Chaos Space Marines vs Dark Angels, 28.05.2024

First outing with the new chaos marine  codex, with some new models, against a brand new opponent playing Dark Angels. So it's chaos versus chaos. There, I made the joke.

Renegade Raiders vs Gladius Strike Force, Hammer and Anvil, the Ritual (completely forgot about it), Delayed reserves.

Battle round 1

The Dark Angels got first turn and drew Assasinate. My Disco Lord survived thanks to a lucky reroll on invulnerable saves.

I, in turn, charged up the right flank, into some Deathwing Knights. The Possessed failed their 6" charge even with a reroll, so the Daemon Prince had to hold this precarious position on his own.

I took some board position, and sent the wounded Disco Lord, along with some Havocs, to investigate signals.

Battle round 2

Inceptors drop in to execute the Disco Lord. Everything else moves up, shoots up my bikes.

I charged the Chosen out of the Rhino, and right into the Redemptor. I was curious if I could bring it down. Thanks to -1 damage and Armor of Contempt, I did not.

One squad of Possessed charged in to help out the Daemon Prince. They seem bad without the additional AP from the Raiders detachment. But even with that and once-per-game devastating wounds, the Knights held out.

As did the Inceptor against my Havocs.

I wanted to send in the other squad of Possessed, just to keep things tied up and in the deployment zone, but of course they failed their charge.

Battle round 3

I was leading in points, but here I got a lot of my stuff killed. The dreadnought retreated, shot up the Chosen, then charged right back in along with Azrael, killing the entire squad.

The Repulsor missed most shots (main cannon double 1-s into the Rhino), but the Bladeguard did charge and kill the Possessed.

I just tried to retreat and score secondaries at this point.

Battle round 4-5

I tried some more desperate plays to score secondaries, such as Tank Shock the Terminators with my Rhino, but the Dark Angels kept their scoring up a lot better.

Some cool moments were the Cultists shooting and charging and killing the last Inceptor (AP is great), and the chaingun Havocs gunning down the entire squad of Bladeguard. After many good rolls, it was my opponent's turn to roll 1s. That denied the Angels primary points.

Conclusion

I tallied up a grand total of 27 points. Yeah, talk about a low scoring game.

35 for the Dark Angels. Not much better, either.

Dark Angels victory!

Alright, lots to talk about here.

My brain was set to tournament terrain mode, and this sparser table mucked me up. Should have paid attention.

I did not place anything in reserves due to the mission rule, but I should have. The Dark Angels reserves really kept me on my toes. 

Space Marine units can be a tough nut to crack, especially this deathwing and dreadnought nonsense with -1 damage and Armor of Contempt. I tried to spread out my attacks to decrease the value of stratagems, but I failed some easy charges - what can you do. Also consuming my command points on rerolls for said charges hobbled the use of cool detachment stratagems.

Loss of AP makes Possessed a lot less useful - imagine going into Terminators with Armor of Contempt and having them save on 2+. The Raiders detachment helps a lot here. Interestingly enough, I barely had a chance to attack units on objectives. Explains the low score. So anyway, units with low AP can still be useful in this detachment. Hint hint wink wink chaingun havocs.

Disco Lord still useless. He can barely maneuver on a tournament table and is an easy target on a sparse table. Daemon Prince does better due to fly and speed, but I think he'll go back to the box for now as well.

Chosen look great on paper but against a tough target they need their rerolls. I will be trying out the Veterans of the Long War next, or place a Master of Executions in the unit.

And technically...

I lost by an 8 points margin, but I had a painted army and my opponent did not. So... technical win by 2 points for me. Yeah, let's keep that to ourselves.