catalyst2 | Battle #25

Tonight was 2000 points against Jason's Space Marines. He hadn't brought any figures of his own so I let him have first choice of my own figures and then I'd take whatever was left - but having 7000+ points meant there would still be quite a choice. He took an unusual list - Calgar and seven terminators, a ultra-tooled up Sternguard in Drop Pod but no tactical squads, opting for 3 scout squads instead.

He took all my favourite armour (Predator Annihlator, Vindicator and Land Raider Crusader) so I had to take the Whirlwind, Thunderfire and a Devastator squad (4 ML). For a little more AP I took a Dreadnought with TL Lascannon and ML, a combination I've never taken before. I had three MM/meltagun tactical squad, all in rhinos and Sicarius with command squad, along with an assault squad. The board ended up a little strange with a hell of a lot of difficult terrain and cover one one side and a much flatter side which we both deployed on.

First round and three things happened - his shooting was awful, missing everything that he shot at, my Dread took out two of his Speeders and his ultra-Sternguard dropped right off the board.

Second round and Calgar and terminators got into combat on my left but because all of my squad were rhino-ed, all they could do was immoblise one rhino. My whirlwind and Thunderfire decimated his sniper scouts whilst the Dread got the last speeder. My assault squad dived over the board to the right, away from Calgar and towards his advancing Vindicator.

Third round is where it all went right for me. For reasons unknown, he used Calgar to continue to asssaulting the Rhino (destroying it) rather than the tactical squad that embarked from it last turn. I moved one tactical squad to the rear of his terminators, one to the side and then let rip. They were all within charge range but I knew that unless I stopped Calgar et al soon, I was dead anyway. With 42 bolter, three meltagun and three plasma pistolshots, I killed all seven terminators and gave one wound to Calgar. The question was, what price was I going to pay for getting so close?

Fourth round and Calgar got to one tactical squad, reduced it to 4 and it promptly fled. However, my assault squad got to his Vindicator and blew that up. His infiltrating shotgun scouts destroyed the Thunderfire and the Predator got my Whrilwind. Nicely, the devastator squad woke up and promptly killed all but the last two of his sniper scouts.

Fifth round and his Crusader savaged one tactical squad but Calgar was a bit out in the open and so could do little but advance and shoot at the already-running tactical squad, killing another two and keeping it running. In my round, my assault squad got to his sniper scouts and killed them off, thereby freeing up one objective but he was still winning 2-0. The Crusader survived 6 MM/meltagun shots at point blank range and I couldn't charge, having shot the MM's. Luckily for me we rolled for a sixth round.

Sixth round and it went from bad to worse for him - I finally shot down Calgar with the Dread turning around and taking two wounds off him with a solo meltagun destroying the Land Raider, blowing it up and killing 4 of his shotgun scouts who had been sitting over an objective on the shelter of the Land Raider. He was still leading 2-0 on objectives. We rolled and got seventh turn, the first time that's happened to me in a very long time.

He had next to nothing to shoot but his bolter scouts did take out 2 assault marines and the predator took out one more. In my turn, Sicarius and command squad killed the shotgun scouts (contesting but unable to take that objective so he was leading 1-0 now), whilst the assault squad broke and killed his bolter scouts, also killing the Predator with power fist attacks in close combat (we were now drawing 0-0). Because my humble tactical squads had nothing left to shoot at, I ran all three, one getting to the center objective and two to the far right objective (which I had almost forgotten about, thus winning 2-0).

Final result was a win to me, 2 objectives to nil

What I learned tonight:
1) I had none of my "must-have" units but still won
2) Even the humble tactical squad can kill of terminators (and Calgar!) if they can get enough shots in
3) The good old-fashioned assault squad can cause some havoc if it gets into any back line
4) The "fire support" version of the Dread (which I never take) is quite effective, used in the right role
5) The 4ML devastator squad can also be effective and it's not too expensive, especially considering it gives me 4 shots at 48' range.
6) Never, ever give up in this game - from 0-3 down at the start of turn 5, I manged to turn that into 2-0 up at the end of turn 7. Whew!

My W-L-D record is now 19-6-0