Battle Report: Lustwing vs. Sisters for the Rat Skull

by Chambers

 

A couple of weeks back I had the opportunity to pack up the family and make our way over to Indy. I might have stashed an army in the back of the car while packing. Graciously, our wives let us get away for the afternoon on Saturday.

Farmpunk and I headed down to the new GP-North with Sandwyrm set to follow later. It was a very nice place with great selection of board games and models.

I had brought along my newly acquired Lust Wing army (Painted by Ron Saikowski over at From the Warp) that I wrote about in an earlier post.

Farmpunk brought a typical (for him) INQ list with melta sisters in rhinos, a GKT w/ psi-hood, and some inducted guard for plasma and auto cannon love. You can see his full list here.

In a vain attempt to get a game in with both Farmpunk and SandWyrm that day, we quickly set up a nice board with matching terrain, and got started just before SandWyrm arrived.

Set up

We rolled up a standard mission from the BRB and came up with a Capture and Control using a Dawn Of War deployment.

In an effort to make the game a little more challenging, we both agreed that the slightly phallic looking rock in the center of the board would serve as a tie-breaking objective. Keeping things simple we also decided to use the skulls as the objective markers with the option to spin the bases that they sat on before deployment.

I won the roll for first turn and choose to take the far side of the board, as shown in the above picture. I deployed my two assault cannon squads across from the =][= objective along with Logan and prayed that he didn't steal the initiative. While my two CML squads and RP would walk on first turn.

Farmpunk opted to deploy nothing and bring everything on first turn. Thankfully he did not seize the initiative.

End of Deployment

 

Turn One: Lustwing

With nothing else to do I Moved everyone forward and attempted to run closer to the objectives, only to find out that apparently the Terminator armor is really heavy, the only unit not to roll a one for the running was the cml squad holding my home objective, and they rolled a two. Awesome guys way to go.

Logan gave his squad relentless.

Turn One: =][=
 

All the units  of the repressive Imperium moved on to the table with the paired "box o' rockets" (Exorcists) on the extreme right flank, with two squads of sisters supporting them. The infantry blob moved on the far left to hold tier home objective while the three HQ units moved on in the center to support the others as needed.

The platoon HQ chimera then moved forward and lit up Logan's squad with it's spotlight and multi-laser. Forcing one wound, but more importantly giving every one on the battle field clear line of sight to Logan and his crew.

First wound of the game and I rolled a one.

Logan gave his squad “pee pants” USR. The rest of the foul =][= open fire into that one squad. The Exorcists let off a combined total of eleven rockets, for a grand total of one dead CSM. Yep, combine an abysmal round of shooting by Farmpunk along with me passing four ups like it was my job, and only one of my terminators failed a save.

End of Turn One

Turn Two: Lustwing

Logan gives his squad tank hunter followed by fearless. Everybody moves forward, with the CML squad + Rune Priest finally securing my home objective.

In the shooting phase the first unit of assault cannon Termies fails to reach their mark by a few inches. Sigh... I really need to get better at judging distances. One CML squad immobilizes a Chimera and the second one stuns one of the exorcists. The Rune Priest, meanwhile, flirts with perils of the warp by rolling an 11 for his Psychic Test.

Turn Two: =][=

Just after the IG Comand Squad jumps out of it's Chimera, the Grey Knight Termies and the Canoness jump in and move towards Logan's crew. Oops! Neither of us caught that the Canoness couldn't get in to the transport because of her JumpPack. Oh well!

The two squads of sisters in rhinos move forward a full 12" in an effort to take my home objective away.

In the shooting phase the blob squad send Plasma and Autocannon fire down-range towards Logan's squad while the Grey Knights add 6 Psi-Cannons and 6 Storm-Bolter shots to the fusillade. Toss in two Multi-Meltas + one Exorcist, and I was giddy when only one Terminator dropped for the second turn in a row.

Turn Three: Lustwing

Logan first gives his squad tank hunter followed again in the second half of the turn by Preferred enemy.

Everyone moves forward, including the squad holding my objective. I thought that I could weather the blessed bolter fire that was destined to follow once, then lock my self into combat where the girls were much weaker.

In the shooting phase my mind bullets are stopped cold by a physic hood and even though I hit the rhinos with 3 of my four missiles I fail to do anything to them, at all. The squad on the far left flank gets lucky and destroys the Chimera with the nasty GK unit inside, while Logan's squad takes the IG Command Squad down to just 2 models.

Not much left for me to do except brace for the coming storm.

Turn Three: =][=

In the movement phase the Rhinos on my left move forward and drop out their Girls well with in rapid fire range of my Termies. The GK + Cannoness Death Star unit moves forward to engage Logan's squad. The IG Infantry blob with the autocannons turns their attention to Termies climbing up their backside but fail to put any wounds on the ancient warriors.

On my left, the blessed fire of 2 squads of bolters combined with the Box Of Rockets knocks the Squad sitting on my home objective down to just 3 models, with the Rune priest selling his two wounds for the greater glory of Slaanesh.

The second Box of Rockets and the infantry fire from the center of the board drops Logan's HQ squad down to just Logan plus a single Power Weapon Terminator. The GKs and the Cannoness then charge Logan.

The assault starts off as you would expect. The canoness and the GKT squad all charge into Logan and his buddy. Logan reacts by counter-charging and popping of his “Hey look at me I am a relic!” ability. Seven attacks on the charge, not too bad at all.

