Battle Standard Tournament 1500pts: Game 2

Game 2 saw me matched up against Bob and his Imperial Guard, note not my good friend Bob from the ork battle report.

The mission was spearhead deployment, with 4 objectives. You can see 3 of them in this picture. The small black beacon on the left below the tape measure, the small grey one next to the dreadnought in the direct middle and the small imperial guard commander alone on the bottom right. The fourth was off screen to the left.

I won the roll and chose to go second. Bob set up his Basalisk, demolisher, and a banewolf, as well as the leman russ varient with the auto cannon, towards the top of the screen all clustered together. Then upon the hill he placed his command squad and 3 veteran teams with a lascannon each. He also had a plasma veteran team in reserve and a melta veteran squad in a chimera in reserve. During his first turn he made the mistake of forgetting to pop smoke.

On my turn one I landed 4 Dreadnoughts just like last game. First shot wrecked the demolisher. Second blew up the banewolf. Stunned the sentinel, and flamed the company command squad killing a few.

This picture is was taken during his turn 2. His sentinel moved up and popped smoke. His veterans came on in their chimera navigating the difficult terrain that was the crater where the banewolf had been. His lascannons took downone of the dreadnoughts. The one at the top of the screen took the melta shots from the veterans as well as the autocannonleman russ, and managed to only be stunned and down its multimelta.
During my second turn the master of the forge and his tactical squad landed in the bottom right after a bad scater, and simply spread out in the cover of the trees there. One of my reamaing dreadnoughts assaulted the sentinel, while another assaulted one of his veteran squads in the mountains. I forgot to pop smoke with the stunned dreadnought that was still staring down the barrel of the chimera mounted vets with melta guns. While the sentinel was summarily destroyed, the veteran squad held in combat keeping my dread safe from shooting for the next turn.

Bob's walking veteran team moved on in the middle of the board from reserves. The rest of his army stayed mainly stationary to bring all the guns to bear. I lost another dread, this time the one that had slain the sentinel. However the dread at the top of the screen continued to shrug off hits left and right and though it lost its other arm it stayed alive. In his combat phase my dreadnought forced the veterans to flee off the board and consolidated towards the chimera.

During my half od turn 3 my last dreadnought made it in from reserves. It landed off screen to the left(a wide angle shot in a later pic shows its location during bob's 4th turn) and flamed the walking veterans. Half of a tactical squad moved into the hills and wiped out a veteran squad, the 3 remaining marines are shown below after their consolidation moves. The only mobile dreadnought shot andstunned the chimera, and then assaulted it causing no further damage.
Bob's 4th turn saw the end to the everlasting dreadnought, that without smoke had still taken most of his heavy shots for 3 turns now. The melta vets had to get out of their ride to fire now, and managed to immobilize the dread swining at their ride. Since it was still in base to base at the end of the assault phase however it killed the chimera.
The late arrival dreadnought popped smoke and then assaulted the remaing veterans in the left of this shot. The immobilized dread melta'd the basalisk away and the ensuing explosion took a few of the melta veterans with it.

During Bob's 5th turn he stunned the dread on the left with his leman russ, and killed the immobilized dread on the right with his last lascannon team.
My turn 5 Vulkan finnally arrived(because at that point its automatic). He and his boys flamed away the remaining melta vets and the command squad. The other 2 tactical squad halves moved to make sure they were on objectives.

Turn 6(the last turn) Bob killed the last of my dreadnoughts. And my fresh tactical marines killed off the last of his guardsmen at the top of the hill. Vulkan fell just short of getting me another of the mission's bonus points, but I still ended up with 28 out of the 30 available. I was in fourth place 1 point behind 3rd heading into round 3.