Objective Secured

So its now the final round and we are playing Big Guns Never Tire with Dawn of War deployment. The issue I face is my opponent has 2 flying metal dragons of doom…

It certainly could be worse but the Helldrakes are going to be an issue. I got a good mix of powers – Veil, Dance of Shadows, Fog of Dreams and Invisibility being the main ones (though forgot the picture) for this game as well as a cool warlord trait – Twisted Encore – from the Dark Traits table.

I got to deploy and go first. I placed the Wraithguard behind the centrally deployed bunker ready to trigger the hatch as before. The Dark reapers I mounted in one of the Starweavers so I could hopefully avoid the Hell Drakes when they came on. The unit of harlies who would normally embark this vehicle went into reserve with the jet bikes. The other unit embarked their Starweaver on the left flank while the solitaire hid behind a ruin on the right. The ministar deployed centrally supported by the void weaver.

He deployed the Vindicators and Landraider filled with Berzerkers on my right hand side along with the 2 squads of marines. The Terminators and Sorcerer deployed on my left.

Turn 1 I embark the wraith guard into the bunker and shuffle a little to set up turn 2 charges. I buff the ministar with Veil and Invisibility and the void weaver gets dance of shadows. The mobile Dark reapers get side armour on one of the Vindicators and scrap it for first blood. He responds with the Land Raider advancing along with the second vindicator. Psychics hurt the sorcerer with perils leaving him on 1 wound. The Land Raider began firing at the void weaver to no effect while the vindicator followed this example. The Reaper Auto Cannon stripped a hull point from the dark reapers star weaver.

Turn 2 I sweep up the left with the small troupe in the star weaver while the wraithguard disembark from the hatch to kill the land raider. The Ministar advances aiming to charge the marines in the woods or the berserkers when their raider dies. The Solitaire lines up a charge on the right flank. Shooting seems me kill a couple of the terminators with bladestorm and the Land Raider dies in an uninspiring wimper rather than an earth shattering kaboom which leaves the berzerkers out of charge range.

The Solitaire makes the charge and takes a wound to overwatch on the way in. He kills the champion (who must challenge) along with another marine but takes a second wound in the bargin. The small troupe on the left hit the terminators with just a single model – the troupe master – after I take 5 unsaved wounds from some very accurate combi bolter overwatch. He kills the champion in the required challenge but is then smashed by the numerous chain and power fists. The ministar makes it 9″ charge and obliterates the unit in a deluge of attacks from the Troupe Master and Shadow Seers for a single loss of a player to overwatch.

Turn 2 for chaos and the first of the hell drakes flies on lining up the wraith guard with its flamer. The terminators move up to kill the star weaver nearby. The berserkers move to within 4″ of the ministar who are hunkered down in cover. The Vindicator reverses to try and drop a pie plate on them as well as I managed to fail every single defensive cast in my turn.

The psychic phase starts and the first cast by the sorcerer is another perils and his head explodes! We go strait to shooting and the Baleflamer only kills 2 of the wraith guard. The vindicator manages a good hit but I only loose 2 players thanks to some good saves. The berserkers open fire with their pistols but fail to do anything. In combat the terminators make short work of the star weaver while the solitaire kills 2 more chaos marines and then dies to the flurry of attacks. The berserkers fail a 4″ charge thanks to the -2 for difficult terrain and leave themselves open to the counter charge.

Turn 3 I separate a single shadow seer from the ministar to line up a charge on the vindicator while the rest of the star prepares to charge the berserkers. The reapers in their star weaver along with the void weaver move to target the remaining 3 terminators. in the psychic phase I cast fog of dreams on the hell drake (which is so very good!) as well as invisbility on the ministar – effectively stopping the first drake from firing and protecting the death star from the second. I open fire with the vehicles and kill 2 of the terminators leaving just 1 alive. The reapers strip 2 hull points from the hell drake. The shadow seer strips a hull point from the vindicator with a thrown haywire grenade. I charge in with the shadow seer and make short work of the vindicator. The ministar again destroys what it charges with a veritable dice explosion of 6’s. Both them and the seer consolidate back towards each other.

Chaos T3 is largely uneventful as the hell drake can only vector strike and fails to kill a wraithguard while the second one fails to deploy. The lone terminator moves back towards the back objective while the 6 models left in the last Marine unit consolidate their position. There is no damage inflicted in the shooting phase.

Turn 4 and the eldar star aiming to mop up the chaos marines. The star reforms into a single unit and moves towards the remaining 6 marines. I can’t draw LOS on the last terminator so everything that can lines up on the hell drake. I again make the ministar invisible and fog the drake again. Fog of dreams turns out to be superfluous as the reapers down the drake with ease and a 6″ run followed by an 11″ charge sees the ministar hit and then wipe out the last 6 chaos marines.

At the start of his turn 4, my opponent concedes. He has a single terminator on the table and while the last hell drake will show up, he knows that’s not going to stop me winning on objectives by a considerable margin.

I have line breaker, first blood, warlord plus 3 heavy support kills and then 3 objectives to his lone objective which with T5 would be mine. Max win for me!

By this stage we have been playing for 11 hours including the breaks and I am so tired its not funny! I pack up and await the verdict. I managed 70 out of the 100 available battle points total and a win draw loss of 2/1/1 which I can’t complain about. I finish about 7th (I think – no official results yet) but do win the door prize which was nice – $20 store credit can’t be sniffed at!

I am confident I could have drawn (or even won) game 2 as well as potentially winning game 3. I have now played about half a dozen games with the new Harlequins and think I have a strategy in mind. I will expand on this in my next post but until then, I hope you have enjoyed this series of games

You can leave me your feedback in the comments below as well as like Objective Secured on facebook and follow me on twitter to keep up to date will my 40k adventures

Happy Gaming!