My Mech Double Deathstar List:
Librarian with Shield of Sanguinius and Unleash Rage
Sanguinary Priest
Furioso Dreadnought with Frag Cannon and heavy flamer in a Stormraven with extra armour
5 Assault Terminators, 1 with shield & hammer, in a LR Redeemer with multimelta & extra armour
3 x 5-man Assault squads with Infernus pistol & meltagun in a Razorback with Lascannon & TLplasmagun
5-man Scout Squad with sniper rifles, missile launcher and camo cloaks
Predator with Lascannon sponsons
Not really 2 Deathstars, but a Stormraven hurtling at your lines with a Furioso Dreadnought in its hold is never something to take lightly.
Mark's Mech Wolves:
4 Rune Priests, each with Living Lightning, then for their 2nd powers they had Jaws of the World Wolf, Murderous Hurricane, Stormcaller, and Tempest's Wrath
6 Scouts, each with meltabombs, and 1 with a meltagun
4 squads of 6 Grey Hunters, with 1 plasmagun and 1 powerfist
1 squad of 5 Grey Hunteres, with 1 plasmagun and 1 powerfist
5 Razorbacks with Twin-linked Lascannons
3 squads of Long Fangs, each with 4 missile launchers and 1 multimelta.
That's a LOT of gunishment. Too much, as I later found out... I thought Mark having multimeltas with his Long Fang squads was a hell of a cool touch - something to make anyone think twice about taking a direct route with vehicles to dislodge the Long Fangs from their firing positions.
Mission: Annihilation.
Deployment: Spearhead. Mark won the roll-off and deployed first.
The Battlefield:
The Grande Planne: With a list like mine, it seemed like there was only one sane thing to do: Ground elements gather behind the Redeemer and Predator and push forward. Stormraven arrives from reserve to hopefully dump the Furioso where it hurts.
Turn 1
SW: The Space Wolf Razorbacks move into firing positions and the 2 closest ones and the nearby Long Fang squad blast away at the Redeemer, hoping to cripple my plan before I'd begun. Fortunately, he only managed to destroy the assault cannon.
BA: I surge forward and make good use of my guns, wrecking one Razorback, blowing up another, and disarming yet another. The Scouts shoot at the Long Fangs, causing a couple of wounds, but no casualties.
Turn 2
SW: The Scouts fail to arrive. The disarmed Razorback beats a hasty retreat, as do the Grey Hunters, falling back behind the cover of the buildings to the main body of troops to better receive my advance. Another withering salvo of fire from the Long Fangs and Rune Priests slams into the Redeemer, tearing off the multimelta and the right flamestorm cannon.
BA: The Stormraven fails to arrive. The Angels surge forward again, guns blazing. Fire from the Combipred fails to damage the 2 remaining active Wolf Razorbacks. Lascannon fire from 2 of my Razorbacks failed miserably to hit Mark's Razorbacks. The Redeemer moves up and incinerates 2 Long Fangs with its remaining flamestorm cannon. More Long Fangs fall to fire from a Razorback and the Scouts, leaving just the Runepriest and the Long Fang with a multimelta. Oooh, that doesn't look good for my Redeemer...
SW: The Scouts arrive! They deploy right up close to my Redeemer, all set to blast it with their meltagun or nuke it with meltabombs. Guns are levelled at the Blood Angels once again and my Librarian gets his shields up...
This time round Mark decides to leave the Redeemer to the nearby melta weapons and concentrate the rest of his weapons on the approaching Razorbacks and Combipred, to devastating effect. The Combipred and one Razorback are blown up, another is wrecked and the last is stunned! Meanwhile, the lone Long Fang blasts the Redeemer with his multimelta, but the hit is turned aside by the Librarian's shield. The Scouts try their luck, but miss! Finally, a distant Runepriest unleashes Living Lightning on one Assault Squad, killing 2 marines.
