Chaos Daemons/Chaos Space Marines vs Ultramarines, 30.06.2015

First time playing against the new Space Marine Codex!

Mission: Contact Lost
Map: Dawn of War
Lists: 1550 points (as requested by my opponent to get the requirements for all the formations)

Chaos Daemons: Combined Arms Detachment

• 3 Nurglings
• 10 Pink Horrors, instrument
• 3 Screamers of Tzeentch
• Kairos Fateweaver, warlord
• 2 Heralds of Tzeentch, both lvl 3 Psykers, one exalted reward
• Daemon Prince of Tzeentch, exalted reward, greater reward, lvl 3 Psyker, armor, wings

I got a mix of Change and Divination on the Heralds, which didn't matter much. One also got the Portalglyph. The Tzeentch Prince got Change powers and Smite, with the Grimoire of True Names and Hellfire Gaze (S8 AP1 Lance shooting attack).

Chaos Space Marine: Allied Detachment

• Daemon Prince of Nurgle, lvl 3 Psyker, armor, wings, the Black Mace
• 5 Chaos Space Marines

The Nurgle Prince got Summoning, Weapon Virus and Endurance besides Nurgle's Rot.

Ultramarines: Gladius Strike Force
2 Demi Companies (almost everything is bare naked here)

• Captain on bike
• Chaplain
• Space Marine bikers with attack bike
• 4x 5-man Tactical Squad in Razorbacks
• 2x 5-man Tactical Squad in Drop Pods
• 5-man Devastators with 4 Missile Launchers (no flak)
• 5-man Devastators with 4 Lascannons
• 3 Land Speeders, 2 Heavy Flamers each

10th Company Taskforce

• Sergeant Tellion
• 5-man Scout Squad with Missile Launcher
• 2x Scout Biker Squads

Everything there has Objective Secured. EVERYTHING. I had no idea how to deal with that. So, although  I won the roll off, I left my opponent to deploy first and go first, and just go from there. Let's see how that worked out.

Deployment

After about half an hour, all the Space Marines made it unto the table.

I'm not even going to try to make sense of what's going on there. Especially since I took the first two photos without flash, so they're blurry. Sorry for that!
* Notice the different color schemes. Some models were loaned from another player. Nobody has that number of Marines!

My counter-deployment:

Basically, the Horrors and two Heralds are holed up in the ruin; their only job was to provide Warp Charges. The Nurglings infiltrated to hold an objective. Chaos Marines behind cover. Fast moving units - flying Daemons and Screamers - in the top left corner, which was the furthest away from Devastators.

Ultramarines, turn 1.

Drop Pod Assault, as far as possible from the Royal Daemons (as my opponent called my 2 Princes and 1 Lord).

Everything moving up to take as many objectives as possible. Land Speeders go Flat Out to catch my Horrors next turn.

All Tactical bolters, Razorback and Drop Pod storm bolters, Devastator krak missiles unload into my Nurglings. Go to ground for 2+ cover. 2 (!) wounds were inflicted.

Daemons, turn 2.

Left flank moves up. Kairos bombards and destroys a Scout Biker squad with psychic shooting, securing me First Blood (the models are in the top left corner, pending removal). He also Perils, suffering 1 wound. He utterly fails a Bolt of Change, rolling 1 for Strength (D6 + 4), thus not harming the tanks.

The Heralds try to take out the Land Speeders, but also fail. At least I immobilized the first one. Foreseeing doom, I got off Forewarning (4+ invulnerable).
I deployed the Portalglyph a bit above the ruin (small blast with flame colors), but nothing came out of it.
At least I scored 2 Objective points.

Ultramarines, turn 2.

Second drop pod come in. Razorbacks move forward. Scout Bikes move up. My opponent was gunning for Domination. Fortunately, my Nurglings were also Objective Secured, so they kept objective 6.

The Land Speeders, on the other hand, devastated my Horrors. Thankfully, the unit didn't die. At this point, the Marines had total board control (holding 5 and contesting 1 objective). Thanks to bad Tactical Objectives, the score was still 3-1.

Daemons, turn 2. An uneventful, and unsuccessful, turn. I drew no objective cards, holding no objectives. I scored the remaining objective from my first turn - Hungry for Glory. The Nurgle Prince charged and annihilated the Scout Bikers - they never got to attack back.

Turn 3.
Things were speeding up, and I didn't take many pictures due to the excitement.

The Marines were taking my right flank, but the Horrors were resisting heroically with Forewarning and Cursed Earth (3+ invulnerable, rerolling 1s). I was advancing on the left, however, with high strength low AP psychics and shooting taking their toll. The Chaos Marines also did their duty, wrecking a Razorback with krak grenades.

Ultramarines, turn 4.

Some maneuvering on the left was going nowhere. The Chaplain failed his charge due to difficult terrain + grav wave generator. The Pink Horrors were annihilated, and a Herald was killed. That last Horror is the remainder of a squad that came out of the Portalglyph.

Daemons, turn 4.

 

Another successful Portalglyph summoning brought my Warp Charges back to 15, enabling a successful push. I have annihilated 3 Tactical squads on the left. Tactical Summoning brought in a squad of Daemonettes to hold the objective abandoned by the Nurgle Prince.

 

Something you don't see every day: Kairos duelling Tellion. I hoped to annihilate the Scout Squad through psychics, but 1 Scout stuck around with Tellion. I charged in, hoping against hope, and did kill the Scout, but 2 attacks just weren't enough.

The right flank was all but lost.

... and this is also the final state of the board. At the bottom of turn 4, after 4.5 hours, at 6-2, we called it game.

Post game

• One word about this Space Marine detachment: Objective Secured! OK, that was two actually. The amount of Objective Secured models on the table is horrifying. Had my opponent pulled better cards, she could have lead by at least double the amount of points.
• Otherwise, with almost no special/heavy weapons, they can't kill anything. Tactical Doctrine was used on almost every turn to reroll failed hits, but there was no way my flying Daemons could be hurt. This was the reason many objectives could not be fulfilled.
• On my part: the Daemons performed exactly as expected. Horrors died easily. Nurglings camped in cover. The Black Mace removed entire squads in one turn. However, once again, I was confronted by the liability of psychics. For the first two turns, I barely killed a couple of things in my psychic phase, only to butcher them utterly in the following turns.
• Marines are OP! Had I had anything else but Chaos Marines in there, I would have had no way to destroy that Razorback. Krak grenades are awesome.