Battle Report

So, I lied. I got home from my FLGS a bit late tonight, and was too drained to take any pictures. I had two hard fought battles, one against Dark Eldar, the other against Orks. Yes, I play 40k as well. The Angels of Purity Space Marines, a Blood Angels successor (well, technically I use the vanilla 'dex right now, but one month and they shall be BA again!). Both games were very close. The first, against Dark Eldar, was an annihilation game, and I won it by the narrow margin of two Kill Points (10 to 8). The second, a Capture and Control mission, was a Draw.

I have to say, even lacking an update in over ten years, the Dark Eldar can still be pretty rough. My opponent, Kevin, is a very capable player and has been playing the army for years. . .plus he managed to pack it with about thirteen Dark Lances. Needless to say I lost my Land Raider and all but one of my Rhinos by game's end. I do have to say, though, I have a new favorite addition to my army. . .

Yep, terminator librarians. I've recently discovered that Null Zone is perhaps the greatest power if you're ever facing daemons, and as one of our regulars has a nasty daemon list, well, it's pretty much the best insurance you can have without tailoring your list to your opponent. They're not overly impressive in combat, and during this match against the Dark Eldar he never got close enough to be of much use, but stick him in a Land Raider with a five-man Assault Terminator squad, hop out, use Null Zone if appropriate, blast your opponent with Vortex of Doom (S10 AP1 Blast), and then assault their faces off. Again, this didn't really work in this particular battle, as they died after fighting only one combat, but termie librarians definitely earned a few points in my eyes.

For the second match, those terminators and that librarian were indispensable. That one squad killed off a twelve-strong unit of ork bikes and a unit of trukk boyz, and the librarian blasted a warboss into the Warp. Outside of that, though, none of my units were that impressive. I was playing Dawn of War against an ork list with 24 bikers (counting as Troops, thanks to Wazdakka), six or so nob bikers, Wazdakka, a warboss on bike, and three trukks filled with boys. My bike squad managed to annihilate one unit of bikers with some support fire from a razorback, and the terminators did an excellent job as mentioned above. I lost a tac squad to one of the bike squads, and all of my vehicles were destroyed or weaponless by turn three (including the land raider). I did, however, have one tactical squad get assaulted by two nob bikers, each with one wound, and kill them before they attacked, which set up my standing on one objective to contest it at game's end.

I do have to tip my hat to my second opponent, Dez, as he had one heck of a worrisome list. Six units, all counting as Troops. The trukk boyz have an effective assault range of 22"without calling a Waaagh, and all of the bikers have a range of 18". It's the fastest-moving ork army I've ever seen. And it's pretty ingenious, as well. Obviously, the bikers are going to take the lion's share of the fire, but at T5 with a 4+ armor and 4+ cover save, they're a tough nut to crack. Your only hope is to fire all of your guns at one squad, get the unit down to half strength, and hope he fails his Morale test so they can't regroup. If I had the money (and wasn't already swamped with three major and one minor army paintjob), I'd even consider a modern speed freaks list.