Where (Blood) Angels Dare

Good weekend! Although my painting/modeling output has been slow over the past fortnight, I have made some progress that will soon materialize into some posts. Speaking of materializing...

Materializing onto the field of battle, ready to engage the foe!

Last night I did get in a game with Jim's Blood Angels. Fresh from his recent victory he spotted me upon walking into Hobbytown, slapped me with his blood encrusted gauntlet and challenged the Company of Sven Axegrinder on the field of battle! To make things more appealing, a relic of importance to the Space Wolves Chapter was at risk of being confiscated by the Blood Angels. Sven, being of both a stubborn and noble character (and, it must be stated, a naïve sort of fellow), was quick to launch the Thunderhawks.


The army assembled.

The Relic is a yellow base with a Space Wolf icon on it. A rather basic objective marker that I made for the a previous edition that occasionally still finds a use. The field of battle was 2/3 wilderness with a 1/3 of ruined city. I imagine that this fight is taking place at the edge of an old habitation zone, long torn asunder by the state of constant war that besets the Imperium of Man.

 

Space Wolves deployed 1st. On my left flank, my venerable Landspeeder Tornado (the Chairlift of Death) lurks behind a rock column. In the distance behind a rocky outcrop (that's what those turd-looking things are supposed to be),

I place the Long Fangs on the high ruins on my side, while the Vindicator is placed behind a tree line to get a bit of cover.

In the ruined streets to the right of the Long Fangs is a rhino with more Grey Hunters riding in it and the Lone Wolf, sitting in the shadows mourning the loss of his comrades and humming the catchier melodies of Piotyr and the Wolf to himself as he works himself up in preparation of a heroic death.

Nice dilapidated bastion huh?

The Blood Angels deploy and the bulk of their battle-line is shifted to where my forces are lightest. He has the best chance to grab the objective 1st as his Death Company are all jump infantry and the objective is directly in front of him

 Failing to seize the initiative the Blood Angels watch as the screaming roar of the Space Wolf drop pod tears down from the heavens. The screaming is actually Wolf Lord Sven, raging at the horribly miscalculated scatter that sent the drop pod 12" off target and in between the woods! More infuriating is the drop pod blocks most of the Long Fang's LOS to the relic and the bulk of Jim's Blood Angels.

 Two dreadnoughts ambling over in the BA deployment zone seem pretty threatening to me, so a concentrated krak missile volley eliminates the Death Company Dreadnought. As you see in these pics, and as I mentioned in a previous post, Jim loves to make cool effect for this game. Seen here is on of the explosion plumes he made. He has his dreads made so that the torso can separate from the legs, and when we wrecked the dreadnought we separated the two halves and placed a plume in between them. It makes in interesting pic for a battle report and makes for a more interesting battle to play in.

First Blood goes to the Space Wolves as the Death Co. Dread is reduced to scrap.

 That was First Blood, my Land Speeder zipped up and tried to slag the BA Predator with a multimelta shot but missed. My Vindicator would announce itself by sending 4 Deathcompany marines to their graves. Not a bad 1st turn for the Space Wolves.

The Blood Angels return the favor, with the Predator noting the Landspeeder's immediate threat and swatting it from the sky with a single blast from a Las Cannon sponson. We noted the event as "second blood", More calamity would occur with the Green Dreadnought shooting it's twin-linked lascannon at the Rhino on my right flank, turning it into a smoldering crater and killing one of the Grey Hunters inside of it.

"Weren't we in a tank a second ago?"

 On Turn Two, my force would concentrate it's fire on eliminating the Death Company with the Vindicator landing another direct hit that would finish off all but the Chaplain, and even he was left standing with a wound. On the BA turn 2, the Terminator's would beam in along with the BA Commander, and the two Terminator squads, each with the respective army commander joined to it, staring each other down behind a hail of Storm Bolter shots. I lost a Wolf Guard to this attack. Note that the Chaplain joined the Terminator Unit.

Beaming in. Note that we had a flashlight above them for the added glow effect.

 The BA Tac squad moved into the dilapidated bastion and fired a krak missile at the last SW Rhino, but it missed.

Jim's firing missile marker.

 Turn 3, and it was time kill stuff. The problem with teleporting in is that you don't get to spread out, which makes the Vindicator's Demolisher Cannon giggle with glee as shoots another directed hit on of the BA commander's head. The entire Terminator squad is wiped out, including the BA commander (Slay the Warlord point) leaving, once again, the Chaplain alive. This left us to wonder it maybe the Chaplin is a curse the units he joins? As he stands their contemplating this, he is felled by a snapshot from the Vindicator's Storm Bolter. Shooting through cover, the Long Fangs manage to blow up the Predator with some surgically precise krak missile shots, leaving another flaming crater in the BA deployment zone.

BA turn 3 saw the Green Dreadnought getting some revenge for his fallen Commander. A well placed shot at the Wolf Guard, and a failed Look Out Sir roll, would see Sven instant-deathed by a twin-linked lascannon shot.

Turn 4, the wolf guard press on taking the fight to the Blood Angels who had just made a mad dash out of the Bastion in a desperate gambit to find some way to get the relic, while my Rhino zips up, deploys a unit of Grey Hunters and they manage to take the relic in triumph!

Lined up for a perfect shot the Vindicator was set to shoot the green dread. Having spent the whole game charging up the field, the Long Wolf was poised to charge the green dread (his Beastslayer oath ment that he was born to engage this foe!), when suddenly, surprisingly, the rhino fired it's hunterkiller missile and it actually hits, and actually penetrates, wreaking the dreadnought! We all looked around in shock, having rarely seen one of these actually work so well!

"...! AH! You bastards! That was going to be MY kill!!!"

Reduced to one unit, the BAs at the bastion fought back, but to little effect.

Turn 5 saw the rhino make it's escape with the relic, while the wolf guard moved in for the kill. The vindicator sent more Blood Angels to their grave, but they held on, refusing to be pinned.

 

Finally, it all ended, as the Wolf Guard charged in and finished off the Tactical Squad in the assault phase in the game.

 

 

For the 1st time in a long time, the Space Wolves tabled their foe! And with few casualties.
Still, the Blood Angels got a few well placed licks in as well.

We had a fun game, and despite the game turning grim for him quickly, Jim remained a good sport all the way through. In fairness to Jim, his dice just didn't want to be there and were just begging to be shot off into the lake with a sling-shot.

He earned 2 VPs (One for his Slay the Warlord kill on Sven, and another quite humorously from my Lone Wolf surviving the game!)

I claimed 6 vps, all 3 secondary objectives as well as the Relic which was worth 3vps.

Afterwards we went to work on improving his army list. He has some models that he has yet to build which I think could make his force far more competitive than it currently is. Including an assembled Rhino and an assembled Razorback. Also he has a Baal Predator model somewhere I think could bring some hurt if he were to use it. So, like all of us in our circle, we take these kind of games and we weigh our strengths and weaknesses vs. our playing styles and make adaptations for the next list. Jim is fairly new to 6th edition and hasn't played consistently since 2nd, so he's learning a lot still, and regardless of his dice, he's having a good time escaping with us to a place where there is only war...