Ultramarine flashback army goes to war

Following up from the excitement of finding the old Ultramarines last week, I decided to brave the elements and risk a game last night. The enemy that the light of the Emperor exposed to us for cleansing was Screech's Thousand Sons. This is my 1st time facing the new Chaos Codex, and my 1st ever using the Space Marines Codex.

It was 1500 point battle and it was a fight to achieve objectives.

The Landraider, ready to face down it's corrupted mkII counterpart

The Devastator squard overlooking the battle field

Without going into a round-by-round review, I will instead focus on highlights and what I learned by 'going back to basics' by using the Codex Marines in lieu of Space Wolves. Besides, we were distracted by the weather outside, so much so that the other players played a round or two before packing it in and dashing off, leaving just Screech and I behind.

Firepower wise, I was impressed overall with the Ultra's output. A lesser army or even a rival Space Marine army, would've been punished harder by the hail of bolts I peppered them with. However, and this I would quickly learn, is that the Thousand Sons are a whole matter completely. Impressed with the Ultramarine's firepower was nothing: I was astounded by the firepower of the Thousand Sons! Inferno Bolts with Soul Blaze did a number on my right flank causing it to crumble up pretty quick.

When my Sternguard Veterans lept out of the Landraider and cut a squad of Thousand Sons in half with Hellfire Rounds, I was giddy with how awesome the Sternguard weapon options were compared to what my Space Wolves have.  But when the smoke cleared, and the surviving Thousand Sons returned fire, it was I who would be surprised as the damned inferno bolts (with Soul Blaze) would cut the Sternguard in half! In the end the final Sternguard would snuff it as the soul blaze consumed him. In the pic below you can see all that was left of this Thousand Son unit standing in the Aquila Lander wreckage.

The two Land Raiders would take turns knocking hull points off each other with their twin-linked lascannons. The Ultramarine Land Raider would later explode when struck by a meltagun at close range.

My terminator squad absorbed a lot of incoming fire, as terminators are known to do, but when charged by Khorne berserkers (correction: Choosen) they would be quick to fall to the vast number of attacks that the berserkers brought down on them. However, they took a few of the frothing gits with them, including the Aspiring Champion who had challenged my Librarian. The two characters killed each other in a bloody clash which I thought was a pretty neat outcome actually.

"So sarge, we just show up and stand here now?"

Space Marine scouts have really suffered from the rule changes over the editions. The inability to charge when coming in from reserve was put in to balance some units that were too good at this tactic, but I feel that the change might have been over kill. I put these guys on the far end to see if I could harass the objective holders on that side of the field, but my the Scout's fire power was ineffective. They ended up being target practice for the Thousand Sons...

In hindsight, I should have infiltrated the scouts forward from the beginning, putting them in the compound where my surviving Tactical squad would claim and hold onto an objective. I would in turn have used that squad to go harass the Thousand Sons marine. In particular I would've chased down the surviving member of the Thousand Son's squad that earned Screech another 3 vps.

The end of the game. The only thing the Devastators killed was a Rhino tank.

Evil cowers in any shadow it can find...

So we chose to end the game at the bottom of turn 5, as the weather was getting scary-nasty outside and the prospect of being snowed in that cold building wasn't appealing to either of us, less so me, as Screech would point out "I have a truck!". 

The Victory Point tally would be:

Thousand Sons: 9

Ultramarines: 5

 

Not a horrible loss, considering I have done far worse with armies I am actually adept at playing with and/or against! The git hiding behind the rhino wreck was within 3" of an objective and he earned Screech 3vps. Yes, a good game, and it was fun to shake the dust off these old models and prove that they still can put up a decent fight.