387 'Battle Report': 2000pt Guard Vs Chaos Space Marines and Daemons

It's true! Against all the odds, three weeks ago I actually got a game in: 2000pts against a Chaos Space Marine army with allied Nurgle Daemons.
 
Sadly this is not really a battle report per se so much as some after-action thoughts with no real pictures. Annoyingly, I'm such a newb with my smartphone that I forgot it had a camera on it - even whilst bemoaning my lack of camera to my opponent. That said, for the purposes of illustration, I have taken pictures of the notes from my (thankfully rediscovered) Book of Arcane Scribblings, Vol 7), so if - like me - you're a sucker for such meticulous ramblings...well, it's all here.
 
My esteemed opponent, by the way, was the excellent Jay, whom I've now played more than anyone else in my adult life. Jay's a stalwart at our club and probably the most easy-going opponent you could ever possibly find. He never tailors an army in casual play - always just picks up his current favourite and brings the most gentlemanly hurt you could imagine.
 
Except this time, apparently.
 
I'll put the two forces at the end, but essentially, I brought my standard (resolutely 5th Ed) 2000pt pick-up 'fun' list (with some tweaks made either for 6th Ed or because I'd mistakenly assumed everything was still in my army case), and Jay brought a shamblingly tough pile of Nurglish infantry, with a dreadnought substituted in lieu of the evidently redundant Aegis Defence Line.

We rolled up Dawn of War and Crusade and my snipers advanced in skirmish order ahead of my right flank before Jay got first turn. Here's my sketchmap, for what it's worth:

Five turns later, Jay had only five Chaos Space Marines left clinging onto his left flank, no objectives and the ever-gracious wherewithal to concede. I end up winning the game

14 - 0

...with the astonishing loss of only five snipers and two Guardsmen.

Surprised? - I could scarcely believe it!


(below is the battle report details for posterity's sake - open separately for detailed view):

Essentially, the mission and deployment worked in my favour, my reserve rolls and shooting went well, and my artillery and flame weapons were brutal. For his part, Jay's reserve rolls really sucked, his saves were not great when he needed to make them, and he simply had almost no ranged weapons that could damage me. Jay is incredibly experienced with 40k, and I believe we both played well, but the odds were definitely with the forces of the God-Emperor that night.

What follows are my notes - not of the battle itself (that's dull reading with my boorishness and no photos) but of my thoughts afterwards, in addition to those above:

 

• The VPs I earned were awarded for 4 out of the 5 objectives, 'First Blood' and 'Warlord'.
• I completely forgot about the 6th Ed VP system - especially the two above and 'Linebreaker', which I could've gone for had I realised.
• The Manticore was fantastic. I rolled-up TEN templates, and they made a dent - even at only AP4.
• The Leman Russes also did very well - not least the Demolisher blowing Typhus sky-high. Uncharacteristically, they also managed to hit something with their hull lascannon!
• Marbo was a class act. Arrived late to the party but plopped his hurt right in the middle of a D/S mass of gribbly nurglings.
• I must remember that dismounted infantry are needed to claim objectives - I almost left it too late! 
• The Hellhound contingent all made their presence felt in a big way. Arrived just in time, too. Pleasingly, for once I remembered to leave room for them to come on!
• My Company Commander's four veteran snipers(!) were still rubbish. They have always been rubbish except in but one game. That's not really enough to justify their continued employment. Any thoughts?
• I really miss the 5th Ed usefulness of my lovely lovely Penal Legion.
• I was 25pts over; 20 of which was because I took 10 snipers instead of 8 when I swapped the Penal Legion out. Two snipers fewer would not have made much difference.
• Although I did manoeuvre to take the fight to Jay an to take objectives, it really was a fairly traditional (and very squishy) IG gunline whichultimately prevailed.
• When played non-competitively, 6th Ed really has the potential to be a very enjoyable story-telling game.
• Lukily, Jay forgot to use Typhus's psychic powers. Phew! I didn't even think about psykers - the new rules scare me.
• Nurgle are hard buggers to kill.

Thanks for reading, if you've got this far. The army lists are in the post-script below.

Take care,

- Drax.

PS:

2/24th Cadian Expeditionary Detachment - 2000 pts (2025):

• HQ- B Coy Cmdr w. 4 snipers
• EL- Marbo
• EL- 10 snipers [should've been 8]
• TP- 1pl HQ w. 3 gren + flamer
• 1 sect w. plas
• 2 sect w. melta
• 3 sect w. gren
• Autocannon sect
• Missile Launcher sect
• Mortars sect
• TP- Veterans w. 3  gren + ML/HF Chimera
• TP- Veterans w. 3 melta + ML/HF Chimera
• FA- Hellhound w. HB
• FA- Hellhound w. HB
• FA- Bane Wolf w. HF
• HS- Griffon Bty (2 Griffons)
• HS- Manticore
• HS- Leman Russ Sqn: 1 MBT w. LC + 1 Demo w. LC.

