Stronghold Assault - Cerberus

Planet: Cerberus.
Region: Cerberus Sector.

Death Guard / Nurgle Daemons vs Crimson Fists.
1500 points.
Mission: Retrieval Mission
Deployment: Spearhead Assault.

The Imperial assault has proven too strong for the Death Guard to resist. Typhus orders his forces to fall back from the front lines to a series of heavily fortified bastions across the surface in order to buy time to rearm and devise a strategy to deal with such a powerful force. In the meantime, it falls to the Adeptus Astartes to launch attacks upon these bastions in order to breach the defences and allow the Imperial war effort to eradicate the traitors once and for all.

Last night I was back to facing the Crimson Fists under the command of Richard Curr. This was a game that I was unusually apprehensive about playing purely because I didn't know what to take against him. The last two times I played against him, both games under 7th edition, he took a tank heavy army loaded with razorbacks and vindicators. His first game of 8th, not against me, he took a infantry army with the new primaris marines. Despite attempts I couldn't design a list that would accommodate both play styles so I had to guess what he would bring. In the end Richard bought a bit of both which made me feel better about my list build.

As this mission just uses the classic my base - your base two objective markers, we both set ours up dead center of our deployment zones opposite one another. I finished setting my army up first but Richard's first roll of the game seized him the initiative and he rumbled his two predator tanks forward and ripped about twelve wounds off of my knight before it had a chance to do anything. It shrugged off the krak missiles though. Everything else was out of range.

My first turn I held back my plague marines from advancing to see how the game went. I didn't have transports so getting them up the table safely was not likely. The knight marched forward though followed by my daemon prince of chaos. The thermal blaster taking a chunk of wounds from one enemy predator and the heavy stubber got one scout who put his head up when he should have ducked. The havoc squad knocked a couple more wounds off that predator as well. The knight then charged the scout squad losing one wound to a lucky bolter shot. It proceeded to crush the scouts beneath it's titanic feet.

Turn two and Richard continued to pour his heavy weapon fire into my knight. It took both his predators and two krak missiles to drop it to four wounds remaining. His bikes got into combat with it as well but they soon died to being stomped and the daemon prince being drawn into the combat. On my turn the daemon prince smited the remaining scout squad killing them all.

Turn three was where it all changed. Lascannon fire from the predators dropped the knight which did not explode. My plague marine squads supported by Typhus' miasma psychic power moved out of cover and put meltagun fire into both predators, successfully taking both out. One exploded killing one of my poor plague marines.

Come turn four and Richard had nothing my side of the table. All he had left were three squads in the ruins around his objective, a librarian and Cantor. He turned his attention to my plague marines dropping frag missiles into their ranks but it proved ineffective. I simply moved my plague marines back into cover and advanced the daemon prince into Richard's deployment zone.

Turn five and all Richard managed to do was knock two wounds off the daemon prince. I just moved him closer to ensure that I had linebreaker and that point Richard conceded. There was no way he could achieve victory as I had first blood and now would have linebreaker. I won 5 vp to his 3.

Despite being very apprehensive about what to take I think I had taken the right options.  I'm still annoyed that a unit like a knight can be taken down as easily as it can be. But despite a great start I think that Richard was unlucky. Perhaps he should have moved a couple squads forward to draw my fire from the predators but the deployment type was going to make it difficult for a footslogging army to get across the table easily.

Unfortunately my phone died on me so no photos to add for this report.

My list:

Typhus (warlord - legendary champion. Powers were smite, miasma of pestilence and plague wind)
Daemon Prince of Chaos (mark of nurgle. Powers were smite and stream of corruption).

10 Plague marines
Plasma Pistol and power weapon.
Icon of Despair and two meltaguns

10 Plague marines
Plasma Pistol and power weapon.
Icon of Despair and two meltaguns

10 Poxwalkers

5 Havocs
boltgun and bolt pistol
Autocannon – missile launcher – lascannon
chainswords

Renegade Knight
Thermal blaster, chainsword and hvy stubber

Despite having the advantage the space marines were only able to breach a handful of enemy bastions. The rest resisted all their efforts, allowing Typhus to seek reinforcements and come up with strategies to defeat the invading forces.