I apologize for a lack of blogging lately, but Big Kev's been a busy lad! Heres a battle report from last weeks club night, and its a special one! My opponent this week is the incredibly awesome Byron who is the chairman for the Crow Valley Crusaders who are based in Cwmbran. We fancied a nice big battle so 3000pts were decided and army lists made! I had no idea what Byron was going to take, he'd mentioned a lot of armies so I decided to just take what I fanced and be versatile. He did however mention a Caestus Assault Ram.... He then went on to tell me the rules and I have to be honest, I was concerned! The day of the battle came and I discovered an Imperial Guard force with Dark Angels allies. This was going to be brutal! Deployment below!
I set up first, eager to get a round of shooting in before the Guard could send a barrage my way. Sternguard dropped down toting combi meltas, and managed to blow up 2 Leman Russ tanks. First blood and some of the enemy firepower gone, relief! I managed to take out one Chimera but that was my first turn. Byron punised my sternguard and wiped them out with some veteran firepower who had disembarked from a nearby chimera. The Executioners spat death and 5 tactical marines (who were the only ones they could see) died, the ruins they sheltered in failing to save them Elsewhere however I was relatively unharmed.
My reserves failed to come on although I was able to do a little more damage the the IG tanks, although nothing blowing up I did cause some hullpoints here and there. I did manage to blow one chimera up however when the vindicator aimed its demolisher cannon at it, but out popped more veterans! Byrons reserves came on, a Valkyrie and... gulp... the Assault Ram! Bryon rammed my Land Raider for a ST10 hit and getting to roll 2 dice picking the highest... but luckily for me he rolled two fours... just a glance! The meltashot did fry a couple of my devastators though, ouch!
Turn three sees my flyers come into play, the twin linked multi melta on my stormraven blowing up the Assault Ram... no wait, it missed! Even twinlinked I failed to hit the DA flyer, although the storm talon did roll three penetrations against the valkyie... and Bryon chose to evade and made all three Jink saves! At least it would be snap firing next turn! Byron then got out his Deathwing, 10 strong with a Chaplain and assaulted my Land Raider wrecking it with their ThunderHammers. We had a problem arise here as we didn't know if the unit inside the LR was destroying or trapped, as it doesn't really specify in the rules. Byron had set up his termies to encircle the tank and covering all the doors, but because the vehicle hadn't exploded it didn't say if the unit inside were destroyed or not. We ruled that if the vehicle wasn't blown up they would be fine if they could escape the tank in a future turn.
In my turn I managed to finish off the two executioners and whittle the termies down so I could escape the Leman Russ wreck in the following turn. 6 Termies killed by pretty much my entire army! Byron then charged headlong at my dreadnought with the Terminators and Chaplain and destroying it, following up into my tactical squad that was supporting it. After the Dread had killed one and overwatch another, only two were left and not many tanks. The Assault Ram hurtles into my dreadnought who had previously killed the veterans from the blown up chimera, blowing the dread up where it joins the wrecked vindicator, melta holes covering its chassis.
The tactical squad manage to hold on against the Chaplain and last Termie and cause two wounds, just about finishing off the Deathwing and leaving the chaplain on one wound. At this point with closing time approaching myself and Byron call it a game, I'd managed to pull off a win mainly due to Byron not having the best of luck when it came to dice rolls. Score wise I have no idea what it was, but Byron had little left whereas I still had a decent amount on the table. If Byrons dice had been a little kinder I can see the game being really close, probably me getting a loss! It was a great game though and Byron was a great opponent. Hopefully he'll want a rematch sometime and try to get his revenge!
In other wargaming news I do have a little side project as I step into the world of Fantasy... I shan't tell you what army yet but you may be able to hear some gutteral braying in the distance.... This weeks club game is against the Elf boy himseld Alun, 2.5k pts and I'm using ALL of my Tau... should be interesting as I think he's using the new Eldar codex. Report up in the week, but thats all for now!
