Jordan VS Garth: FIGHT!!

    As the drop pod doors opened, Azreal and his command squad stepped into madness.  Directly before them was a monstrous beast, flesh and metal fused together with dark sorceries, spewing fire and death off in the distance.

    Azreal’s command squad didn’t need to be told what to do and leveled their melta guns at the beast.  A sudden eruption bathed everything nearby in fire and through the fire came the response of the enemy.  2 hulking figures, no longer resembling anything natural, covered in eyes, tentacles, appendages, and bulging muscles raced towards them manoeuvring over the rubble and wreckage without issue.  From all directions came bolter rounds and solid rounds dropping Zeirael, and just before the 2 daemonspawn of chaos hit their lines a feeling of dread fell over Azreal’s mind.  So powerful was the feeling that it took everything in his power just to defend himself as the creatures slammed into his squad tearing Lucius to pieces.

    As the icy feeling on his soul release it’s grip, he was further dismayed as the spawn disappeared before his eyes and Brontes was torn down next to him, beyond the help of the apothecary.  Despite not being able to see his foe, his wild swings managed to find their mark.

    Before he could recover from the assault of the daemonspawn, Azreal is swarmed by cultists and traitor space marines and he knew that he would not break their lines in time.  He would have to settle knowing that he at least crippled the army by destroying the gun behemoth.

Lets set this up right off the get go.  Garth chose Run and Gun Recon for his mission, and I chose Cut the Head off the Snake for mine, and we both chose Slaughter and Withstand for faction points.  Garth had his core plus 2 full tac squads in drop pods and a scout squad.  I had my core plus another chosen squad in a rhino, 2 spawn, 2 oblits, and the forgefiend.

I knew that Garth would have to come to me to win so my plan from the start was to castle up in a corner using all the models I had to take up as much space as possible so he couldn’t drop in and nuke my Forgefiend turn 1.  Garth deployed his scouts in a ruin in the centre of his deployment zone.

Turn 1 I shuffled around a bit…

…and now everything looks like this

Garth drops in his 2 tac squads on his side of the table, combat squadding them to picking up resource points but throwing my game plan right out the window.  I am now going to have to go get him, breaking up my battle line and give Azreal room to drop in.  There is some shooting and stuff but not a whole lot happens.

I make a bold move turn 2 and move up to make an assault on one of the combat squads.  I am also able to multi assault and get the drop pod, in doing this I am hoping to get the extra kill point, and not kill all the marines so I can finish them off in Garth’s turn and not get shot at.  I issue the challenge and win giving be a victory point, but drop pod explodes and kills my powerfist.  Well dammit.

One of my oblits comes in and drops in behind his scouts and leaves 2 alive.

Garth does exactly what I was afraid of and drops Azreal and his 3 Meltagun toting command squad next to the Forgefiend blowing him to smithereens.

I FAIL to kill all the marines I assaulted turn 2 and will now be stuck in combat during my turn 3…FUCK!!  Some other stuff happens.

Turn 3 starts off with a fantastic set of psychic powers.  I cast Hallucination and got the result where the target unit can’t do anything, and I had cast that one on Azreal and his command squad.  Then I set up my cultists and a unit of chosen move to shoot the shit out of the command squad and dropped 2, the spawn drag down another in assault.  I also get a plasma cannon shot off on to his other combat squad and get his second hero.  I know I’ll have to keep Azreal busy, or kill him, if I want to win this game because Garth really only has 2 units left that can get into my deployment zone. 

Garth grinds on in the combat phase with Azreal and plinks a couple wounds off elsewhere with some shooting.  He is also booking it for a resource marker that I placed on the top floor of a building that’s just outside my deployment zone.  I figured he might go for it because he was talking about how he wanted to get a roll on the magical chart.  So I guess I kinda got some inside info, I like to think it’s due to good intel and scouting.

For the last couple turns I manage to mob Azreal with cultists and my remaining chosen just long enough to keep him out of my deployment zone.

Garth collects the rooftop resource marker  making that 4 and I manage to wipe out the scouts with a powerful Psychic Scream

After the dust settles, Garth manages to collect 18 resource points and 8 Faction points.

I earn 9 resource points and match Garth’s 8 Faction points, but I also manage the win.

All in all a good game, as always, against Garth.  I play him often and notice how much of a better player he is every time I play him.  Looking at the lists, he easily could have beat me if he had decided to be more aggressive in getting his units into my deployment zone.  Because I had turtled in a corner, he should have overwhelmed the other corner in my deployment zone and shot the crap out of me.  However, he decided to collect the resources and picked up a ton, easily enough to get him his roll on the legendary traits tables.

I should have covered myself better and not allowed Azreal room to drop in my lines, that cost me my forgefiend and 175 points that only saw 2 turns.

Thanks for the game Garth, a good time was had by all.

Happy gaming.