Battle Standard Tournament 1500pts: Game 3

My third opponent was a Blood Angels player, and the for the first time I would be fighting this new codex. He had Dante, along with 2 dreadnoughts in pods, an assault squad in a pod, an assault squad with jump packs, and a squad of sanguinary guard, with a priest giving them feel no pain. In the pregame he managed to roll blood rage for almost his entire army.

Game 3 was very interesting. It had 3 variable missions as the main objective, and each player had to secretly choose one, and then reveal it to their opponent before deployment. Also each mission had a different deployment associated with it. That meant that each player could be running the same mission and deployment, but they could also be running different deployments and totally different mission objectives.

Out of the 3 mission types I choose the one that had 3 objectives, and pitched battle deployment. I got to place all of the objectives with the only restrictions being that they had to be outside of my 12" deployment zone and no closer than 12" to each other. I was counting on my opponent choosing the mission that would lead him trying to infiltrate my deployment zone, so I set up my objectives just outside the 12" no fly zone, and close to central position on the board.

I lucked out and my opponent did choose that mission, and not the assassination mission. Things were interesting in deployment as both of us were playing all deepstriking armies. He won the roll to go first and passed it to me.

I landed 3 dreadnoughts and a tactical squad near my objectives, along with the master of the forge. In his turn 1 he landed a furioso dreadnought which scattered off to the left of the frame, and an assault squad in a drop pod. Nothing really occurred in turn 1 so we move to turn 2 with these edited photos.

I edited out his turn 2 additions. But anyway the master of the forge along with the flamer marine and combiflamer sergeant moved forward and torched the assault marines standing in front of their drop pod. Killed all but 4 of them including the sergeant with the powerfist so was pretty excited and still in assault range. However they failed their leadership check and fled robbing me of an assault. In retrospect this squad had blood rage and should have been fearless, its something to remember when facing Blood Angels, because the rule isnt standard, its random its harder to keep track of the penalties and advantages of blood rage.


Here in his turn 2 I highlighted where my objectives were for ease. Also in the now unblotched out sections you can see that all of his reserves came down on turn 2, when I hadn't gotten any of mine yet. Dante and the sanguinary guard used his ability to not scatter and blow up a dreadnought. The assault squad, landspeeders and dreadnought drop pod used the locator beacon on the forward pod to land close to my marines. They put a lot of fire into my combat squad and killed the sergeant and all but one marine, and wounded the master of the forge once. Then the previously fleeing assault marines used their furious charge and attacked the lonesome commander. Fighting was a wash, with artificier armor keeping the MOF alive and him whiffing with his powerfist attacks.
Here is another angle of that turn,so you can see the master of the forge fighting for his life.
Turn 3 I got another Dread, and Vulkan and his tactical squad in. They flamed the nicely bunched assault squad dealing 27 wounds, but only causing 6 deaths. The dreadnought also dropped one of the speeders. My two other dreadnoughts that were on the field attempted to get into grips with the sanguinary guard, to keep them from running through my troops. One managed to reach combat, while the other got hung up making bad difficult terrain rolls while trying to cross his dead friend wedged between the two drop pods. With only one powerfist my dreadnought was relatively safe, but didnt manage to kill off any of the guard wither.

During his turn 3 his dreadnoughts continued to plod forward doing nothing, they were really placed far too conservatively and never managed to get well into the fight. His remaining speeder jumped behind my freshly arrived dread at the top of the screen and missed its melta shot. His remaining assault marines used their meltas on the dread as well, and also missed, so they assaulted it. Again their lone powerfist proved insufficient and they were locked in combat. The sanguinary guard were likewise ineffective losing a member, and the master of the forge and his tactical squad companion dealt the final blows to the assault squad remnants they had been locked with.

During turn 4 I separated Vulkan from his tactical squad so the forgefather could help free the locked dreadnought. My last dreadnought landed and wiped off one of the Furiosos that was finally getting close to my tactical marine hiding in the building. The tactical marines along with the master of the forge and slow moving dreadnought all piled into the sanguinary guard and dante fight. Now it was probably foolish to rush all these fleshy bodies into a fight that the dreadnoughts could probably win by themselves and leave the marines to consolidate onto the objectives, but I tend to get impatient with the dreadnoughts and their limited attacks and sent a good number of marines to their deaths at Dante's hands.

The middle of his turn 4 is where this pic was taken. His black speeder has just blown up a drop pod that previously marked the middle gray area of the pic, likely in frustration of everything else being in combat. His off screen dreadnought killed my dreadnought with a melta shot. In the ensuing assault phase Vulkan and the dreadnought finally dealt with the assault marines and consolidated. The large mess of an assault continued to grind.


In the ensuing 5th turn Vulkan moved to join the combat. The dreadnought killed off the last speeder. And when Dante finally failed his invul save and came crashing down I consolidated nicely onto the objectives. We called the game then, as all he had left was a lone dreadnought and couldnt get through all my scoring units at that point, and also lacked the scoring unit necessary to win his own objective.