Thursday, 22 March 2018

Battle of Chernobog - Cerberus

Planet: Cerberus.
Region: Cerberus sector.

Death Guard vs Astra Militarum: Cadian.
2000 points.
Mission: Sealed Orders.
Deployment: Search and Destroy.

This was a major battle between the Astra Militarum and the Death Guard that took place in the sunken ruins of Chernobog. It was an important victory for the Imperium that saw the enemy forces routed so badly, they they never returned to the region for the rest of the war.

This week was the revenge match for my brutal defeat at the hands of Ashleigh a few weeks back. This time he promised to bring a infantry heavy army rather than a mechanized list. Even so I had expected at least tank of some description and so I brought a Renegade Knight and a Plagueburst Crawler. The only vehicles that my opponent brought were a pair of sentinel walkers. Was I going to be able to bring down quite so many infantry? We shall see...

Both of us were running late that evening so our planned 2000 points was probably stretching things a bit but we played as much as we could before the venue wanted to close for the night. Our mission of choice was Sealed Orders as neither of us had played it before. We rolled Search and Destroy for the deployment and although I got choice of zone none of them were actually suitable. I made a choice just on the fact that it gave me easy access to two objective markers.

First turn and I tried to advance to get the objectives closest to me. At the same time I kept back the Knight, and the helforged dreadnought as Ashleigh had kept some units in reserve. I didn't want them coming down behind me if I could help it. I also didn't want to go too far forward in case I left myself open. One of my secret objectives was casting psychic powers and I completely forgot to do so turn one. My shooting was ineffective as well. I think I killed one ratling sniper and one of the sentinels.

Ashleigh's turn one was a lot better. Not a lot moved but he did bring in a pair of assassin's in and a load of rough riders on my left flank. The assassins did a good good of dropping my plague caster down to a single wound. He managed to inflict some injuries and a couple kills.

Turn two and I made sure to protect my plague caster with a Death Guard stratagem that stopped Ashleigh from shooting him. I also turned my knight, both chaos spawn and helforged contemptor to dealing with those units that came in from my flank. I couldn't afford to just ignore them and they had to die. It was a tough decision but I used this turn to drop Typhus and his Deathshroud terminators down as close to my right flank as the enemy would allow me. It wasn't all that helpful but I knew that I needed them to try and draw fire. I also remembered to do a psychic power this turn thus ensuring I achieved something from my objective cards. Most of my shooting was reasonable but I did manage to blast a fair few out of the rough riders and guardsmen that had popped up to my left. The knight and chaos spawn charged in and were rather successful. Most of the enemy died to mighty titanic feet or to the claws of the spawn.

Due to the venue wanting to close we managed to get a complete third turn before we had to pack up. The third turn was the decider whether we had achieved any further turns or not. Ashleigh succeeded in blasting down my Knight but sadly it just toppled over rather than exploding. Typhus lost his bodyguard squad and was knocked down as well. When the game ended, I had very little left and the Guardsmen still had the majority of their army sitting there.

When it came to it my opponent had scored five or six objectives to my four. Victory went to the Cadians this day. Good game as always. Maybe next time we try this we should play smaller points and see what a difference that makes.

Death Guard deployment.

The might of Nurgle marches to war.

Sneaky Cadians trying to get behind me.

Entrenched heavy weapon teams.

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