Campaign Battle 1 : Objective 6

ANGELS VS. ANGELS

Mission: Annihilation - Set Up: Spearhead

So here we go. The Dark Angels have chosen to take Objective #6. It's up to my Angels of Ecstasy to stop them. Well, I gotta admit, I felt a sense of dread going into this battle. Sam's has been doing a pretty good job of turning his Dark Angels army into something pretty scary to face on the tabletop. I think there's the overall consensus in the 40k community that the Dark Angels Codex is rather gimped. Yet, some hardcore fans of the Lion have been able to brainstorm and come up with some nasty lists. Having faced a few of these newer and nastier lists Sam has been using, I knew that things were gonna get bloody.

There was also another factor that was making me have doubts. The scenario set up for this particular battle involved the table being covered with one third ruined buildings. My whole trick to dealing with Terminators is to hit them with a lot of AP2 weaponry. How is this plan going to work if there is so much 4+ cover everywhere?

So, the game started and right off from the start the Dark Angels have me on the defensive. The Land Raider full of Terminators boldly guns it down the main street of town. My rather expensive unit of four lascannon Havoc Marines were unable to stop it. Yeah....uhm....I think the key to reliably bring down high armored vehicles is no longer with lascannons. I truly think meltas are the way to go from no on.

After disembarking, Belial in Terminator armor, Chaplain in Terminator armor, and a bunch of Deathwing Termies rush into the ruined building on the left flank and slay my Havoc Marines. I guess I should've but them further in the back field. Well, I did want them to be the focus of the Dark Angels, but sometimes having things go your way doesn't always mean....uhm....things are going your way. Sure, now I know where to focus my counter attack, but actually launching it successfully is a whole other matter.

I try though. I rush in two squads of Chaos Marines in armored Rhinos backed up by lots of support fire. Does this inflict the kind of casualties I want? Not at all. Belial and his squad are hard as nails and they shrug off our counter attack and nearly decimate an entire squad of mine as well. That squad ends up retreating despite my orders. The highlight of this has to be when, before charging in, Belial's squad was shot up by my second Havoc squad armed with four plasma rifles and I forced him to make 6 (5+) invulnerable saves! What does Sam do? He makes ALL SIX SAVES!

face/palm

So things were looking pretty grim. Sam was winning the war of attrition. I knew there had to be some major sacrifices in order to get rid of Belial, but I didn't expect the cost to be so high. Plus, he and his Chaplain are still on the field. At this point, should I ignore them and concentrate on easier targets or keep spending troops and resources to killing them? Well, I decide to keep concentrating on them. A little foolhardy, but I've already come this far and I really can't afford to have them run around on my side of the battlefield unchecked.

Fortunately, as the last half of the battle starts, things start to go my way. The Daemon Prince, finally sees the right opportunity and joins in on the battle versus Belial and his friends while they are occupied with regular Marines. The Daemon Prince starts to do massive damage. I gotta say, everyone talks about how awesome Lash of Submission is (which it is), but my new favorite psychic power has gotta be Warp Time. With everything in slow motion, The Daemon Prince has an easy time hitting his opponents and causing lethal damage in battle. He defeats Belial and then goes onto take out the Chaplain too. I can't believe how the battle is turning! Things are actually swinging in my favor. Ah, the Chaos gods must be smiling on me now.

In the end, (if my memory is correct) I win with the score of 4 to 2. The Angels of Ecstasy defeated Belial, the Chaplain, their retinue of Deathwing Terminators, and a bike squad. The Dark Angels, while inflicting a lot of casualties, still had not finished off a few squads that had one or two guys left in them. Their score comes from destroying one Rhino and a Havoc Squad.