The Ritual - Cerberus

Planet: Cerberus.
Region: Cerberus Sector.

Death Guard vs Blood Angels.
2000 points.
Mission: Purge the Alien.

The sudden attack upon the Death Guard held world has come as a surprise. Territory has been lost but the sons of Mortarion have enacted a strong counter attack but for now the war has bogged down into a stale mate.
In an attempt to bolster their forces with daemonic allies, the Death Guard blightcasters attempt an powerful ritual to bring forth a host of plaguebearers and great unclean ones. 
Alerted to this by the divinations of his chapter's librarians, Guilliman dispatches an assault force of Blood Angels to thwart the plans of the Death Guard.

Tonight's game was against one of our club's newer players Michael Y. Always good to play against someone new so I was really looking forward to this game. I had forgotten that he played Blood Angels so I built a basic combined-arms detachment list. I had considered playing my Chaos Knight but decided against it as I didn't know whether he had ever played against such before and I wanted to be nice. We decided on the night to go with a basic kill mission and we played the usual across table deployment.

His list was a librarian dreadnought and sternguard in a stormraven, some scouts, two units of bikes, a land raider redeemer, two flamer predators and an assault cannon predator. He also took a fortification to hold a devastator squad. Haven't played against a Blood Angels army like this for ages so I had forgotten that they were fast. His tanks were across the table and in my face straight away from turn one. Had not expected that and it put me on the back foot.

Quite quickly I lost my rhino's and Michael was three victory points up. I was convinced that he was going to win this straight away. I tried to focus all my lascannon and heavy weapons fire upon his land raider but if I did cause a hull point of damage Michael has a tech marine inside fixing things. Quite frustrating. I did manage to knock some hull points of his predators and my helbrute charged and knocked one into twisted scrap.

As the game progressed my marines were getting burnt to death and blasted away by sniper fire with rending hits. Not getting an army save first and failing quite a few FNP rolls was hurting my ability to mount a counter attack. The helbrute soon exploded removing my easy means of taking his tanks down. My Heldrake soon came in and was able to eradicate one bike squad and slay most of a scout squad that had been causing me trouble. It didn't do me much more use though .

The last few turns of the game were spent with my marines trying to tank hunt on foot with an autocannon and meltagun, or desperately trying to avoid the flamestorm cannons on my opponent's land raider.

When Michael's stormraven came in it dropped off the sternguard and librarian dreadnought, and blasted my land raider to bits. This actually helped me as it freed up my terminators and terminator lord. Combat quickly ensued and my chaos lord did very well. The dreadnought failed to wound him and with a fantastic roll my lord dropped a meltabomb on it and blew the dreadnought away. The sternguard did nothing and then died to lots of lightning claw hits. I grabbed myself a good few victory points on that last turn.

Turn 5 the game ended and I thought it was going to be close. I had clawed my way back and had achieved a draw. That was until it was pointed out that Michael's surviving bike squad was within my deployment zone and gave him one more victory point. My opponent had won 8vp to my 7vp.

We both agreed afterwards that this was one of the best games either of us had had for a long time. Looking forward now to our rematch.

The Blood Angels strike against the ritual site came as a shock for the defending Death Guard. The traitor marines put up a strong defence but were cut down with righteous fury/ The Blood Angels then disrupted the warp magics and massacred the blightcasters. For now the Death Guard would fight their own fight against the invaders.

The Death Guard east flank falls to the Imperial advance.

The Blood Angels dominate the air war.

Death Guard marines seek to avoid the flames of death (crusader proxying as a redeemer).

A mighty heldrake brings fiery doom to the Blood Angels.

The Blood Angels bring fire and flame to slay the sons of Mortarion.