With Logan going before the GKTs, but at the same time as the Canoness, I split his attacks to five as Inv and 2 as Power Fists. As Logan is the Canoness' only target, he takes all of her attacks and manages to come away with only one wound, leaving him one left.

The combined attacks from Logan and my remaining Terminator are then sent against the GKT squad, and after a flurry of five up saves only the Brother Captain and one trooper are left alive. They in turn drop my remaining Terminator from the squad before losing the last regular GKT to logan's power fist swings. The =][= loses the fight, but holds fast, and we move on to turn four.

Turn Four: Lustwing

My center-rear squad moves up to grab the phallic-rock in the center of the table, while the far right squad moves up to engage the infantry platoon. Meanwhile, my left-most squad sets up a double charge so that both units of Sisters will be tied up and unable to cause havoc.

The units on the center objective and my far-right fire into the infantry platoon on Farmpunk's left. Dropping his squad down to six and wounding an Autocannon HWT. They have a Commissar to keep them in line, but run anyway.

 

Now came the hitting people with sharp sticks phase. 

My home objective squad double charges into both squads of Farmpunk's Sisters hoping not only to stop the pain, but also keep them from running amok on the center objective. One of my fallen dies to the girls and in turn they loose a total of three Termies thanks to poor rolling and divine faith tricks. Both squads hold and the fight continues on to the next round. 

Back in the center of the board, Logan faces off against the Brother Captain and the Cannoness, taking all of his attacks at initiative and sending 2 wounds towards the BC, killing him. I send another 3 wounds towards the Canoness, who failed her holy armor roll (2+ Faith Invulnerable Save).

 

Seeing her failure, she promptly runs. Logan responds by wetting him self, a little. He knows the rockets will come for him again.

Turn Four: =][=

The Cannoness pops faith and becomes fearless for the turn, which meant that she then auto-rallied. The rest of movement sees the IG Comand Squad stumble towards Logan while the Cannoness hides behind the wrecked chimera (yea missed that one too).

Shooting Phase: One of the Exorcists puts two of my Terminators on the =][= objective down. We still hold it but it isn't looking so good for next round.

What about The second exorcist? Well, Logan only had one wound left and no amount of eternal warrior was going to be able to get him out of this one. Here is a view from the turret.

Target Aquired. He's in cover, how cute!

Poof!

In the assault phase one or two more Sisters died on my left while taking a Terminator down with them. This left me only one Terminator to hold my home objective.

End of Turn Four

Turn Five: Lustwing

The four man squad holding the =][= objective tries to move latterly in the hopes of getting away from one very angry nun, I don't remember how far they moved but it wasn't much.

Meanwhile, my squad holding the center drops down behind the phallus in order to get some cover from the Exorcists. They take out the last two models from the IG command squad with sheer weight of shots while the angry nun (Who joined them) passes all of her 2+ saves.

The lone Terminator on my home objective kills one more Sister while managing not to take any wounds in return. Not a good round of rolling for Farmpunk. If nothing else, this game has seen its fair share of good and bad dice rolls.

Turn Five: =][=

The two empty Rhinos move flat-out to contest the center objective. Meanwhile, the canonness jumps over to say "Hi" to the four remaining terminators on her objective.

Both Exorcists unload into the terminators on the =][= objective, killing 3. The Canonness then tries to finish the last one with her bolt pistol, she fails but manages to kill him in the assault phase. But...

She takes 2 wounds from him in the process and fails both 2+ saves! Which leaves the =][= objective completely devoid of troops. Ha!

On the Lustwing objective, nothing much happens. No wounds are dealt to either side so it is once again a draw. We start theorizing that they decided to play nice and solve their differences with tea and cake. Or maybe the girls took a liking to the tentacle-men. Who knows?

Being the ever generous host, Farmpunk allows me to roll to see if the game continues, and the die comes up 1. So game ends with two objectives contested and one barren of any life whatsoever.

Result: Draw

Summary and Final Thoughts

It was a great game, that most of the time was spent laughing and having a good time. I was very excited to play the Lust Wing for the first time and to play against a friend who I don't get to see very often made it all the better. While the luck of the dice swayed wildly through out this game I think that in the end it ended up pretty even on the bell curve. In the end even though we tied it didn't feel like we were destined to do so from the start, I am not sure if the “tie breaking only” objective help in this regard, but I must admit I enjoyed playing this way more than with only two objectives.

As for my list, I like it. While only having four units is going to take some getting used to, those 26 models are tough as nails and put out a comparatively large amount of firepower for their size. As for Farmpunks list, that Grey Knight Terminator squad was intense. I am curious to see what he does with that unit from here on out.

Here are my choices for MVPs and the goat, I will let Farmpunk chime in with his own nominations.

MVP - Lustwing: This has got to go to Logan. He is a beast in combat and proved to be worth all of his points. Which was something that I wasn't sure about.

MVP - =][=: This one has to go the Exorcists. They steady ate away at my forces and proved the pivotal swing in freeing up the =][= objective.

The Lustwing Goat: Definately the Rune Priest. In this game I would have better served by two additional terminators who would have at least given me 4 extra storm bolter shots a round, never mind that the cost difference would have allowed me to buy melta bombs for the half army as well.

The =][= Goat: I think perhaps the Commissar who couldn't keep his men in check.

Anyway, it was a fun game. It's just too bad that it went too long for me to get a game in with SandWyrm too.