Battle Report 1850: Salamanders vs. Ultra Marines

This battle report features another 1850 tourney test list from myself and Rod with his Ultramarines.

My list:

Vulkan - 190

Master of the forge - 100

Tactical Squad - rhino - 125

Scout Squad - 2x combimelta - 95

Ironclad - melta gun, heavy flamer, 2x hk missiles, drop pod - 200

Ironclad - melta gun, heavy flamer, 2x hk missiles, drop pod - 200

Ironclad - heavy flamer, heavy flamer, 2x hk missiles, drop pod - 205

Ironclad - heavy flamer, heavy flamer, 2x hk missiles, drop pod - 205

Dreadnought - assault cannon, TL auto cannon, drop pod - 160

Dreadnought - assault cannon, TL auto cannon, drop pod - 160

Speeder - Multi Melta, heavy flamer - 70

Speeder - Multi Melta, heavy flamer - 70

Land Speeder Storm - multimelta - 65

Rod's List:

135 - Librarian on Termi armour - Combi Flamer, Nullzone and Gate of infinity

235 - Tactical Sqd I(10) – Meltagun, Heavy Bolter, Power Fist – Rhino
230 - Tactical Sqd II(10) – Falmer, Multimelta, Power Fist – Drop pod
165 - Tactical Sqd III (5) – Razorback (Twin Lascannon)

450 - Assault Termis (5) – TH/SS(4), LC(1) – LR Redeemer – Multimelta
150 - Dreadnought – Heavy Flamer – Drop pod
180 - Ironclad Dreadnought – Seismic Hammer, Heavy Flamer – Drop pod

85 - Predator – Autocannon, Heavy Bolter sponsons
105 - Predator – Twin Lascannon

115 - Vindicator

So once again this is a 5 objective match. In tournament prep I find this is the most useful mission to practice as it is nearly always present in tournament play where you cant be quite sure of the rest of the mission choices. The deployment here was spearhead. Rod won the roll to go first and told me that he would like me to go first.

Here you can see our deployments. I set up my two shooty dreads inside the ruined building, and then shielded their rears with the speeders. The scout speeder is also there to jam his drop pods, but the scouts themselves are outflanking. Everything else of mine is in reserve.

Rod set up his whole army with some space between it. I was somewhat surprised as usually when people tell me to go first they dont set anything up at all. But Rod smiled at me and rolled a 6 to steal the initiative... grrrr sneaky.

Didnt take a picture of Rod's first turn... but it went something like this... landed his two dreadnoughts back from my lines, you can see their pods in the next pic(the black one and the blue one) and the dreadnoughts hid behind them. Then his landraider moved forward as did most of the rest of his army. Then when it came to shooting most of his line of sight was blocked by both terrain and his own pods so he only managed to stun my scout speeder this turn.

On my turn 1 I landed the 2 melta gun Ironclads, as well as one of the dual flamer ones. Using two of the pods and one dreadnought I boxed the landraider in. When I started shooting Rod got scared. I blew up the vindicator with ease, then wrecked his razorback, then his regular dreadnought. My speeders blew up the blue drop pod to clear cover off his Ironclad and then my shooty dread opened up on it, 3 rending 6's for 3 pens.... oh yeah I was pumped up... then on the damage table... 3 2's for basically no result.
Carnage shot!
On Rod's turn 2 he was a little peeved that his landraider was trapped, so his terminators got out to inflict some revenge on the nearby Ironclads. His shooting went off just as good as mine had last turn. First his lascannon pred wrecked one Ironclad. Then his autocannon and heavy bolter pred ripped into the rear of another one wrecking it. The third Ironclad ducked his multimelta but then got piled onto by a heap of terminators. They also assaulted the pod to keep the librarian out of combat and wrecked that.

They failed to kill the Ironclad and the librarian had to consolidate into base to base with it, his Ironclad also failed to destroy the pod in front of the landraider.

Off screen slightly but visible in the next shot his drop pod troops landed on the right of the battle field.
On turn 2 my reserves arrived. The Rhino rumbled straight towards his marines on the right and popped smoke. My scouts also arrived on that flank and I sent the Storm to go pick them up. My last Ironclad landed on the far left to slow his tank and transport.

I fired my melta speeders and one of my shooty dreads at the enemy Ironclad... to little effect.. another stunned, too bad they come stock with extra armor. The fresh Ironclad lay its dual flamers over both the pred and rhino and though its missiles blew up the pred the flamers only took off the rhino's storm bolter.

In the assault phase I sent a shooty dread to tie up his tactical marines for a turn to wait for Vulkan. And my Ironclad stood tall against the terminators and slew the Librarian. His Ironclad still in base to base with my pod blew the blocking thing up.
End of my turn 2> one of the speeders had actually been shaken so rod let me move it far out to the top of the screen instead of where it had been pictured shooting at his dreadnought.
Rod's turn 3 he moved his landraider forward a bit. His rhino moved to shoot its embarked melta at my Ironclad on the left. His lascannon pred shot at my fast moving Landspeeder which passed its cover save. His melta gun missed. And his landraider tried to split its fire on the shooty dread and the nearby speeder and did nothing.

His Ironclad then joined combat with his terminators and finally helped do some damage to my Ironclad, blowing off all its weapons and immobilizing it.
On my 3rd turn I got Vulkan and the master of the forge out of the Rhino and sent them to join the assault. My speeders jumped forward and blew up the landraider. My Ironclad on the left assaulted the rhino and stunned it. And my other Ironclad continued to avoid destruction improbably.
On turn 4 Rod's meltagun team jumped out of their Rhino and blew away my Ironclad. And his terminators finished off my Ironclad in combat. His predator stunned my nearby speeder.
On my turn 4 I jumped a speeder forward to block the terminators. My tactical marines spread out to take the objectives(red circle markers) one on the red terrain piece and the other hidden in the front of that nearby building. While the scouts in their speeder to control of the one near those refinery tanks.

I had one of his contested by that pod in the top left of the screen(I know astute readers will say the terminators destroyed that turn 2), but I had dropped one of my empty ones on it again.

Vulkan finished off the last of rods tactical marines near the pod, and the last objective off screen to the left was contested by another empty pod.
Rod played out his turn 5 getting his marines back in the rhino to speed toward the offscreen objective, in hopes that with another turn they could break that contesting vehicle. His terminators assaulted my speeder wrecking it.

We called the game there with my 3-0 lead being rather Ironclad(excuse the pun). Even with the ability to break my contesting units on further turns it would have only been able to turn the game from 3-0 to 3-2, without counting my ability to further contest with the empty Rhino as well as my still mobile speeders.

Rod is a great opponent and a great painter. And it really pained him to have some grey models in this report, so much so that he couldnt sleep the day after and had to paint his newer tanks to at least a base coat standard. We've also adjusted his list ideas by replacing his librarian with Khan to try and get some dynamic deployment options into his army.

Im fairly happy with my list for the tournament, even if people laugh at the 10 scoring models. But my motto is it only takes one marine to win, and the rest of the list is designed to contest the board and reduce enemy mobility.