My Blood Angels:
Reclusiarch
6 Sternguard with combiweapons
10 Death Company with a power sword, a power axe and a thunder hammer
10 Scouts with sniper rifles, camo cloaks and a missile launcher
5 Devastators with missile launchers
2 Stormravens with twin-linked multimelta, twin-linked assault cannon, hurricane bolters and extra armour
2 Baal Predators with heavy bolter sponsons
Land Speeder Typhoon
This list is a variant of a list I'd inflicted on Louis' Thousand Sons a couple of batreps ago. The previous one was designed to get the first strike in with the Drop Pod. This one forgoes the Drop Pod and just concentrates on pure firepower, with a staggering volume of shots, and the speed to bring the army to bear where it counts. The Death Company are there to provide a great big close combat punch, with a good number of bodies to hit with 40 attacks on the charge, with rerolls to hit and wound, thanks to the Reclusiarch.
Waaagh-Ian:
Warboss with 'Eavy Armour, Cybork Body, Power Klaw
Wierd Boy with Warp 'ead upgrade
30 'Ard Boyz with 3 Rokkit Launchas and a Nob with boss pole and power klaw
30 Shoota Boyz with 3 Rokkit Launchas and a Nob with boss pole and power klaw
30 Slugga Boyz with 3 Rokkit Launchas and a Nob with boss pole and power klaw
10 Tankbusta Boyz with 2 bomb Squigs
7 Flash Gitz
2 War Buggies with twin-linked Rokkit Launchas
Dakkajet with additional twin-linked Supa Shoota
Looted Wagon with big shoota
There were a LOT of boyz on the board, so forgive me if I don't quite remember all the details of this army. There's a little more stuff in there but for the life of me, I have no idea what. I'd faced Ian's Orks once before, using my Necrons in 5th ed. Pretty straightforward battle. He just moved as quickly as he could towards my line, ignoring the horrific casualties was taking and, after about two thirds of his army was blown away by gauss blasts and lightning death, he smashed into my lines and that was that.
Mission: Purge the Alien
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil. I won the roll-off and deployed first. Nightfighting was active for the first turn.
One Stormraven was full of Death Company and the Reclusiarch, the other held the Sternguard.
The strategies of each player were simple enough. Mine was to bring in the Stormravens and let the Death Company rip up the biggest, meanest unit they could find, i.e. the Warboss', all the while laying down salvos of shooty death with the rest of the army. Ian's was to go forward and hit things til they stop shooting at him. Utterly artless and wonderfully Orky. Here's how it went...
Turn 1:
BA: The Baal Predators moved up, carefully staying out of the Flash Gitz' range, then opened up with their guns on some exposed boyz, pushing back the Ork line a few inches. The Land Speeder Typhoon took a potshot at the building with the Flash Gitz inside, but did no damage. The Devastators were out of range to do anything, but I didn't bother moving them, knowing as I did that the Orks would come soon enough. And that was my turn 1.
Orks: The green tide advanced, quite heedless of their casualties. The Looted Wagon moved up and the Tankbustas and Weirdboy got out, bunching up to the very edge of their disembarkation zone to fire on the Baal Predator on my left flank. The Weirdboy rolled well for his psychic powers, and unleashed a searing lance of Strength 10, AP 1 death and maiming towards the Baal Predator... which managed to make its Deny the Witch roll. Phew! That didn't stop the Rokkits, though. A hail of rokkits flew from the green and yellow mob, blowing off a heavy bolter sponson and taking off another hull point. That still left me with two guns to fire...
Over on my right, the Warbuggies hurtled forward, hurling a volley of rokkits at my other Baal Predator's side armour. Ooh, not good! They scored a hit, but failed to penetrate.
 |
| Sneaky Warbuggies! |
Turn 2:
BA: The Death Company Raven arrived, and I aimed it straight at the Tankbustas. I figured since Ian had been so kind as to clump the Tankbustas together like that, this was the time to focus some gunishment on them and remove a threat to my precious few vehicles.
The Typhoon opened up first, scoring 2 direct hits on the bunched-up Tankbustas with frag missiles, blowing away about half of the squad to meaty chunks. The wounded Baal Predator let rip and gunned down a couple more, then the DCRaven finished the job.
The Scouts finally had something to shoot at, and pinged away a couple of boyz from the Warboss' squad.
Over on the right, my lucky Baal Predator wasn't going to let those Warbuggies fire again. It backed away to swing its guns on them and, with the Devastator squad, wrecked both of them.
Orks: The pressure was on now. Ian knew I intended to unleash the Death Company next turn, and he had to stop them somehow. I pointed out that shooting down the DCRaven would mean a whopping 4 Victory points (Stormraven + Death Company + Reclusiarch + Slay the Warlord) for him, and that pretty much convinced him that every gun in his army needed to take that gunship down.
The Dakkajet screamed onto the battlefield, the Warboss let out a mighty Waaaagh! and a massive deluge of shells were spat forth from the Dakkajet's supa shootas. I figured this was the time to take some evasive action but it didn't matter as none of the Dakkajet's shots even managed to glance the Stormraven's heavy armour.
This was looking bad for Ian, as his best chance to hurt the DCRaven had failed miserably. Every rokkit and snazzgun he could spare turned to try and take down the gunship and its deadly cargo, but to no avail. Inevitability loomed...
BA: 5, Orks: 0
Turn 3:
BA: This turn was going to be violent... The other Stormraven full of Sternguard arrived, unleashing a vicious salvo against the Dakkajet, but the Ork pilot jinked and weaved, and managed to escape with 1 hull point remaining. Unfortunately, the other Stormraven, after dropping the Death Company right in front of the Warboss' squad, trained its guns on the Dakkajet, and took off the last hull point, sending the fighter crashing to the ground behind the Ork lines.
The Baal Predators, Scouts and Typhoon continued spitting death at the oncoming Orks, pushing them back further. And then came the fun part: Assault!
The Death Company charged into the Warboss' squad. The boyz were spread out and couldn't bring much overwatch fire to bear on the frenzied marines, who crashed into the Ork lines with terrifying ferocity. The Warboss was too far in the back of the of the squad, so no challenges could be issued, and the Death Company and the Reclusiarch got to work. By the end of initiative step 4, the Death Company had inflicted a total of 34 wounds, 8 of which were done with crozius and power sword. It was enough to wipe out the whole squad without a single choppa raised in defiance!
At this point, I was sitting on 8 victory points and every heavy hitter in Ian's army bar the Flash Gitz had been sent to Gork and Mork. We both realized I had more than enough firepower to wipe the remaining Orks off the board and called it a day.
Afterthoughts:
That went rather well! I'd heard it said that Stormravens are vicious as hell in this edition and this batrep certainly proves it. It's the toughest thing in the sky, carries massive amounts of firepower and, most importantly, it allows you to put a really nasty close combat monster of a unit right up in your opponent's face, with almost no way of stopping it short of downing the Stormraven, which is no easy feat without some serious anti-aircraft firepower.
The one thing about this list that has me thinking is the Sternguard. They are 180 points of badass gunnery, but is it appropriate for a list like this? I'm pretty pleased with all the other elements of this list, but I wonder if I can do something more useful with those 190 pts. Another Typhoon and an Aegies Defense Line with the obligatory quad cannon, perhaps? A nice big dreadnought with all the bells and whistles? Maybe even free up some points elsewhere and bring Terminators to the field? We'll see... Until next time, happy wargaming...
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