Once a King Always a King

But Once  a Knight is Enough...

I got time to play 40K  First time in maybe two months?  Crazy how time flies! 

Crazy how the game changes!

This ain't the 40K of 2 months ago...

I showed up at the FLGS - late due to nearby road construction.

I was very happy to get paired vs one of our best local players. 

And yes, at 2000 points, his list was pretty simple.

3 Chaos Knights - each armed differently.

A Bloodletter Bomb (30 or so models in one blob)

A Pink Horror Bomb (25+ pinks and a single blue)

A Chaos Sorceror

A Chaos Demon Prince

2 units of Nurglings

Well, I had a list designed to take care of maybe one knight...

Here at setup.  I had started with 10 CP's, and used some to give me two relics, make my Captain death company, and move my death company out to the right flank.  My opponent only deployed the Knights and used his CP's to put 4 units into reserves.  We were fighting over just two objectives worth 3 points each, plus LB, STWL, and FB.

 Beginning of turn 1.  Nurglings are going to move up to charge followed behind by the Knights! 

On my right, shooting is done, and the nurglings are charging the Baal predator. 

Meanwhile on the left flank, the Knight there moved up and charged the Death Company!

 Here in the Blood Angels Turn 1, the Damaged Baal moves back a bit and the nearby tactical squad moves to screen them.  Killshot is used, but the the Predators fail to wound the Knight on the right - but the center Knight loses some wounds.  

At the end of Turn 1, the Death Company are gone, having just scratched 4 wounds off the Knight...

In Turn 2 the Knights continue their forward advance. 

Here at the beginning of Turn 3, the Pink Horror Blob is wrapping around a building, still keeping one toe at the objective.  Not that during Turn 2, the Blood Angels reinforcements had arrived and assaulted the damaged knight in the center...it was dispatched.  

By the end of the Chaos Turn 3, the predators were all gone, the Tacticals, and everything else was gone too.  

Eventually in Turn 4 it was down to three separate combats - the Captain vs the Demon, the Sanguinary Priest vs a Knight, and Lemartes and a Sanguinary Ancient vs another Knight.  I've got no CPs left to spend. 

I'm Tabled mid Turn 4. Chaos wins 9-0.

 A deployment mistake I made was that I had no idea he had Nurglings.  I was deploying the tacticals and Sniper Scouts and Aggressors to screen my deployment zone from the turn 2 drops...that caused some issues.  The Aggressors should have been deployed behind cover, and the predators all on the far back edge.  Those elements might have preserved me enough to get to the bottom of Turn 4.  I also needed to better guess how far the Knight on the far-left would get.  Although the Death Company were fairly safe from shooting, they were just too close! 

Overall, as a practice this game went pretty well. I remembered pretty much everything I wanted to get done.  My opponent did remind me to do my CP spends for pre-game stuff earlier (before deployment) where appropriate.  And we shared some ideas on making a slightly better Blood Angels List.  We will see in the next game!  My next practice game will be Monday against a primaris heavy Imperial Fists force...

All for now,

MING

   

 

Sanguinary Guard vs Death Company II

Its like Deadpool 2 but without a movie...actors...fans...

Since I need to keep practicing, and evaluating, in these experiments, I ran a game scenario at 501 points DC vs 489 Points SG - plus or minus a few points.

Death Company:
Lemartes, Stock
10 Death company (as before w/ 9 Bolters and Chainswords; 1 thunderhammer)
1 Death Company Dreadnought, 2xBlood Talons, 1 MG, 1 SB     
Everything here has black rage, red thirst, benefiting from the DC rules and buffs from Lemartes
Not enough (yet) for command points.

Sanguinary Guard:
Captain Slamguinius (JP, Thunder Hammer, SS)
5 Sanguinary Guard (as before, 3 angelus bolt guns, 2 inferno pistols, 3 encarmine blades, 2 power fists)
Furioso Dreadnought (frag cannon, heavy flamer, blood fist)

The Blow by Blow
Similar to before, each faction was deployed about 6 inches in from their own table edge, creating about 36 inches of space between them.  The aircraft wreckage area was going to be treated the same as craters - would give cover to shooting, and would be -2 to charge distance. 

The SG went first, DC failed to sieze.

Turn 1
The SG all advanced, with the Sg getting just a total of 13 inches, the captain got 15, and the Furioso 15 inches of movement. I kept the Captain within the distance of the SG. No shooting was available.

The DC in response moved forward 6 inches, and stopped.  The DC dreadnought advanced on the right and Lemartes advanced on the right.  In 9 bolter shots, 1 converted to a wound on a SG. 

Turn 2
The SG and Captain jumped forward 12 inches, and the Furioso 9.   In shooting, the frag cannon was barely in range to the DC and fired first, causing 2 casualties.  The Angelus boltguns accounted for 2 more. Tehn in the assaults, the SG charged Lemartes, but the Captain and Furioso failed their charges! In the fight phase, neither side wounded the other!

In response, the Death Company moved forward. Lemartes fired his pistol into the SG but failed to wound.  The DC marines fired on the Captain and failed to wound him.  The DC Dread set itself to charge directly into the Furioso to determine who was better! Its Meltagun caused several unsaved wounds on the Furioso, who caused a few back in overwatch!

The DC Dread punched first, however, with 5 attacks on the charge hitting on 3's rerolling and wounding on 2's (rerolling) - the Furioso was dispatched and the DC Dread consolidated into the Captain! Between the DC marines and Lemartes, three SG were taken down.  Then the Captain swung his hammer into the DC dread (Hitting on 3's, rerolling 1's, then wounding on 2's) and dropped it!  Both dreads were gone! Lemartes was wounded.

Turn 3
The Captain jumped forward into the only remaining close combat.

The Captain took down 2 DC marines with his hammer, but was wounded in return.  The SG took down Lemartes in exchange for another SG.

In the DC turn, the end came swiftly.  The remaining DC marines failed to wound the Captain or the one remaining SG. In response, they were dispatched by blade and hammer and the experiment ended. 

End thoughts
I'll soon do this again, but add in the JP death company (5 more marines) and then a 5-marine (gold painted) veterans squad similarly armed.  The points should go up to about 675, and each side will be similar.  I'll run these as Vanguard detachments so each side will have 4 command points, and will include a single relic for each (probably the relic hammers so they can be ever more useful). 

It was interesting that the SG faction won again, but it was close.  It might have been interesting to have the DC Dread plow into the SG in turn 2 rather than go after the Furioso.  I thought about not advancing on the Captain but figured the Captain would then just charge the Furioso anyways. The end would have been the same just in a different turn.

I need to get that Stormshield painted and mounted on the Captain...its from an older lead original terminator model, but its a good size to pin to his elbow.  His gold needs brightening too. Maybe a new base. Some 5th Company markings...

All for now!

MING