Shrike vs. The Badmen

[marine77]

I got in a fun 2,000pt game today against CSM using a Shrike list. Being a relatively new (Non-Templar) Space Marine player, I really like the idea of fleet marines. Thus, I put together the following army

 

Shrike

 

Assault Terminators- 1LC, 4TH/SS in an LRC

Dreadnought- assault cannon, DCCW

Dreadnought- assault cannon, DCCW

 

Tac Squad- lascannon, melta, in rhino (combat squaded)

Tac Squad- lascannon, melta, in rhino (combat squaded)

 

Landspeeder- multimelta, heavy flamer

Landspeeder- multimelta, heavy flamer

6 Vanguard Vets- 3 power weapon/pistol, 1 pistol/CCW, 1 CCW/shield, sargeant with pistol/fist, jump packs

 

Predator- autcannon, lascannon sponsons

Predator- autcannon, lascannon sponsons

 

I love lascannons for their ability to reach out and touch the opponent quickly. Also the ability to have both a vanguard squad (with Shrike) and a terminator squad that can move around 20" in one turn to get into an assault is great.

 

My opponent took:

 

Khorne Lord- terminator armor, daemon weapon, ?

Khorne Lord- daemon weapon, ?

 

5 Terminators- chainfist, 2 power fists, lightning claw, 2 combi-meltas, heavy flamer ? in a land raider (khorne lord here)

 

10 chaos marines- missile, plasmas in rhino

9 marines- missile launcher in rhino (khorne lord here)

9 undivided summoned daemons

 

10 raptors

5 bikes with 2 plasmas

 

1 autocannon/heavy bolter pred

1 vindicator

 

We rolled sieze ground and pitched battle deployment. There were 8 pieces of terrain. A wrecked building on my left, a ruin in my center, and a wreck building on my right. Each in my deployment zone. In the middle of the board on the extreme ends were a crater on the left and a wreck ship on the right. In my opponent's deployment zone there were three wrecked buildings. One on the left, one center, and one right.

 

Objectives went in my left hand building and in the center ruin and in his center building and the building on my right in his deployment zone.

 

I deployed my army as such:

I combat squadded and put one lascannon/bolter squad on my left objective and another lascannon/bolter squad in my center ruin. In between went two preds. Behind them I put my two speeders. To the right of the ruin I put my LRC wiht terminators inside followed by a rhino with sargeant/melta squad with dreadnought behind. On my far right I put the remaining rhino with sargeant/melta squad with a dreadnought behind.

 

In his zone, on my left behind a ruined building went the raptors and bikes. Behind the center building went pred followed by rhino with 10 man squad then land raider. Behind the right building went the rhino with khorne lord and the vindicator.

 

Shrike and company went 18 inches away from the raptors.

 

My opponent failed to sieze the initiative.

 

Turn 1. My rhinos, LRC, and dreads moved up. The rhinos popped smoke. Shrike and crew jumped up 12 inches then fleeted another 5. The sum total of all shooting was the pred not being able to shoot.

 

Shrike and company assault the raptors. The raptors are wiped out and I lose the storm shield and a power weapon.

 

In his turn, the bikes move up to try and take out shrike and co. Everything else moves up a bit. Not much happens, though his vindicator does take out my right most dread. In shooting against shrike, I lose three more models, the CCW, a power weapon, and the fist. The bikes come in and shirke knocks off 3 and the power weapon gets a fourth. We take no wounds and they stay put.

 

Turn 2. I move up my transports some and disembark the terminators thinking I may be able to fleet and assault once I pop a rhino. The speeders are swooping in from the left to take out the pred. They actually moved up turn 1 as well. After all of my shooting, I have account for 1 dead predator, 1 immobilized rhino and that's it. My terminators run back into my center ruin to provide a little protection from return fire. Shrike and now- partner, finish off the bikers and consolidate back behind cover to have a lemonade and watch the rest of the game.

 

My opponent moves up the khorne lord's rhino to try and come after my terminators. His vindicator moves behind the far right building in his deployment zone. In shooting he doesn't manage much at all. Very nice.

