18 Feb 2012

The Blood Angels go to war!

Today the Blood Angels faced the Eldar on the battlefield! Here is a brief report on what happened!

The mission is seize ground with four objectives in total, one in each base camp, one in the dead centre of the battlefield and one just outside the Blood Angel deployment zone!

The Blood Angels are definitely confident of a win and deploy first. With a 5 man devastator squad as support they position a razor back with 5 assault marines on board and a Baal Predator at the front closely followed by a 5 strong assault marine squad with jump packs and a Captain with 5 honour guard also with jump packs!
Leaving a veteran unit, another assault unit and a Storm Raven in reserve.

The Eldar deploy next placing two wave serpents each with nine dire avengers and exarch on board in cover behind a wrecked building. One with Eldrad in command and the other with a farseer! A war walkers takes up position in the building just in front and a 5 man unit of pathfinders infiltrates and positions itself in the building on the right of the deployment zone. The remaining forces wait in reserve which are a unit of two war walkers a unit of 6 scorpions with exarch and a unit of 6 howling banshees with exarch.

The Blood Angels inflict the first damage of the battle! The Baal Predator fires into the back of one of the serpents destroying the twin linked bright lances! Unfortunately the other serpent swoops in behind the predator and and an accurate shot from a bright lance causes it to explode leaving nothing but a crater and some wreckage!

Both armies advance to the middle of the battlefield. The howling banshes join the battle coming to support Eldrad who disembarks from his serpent to face the quick moving marines. The unit of war walkers outflanks the marine entering the battlefield just in front of the devastators and behind the advancing assault marines!

Eldrad tries to destroy the mind of the Blood Angel captain but he proves too strong ... this time! The Dire Avengers bladestorm the marines but only manage to take one wound on the captain. The combined strength of the war walkers and pathfinders manage to kill three of the devastator unit and the remaining 2 run away only to regroup and take up position to fire there lascannons on the advancing Eldar!

The howling banshees although very skilled in hand to hand combat prove no match for the stronger and more heavily armoured honour guard and captain and the unit is wiped out in a single round of combat! As fortune begins to swing back to favour the Blood Angels the Storm Raven arrives with a roar from its engines above the unit of two war walkers!

The captain and honour guard still confident after destroying the Eldars finest assault warriors charge into combat with Eldrad and the unit of Dire Avengers. Unable to stop the blood thirsty attack Eldrad and the surviving avengers try to flee from the combat but are too slow and are caught by the marines and wiped out!

With Eldrad a casualty of war can the Eldar regroup to slow the quick and aggressive Blood Angels!

The Storm Raven opens fire on the unit of war walkers and destroys them both and then advances to drop off the veteran unit!

The striking scorpions arrive to add support to the home objective but it still looks bleak for the Eldar!

The second unit has more success with its blade storm killing veterans and moving on to the remaining two devastators and claiming the objective. The scorpions try to contest another objective but are spotted by the honour guard who fire up their jet packs and swoop in to claim another Eldar unit in close combat!

The battle is still close as each army controls one objective each!

The remaining veteran sergeant having lost his brothers to the dire avengers turned to chase them down by himself, the Storm Raven seeing this brave act opens fire on the avenger unit to give him a chance! When the dust cleared all that remained on the objective was .... the veteran sergeant!!!!!

The battle finishes with the Blood Angels holding 2 objective and the Eldar none ... the Blood Angel confidence and aggressive tactics had paid off!!!!


A really great game that could have gone either way, although Scott's Eldar forces suffered heavy losses they really took the battle to the Blood Angels and if the game had finished on turn five it would have been a draw! The unit that changed everything was the captain and honour guard, which completely destroyed the Eldar's main units, had the first blade storm from the dire avengers been more effective may be the banshees and scorpions could have done better and kept this more level.

Aaron played a great game really aggressive tactics as you expect from the Blood Angels and it gains him a valuable 30 points in the ranking system and moves him to second spot!

With our gaming weekend on the agenda for next weekend, hopefully we will see lots of 'ranked' play happening in all sorts of game systems!
,.
Gary of Team Gambit

1 comment:

  1. aaron3:08 pm

    tense game! the Eldar played well...

    ReplyDelete