Cloak and Shadows - Perdus Rift

Planet: Tyros.
Region: Perdus Rift.
990.M41

Death Guard vs Raven Guard.
2000 points.

Cloak and Shadows.

Confident by their success against the Death Guard, the Raven Guard continue to hound the chaos marines into the countryside of Tyros. Typhus calls upon his psychic connection to the Warp seeking a way to secure a victory over the space marines. What he learns leads him and his forces to stage an ambush. Shryke sees through the false scouting and locates Typhus and his main force. Using the element of surprise they drop from the skies and reverse the ambush.

Played a revenge match against against Richard's Raven Guard last night. Know what he took last time I made a less competitive change to my list to help handle the lightning claw assault marine. I ditched most of what I had before in order to take a 15 man and a 20 man plague marines squad hoping it would be harder for him to cut through them. His list was different again. No lightning claws, just regular bolt pistol and chainsword assault marines. He also took two stormtalon fighters which proved once again that flyers are my bane. CSM really do need a better flyer than the Heldrake.

Six objectives were placed and we rolled for deployment which gave us the short ends of the table. He set up first with a scout squad on the table in a ruin and little else. Everything I had was deployed and just to be on the safe side I kept my Chaos Knight on the back edge to prevent him drop podding down behind it.

First turn his drop pods came down and all they did was kill four plague marines and nothing else. Even the melta weapons failed to touch the Knight. It looked well for me and I was hopeful that his poor dice rolls would help me in the long run. Come my turn the objectives I drew were rather terrible with only one that I could take. On his turn he had secured two with random victory points netting him 5 VP. My turn I achieved none. Thankfully though the squads he dropped in my deployment zone died to mass bolter fire and the actions of the Chaos Knight.

The second turn saw my dice go as bad his my opponent's/ We had a helbrute vs deadnought battle. My helbrute fired point blank with a multi-melta and missed. In combat it knocked one hull point off and his dreadnought hit me for five hull points and boom! When his planes came on they wrecked all kinds of trouble. Immediately my Knight lost 4 hull points and my predator turned into a burning wreck.

The objective cards then gave me objective 5 and two objective 4. Number 5 I had but 4 was contested until my Knight took out the drop pod stopping me. The following turn I got objective 4 again. Richard however kept pulling all the high point cards though and it was clear that without divine intervention I was losing this just on VP.

Typhus once again fell to his dreadnought. That seems to be a recurring element in our games. I got my revenge though when my Chaos Knight charged the Dreadnought crushed beneath the teeth of it's chainsword. Unfortunately my Knight exploded not long afterwards.

My plan to hold him back with large numbers of plague marines failed. Even just equipped with basic close combat weapons and just two thunder hammers, he smashed through both squads with ease although I did manage to drop a good number of them before my last plague marine fell.

Turn six and he tabled me. We didn't even bother looking at the victory points for comparison, he had easily doubled if not tripled whatever I had. It was a good game though and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am going to have to really consider what I can do about his hard hitting list for future games.

Surprise Attack - Perdus Rift

Planet: Tyros.
Region: Perdus Rift.
990.M41

The war against the Tau is going well. The planet D'Then is slowly falling to the forces of Nurgle. Typhus has returned to his base of operations on the planet of Tyros in the neighbouring system to oversee the war effort throughout the Perdus Rift.
Unknown to him the Death Guard presence has been detected by a Raven Guard battle barge headed towards their own war against the alien empire. Shrike decides that this may be the chance to strike against Typhus. For several days Raven Guard scouts monitor Typhus' base reporting back to the battle barge hiding behind Tyros' moon. When the time was right, Shrike lead an attack against the Death Guard.

Last night played a game against my friend Richard and his new Raven Guard army. We played a mission from the Battle Missions book called Surprise Attack. It represents a Space Marine surprise attack on an enemy headquarters so somewhat thematic.

My list was pretty much what I had played lately but as Richard wanted a 2000 point game I added in a Hel Cult (plague bearers proxying for some missing cultists), a few extra plague marines and two vengeance weapon platforms.

I was quite worried by what he could bring and I was not disappointed as nearly everything came with lightning claws. This was an army built to bring down my poor plague marines. He played 5 man squads though to break up his deployment and give me more problems to deal with.

Deployment for this mission is awkward as I can set up anywhere more than 12′’ from the table edge but the units must be 6′’ from each other. How a horde army might do this I have no idea as I struggled and we had to agree to shrink that where necessary. Richard’s forces can deploy in the 12′’ table edge and come in from any side.

To start with I was doing awesome. I was racking up victory points but turn three was the beginning of the end. Although his dice rolls were fairly pants all game he had slowly whittled hull points off of my Chaos Knight and when his Storm Raven came in it took the walker down with an impressive explosion. I had nothing that could touch the flyer and that was a huge problem. My only multimelta, on the helbrute, never got close enough to do anything.

His lighting claws were just horrible. No armour saves and FNP did me no good. I’m now dreading that my local space marine players will start outfitting with lightning claws when facing me. Typhus himself fell to a dreadnought after it ripped through his terminator bodyguards. Although thought dead, his body isn't recovered after the battle. Typhus will survive to fight again.

Come turn 5 and the game ended. Counting up the VP’s Richard’s space marines beat me by one point. 10vp to 9vp. Good close game.