Astra Militarum vs Space Marines, 11.07.2023

For my second game of 10th edition, we busted out the Leviathan mission deck. We played Tactical mode obviously, since it was a first glance at the cards for us.

Battle round 1

The only unit of mine that was (mostly) visible was a crew of heavy bolters. They immediately got Oath of Moment'd, but they did manage to shoot once on Overwatch, doing nothing. Notice the nothingness on the ruins, bottom left.

On my turn, I surged forwards towards the objectives. The secondaries were not achievable.

Combined fire took down a squad of Infiltrators in the middle, as well as one Bladeguard.

Battle round 2

The Incursors hid behind their closed ruin to do actions, the Terminators staid in reserves, everything else cautiously moved up the board.

I had no other targets, so I bombarded the Bladeguard into oblivion, while again moving up the board.

Still no scorable secondaries.

Battle round 3

The pace of the battle accelerated, with the Eradicators, led by Tor Garadon, moving out to face the tanks, and the Terminators dropping in from reserve.

My most successful Overwatch ever killed two Terminators.

Then the combined melta and krak missile shots took out the Executioner, and everything else took out the large squad of Cadian nuns in the middle. Reinforcements time!

The Terminators also made a successful charge into my Ogryns, preventing the objective being burned.

On my turn, I could finally score secondaries. Shooting disappointed me, however, with only 1 Eradicator dying.

Battle round 4

To our great surprise, the battle tank survived the next round of meltas.

Incursors charging in, disabling the squad shooting. Oh how I miss Get back into the fight!

I retreated to take the objectives and score Engage on all Fronts with my insanely brave Bullgryn there. Then I had to shoot everything into the Eradicators.

On their last turn, the space marines retreated out of sight to score their secondaries, and I tried to do the same. 

Victory for the Space Marines!

Even with the painted bonus I got beaten by 2 points, but at least I scored 69.

Thoughts about the edition: about the same as last time. Killing power is greatly reduced. Everything mostly has cover all the time. If not, then Go to Ground. This means that Space Marines act like having Armor of Contempt again. The -1 AP of the Leman Russ Battle Tank does not cut it. I'll have to try something else next time. The Executioner still does fine, though.

Smokescreen does not protect against Oath of Moment. It can do wonders in other cases, though.

Heavy bolters look so good on paper but don't do anything. I'll mix it up, next time.

Thoughts about the mission: primary was pretty balanced, with none of us able to burn objectives (or forgetting about it). Secondaries were reminiscent of last edition, and I never recovered from the first two turns of bad draws. I might dip my toes into fixed objectives next time.