During the Assault phase, the Scouts charged into the Redeemer, managing 2 hits on it, wrecking it, sending some very angry Terminators, lightning claws gleaming, spilling out the assault ramp...
BA: The Stormraven arrives and turboboosts straight toward the main body of Space Wolves, annihilating one Runepriest with its multimelta. The Terminators storm towards a squad of retreating Grey Hunters, while the two Assault Squads whose Razorbacks were disabled converged on the Wolf Scouts. After a punishing salvo from their bolt pistols and melta weapons, the Scouts broke and ran off the board. My sniper Scouts tried to finish off the lone Long Fang, but didn't manage to hurt him.
During the Assault phase, the Terminators thundered into the Grey Hunters, but awful rolls on my part meant a Grey Hunter managed to survive to pulp my Librarian with a powerfist! Curses! Still, the Grey Hunters lost the combat, and the 2 survivors scampered right off the board, leaving the Terminators to consolidate into the ruins, ready to pounce on the Long Fang and Runepriest on the floors above...
Turn 4
SW: And here's where it all went horribly pear-shaped for me. The squad of Grey Hunters whose ride whose blown up in Turn 1 formed a line in front of the Stormraven, fired their plasmagun, and promptly wrecked it. Crap. I had no choice but to disembark my Furioso behind the bastion nearby, safe from the Space Wolf guns. Those guns then turned to blast away at the rest of my army, stunning the surviving Razorback and killing 3 Terminators. Man, those Long Fangs are lethal!
BA: Not much I could do now. The Terminators moved up through the ruin, looking to charge the Runepriest. The Scouts splattered the lone Long Fang with a krak missile. The Furioso tried clambering over the Stormraven, but didn't get far enough for me to charge the nearby squad of Grey Hunters, so I ran it back into cover behind the bastion. The Assault phase saw the Terminators shred the Librarian who, in return, slew the Sanguinary Priest. I consolidated away to weather the inevitable storm from the Long Fangs.
Turn 5
SW: Long Fangs and Runepriests fire, killing one Terminator...
BA: At this point, I couldn't do anything but try to limp away out of the Long Fang's reach...
Somewhere around the end of this turn, we took a breather from all the excitement and tallied up points. I killed 2 Razorbacks, a Runepriest, a Long Fang Squad, and chased a squad each of Grey Hunters and Scouts off the board, so that's 6 kill points. Mark killed a Stormraven, 2 Razorbacks, the Librarian, the Priest and the Redeemer, for a total of 6 kill points, so that's tied!
We roll for turn 6 and yep, it happens.
Turn 6
SW: With all the Blood Angel forces taking cover, there was only one thing left to do: KILL the Terminator! 2 Long Fang squads and the 2 remaining Rune Priests blasted away at the Terminator, who had no choice but to go to ground again. It survived a salvo from the Long Fangs... then the 2nd squad of Long Fangs... finally, the beleaguered Terminator fell to Living Lightning from a Rune Priest. With no way for the Blood Angels to strike back, we called it a day. Space Wolves are victorious!
Post-game revelations:
Or are they? After we finished packing up Mark pointed out that I'd forgotten 1 kill point I'd gained: The 2nd Rune Priest, which I'd nuked when my Stormraven entered the battlefield! It was a draw!
Another revelation turned up when I started writing this batrep. I've gotten into the habit of keeping a pencil and some scrap paper for quickly scribbling down my opponent's army lists. On totaling up the points, I found his list was actually running at 1935 pts - I was fighting at a 185 pt disadvantage! :-(
Ah, well... I had wondered after the battle if there was something I could have done better to seize the game, but now, knowing I was fighting a fairly unbalanced fight and still managed a draw, I daresay I'm pretty pleased with how this list has performed, and will definitely field it again, hopefully on more equal terms...
Meanwhile, back on my hobby desk...
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| Lonely... I'm Mr Lonely.... Oh, so lonely... All on my ooooown... |
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