Blood of the Martyrs

So Thursday night myself, Morgan, and Alun, took a trip to Firestorm in Cardiff. Its a wee shop with a huge selection of games and mini's for sale, and a nice big room out the back for playing games on. If you've read my blog you'll already have seen some of the awesome terrain they have there! Seeing as there were 3 of us, we looked for a mission to do.

Morgan suggest Blood of the Martyrs, which is in the back of the 6th rulebook and has the special rules for the Tau attack on an Imperial outpost. Myself and Alun would have 4500 points to Morgans 3000. Narratively we think Space Wolves with Eldar allies is a bit naughty, so instructed by Castellen Crowe Alun's Grey Knights and Imperial Guard (Crowe was the only GK bar a dreadnought!) and my Space Marines we would oust these traitors from a holy Imperial Cathedral!

Well... try.......

Morg set up and spread his units around. The more ground we had to cover to longer it would take to wipe him off the board. Varying degrees of success were available but we HAD to wipe him off the board in 7 turns. Or we would fail. We had only a little room to set up on but most of our units were either to deep strike or in Transports. Due to my bad luck on Monday I decided not to outflank Khan and some of my other units and go for a more direct approach and deploy at the start.

Deployment! Left flank was less threatening to us so we concentrated more on the right where Eldrad and his seer council were, plus a Wolflord on Thunderwolf and his flock of dogs were. Head on attack! 

So we would get the first turn unless Morgan rolled a 6. Six. Alun points out that Castellan Crowe would force Morgan to re-roll this thankfully, we need the first turn! What did he roll? SIX. Jammy bugger! Morg uses this to his advantage by advancing with some of his harder to kill units to act as a roadblock and slow us down. Edlrad moves forward as does a land raider, a large unit of blood claws, and the Wolf Lord. 

I move my Land Raider up and the termies disembark to assault Eldrad. Shotting isn't too effective, couple of warlocks die, but not a lot else. My Termies with Chaplain then roll poor for the assault and fail to get into contact with the Eldar, meaning I'd be assaulted next turn with Eldrads choice of psychic attacks to beleagre me!

Turn 2, and Morg's wolf scouts come into play. And promptly blow up Alun's Land Raider.  Khan attacks Edlrad after the survival of one Terminator and 5 bikers die leaving Khan and a terminator to fight on. They're both killed soon after. *sigh!*

The games room.

Disembarking my tactical squads I blow up a rhino that has zoomed forward... and find theres nothing in there. Bugger! I really should remember to find out whats inside a transport in case they're empty, silly Kev. This then leaves us to attack by the Wold Lord and his wolves, who can move through cover. Fast little puppies! 

I roill for reserves, with four units to bring on probability wise thats 3 units. How many come on? One. Land Speeder strikes down near Morg's Land Raider but fails to blow it up, although it does penetrate with the multimelta thus taking the heavy bolters and a hull point off the machine. My vindicator manages to kill some of Morgs big Bloow Claw unit, and Alun's imperial guard are able to whittle Eldrad down. 

My Termies finally make it onto the board and leave just this guy of the Long Fangs.  Legion of the Damned and Storm Talon fail their rolls to come on. Bad Luck continues! Around about Turn four and myself and Alun are now hopeing to make this loss look respectable, we've taken a beating and not had much luck, surely these are not Sons of Russ but Luna Wolves using some fiendish disguise?

My termies are taken out by a mass of shooting, which means my hope of using them and the Legion of the Damned to attack the rear of Morg's army over. The problem I had from Monday's game was not having enough attacking at the same time, and it happened again. Perhaps I shouldn't bring things on from reserve so much, or at least not use them too much as part of my plan if I can't rely on them? We shall see!

So the Storm Talon eventually arrives, along with the Damned and are able to do some damage but it looks like it may be too little too late.The storm talon takes a couple of grey hunters down, but the Damned are badly mauled by gunfire and only four remain. They make it into combat and last two turns but are eventually killed.

Castellan Crowe and the Wolf Lord meet after the Space Wolves warlord brutally takes out a few of our units, and then kills Crowe Crowe however manages to get one last attack in and kills the Wolf Lord, and thank the Emperor! He may have rampaged through the Imperial Guard lines with ease. A Grey Hunter squad succumbs to a lot of firepower, and it looks like me and Alun have an outside chance of pulling this off!

Eldrad is finally fallen thanks to the Guard storm troopers who pour fire unrelentlessly at the Farseer and his Warlocks. They've taken a tremendous amount of abuse and it was good to see them die. Sky Claws are also taken down after they dispatched a Callidus assasin, thanks in part to the Guard firepower and my Stormtalon's frag missiles, which killed 4 of their number. The vindicator taken down 5 grey hunters and theres only two left, but theres another squad that are still fairly strong, along with a unit of pathfinders with their 2+ coversave... ARGH!

The defenders take refuge in the cathedral.

So whats left of our forces line up to try and vanquish the enemy. The Imperial Guard manage to take out 5 scouts, but two still survive. This shooting comes from two Storm Tropper units, a GK dread, and two Chimeras. I try to take out the Space Wolves, but the cover saves prove too much. In the end, 2 Eldar are left and 5 Space Wolves survive. We fail.

We didn't fail at having an awesome game though.There were a lot of cool moments in this game, although my memory is failing to remember a few as I was concentrating on my army and taking pictures, but hopefully Morg and Alun will remind me and I can edit some more in. I remember a lot of bad dice rolls again, fingers crossed I'm due for some luck soon! I just remembered the vindicare that took 7 rounds of shooting before finally dying by the pathfinders! Its a really good mission to play though, and I recommend it to anyone. I still have some elements of my force I need to learn to use, Khan and the bikes, the Termies I've been using by deepstriking so I may try deploying these at the start, plus I realised I took no plasma weaponry, which would have helped enormously. 

Next time Space Wolf scum!!!! *shakes fist*