Freebootaz Open Report - Part 5 - Bloody Wolves vs Chaos

If chatting too much had slowed us down in our first couple of battles we'd have no such problem here. Our third game saw us pitted against Leon Smith & Brett Armitage who had a 1500 point Chaos list. I'm sure they were nice guys but they didn't really say that much to us which was a shame since we'd had fun playing everyone else. I guess they were just focusing on their game. Their list:

1500pts of Chaos

1x Daemon Prince (Wings, Wind of Chaos)

1x Daemon Prince (Wings, Mark of Slaanesh, Lash)

3x Chaos Terminators (Chainfist, 2x Combi-melta)

(2x) 5x Chaos Space Marines (Meltagun), Rhino

(2x) 5x Khorne Berserkers + Skull Champion (Power fist)

3x Chaos Bikers (Meltagun x2)

(2x) 2x Obliterators

Well looking at that list we were certainly a little concerned. There were a lot of units in that army that could really hurt us. We'd need to ensure we got the charge on the Khorne Berserkers and we needed to wound the Daemons as much as possible before combat. Hopefully the long fangs could do that as well as taking down the obliterators. The mission was Seize Ground with a mandatory 5 objectives and Spearhead deployment.

Our opponents won the roll off but let us go first. We deployed our long fangs behind a wall with the blood angels around them and their razorback to their left. The rhinos were on the right and left of our zone. They deployed their whole army in heavy cover behind a large ruin. The bikers, terminators and both CSM rhinos were in reserve.

We advanced forward quickly and used the rhino to keep Mephiston hidden from view. The first couple of turns were very cautious. We were loathe to leave ourselves open to a charge. My rune priest on the right attempted to use living lightning to wound the daemon prince but he failed his psychic test. The long fangs scored a few wounds on the other prince and blew up one of the khorne rhinos. The occupants moved off into trees for cover. Mephiston and the rhino advanced together again and the blood angels walked into the area terrain in the centre of the board. The grey hunters on the right lost their rhino and I rather foolishly disembarked on the side facing the enemy. This lead to the berserkers charging in and causing heavy casualties.

Mephiston leaped straight over this combat and killed one of the daemon princes. The long fangs finished off an obliterator team who weren't having much luck with their shooting. The terminators dropped in behind my other rhino but failed to blow it up. The following turn my grey hunters disembarked and charged them down wiping them out. 

Matt went to jump his marines out of cover believing that dangerous terrain only applied when you land and not when you take off. Our opponents were quick to point this out to us! Of course the sanguinary priest fell victim to dangerous terrain and therefore when they charged in to help the grey hunters with the berserkers their attacks were pretty impotent. Matt had some atrocious rolling with his power weapon though. 

The berserkers finished off my grey hunters and Mephiston was charged by the daemon prince, obliterators and the khorne berserkers. He managed to take out the obliterators but the rest of the chaos forces brought him down. Both of the reserved rhinos came on in the middle of their deployment zone and the long fangs failed to cause any real damage. The bikes came on their far left to engage the grey hunters' rhino but fell short with their meltas. We fired at them in the next turn killing one and hoping for them to break which they sadly didn't.

The daemon prince came in to help out the khorne berserkers finishing off the assault marines but not before the berserkers died off. At this point the other khorne berserkers held their original objective with no other objectives being held (after a judge ruled that since one of the tokens was on a higher level the assault marines didn't actually control it.

Our opponents moved their rhinos onto the central objective and also the objective on their left. The assault marines tried to charge the marines on the central objective but rolled a double 1 on their terrain test meaning they fell short. With little else to shoot the long fangs fired at the remaining daemon prince, killing him to claim some vital VPs. The remaining grey hunters charged the CSM squad on the corner objective and cleared them off. In the final turn however the bikes which had come on earlier moved in to contest.

Final result: The central objective and the one on the far right were contested with the khorne berserkers holding the one on the far left. 1-0 to them. We managed to score 500+ more points than them so we claimed 2 battle points. Therefore we won on battle points but it was certainly a close game. We were now on a total of 12.

Conclusion

In the first few turns we were very cautious when we perhaps should've got stuck in. With the chaos forces being so tightly clustered we were sure to get counter charged though. What cost us the game was the mistake with the assault marines. Had we left them out of the cover and the priest had survived we'd have certainly killed off the berserkers and lived to tell the tale. That would've meant the grey hunters could hole up in the trees or behind their rhino to claim an objective. Mephiston and the remaining marines could then have attempted to kill off the prince, obliterators and berserkers. I think it's optimistic to say they'd have cleared them out but who knows?

The other squad of assault marines should've got onto that central objective and holed up there. This would mean the CSMs would have to charge in to remove them.

However, negatives aside we were very successful in dealing with the princes and obliterators which netted us a ton of points. I think the shear number of units they had meant our fire was spread too thin. We can't complain about time constraint on this one though since we managed a 6th turn because we barely spoke to each other!!