To stop a Crusade

By TheGraveMind

Well, after my pity-party-post a few people had said they would like to get a game in on tuesday. It's good to have friends, and you're welcome GP south. The tuesday crowd has been slowly dwindling to 1 to 4 people on average, I think there were at least 6 this time. Besides the point, as I walked in, my first opponent seemed to be eagerly waiting for me. You may recognized the marines from Wienas and his Bloomington report. We agreed on 1850 to get me ready for my Bloomington adventure and to see how I could do against his list he had brought to down there the past weekend.


My list looked something like this.

Librarian in Terminator armor, with storm shield, Blood Lance and Sword of Sanguinor. (S8 AP1 line, and S10 in combat)
Captain with Combi-melta
Honor guard with 2 meltaguns, a plasma gun, and a flamer.
all in a droppod.
Librarian Dreadnaught, Wings and Might (jump movement and +D3 attacks)
5man Assault squad with flamer
In a Razorback with TL Lascannon
10man Assault squad with 2 meltaguns and a powerfist
In a Rhino
10man Assault squad with 2 meltaguns and a powerfist
In a Rhino
Land speeder Typhoon
Land speeder Typhoon
Vindicator
5man Dev squad with 4 missile launchers
1850 exactly

First off, I'm going to critique my own list with hindsight. Librarian with Storm Shield; 3+ invulnerable seems really cool, but I'm not sure it is worth the almost 50pts for it. Captian; I should have found somewhere to give him a power weapon. Honor squad; very all-comers, I can save 5 points and replace the plasmagun with a combi-plasma. Librarian Dread; 3rd game in a line of 4 games that he has done nothing. His hood is being closed and I'm down grading him.

We roll up annihilation and spearhead deployment. I win the roll and choose to go first and deploy my forces.

I tried to keep my side armor covered and set up for my first turn moves, knowing he'll be somewhere in this corner. On his deployment he'll set up the LR Crusader with emperors champion and a large assault squad in it, and a vindicator on either side with his Dreadnaught in the back side. Hard to see, but behind the left vindicator is an attack bike and there is another one behind the LR.

He holds his two "tactical" squads in reserve in their rhinos, his tank hunter terminators will deepstrike in, and he has a Landspeeder that will come in from reserves as well.

This is after my turn 1, not the best picture but can you see the smoke coming from all three vehicles. Ya I am/was cocky, what can I say, this was the first time I used the squad and they did their job and then some for the most part. So turn one I moved as fast as I can with most of my stuff and started flanking around. First mistake, I divided my army. My honor squad and Co. came down in the pod and landed right in front of the left Vindi.
I broke the Librarian off from the squad and had him cast Blood lance, and decided to not be greedy and hit Vindicator side and the Attack bike. Penetrated the Vind and got a 4 on the chart, but AP1 bumps it to destroyed. The Bike gets a cover save and fails killing it off. My meltas in the honor squad light up the LR and destroy it. My vindicator (being fast) was able to move to line up a shot and took out the right side vindicator.
What came next hurt pretty bad. My Librarian was a prime target all by himself so Wienas lined up both the dreadnaught and the second attack bike to fire into him. I was hoping he would be forced to charge and my S10 power would start wrecking house. Of course the first shot from the dreadnaught would be all it would take. It truly was a Venerable Dread as he knew how to fire a Lascannon to get straight through a Storm Shield. I failed that 3+ invuln and Poof no more Librarian. Well that was points well spent on defense. With the reserves at least a turn away, all he had left was to assault into my Honor Squad.

His emperors champion faced off against my Captain. My Iron halo my only saving grace which kept him alive for a turn or two. Man I wished I had given him some Armor ignoring weapon. The rest of the squad held its own, countering the Templar's Preferred enemy with their own Feel No Pain. The combat lasted for two full grueling turns of melee as we slowly killed only one or two models a turn. His power fist and Emperors champion finally pushed the advantage before I could save the squad (the priest's bonuses were really all I cared about).

(Note: I need to start doing Battle Reports sooner after games, so I don't forget details) In turns 2 and 3, His Terminators deepstruck in a lit up the back armor of my Lib Dread that was on its way to take on his main assault force. His speeder came up and had gotten a 2 against my dread the turn before and I quickly shot it down with meltas. His attack bike took off my Demolisher cannon before eating some missiles. His Dreadnaught continued to harassing by first destroying my Drop Pod and using it as cover and then shrugging off almost all shots I fired into it. All I managed to do to it was blow off its Lascannon, so it just Punched my stuff to death. I think this was one of my tactical failures of the game. It took just enough fire into it to keep shots from hitting the rest of the army, but I didn't focus enough on it early on to get rid of it.

 I tried to bait his assault squad with my weaponless Vindicator (which I looked up later and yes, it does have a storm bolter, ugh) but the Black Templar rule isn't the same as the rage rule so I gave that up and Flamed and charged them with the Razorbacks squad.

A barrage of Missiles caused a Zealous test on the terminators which ended up failing and running, I tried to escort them off, but two assault cannons with the Tank Hunter rule is hard to take at 6" away. Mean while his two rhino squads had came in and hid behind the far piece of terrain, and my rhino squad played chipmunk for a turn with them. He had Lascannons in each squad, which couldn't move and fire, while I had two meltaguns and a powerfist. If I could find a way to get them out and assault I would have that. I moved 6" to fire my meltas out of the hatch, came up at 7" and didn't do anything of note to the rhino. He then did something I didn't expect, and jumped out and assaulted my rhino. He also managed to trap my squad inside as the rhino was. He didn't do anything to the rhino, but I had a choice to make. I needed to keep the terminators running to count as destroyed for when the game ended, and that would require my rhino moving over 12" up to them. And that means my squad couldn't jump out and shoot at anything. Because of his assault, I couldn't jump out first and drive the rhino separate. Out of both of those options I chose the Terminators, but I really just wanted to get an easy kill point from a rhino.

His assault squad with Champion took out one of my typhoons, my Vindicator drove away to live. My second typhoon immobilized the Dreadnaught finally and my Dev squad fired into the assault squad killing them down to two men. I then fired two meltas, taking out the last guy, and assaulted into the Emperors Champion. DEATH OR GLORY assault squads, Death or Glory. Casualties were taken, but in the end the Powerfist prevailed!

We called it at end of Turn 5, as it was just over two hours and I was looking to get another game in that night.
I had killed
2 Vindicators
1 Crusader LR
1 Speeder
1 Emperors champion
1 Assault Squad
1 Terminator squad falling back
Gives me 7 Kp
He killed
1 Drop pod
1 Librarian
1 Captain
1 Honor Guard
1 Typhoon
1 Razorback
1 Rhino
1 5man Assault squad
Giving him 8Kp.
So even with my devastating first turn of destruction, through good generalship and a survivable Dread he managed to gain the advantage near the end and press it home.
But wait, the bikes! When I got home from my second game, I had an email from Wienas, his pictures didn't turn out as well and wanted some of mine (Above are some good ones and I'll email you some more), and also realized I had 2 more Kp. Thus I pulled ahead with 9 to 8. A marginal victory but one none the less, I'll take it.
While it is a Game victory, I consider it a moral defeat. I couldn't keep my advantage and was put on the defensive. He played one heck of the game and if we kept going probably would have ended up winning. I look forward to having our marines clash again on the battlefield. It was a great game and just what I needed before going to Bloomington.
With that game in mind, back to the old drawing books. Tweaks are needed, and I really need more of my army painted.