Victory Pointless

Lord Atreon raised a fist. Behind him, the column of Alpha Legion marines halted and melted away into the shadows. Atreon drew a cameleoline cloak over his armour and crept to the crest of the ridge ahead. There in the distance was the comms-link they sought, but the auspex was picking up other signals now too – other forces converging on the same location. Through the warren of ruined buildings Atreon spied marching human troops and skittering xenos swarms. He caught a flash of blue plate and hissed. Ultramarines. The hated ancient enemy. Still, this might be turned to their advantage. He keyed the stolen Imperial clearence codes into his comm-link and broke into the Ultramarine vox-network.

“Brothers! This is Captain Atreon of the Iron Snakes. By the Emperor it is good to see some fellow Imperial Astartes in this cursed place! Be warned, there are xenos forces and traitor guard closing on your position. We stand ready to assist…”

This was the kick-off event of the London Wargaming Guild’s Slow-Grow campaign; an event designed to allow people to play games as they gradually build up new armies, starting at 500 points and building up to 1,500 over a few months.  At the kick-off session we came with 500 points each and were randomly partnered up to compete in 2 v 2 custom scenarios.  On this occasion my Alpha Legion had managed to pass themselves off as loyalist marines in order to trick some Ultramarines into fighting alongside them to take down a force of Tyranids and some Astra Militarum that they were presumably mind-controlling, or who perhaps just had very eclectic (and ill-advised) tastes in exotic pets.

The custom scenario we were playing tasked us with capturing a Comms relay in the centre of the table – that’s essentially it; whoever controlled the centre at the end would win, although there were some additional points on offer for holding the relay and killing enemy units.

The Forces

Me: A Lord + Chosen, a Legionary squad with chainswords, a cultist mob and a pair of Obliterators.

Ultramarines: A lieutenant with a squad of Assault Intercessors, two Intercessor squads and some Terminators.

Tyranids: A Tyranid Prime, a Screamer-Killer, some Von-Ryan’s Leapers, some Barbgaunts, two mobs of Termagants.

Guard: A command squad, two guardsman squads, a Kasarkin squad, a Sentinel and some artillery.

Turn 1:

The Tyranid-Guard alliance got first turn and mostly stayed put with some movement on the flanks to get into better firing positions.  The Leapers burst out of cover and got off a charge onto the Terminators but took a beating from overwatch fire on the way in and didn’t do too much damage in combat.  On the other flank, the Sentinel and artillery took out a couple of Assault Intercessors.

On our turn, my Lord and Chosen ran up the flank and smashed the Sentinel to pieces. 

My Obliterators chipped some wounds off the Tyranid Prime and the Terminators finished off the Leapers.  Everyone else moved up, but we were all still being a bit cagey and nobody made a break for the objective just yet.

Turn 2:

The Screamer-Killer screamed at and killed an Ultramarine and managed to weather the storm of returned bolter-fire.  The Intercessors gunned down a Guard squad.

The Tyranid Prime charged the Ultramarine command squad but was cut down.  The Chosen took fire from the Kasarkin and Termagants and lost two marines but that didn’t stop them racing over and demolishing the Barbgaunts.  I then consolidated into a Guard squad to tag them into melee.  The cultists set up camp on the objective and were joined by the Ultramarine Assault Intercessors.

Turn 3:

The guard squad (wisely) fell back out of combat with my Chosen, allowing the Kasarkin to open fire and then charge in alongside some Termagants.  This left me with only one remaining Chosen and the Lord in that unit, but via a combo of Counter Offensive + Profane Zeal + Dark Pact + Chance for Glory the Lord managed to single-handedly wipe the squad and survive.

Elsewhere, the Terminators and Obliterators finished off the Screamer-Killer.

As it was getting late and the Tyranid-Guard alliance had lost all their heavy-hitters who stood any chance of doing us any damage at all we decided to call it there, with the Alphamarines/Ultra Legion holding the key point and being well ahead on points.

Final Score: 94 – 0

Post-Mortem

This was a clear victory, but not a particularly satisfying one since it didn’t really feel like our opponents had much of a chance.  They had mostly ranged, hoardy stuff while we had elite durable melee stuff, which forced them to hold back while we could advance to the single centreground objective with more-or-less impunity.  Everything about the match-up and the scenario was in our favour and I can’t really think of much our opponents could have done differently that would have swung it for them.  At 500 points it’s impossible to cover all the bases and we won the rock-paper-scissors of army selection.  I see now why GW stopped officially supporting 500 point games and replaced them with Combat Patrol instead – fixed armies may make this less of a problem..

That said, I’ll take the win!  It was still an enjoyable evening with good people and it was fun to take my new army out for a spin and see what they can do.  This was, after all, primarily a learning game.  So;

Key Learnings:

• My Chosen + Chaos Lord are absolute murder machines that essentially just instantly deleted anything they came into combat with and were durable enough to survive the inevitable counterattack. The ability to advance + charge also makes them quite nippy and gives them a surprisingly large threat radius.
• The combo I described above is insanely effective.  I don’t want to say I lucked into this, exactly; I did the homework, I read the stratagems, I built a list to maximise the synergies and I expected it to be quite deadly.  But I really had no idea how deadly it would be; to the point that afterwards I felt a bit guilty about having used it.  It felt like bullying.  My aim in using it in round 3 was to give the Lord one last glorious stand before he got mobbed to death, but as it worked out by the time he’d finished there was barely any mob left and he survived the game.
• The Obliterators also did some good damage, but were limited by low speed and middling range. Deep Strike was banned for this game so ordinarily that will hopefully be less of an issue.
• My cultists and Legionaries didn’t really get a chance to do any damage, but they held the objective and looked scary, which is dull but important.  I had some CP left over, so perhaps I could’ve used Unnatural Swiftness on the Legionaries to move them up the board to get stuck in.  Or maybe a bolter loadout might be better to give them some ranged threat.