towards my objective.

Falling Back - Lelithar

Planet: Lelithar.

Cadian Sector.

999.M41

Dark Angels vs Death Guard.

2000 points.

Mission: Deadlock.

The Lelithar conflict has after many weeks fallen to a stalemate with neither the larger Death Guard army nor the Dark Angel strike teams making head way against one another. Typhus has decided to pull his back forces to the territory that they have captured. While this consolidates his forces into one target location, the Dark Angels do not have the numbers to launch an effective strike and the lord of the Death Guard plans to use his numbers to eradicate the space marine threat.

This was my effective third tournament game against my nephew's Dark Angels. Typical that I would end up playing him yet again. Having played against this list recently I knew exactly what to expect and I spent the set up trying to work out how to deal with all that grav weaponry. This game was played lengthwise down the table but I knew with his drop pod force I wouldn't make much headway and that is exactly what happened. Benjo got the first turn and his grav weaponry tore dropped a handful of chaos marines first turn and stripped some hul points from my Chaos Knight.

My plague marines were in rhino's but each attempt to get close to objectives resulted with me losing hull points and slowly he whittled away my forces. Worst of all was my turn two in which he wrecked my land raider forcing Typhus and his terminators to jump out. All I could do on my turn was hope that enough of them could assault the squad and remove those grav weapons, but once again overwatching on full ballistic skill meant he killed all four terminators and Typhus before I even did anything. By the end of turn two I had basically given up and was just playing to make things more difficult for my opponent.

The only real victory I had this game came from my Chaos Knight. I was able to keep it alive and continually focus fire into his Librarian Conclave squad and Azrael. Turn after turn I stripped away Azrael's protection but I couldn't get through the invulnerable saves by the time the game ended on turn 6. But I did more damage to them in this game than I had previously.

On turn 6 the game ended and once again victory was achieved by the Dark Angels due to grav weapons.  I've said it before but they are nasty. Unfortunately this game because of the terrain layout and my nephew's well placed drop pod assault, I didn't have the cover saves to prevent it. Going to need some more practice against him I think.

Typhus plan has worked but at great cost. His men have successfully fallen back but the Dark Angels launched a series of successful strikes into the chaos forces they retreated from the front lines. Now the Death Guard have consolidated their position Typhus needs to fathom a means of breaking out and achieving a victory if the Lelithar campaign is to be successful.