The second game at Brother's Grim was against a nice guy named Steve I believe. He was using the new blood angels codex, and in a differing style versus the last report was more mechanized Blood Angels. He had 2 Speeders, a squad of 3 Attack bikes with multimeltas, 1 Furioso Dreadnought with the new blood talons, and a regular Dreadnought with an assault cannon. He had a vindicator and a rhino, along with a Baal Predator with a flamestorm cannon. He had 2 priest one of whom was Corbulo, and 2 10 man squads. He also had the beast that is Mephiston.
The game was capture and control with the secondary objective as having more units in the enemy deployment zone then they have in yours. Deployment was a type of modified spearhead that cut the table in half like apocalypse and each player received a table corner with an 18" middle ground between the zones. Also the objectives had to be placed in one specific spot that was 18" from each edge and still in the deployment zone. That why they look so symmetrical in the renderings(They're the green flags in case you were wondering).
I forgot to take pictures, but did this up on vassal to be visual.
Steve deployed a 10 man squad with Corbulo back in the building up on the second floor. The other squad he split, and walked one half and put the other half in the rhino with his other priest. His attack bikes and Furioso are up at the top middle, while his vindicator and regular dreadnought are towards the lower middle of the board. Mephiston is also hiding out in the ruin with the large squad. His Baal Pred chose to outflank and his Land Speeders were deep-striking.
On turn one he turbo boosted the bikes toward my objective and rushed the vindicator forward as well. His dreads and small foot troops also moved forward. Only the vindicator popped smoke.
My Turn one the table starts to get really messy. 4 Dreadnoughts as well as my dual melta tactical squad land, with Vulkan and the master of the forge in tow. Between rear flamer shots and two meltas the vindicator is both immobilized and its main weapon is blown off. Three of the regular dreads line shots at the assault cannon dread in his army and immobilize it as well as blow off both its weapon arms. In hindsight I should have gone after the furioso. My 4th dread managed to meekly drop the storm bolter off of the rhino. The other half of my combat squaded tactical marines manages to surprisingly inflict some wounds on his walking unit and cause them to flee.
Turn 2 for the Blood Angels saw the arrival of his melta Land Speeders. His furioso crashed into my tactical marines and began to shred them with bloodtalons. It was about now I regretted dropping in the one squad that didnt have its own powerfist, the master of the forge luckily was ignored at first but managed nothing with his servo harness fists. The meltas in the rhino and building managed to blow up the dreadnought closest to them, and Mephiston began what can only be summed up as a killing spree by summarily decapitating another dreadnought. Luckily the Land Speeders missed fantastically with double 1's on their to hit rolls.
1 of my remaining dreadnoughts came in from reserve and along with the 5 free tactical marines made the small squad run away again to incoming fire. Instead of helping get my men out of combat I moved my dreadnought through the space between the drop pods to threaten the middle of the board... for what reason I do not know. My other dread focused its rage on the land speeders and felled one with its multimelta and the other in combat. I lost a few more marines in combat with the Furioso but Vulkan and the Master of the forge held.
On turn 3 Steve's bikes came turbo boosting back because he felt he was quickly running out of ways to kill the rain of dreadnoughts. Cover saves kept my dreads safe from shooting, and in a luck turn of events Mephiston failed to destroy his newest dreadnought target in combat. Vulkan however fled from the furioso after it ripped the master of the forge limb from limb.
All the reserves came crashing down in my half of turn 3. One tactical squad landed to secure the home objective, while the other dropped midfield, I would have dropped it closer, but I didnt want to go near Mephiston and the board had already become quite crowded. The last Dread landed near the rhino again. Here I think I messed up the pics(and am too lazy to change them.) Because the men were outside of their Rhino and both the Dread and small tactical squad shot at them killing nothing, and all the storm bolters shot at them killing nothing, 3+ saves and feel no pain are tough, actually to be fair the two melta shots did kill 1 each but thats to be expected. Vulkan rallied and foolishly assaulted Mephiston, should have waited and let him assault me next turn, and died, but it did let the dreadnought live another turn. I charged into the Furioso with my dreadnought and into the bikes with another. Killed all the bikes, did nothing to the Furioso.
The Baal Predator moved flat out at the start of turn 4 to get near my marines. Mephiston finished off the pesky dreadnought and moved towards the one that could not do much of anything to the Furioso. The one surviving member of his squad that had ran twice assaulted my dreadnought, and didnt die. His rhino also tank shocked my 5 man squad and they fled ( there were a lot of fleeing marines in this game). And his melta squad shot my dread near his troops blowing off its combat arm and then assaulted it.
Turn 4 for me saw the fleeing marines flee some more, though not much I rolled pretty low at this point. My other nearby marines immobilized the rhino with a multimelta shot and then the other combat squad dual assaulted it and the man tying up the dreadnought. My other two dreadnoughts were continuing their futility in combat.
Turn 5 the Baal pred fried all but one of the fleeing marines who then fled some more. THe boys in the building finally began to move down and toward the objective. Mephiston freed up the Furioso by once again besting my dreadnought in combat. While the powerfist in his 5 man squad had trouble touching the dreadnought it was locked with.
Turn 5 surprise my marines ran some more. The one free roaming dreadnought immobilized the Baal with its multimelta and then destroying it easily in assault, while the tactical marines followed in its wake. My multimelta squad managed to knock an arm of his Furioso, something the master of the forge and 2 rounds of combat with my dreadnought had not accomplished.
On turn six, with the threat of the game ending looming Steve found the time and the necessity of actually clearing some of the darn drop pods that were neatly contesting his objective. Mephiston added one to his trophy rack but the large tactical squad failed to do so.
My lone marine stopped fleeing and with a great run roll came roaring back towards the action. With a totally different and disappointing roar my dreadnought immobilized itself on the wreckage of the baal predator. My tacitcal marines moved their way though the tight spaces trying to make sure and threaten the objective should the game go to 7 turns. My other remaing dreadnought succumbed to the powerfist of his Blood Angels sergeant, dying the old fashioned way, weapon destroyed, weapon destroyed, immobilized, immobilized.
The game did go to turn 7. His Furioso halted the advance of my combat squad. Mephiston racked up the last threatening drop pod and his marines closed on the objective.
However one small problem remained. And on my 7th turn the forgotten, cowardly marine managed to run and contest the objective.
This left me with a 1 objective to 0 victory on the main mission. Also with nearly all of my army in his deployment zone, and none of his in mine I got the secondary objective as well. I didnt get the 3rd objective which was to select a unit and kill it. I choose Mephiston because he had chosen Vulkan and I thought it would be epic. Also I thought I would have to kill Mephiston to have a shot at winning. However after the game started and the prospect of actually killing him didnt seem possible I decided to try and handle as many threats as possible while completely ignoring mephiston, aside from the crazy stupid move of charging him with Vulkan. My goal became to feed him units and try and lead him away. Also the fact that 3 drop pods contested his objective meant that in the closing turns he had to really turn his attention on these and allowed my final marine to do the job.
The game was really fun, and things looked really good for me at the beginning, however the survivability of the blood angels combined with my stupid move to ignore the Furioso turn 1 caused it to get really tight... well that and the bat shit crazy Librarian from hell running around killing all my dreadnoughts.
In what was probably a poor decision I decided to fight infantry with infantry. In hindsight he didnt have an overwhelming amount of quality anti-tank fire, I was more scared of his volume of missile fire and it may have cost me some points.
