Tzeentch-Nurgle v Tzeentch - Nurgle and CSM v GK

[Warsmith Aznable]

Met my friend and his son, who he is getting into the hobby, and had a couple games today. His son is into Death Guard, and he's teaching him to play by letting him make whatever list he wants. I guess the "throw him in the water" approach.

 

He brought to a 1500 point battle:

 

Typhus

Ahriman

2 squads of Plague Marines, x2 Plasma Guns each Champ w/PW

1 squad of Rubric Marines

 

I don't remember his exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure he did not have full squads.

 

I had:

 

Sorcerer with wings and Doom Bolt, Bolt of Change, MoT

7 Raptors, x2 meltagun, MoT, Champ with PW, MoT

10 CSM, plasma gun, lascannon, Champ w/PF, Rhino, MoT

10 CSM, plasma gun, lascannon, Champ w/PW & MB, MoT

7 Plague Marines, x2 plasma guns, Champ w/PW&Combibolter, Rhino, extra armor, MoT

1-1 Oblits

 

Annihilation, table halves, I went first

 

I set up with the Oblits on promontories with the majority of the battlefield in a crossfire. The Nurgle rhino was in the middle, and the other two rhinos were flanking it, with a low hill providing not really much cover at all. My sorcerer and the raptors grouped up and waited to deepstrike. For reference, here is the aforementioned battle field map showing my initial set-up:

 

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j91/montismo/initial-set-up-17mar12.png

 

He set up with some Plague Marines in an Imperial Bastion (which we said had AV12 and the weapons didn't work), Typhus and Ahriman hunkered together behind the support of an Imperial landing platform, his other squad of Plague Marines were sort of near the other far support, and his Rubric Marines were out in the open between the landing platform and the bastion.

 

The game didn't really go anywhere at first. He had no long range weapons and wasn't inclined to get close, so I hammered him with plasma and laser. My reserves weren't coming in for me, which was annoying. I hosed down most of his two squads that were out on the ground, leaving him with 2 plague marines and a rubric marine and aspiring sorcerer. The aspiring sorcerer and the rubric marine took off toward the bastion in an attempt to hide in it, but the doors were on the far side, so he was boned.

 

The game got interesting when my reserves finally came through. I had taken a couple of potshots at his HQ units, so he had moved Ahriman up on the landing platform alone. I dropped my sorcerer/raptors right in the middle of it, but got a mishap. The result was that he was allowed to place my unit. His dad helped him out by putting them within assault range of Typhus and the 2 plague marines, but unfortunately for him the unit burned Typhus down with shooting, then hacked up the plague marines.

 

The game ended with none of my troops ever getting out of their transports, instead shooting their heavy weapons from the top hatches. The sorcerer separated from his raptors and chased down the rubric marines, killing one and getting locked in combat with the aspiring sorcerer for the rest of the game. The raptors jumped up on the landing platform, shot at Ahriman and then assaulted him. They eventually ground him down. So in the end all he had was the one aspiring sorcerer and a handful of plague marines in the bastion when the game ended.

 

As usual, it was a little different when I faced off against the Grey Knights. He had:

 

Khaldor "I'm not a Daemon Prince" Draigo

5 Paladins, apothecary, glaive, x2 psycannons, x2 force swords (or whatever, I hate this squad)

Coteaz and his band of merry Crusaders and DCA, riding in a Storm Raven

2 units of psykers designed to launch the big holocaust template

a callidus assassin

 

I set up the exact same way, and the scenario was annihilation, spearhead, me going first

He held his Paladins and callidus in reserve, put his psykers in the bastion, and loaded coteaz and his henchmen in the storm raven, deployed forward.

 

He failed to seize the initiative, and mindful of his crazy psyker enclaves I attempted to lascannon the bastion down on their heads. This didn't work.

His Storm Raven flew straight at my left flank and dumped the inquisition on one of my rhinos then shot at my plague marine rhino. His psykers managed to not do anything at first, but his henchmen wrecked my rhino, forcing me out.

 

Remembering why I hate Storm Ravens, I blew it up with a lascannon fusillade. It exploded, threw out shrapnel the full distance, and managed to kill about a third of his henchmen. My CSM shot down the next third, while my plague marines de-assed their own rhino and managed to take out everyone else but Coteaz and a single Crusader. Things were looking up for me. I thought.

 

His Paladin squad materialized and shot up my CSM on that left flank. Then Coteaz and his Crusader charged them. Due to my invuln saves from MoT I managed to stay alive and slay his Crusader, then pile everyone on top of Coteaz. The Paladins were on their way, however. After offing Coteaz they tried to consolidate out of assault range, but only got to move 1". Suck. The Plague Marines put a wound on the Paladins as they made their way over to help, but couldn't stop the paladins from charging the CSM. Which didn't go well.

 

Meanwhile, on the right flank, the Callidus popped up and tried to assassinate the Oblit I put on the right flank. She was amazingly inept, and they ended up locked in combat for a couple rounds. The CSM on the right flank de-assed their vehicle and formed a gunline for when the Callidus finally beat up my Oblit. Unfortunately she managed to kill my Oblit on my own turn, so was able to charge into my guys (though after she failed to do anything interesting to my leadership with whatever funky weapon of hers does that).

 

But the heart break came for me when my sorcerer and raptors came in. There wasn't a lot of places I could put them, and it made sense to me (at the time) to put them in the open space between the paladins and the bastion full of psykers. They failed to do anything with their two meltagun shots, and I forgot about my psyker shooting powers, so they were grouped nice and tight for the psykers to lob their two Templates of Doom onto.

 

Everybody but the standard bearer died.

 

And HE ran away, right at the Paladins.

 

We weren't sure if he could regroup or not. He was fearless, but he was by himself. Instead of looking it up he said to go ahead and regroup him. He was stomping me flat by this time anyway so it hardly mattered.

 

Over on my left flank his Paladins had struggled a little to defeat my MoT CSM (I wanted to show him how frustrating invuln saves everywhere can be...), but he did take them out. They then moved over and got the assault on my plague marines, taking them down in one go. As he let me have my one raptor, that guy made his way back to the bastion, jumped up on the roof, and managed to get himself killed in HTH with psykers...

 

The callidus was eventually killed by my other CSM squad, but they only had 4 men left by that point. They consolidated up onto a rocky outcropping to wait for the paladins, but it was the end of turn 7 so the game ended.

 

***

 

It was my first time playing against another Chaos Space Marine force. Even though he wasn't using sound strategy it was still interesting to face off against my own codex. I was experimenting with a Mark of Tzeenth style army, though I threw in the Plague Marines and their up-armored and up-gunned rhino in case I needed to sit on an objective.

 

I also had painted a Sorcerer Lord the night before and was dying to play him:

 

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j91/montismo/chaos-sorcerer-rightside.png

 

So it was really having this model freshly produced that made me do this list the way I did. That and Grey Knight's "everything has an invulnerable save" army really irritates me, so I wanted to put MoT everywhere to get the same thing. Maybe I should have taken more HS, but I enjoyed the novelty of all those 5++ saves and they helped a lot. I don't know that I'll field that many lascannons with squads again. It was just a lark, because I had the idea that with invuln saves I could afford to wait for my track to get shot out from under me before I did any moving. Which was mostly true, so I might take one CSM squad with a heavy weapon more often than I have been. Maybe should have used Rubric Marines instead of Plague Marines to keep the list all Tzeentch, but I felt like playing with my Plague Marines today.

 

That's it.