Khorne Flakes

  We started the month off with a battle report.  For the first time ever, I let my son use the Ultramarines and he was a tad bit excited (almost vibrating in place).  Remember that he hates my Ultramarines as I keep kicking his butt with them, but now he would be able to feel the Emprah's grace.

  I also wanted to use some Chaos dudes, especially all the Khorne daemon models that were finally built (years after being purchased).  I haven't used my Word Bearers in a while, so this was going to be interesting...

  We would be fighting over a ruined city that was bombed out decades previously again.  I was tired of the lack of levels in the Planetstrike stuff, so it was time to bring out the ruins and set up the old go-to again.  Even better, I didn't have to set up the battlefield!  My son has finally learned and, upon inspection, 'gets it' when it comes to terrain- make it even and block some line of sight across the table.  I was so proud.

The ruined battlefield

  Now that we had the battlefield all set up, it was time to pick the forces.  He chose the Ultramarines, but chose not to use the Primaris force I'd been pummeling him with.  He actually busted out my old stuff!  Led by two Captains and Tigurius, he also included Telion, a sniper Scout Squad, a couple of units of Tactical marines, a couple of units of Devastators (full squads, mind you), an Assault Squad, a couple of Dreadnoughts (the 'typical' one with Assault Cannon and the 'shooty one' with twin Lascannon and Missile Launcher), and a shooty Terminator Squad in a Crusader.  Besides wasting a goodly number of points on extra Bolter marines, this was a pretty scary list to me.

Who needs Primaris?

  My force, on the other hand, depended on our allegiance to Khorne.  The Word Bearers brought their Terminator Lord leading some Terminators, a Sorcerer leading a squad of Chaos Marines (yes, they still exist!), and a couple of blobs of Cultists (one with Autoguns and the other with brutal close-combat weapons).  Oh, and there was an Exalted Champion in there because rerolling 1's to wound never sucks with my dice rolling.  As a reward for my allegiance, the Lord of Slaughter sent me a Bloodthirster, a Bloodmaster, 3 units of Bloodletters, six Bloodcrushers (a lot of blood here...), and a Skull Cannon.  Ah yes, the amount of red hitting the table makes me happy.

Blood for the... Word?

Deployment

   So the table was set after deployment.  Oh yeah, we were playing with Hammer and Anvil deployment and the mission was Scorched Earth.  I didn't care- I'm Khorne!!!  We don't need no stinking objectives.  That being said, I totally worked at taking objectives.  We rolled for first turn and I won the roll-off.  But for the second battle in a row, my son Seized the Initiative from me.  He thought it through and decided not to take that roll.  This was after the last battle (sorry for not posting it, but even worse pics than normal) where he went first and I blew him off the table.  Another lesson learned for him!  Woohoo!

Chaos first turn, 4-0

  My first turn was simple, but very frustrating.  I rushed up my Autogun-wielding Cultists to shoot at the sniper Scouts, even casting Warptime on them with my Sorcerer and suffering a mortal wound in the process.  I summoned two of the units of the Bloodletters and suffered mortal wounds for one while using the Strategem to avoid it for the other.  I even burned some command points to put the Bloodcrushers in 'Denizens of the Warp' deep strike and brought them in behind the Crusader.  At the same time, I teleported in the Terminators with meltaguns and blasted that Crusader, spending a command point to squeeze out as much damage as I could.  When the heat fizzled, I had put eight wounds on it (not a bad start), but that would be it.  Even the Skull Cannon, buffed by the Terminator Lord, couldn't do any damage to the huge vehicle.  But no worries, I thought, I still have the charge phase!  Rolling three dice to charge with the Bloodcrushers, I still had to spend a command point to get them into combat with one of the Devastator units, only to kill four models.  FOUR MODELS!  To give you an idea of how bad the dice were for me this turn, the probability is that they would kill twice that many (19 attacks, hitting on 3's, wounding on 3's, with a -3 AP, plus another 18 attacks hitting on 3's, wounding on 3's, with a -1 AP).  The Cultists that had charged the Scouts failed to do any damage to Telion but finished off the last of the Scouts, so at least I got First Blood.  After suffering so many mortal wounds and spending so many command points only to see the dice still treat me this way... I was starting to wonder if Khorne was mad at me or something.

Ultramarine's first turn, 2-4

  Then came the Ultramarine's first turn.  They didn't do much other than advance and start killing some heretics here and there.  His Terminators disembarked from the Crusader, along with a Captain, and shot down most of my Terminators.  Then he charged them and wiped them out with just the leader without even getting to roll for Power Fists.  My armor was not strong.  Telion continued to hold his ground against the mob of Cultists, and the combat squad and Tigurius moved to support his Devastators against my Bloodcrushers, finishing off all but two (my banner brought another one back at the end- yay!).  I wasn't too scared of the Imperials yet.

