Saturday 15 August 2015

Hunt for the Voice - Lelithar



Planet: Lelithar.
Cadian Sector.
999.M41

Dark Angels vs Death Guard.
1000 points.
Mission: Purge the Alien.

The Dark Angels sought the shadowy Heretic calling himself the "Voice of the Emperor," who was operating on the world of Lelithar. The so-called "Voice of the Emperor," Cypher, the infamous Fallen Angel.
The Dark Angels launched a number of strikes against this figure, but on each occasion found that the pressures of constant attacks upon their hallowed ground in the Caliban System forced them to redeploy their forces. Each time the Dark Angels manage to close on the suspected location of the Voice, he somehow proved able to slip through their clutches, leaving behind taunting, heretical graffiti.

A couple weeks ago I challenged my nephew to a game of 40K as an opportunity try out my Death Guard once again. I went in expecting to lose because I still need to learn how to play them but I was pleased at ho well they did handle themselves despite the high points cost.

My nephew made a small screw up as he was unsure how the Forge Organisation Chart worked with formations but it didn't matter for this as I was happy to play. He has three armies - Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Adeptas Sororitas. He is such a big Blood Angel fan that I expected to be facing off against a plethora of assault marines and furiouso dreadnoughts. Instead he turned up with a Dark Angel force mounted on bikes or part of a Ravenwing detachment full of land speeders. I was going to have a hell of a time.

I don't quite remember everything he had but it includes Sammael on his jetbike, a bike command squad, a squad of bikes, and the formation that gave him three land speeders and a darkshroud land speeder.

My list was:

Sorcerer - level 3.
Mark of Nurgle. Veteran of the long war.
Powers: Force, Nurgle's rot, summoning, plague wind and the one that makes weapons "get hot".

10 man CSM squad.
Mark of Nurgle. Veterans of the long war. Champion had power fist.

10 man plague marine squad.
Veterans of the long war.
Champion had power weapon and plasma pistol. Icon of despair and two meltaguns.
Rhino with two combi-bolters.

5 man terminator squad.
Mark of Nurgle. Veterans of the long war.
Combi-bolters and one reaper autocannon. Champion had lighting claw. The rest had one power fist and the others power weapons.

Aegis defence line with quad autocannons.

I deployed mine with the sorcerer and his CSM buddies holding the autocannon. The plague marines sat off to the side in a rhino looking to get around to objectives as needed. I also talked myself into holding the terminators in reserve which proved to be a poor choice as you'll see.

Battle was then commenced. He threw everything at my CSM squad on turn one. Bolters and plasma weapons both, and I either made every armour save or passed the cover save for the defence line. One dice in particular rolled nothing lower than a 4 for half the game! It has since been promoted.

Second turn he decided to move across the table and sweep in behind me rather than risk driving over the terrain. When he realised that he had wrecked my Rhino in the gap he needed he was not a happy bunny. On my second turn no terminators arrived. Poured everything into the land speeders and did nothing. The quad cannon did smash through one bike squad though which really helped my bacon.

Turn three and still no terminators! I ended up having to summon plaguebearers to stall his advance with the bikes. They did not last long which I found very disappointing. I really wanted them to last a bit longer but a free unit (although it cost my sorcerer a wound thanks to a issue with the warp). As the game went along my nephew did manage to kill my CSM squad but not before my sorcerer conjoured a second squad of plaguebearers to halt the bike advance and blowing his own head off with another mishap.

Eventually my terminators arrived turn four way past the point where I really needed them. They came down and took out a couple of bikes but the rest blasted them down to two terminators who then proved ineffectual other than to hold an objective.

My plague marines did fantastic though. They never did put a dent on the land speeders but they survived so much fire power and took down Sammael that I didn't care. At end of turn 5 it was getting late and my nephew was on 12 vp to my 5 so we called it there.

At the end of the day my army is going to be expensive as I want the mark of Nurgle on everything and I'd rather field plague marines than the regular chaos marines. I'd have liked some more models on the table but even so I was very pleased as to how the game played out.


Wednesday 5 August 2015

Skirmish on Lelithar

Planet: Lelithar.
Cadian Sector.
999.M41

Dark Angels vs Death Guard.
1000 points.
Mission: Purge the Alien.





Early in the crusade the planet Lelithar came under Chaos attack. The Death Guard arrived and seeded the atmosphere with the virulent zombie plague. While the Planetary Defence Forces mobilized to fight the growing number of the dead, the Death Guard deployed to the surface many kilometers from the main hive city. Colonies were reduced to cities of the dead and the crops in the fields rotted to mulch. An astropathic call for help was sent. The Dark Angels chapter of space marines answered the call and began to deploy a company to the surface.

Out in the midst of the rotting fields of grain, a scout force of Dark Angels ran into their equivalent and battle was joined. The Death Guard were few in number and soon outmaneuvered by the space marines in their Rhino transports.  The chaos marines suffered heavy casualties from plasma weapons but the Dark Angels suffered as badly from their own weapons. Even so, the chaos marine scouting force was swiftly eradicated. From here the space marines prepared to take the battle to the enemy.

Chaos Sorcerer.
Mark of Nurgle. Veteran of the long war.

10 man plague marine squad.
Veterans of the long war.
Champion: power weapon and plasma pistol.
2x Meltaguns. Icon of despair.

5 man chaos terminator squad.
Mark of Nurgle. Veterans of the long war.
Champion: Lightning claw.
1x Reaper autocannon. 1x powerfist. 3x power weapon.

Helbrute.
Multimelta and power claw.

Game Notes:
This was my first game playing Death Guard. I didn't expect to win and went in with a positive mentality to just try out what I had build and painted at the time. I hadn't expected my opponent to bring a force deployed inside Rhino transports. I had trouble taking them down just because of range and crap dice rolls. He immobilized my Helbrute just outside of melta efficiency range and I failed to do anything with it all game. His plasma weapons hurt him and one plasma cannon deviated back onto his Rhino which went bang. If I remember right I called it at the end of turn 4 because there was no way I was pulling the game back.

Monday 3 August 2015

Introduction



For many years I have played space marines in Warhammer 40,000 (hereafter, 40K). Ever since the initial release of Rogue Trader (AKA 1st edition) back in 1987 in fact. The problem is that I never do well with them especially under the current and previous 6th edition rules sets. Part of me is really disappointed that they don't play the way they are reflected in the fluff or that I cannot play them as gun lines anymore.

With that in mind I made a decision earlier this year to ditch the loyalist losers and play something that might give me a more interesting game. I've always liked Nurgle so I decided to go with a pure fluffy unbound Death Guard list and to base their games around the events of the "current" 13th Black Crusade since Typhus' little army plays such a major part in it. Win or lose I'll have more fun I think than I have had in recent years with my old space marines.

The purpose of this blog is to record those games and put a fluffy spin on things. I'm not great at writing these sort of things but I hope you'll stay with me. Comment away and enjoy.

At this time as I write this I have the following built and painted:

Typhus.
Chaos Sorcerer.
20 Death Guard marines.
10 Chaos marines with mark of nurgle.
5 Chaos terminators with mark of nurgle.
1 Helbrute.
1 Chaos Rhino.
10 Plaguebearers.
Agis defence line with quad-autocannon.
Void Shield Generator.

I am currently painting another 10 plaguebearers with 20 more Death Guard built and ready for undercoating. Then I still have some more Death Guard, 3 chaos bikes, 20 Raptors, a fortification (I forget the name right now), a box of zombies and some chaos cultists.

Still a long way to go.

Crusade Battles catchup

 It's been a few weeks since I last updated and in that time I have played a further three Crusade games. I am really enjoying playing C...