Primaris vs RTB01

 

Welcome back to another duel between myself and Da Masta Cheef. This time, in response to a comment I made somewhere that his Ultramarines ought to fight my Ultramarines. Cheef was more than willing to see that come to fruition. We decided since not only do we have the same army, but we even use the same company (3rd, the guys with the red trim) so it only makes sense that this "battle" is really a training exercise. Or is it? 

Check out Cheef's force. Leading it on this training exercise is a nefarious Inquisitor! 

748 points of Primaris. 

You might also notice that his force is also all Primaris Soace Marines! Lead by Primaris Lt. Siph Horridus (inspired by the guy who hooked us both up with that particular model, thanks again mate!), who is armed with a Master Crafted Bolt Rifle and an Astartes Chainsword. A squad of Hellblasters, a unit of Intercessors, a squad of Assault Intercessors and a smaller unit of Intercessors. 

744 points of old Marines. 

Whereas my force is comprised entirely of 1st edition models. Most of which were all painted during the years of first edition! That's two RTB01 Tactical Squads. Pretty much no frills there: bolters, bolt pistol. Frag & krak grenades, a missile launcher, a flamer and a Sergeant with a power glove power fist. That's an original Advanced Space Crusade scout squad (they have stealth bolters) and that Devestator Squad is from Space Crusade. And that Ultramarine Captain model tops it off. He was the most recent thing painted for this army and this is his first game showing off his new colors. 

And that was two small Patrols (approximately 750 points) ready to rumble in the snow. 

Open War random results.

We were joined by the illustrious Mr. Crosby (as an ex-teacher he kind of dislikes to be called that, but for he sake of online ambiguity I will default to that regardless) who assisted with the Shuffling and selection of our Open War cards as well as offered rules input during the game; as both Cheef and I haven't played the 9th ed Space Marines yet. He also provided the three Objective Markers for us. They are each an assortment of military assets. We placed old Artillery Dice on them to indicate which ones were 1, 2 and 3 for determining which would  e the 'active' objective each round. 

We were also assisted by Josh of Hobbytown U.S.A. of Johnson City, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the current 40k rules is pretty much second to none. 

Battle Squad takes the bunker.

During my deployment I chose to split one of the Tac Squads into two separate teams leaving the other squad at full strength. 

Ultra Neverness deployment.

Ultra Masta Cheef deployment.

I played my Ruse card as soon as possible to immediately take advantage of being Dug In to my deployment zone. It really did help a lot! 

A clever Ruse! 

Turn One and we both moved our forces towards the objectives. Some fire was traded back and forth but we each only managed to score a single casualty against each other and maybe inflicted a few non-lethal wounds here and there. 

Moving up to the goal.

I did make my first critical mistake of the game by not advancing my 10 man Tactical squad towards the objective closest to them. In the end, neither of us scored any points on Tunr One.

End of Turn One. 

On Turn Two Cheef's dice heated up and his Hellblasters were too. They vaporized half of the remaining Tactical Squad!  "This is a training exercise, right?" Asked one Devestator to another upon watching the boiling fleshy blue pool that was once Brother Marcus. 

Meanwhile my scouts were hounding the Primaris boys from their own deployment zone. Returning the attention one scout was eliminated.

Old but still effective.

The Devestators took stock of the situation and set their weapons to lethal mode, annihilating the Hellblasters! As a point of retaliation however Cheef played the Stratagem 'Avenge The Fallen' (a card I hope to play on a Dark Angel unit some day, just for the cheekiness of it!)

Marked for vengeance!

The Tactical Squad lost another marine in the Morale Phase of Cheef's turn 2. But the Sgt was determined to get to that objective! They advanced on to it and claimed in on my Turn 2.

"There's four of us, we can do this lads!"

On the otherside of the ruins I had the Scouts and both battle squads pour all their fire into the Squad that was on an objective. Unfortunately, for me Cheef was making his saves like a champ, and whittling away at those two-Wound Primaris Marines was proving to be an uphill battle indeed. After a failed charge attempt, that effort seemed even more futile.

The tally for Turn had Cheef with 2 points and Neverness with 1 point. 

Turn 3 was the deciding one. The Inquisitor moved onto the objective in the middle. The Primaris goons shot up and killed the Tactical Squad except for the Sergeant. But they charged and slaughtered him in the assault phase, but what a glorious way to go down! 

"I'll take you young punks!"

On the otherside, my Tactical squad stood firm to the onslaught of shooting and in fact killed a guy with Overwatch! It was a fairly balanced fight really with both sides standing firm for the most part. 

My turn came, and my Captain moved upon the the middle objective where he came across this sneaky Inquisitor skulking about the place. Despite a strong showing by the Captain weilding his Soldiers Blade, the Inquisitor survived this assault. 

"Avast!"

My Devestators tried to blast the Primaris Intercessors off of their objective but the dice were against me on this it seems as they missed  a lot more than they hit! Same goes with the other side of the field, I tore that squad up but I could shake them off of that objective. At the end of turn 3 Cheef scored 3 more points and Neverness scored 0. This brought the Tally 5 to Cheef and 1 to Neverness.

By the end of Turn 3, looking at the points tally it was clear that I could not possibly recoup my points. I felt that I had to concede to the inevitable and accept defeat.

These two held firm! 

What was this guy's goal?

Laughing in the faces of the Devestators. 

Well, that was a fun one! One thing we learned was that we need to not only play more, but play Marines more. Trying to keep up with all the army rules, remembering Warlord Traits, (we both had Paragon of War), Doctrines, etc. made us wish we had a dry erase board available.  But we got by with the help from our friends. I am impressed with how well the old First Born have held up compared to the Primaris, and, had Cheef's rolls not be more amazing than not, I think it would have been a bit more even.  

However the one advantage that was apparent was the range difference between the Bolt Rifles and the traditional Bolter. It forced me to push some of the units I had held back for support to move closer, otherwise he could reach my units and I could not reach his. Duly noted for the future. I wish we could have played longer but it was still fun regardless. 

..and the Inquisitor slips away...