Chaos turn 2, 8-2

  Now it was time to have some fun for the Chaos guys.  I shot with everything I had (admittedly, not a lot at all as I preferred blades for this battle) and failed to do much more than knock out a marine or two.  I tried to summon the last unit of Bloodletters, only to fail and suffer another mortal wound (by now, my Sorcerer was down to a single wound left and none of it was because of the enemy!) and I had nothing to cast in the Psychic Phase, so I quickly moved into the charges.  The Cultists had retreated from Telion and allowed the Bloodletters to move through the ruins and put him down (taking all the charge buffs to do it, mind you) and the Bloodthirster finally got into the Dreadnought with the Assault Cannon and the supporting Tactical Squad.  With a mighty swing, he hacked the Dreadnought in half but, in turn, was pounded by the overwatch and return attacks by the Tactical marines, bringing him down to just a couple of wounds left.  Uh oh.  The Bloodcrushers, in the meantime, tried with all their might and finally finished off the Devastators they were fighting, leaving Tigurius and his combat squad to punch them up some more.  And that was it.  I felt like I had no teeth in an army based on teeth, so I was not feeling terribly proud of my efforts up to this point.

Ultramarines turn 2, 4-8

  In return, the Ultramarines retreated from the Bloodthirster and poured tons of firepower down range, killing off a unit of Bloodletters, the Bloodthirster, and even tapping some of the Cultists.  Tigurius watched his combat squad get cut down by the Bloodcrushers and avenged them with his mighty Smite and then his Rod of Tigurius, finishing them off.  Worse, a unit of Assault marines deep struck and prepared to seek and destroy my warlord.

Chaos turn 3, 12-4

  This was my last chance and I needed to make it count.  I rushed up my marines and tried, with all the buffs of the Terminator Lord and Exalted Champion, to kill off his marines before the Assault marines got stuck into my lines, only to drop two.  That's right, two rapid-firing Plasma Guns, a Plasma Pistol, and seven rapid-firing Boltguns with rerolls of 1's all over the place resulted in two dead blue-boys.  The Skull Cannon, for the second turn in a row, decided to fail completely.  Oh boy.  I charged and even started to advance with my Bloodletters while claiming as many objectives as I could.  But it just wasn't meant to be.

Ultramarines turn 3, 5-12

  The Ultramarines simply moved the Crusader to pour firepower into all my daemons and charged up with his Assault Squad to finish off the Chaos Marines screening the Terminator Lord.  Having another Captain (his warlord, coincidentally) over there meant that my flank had completely collapsed.  The other flank saw Tigurius charging into the remaining Bloodletters, confident that he would survive and kill them off as well.  All the forces of heresy had left was a unit of Cultists and a smattering of Bloodletters to accompany the Chaos Terminator Lord, his Exalted Champion, and a Skull Cannon.  This was bad.  With that, the Word Bearers realized the Khorne was not paying any attention to them and chose to bugger out of the battle. 

  While the Word Bearers and their Khornate allies definitely racked up the points for holding objectives and killing the odd unit here and there, the Ultramarines barely suffered and still had enough firepower to kill off my force in one turn (or two, if his dice turned unlucky suddenly).  The Cursader and untouched Missile Launcher Devastator unit would easily be able to table me, added to the Assault Squad and Captain coming for my Terminator Lord and his Terminators coming for the straggling Bloodletters.  There was nothing I could do to damage them at that point and I had to concede.  Funny enough, my son still thought I won because of the score.  He forgot that a tabling or concession equals automatic victory, and that made me smile.

  I was so unimpressed with the Khorne daemon part of my army.  It took every single buff and a number of self-inflicted wounds to get them to perform anywhere near as well as I expected.  The dice were very bad and my strategy didn't pan out at all.  For that, my Word Bearers may have to switch their allegiance to Nurgle.  Or just forget about daemons altogether and focus on the marine stuff.  I also found that summoning sucks.  I suffered wounds from it, was limited on where I could place the summoned units, and found that it didn't actually make any difference.  The 'summoning bomb' is supposed to surprise the enemy, not serve them.  I wasn't happy with that part.  My son was very happy with the performance of the Ultramarines, however...

Oh well, another victory for the Imperium, even when I'm not playing them!  Maybe next time...  Until then, Happy Gaming!