Battle Report: Astra Militarum vs. Orkz (1,650 pts)

This battle report represents the first mission in a Campaign presently being put on at the FLGS.  It’s based on the Sanctus Reach campaign featuring the Red Waagh.  Generally speaking, it’s Imperium vs. Orkz.

Battle Report: Orkz vs. Space Marines (1,000 pts)

The second game I played over the weekend was against an unbound army of Space Marines.  He really likes Sternguard, and wanted to try them out in place of regular troops.  I wanted to get the new Ork codex a try, and scraped together a list based on models that I already had in my inventory, albeit left over from 3rd edition.

Another mini-batrep from this past weekend (and apologies for the poor lighting!):

Battle Report: Astra Militarum vs. Space Marines (1,650 pts)

I played a pair of games this weekend against a pair of unbound Marine lists.  Rather than write up a full battle report as I’ve done previously, I’ll write a synopsis of sorts…  It doesn’t help that I forgot to, or didn’t have the battery power to take a lot of pictures.

Game 1: Astra Militarum vs. Blood Ravens (Space Marines, Unbound) @ 1650 points

Astra Militarum

• Pask Punisher, multimeltas, lascannon
• Demolisher Russ
• CCS w/ Chimera, Autocannon, Vox, Melta
• 2x Chimera Melta Veterans (4x Meltaguns total)
• Veterans w/ Forward Sentries, 3x Plasma & Lascannon)
• PCS w/ 3x Flamer, 1 Heavy Flamer
• 2x Infantry Squads, 2x Autocannons, Voxcaster
• Hellhound
• Vendetta
• 3x Armoured Sentinels w/ Autocannons
• Aegis Defense Line

Blood Ravens:

• Terminator Librarian (ML2) (Pyromancy)
• 2x Librarians (ML2) (Biomancy & Telepathy)
• 10 Man Tac in Rhino w/ Gravgun
• 10 Man Tac in Rhino
• 5 Man Tac  in Razorback w/ TL Assault Cannons
• Dreadnought (TL Lascannon & Missile Launcher)
• Ironclad Dreadnought (Chainfist, DCCW, 2x Hunter Killers, 2x Heavy Flamers) in drop pod with deathwind launchers
• Whirlwind
• Predator Destructor (Autocannon, 2x Lascannons)
• Predator Vindicator (Demolisher Cannon)

The mission was a “Cloak and Shadows”which means secret objectives, max of 3 at a time.

Guard Deployment

Blood Raven Deployment

Guard take first blood by vaporizing a Rhino, via Pask’s Lascannon.

Chimeras and Hellhound advance rapidly on the left, moving flat-out to get into a better firing position on the armour in front. Spacing is crucial, to avoid getting tagged twice by the Vindicator.

The Marines make the Guard pay for their aggressive Chimera movements. Vindicator blows one up, and only 4 survive the explosion, with two more being gunned down by bolter fire.

Meanwhile the drop pod with the ironclad comes down first turn, and puts two hunter killer missiles into Pask’s rear armour. Fortunately he made his armour saves. This ironclad really had the guard sweating for a while…

Ironclad goes down from a melta-gun round from the CCS & some particularly sharp shooting from the armoured sentinels. Hit twice, and glanced off the two remaining hullpoints (requiring 6’s to glance!)

The Ironclad dreadnought going down allowed Pask to ventilate the Rhino…

…and the Demolisher to completely erase a tactical squad. The Librarian survives on the merits of Iron Arm, but takes a wound regardless.

Vendetta comes on and rips the Whirlwind Launcher off of the Whirlwind. It had been bombarding the Plasma Veterans, ignoring their improved cover and generally giving them fits.

The terminator Librarian assault the Hellhound, and put 2 hullpoints on it, and shake it, but can’t finish the job. The second Chimera is brought down by a Twin Linked Assault Cannon on the side-arc.

The Hellhound takes off, securing an objective up-field, leaving the tac squad and the Librarian to be ventilated by Pask. The Veterans were shaken up leaving the Chimera, and are really unable to accomplish anything.

The Demolisher is taken down in one turn of shooting on the side arc by the Predator and Dreadnought. There was some fairly exceptional rolling there.

From this point on it turns into a bit of a turkey-shoot.  Pask is still on the run, but the Guard are generally more mobile and able to achieve their objectives.  The Marines are left with a Razorback, half a tactical squad, and a Predator.

Guard casualties are low-ish, with a full melta-squad on the prowl, the BBQ squad on foot after disembarking from the Vendetta, and just about every back-field unit intact.

Debrief:

After the game the discussions were focussed on list design.  Playing Guard, I feel that it is important for a Marine Player to force difficult decisions with regards to where to apply my firepower.  Some suggestions were to include a set of Multi-Melta Landspeeders, which could jink like crazy and cause me to waste quite a lot of shooting (because the threat of them potentially vaporizing Pask or high-value armour is very real).  The marine player countered, and suggested attack bikes for the same reason.  Either

Similarly, the ironclad hopping out in my backfield was a great idea, but there was nothing really pressing me from the front, so I had just about everything available to shoot at it.  I’m looking forward to playing him again soon, because he’s a good opponent, a better sport, and definitely learned something.

Video Batrep?!? What Wizardry is This?!?

So Smack TalkYo went and put his talents to making a video battle report for our recently completed game.

Astra Militarum Unit Report Card: HQ’s

I’ve played quite a few battles with the Astra Militarum since the new codex came out, testing the interactions between several of its core units, feeling out their strengths and weaknesses.  In this post I’ll review the HQ choices I’ve used in my builds so far.

Battle Report: Astra Militarum vs. Chaos Space Marines (1,500 pts)

Abaddon continues his 13th Black Crusade on Cadia.  Knight Commander Pask answers the call.  Punisher vs. Despoiler: who will prevail?

FIGHTAN Chaos!

Looking forward to a game against the forces of Chaos this evening.  He’s featuring a very well painted Black Legion force, and has been wanting to put the hurt on Knight Commander Pask for MONTHS.  Abaddon needs a new face-mask, apparently.

I’ve made some subtle tweaks to my own army list, most notably dropping Ulmar the Incompetent in favour of more and different guns.  Twin linking is nice, but I haven’t had great success getting the power off, so to the shelf he goes.  We’ll see if I really notice him missing.

This should be interesting!  Stay tuned for another battle report!

Neat Tactics I Wouldn’t Mind Trying (Pt. 2)

In my last tactics post, I wrote about the viability of Bullgryns.  Based on my RECENT EXPERIENCE with respect to effective tar-pitting, I’m rethinking this position, and I’d probably want to keep them out of combat, as there are plenty of things out there that can really stack up the wounds fast…  Which brings us to Part 2…

Battle Report: Astra Militarum vs. Orks (2,000)

An absolute cracker at the shop today with an experienced orkist, as we test the FIGHTAN orkz in 7th edition.