Typhus's Shambling Force of Grottiness with Daemonic 'Allies' +/- 2000 pts:

[I should point out I have absolutely no idea what most of the wargear Jay's listed for his army means, so I'll give you the simple version, but I can find answers to any qustions that arise... ]

• Typhus (T), leading...
• Chaos Terminator Squad (5) w. Champion, Reaper AC, Mark of Nurgle and various Guard-killing combi-weapons (all D/S)
• Chaos Cultist Squad (20) w. Champion, Mark of Nurgle and assorted small arms + 1 heavy stubber.
• Plague Zombie Squad (20)
• Plague Marines Squad (14) w. Champion, Icon, flamer and plasma.
• Plague Marine Squad (10) w. Icon, metla and plasma
• Chaos Dreadnought w. multimelta
• Herald of Nurgle (Level 2) w. weird-sounding stuff, leading...
• Plaguebearers (20) w. plagueswords (all D/S)
• Nurglings (6 bases) (D/S).

(my lot)

- D.

346 Sly Marbo says,"Happy New Year!"

Thanks for another great year, Gentle Readers!

To celebrate, and because I'm miles away from the hardware or enough poxy bandwidth to get any new pics up, here's an old and irrelevant image from my blog chosen from the paltry selection blogger offered me: it's Marbo!

...and here's an almost-just-as-random link to my second ever post - from May '08 - in which I note my current OrBat. Not that much different, infantry-wise, to what I field today!  

Here's to 2013, eh?

- Chris.

216 Second Night at the New Club = Success.

Hi, All,

I went to the club again tonight: I really like it, and I look forward to getting to become a regular there (work permitting). The club is the marvellous Cross-Swords Gaming Club, and it's also a store (catering for a range of different systems) so even if you're not local to Devon in the UK, it's still worth checking out the link!

Tonight I had a fun game Against a very sporting chap called Jason, who was playing with a chaos daemons army. Sadly for Jason, he'd put together an anti-horde list (having seen my infantry company a fortnight ago) and I'd figured I'd try out a mech list. D'oh!

I took these guys along:No batrep, but in summary, his daemons made a rather piecemeal arrival due to some really duff deep-strike rolls, struggled to hurt my vehicles and then got eradicated (mostly by shooting) as they hove into range. We ended with him having scored two KPs, and with only three bloodletters and a damaged, immobile soulgrinder left for him to fight back with. The dice really were unkind to Jason, alas.

As for my stuff?

Marbo was pretty useless but a fun distraction, G/Sgt Harker was...meh...and the jury's out on the devil dog. It did nuke the other soulgrinder, but was broadly ineffectual beforehand. Nurgle truly are buggers to kill.

I can see why people find chimera-vets such an attractive choice, though I couldn't bring myself to arm mine with anything beyond grenade launchers!

My list, for reference:

HQ:

Primaris Psyker

EL:

Guardsman Marbo

TP:

Vets w. G/Sgt Harker, autocannon, hvy flamer, 2 grenade launchers [infiltrated]

Vets w. 3 grenade launchers,
- Chimera [with Primaris Psyker attached]

Vets w. 3 grenade launchers,
- Chimera

FA:

Hellhound w. hvy stubber + smoke

Hellhound w. hvy stubber + smoke

Devil Dog w. smoke

HS:

Leman Russ MBT

Leman Russ Exterminator w. hvy bolter sponsons + hvy stubber

Leman Russ Exterminator w. hvy bolter sponsons + hvy stubber

= 1500pts.

Cheers, and thanks to Jason too, if you read this. Cheers for being a good sport.

- Drax.

183 Drax's Sly Marbo Variant

Hullo, Gang.

By the time this is posted, I'll be en route to Cambridge to play 3 battles - the details of which will follow - but as this chap will be something of a surprise to my opponents, I didn't want to post him until I was already there!

Sadly, the pics aren't great (cruddy winter light) but here's my version of Guardsman Sly Marbo. Please trust me - he looks considerably better in real life:

It's just the old metal Catachan lascannon loader with a converted 'ripper pistol' and a different paint job. I hate the muscle-bound look of the Catachans, but Marbo is Marbo, and I quite fancied trying my hand at some 'GW-style' camouflage. I quite enjoyed it, actually!

This is one of the quickest models I've ever painted, even with those stripes on the 'demo charge' which Mrs. Drax noted made it look like one of the traps that the Ghostbusters used.

This (of course) made me laugh and hug her and love her even more.

Hope all's well - I'll let you know how the games went, and show you my new Officer of the Fleet model too (finally painted after some six years!).

- Drax.