One last game before the summer holidays hit. One thing's for sure: Chaos Space Marines will win this game!
Note: We completely forgot about the warp lightning storms.
Note 2. We just set up a symmetrical battlefield, but the deployment zones were unusual, and we barely had any cover. I just placed a lot of stuff in front and hoped to go first. I did.
Battle round 1
Full steam ahead, everything does its job. For the Land Raider and Cultists, that is: draw fire.
Also protect the characters.
Bikers take the objective, Possessed hide in the ruins.
I had a good first turn, scoring one card and shooting a Venomcrawler off the board with the Raider.
In return, the Emperor's Children drew Bring it Down, and focused on the Land Raider. Hexagrammatic Wards made the lascannon Havocs' job a lot harder, but the Noise Marines contributed with Excruciating Frequencies. Lots of mortal wounds brought the Raider down to 4 wounds. Not dead yet!
The Disco Lord and a squad of Possessed charged my Rhino, killing it. I had both my Masters of Execution do heroic interventions, one of course died. The other downed his Intoxicating Elixir and killed 4 Possessed. There is something to this character, let me tell you that.
Battle round 2
Both the Venomcrawler and the Rhino exploded, so the Disco Lord was already weakened. Just enough for a Smite to take it off the board. Same with the remaining Possessed. I had the surviving Master of Executions advance forward, somehow thinking that there is an advance and charge stratagem. There wasn't. He just stood there, inviting death.
I had the Bikers charge the Havocs. No more lascannon shots into my beautiful Land Raider. If you want that Bring it Down, you have to work for it.
And work for it, they did. 3 Obliterators materialized in my backfield. However, their shooting proved ineffective, and so did the blastmaster from the Noise Marines. Command reroll armor save for the win!
Terminators arrived on the board, charging into my Cultists with Honor the Prince. Hero Cultists survived to hold the objective!
Spawn and Raptors charged the Bikers, killing one. More heroes of the Dark Gods!
Lucius swooped in to execute the Master of Executions.
Battle round 3
I was leading comfortably on both primary and secondary points, as I was holding 3 objectives and I wasn't held back by easily achievable, yet somehow impossible cards like Bring it Down. Now all I had to do was to hold the enemy back even more, while keeping up the scoring. It's Terminator time! With melta shots and a successful charge, they killed 5 Emperor's Children Terminators.
The combined firepower of the Land Raider and my own Obliterators killed a total of one (1) Obliterator. I might as well ignore them.
Possessed charge in, taking out the Havocs.
Rubrics step forward and flame Lucius to death. I also forgot to bring in my other two Obliterators, however my opponent allowed me to place them (without shooting).
The Emperor's Children played out their turn, with no hope for success. The Obliterators could have taken my backfield objective with a long bomb charge, but failed to do so. Their firepower bounced off the Raider again. The Spawn bounced off the Master of Possession. And the Dark Apostle charged my Obliterators, but died to their melee. On my turn, I was ready to score even more primary and secondary points, and we called the game there.
Word Bearers victory!
Aftermath
Of all my games with Chaos Marines (so all my games lately), it is always the person going first that takes the win. But not because of the amount of killing happening first turn, but due to the board position they are able to take. This is very different but also very similar to good old 8th edition.
I like to believe that I did a much better job playing the Word Bearers this time, having learned from my failures. I was able to take advantage of the enemy over extending themselves (with the Lord Discordant) and punch through any openings (towards the Havocs). But I also did a poor job remembering some stratagems, and I threw away both Masters of Executions. Although they traded about equally considering the squad of Possessed one of them murdered.
Speaking of stratagems, I abandoned my fighty killy Dark Apostle build, instead giving him Daemonic Whispers and the Epistle of Lorgar for increased CP generation. He was a cool little CP battery, and I was sitting on just enough for the entire game for cool stuff like Hexagrammatic Wards, rerolls for the Land Raider, having the Raider act at top bracket, and one instance where the Rubrics did an action in the middle of the board, as well as shoot up Lucius. So the Dark Apostle did much less this game, however, he enabled the rest of the army to shine.
The Master of Possession did very little in terms of casting, and did not pull his weight this game. With both the Possessed and Obliterators far from him, all his cool buffs went unused. I still need to figure out this one.
All in all, a cool learning experience, and interesting to see the Chaos Marines from the other side of the board as well.
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