 

Turn 3. I move my rightmost sargeant/melta squad up to try and pop the vindicator. I aim lots of shooting at his khorne lord's rhino and pop it killing a man. I then unload into it killing all but two guys and the lord. I am very wary of the daemon weapon and so choose not to assault into the difficult crater left by the rhino. Instead I move my terminators back into the ruin. The melta fails on the vindicator, so I assault it with my squad and melta bomb it with my sargeant. I manage to blow off the big gun.

 

In his turn, He moves up the LR and disembarks his terminators to shoot. His summoned daemons deepstrike in on an icon on his terminator khorne lord. He rams his vindicator battering ram into the side of my other rhino failing to do anything. His immobilized rhino squad gets out and moves into the center building in his deployment zone to claim the objective. In shooting, his terminators blow up my other dreadnought. His full marine squad blows a speeder out of the air and that's it. The khorne lord and remaining 2 marines assault into my terminators. My lightning claw kills a marine. The khorne lord wiffs terribly and doesn't wound though he had 13 hits. I manage a handful of shield saves. My hammers pound the lord into the ground, leaving the aspiring champ. He legs it and can't rally. The daemons assault my sargeant/melta squad that damaged his vindicator. They kill four, I kill 2, and I lose my sargeant to fearless wounds.

 

Turn 4. I move my LRC back so that my victorious terminators can get into position to assault his terminators. I move my remaining speeder up to the center building to flame his remaining marine squad. I unload on the terminators with much of my shooting and kill 2. I melta the vindicator into an immobilized storm bolter with my remaining sargeant/melta squad in their rhino. My preds begin the bombardment of the central building squad, slowly stripping away models. In assault, the daemon weapon does the trick and kills all but 2 hammers, then the lightning claw kills another. My last one kills his khorne lord and then is killed by the fists. They consolidate forward.

 

In his turn, his daemons move onto the upper right hand objective, the marines in the squad move around a bit on the upper central objective, the LR moves to shoot at my rhino squad and the terminators move up to assault my LRC. In shooting the LR manages to destroy my storm bolter and immobilize my rhino. The marine squad blows my remaining speeder out of the air. The terminators assault and manage to wreck my LRC.

 

Turn 5. Not much happening in the movement phase. In the shooting phase my two lascannon squads manage to kill a terminator leaving two. The rhino squad misses the LR. The preds continue to bludgeon the central building whittling the models down to three guys.

 

In his turn, the terminators move up towards my lascannon squad holding my central objective. In shooting they kill a marine from that squad. His LR wrecks my rhino.

 

We roll and move on to turn 6.

 

Turn 6. I move my last sargeant/melta squad into the rhino next to my wrecked one. They then shoot the LR and wreck it. My preds kill the marines in the central building. Now I have 2 objectives and he has one with his daemons.

 

In his turn, the terminators move up to contest my central objective and manage to not kill anything from my lascannon squad.

 

We roll and move on to turn 7.

 

Turn 7. My preds move up to get angles of fire at the terminators. Each only gets a single lascannon sponson due to me wanting to get my two lascannon squads the ability to shoot and because the ruin is tricky to get LoS into. The rhino squad need to contest the daemons' objective as they don't have the strength to wreck it. The only way to contest is to move over the LRC. I roll and get....a 3. Objective contested. In shooting my lascannons annihilate the terminators.

 

At this point, my opponent shakes my hand. He had one objective to my 2.

 

This was a fun game. Shrike did well with his turn 1 alphastrike ability. Granted that is about 500 pt., but it held up his entire fast assault force which allowed my preds and lascannon squad in the backfield to remain totally unscathed until the very end and in the end, I lost one bolter model. That was priceless in this game. If the raptors or bikes had free range, it would have been a much harder game. If my opponent had even decided to move the bikers towards the real battle instead of at Shrike and Co., it would have been tougher. Luckily he didn't.

 

I have found that I don't like marines' lack of combat ability. This is probably an obvious thing, but coming from a Templar background, it can be aggravating. 5 man squads just can't get across to objectives and hold them for long. I will have to be a bit smarter in how I deal with this in the future.

 

Those daemon weapons are nasty! I was lucky in the first assault in that he failed to wound on most of his hits and I saved the one that he did make.

 

Really this game went pretty smoothly except for my early game inability to damage anything! I would appreciate any comments or questions. Thanks for reading.

[Brother Ambroz]

A good read.