Victory Pointless

These were a pair of games played at the London Wargaming Guild’s Boarding Actions night in March.

Forces

Blood Angels (Me) – Shield of the Void: Ancient, 3 Aggressors, 10 Terminators

Dark Angels – Shield of the Void: Terminator Captain, Lieutenant, 3 Bladeguard, 5 Sternguard, 5 Terminators

Terminators have always done well for me in Boarding Actions (less so in ‘big’ 40k) and my opponents Aggressors impressed me in the last game, so I thought I’d try a list maxxing out those things with a cheap character to run around stickying objectives.

Mission

Control Centre

Game 1

My opponent got first turn and moved forward cautiously. My terminators on the right flank weathered overwatch and then charged and took out the sternguard.  My Aggressors went up the middle and took care of the Bladeguard and Captain.

We both had terminators in deep strike, although they had to arrive in fairly unimportant corners of the board and it took them both a while to get anywhere useful.

The Dark Angels terminators eventually caught up with the Aggressors but couldn’t quite get the kill and by the last turn I had much more on the table and was able to control most of the objectives for a significant late-game score boost.

Result: Blood Angels victory, 45-20

Game 2

The second time around I got the first turn and in the interests of doing something different I took the approach of rushing out to the midground objectives with my Terminators and relying on their durability to hold them.

This plan was unravelled immediately when the Sternguard managed to wipe one squad of Terminators in round 1.  The weakness of this list then became apparent – each death is a big blow and once that unit was lost I was definitely on the back foot.

My early objective control and the Aggressors managing to splat the enemy warlord for 10 bonus points gave me a good lead which was steadily eroded by my lack of board control.

I managed to keep my own warlord safe by having him run away and hide, but the Deathwing terminators managed to break through my own terminators in the final turn and consolidate onto a 10VP objective, just swinging the game to their favour.

Result: Dark Angels victory 50-40