Minotaur vs Mars battrep 2500

[Galron]

We played a fun game using the Roving Patrol scenario in the new CA. Talk about a scenario that will screw over your army's strategy. Its the one where you divide your force into three evenish forces and roll a dice to see which of the three actually deploys and there are three objectives. Board had a lot of tall ruins on it. We played the arrowhead looking deployment on each end of the table, meaning m back line did almost nothing the whole game but babysit an objective.

 

My list: Salamander doctrine

HQ Moloc warlord trait for feel no pain on a 6
HQ Aiketon the Named Dreadnought
HQ Captain with power sword and plasma pistol Relic flame sword thingy

Elites- Terminator Assault Squad Thunder hammer and storm shields
Vets x5 all meltaguns
vets x4 all plasmaguns
both vets and captain riding in a
Caestus Assault Ram

Scouts x5 heavy bolter.
Scouts x5
Intercessors x 5
Tacs x5 combi-plasma + plasma
Tacs x5 combi-plasma + plasma
Drop pod

Tacs x5 combi-melta + melta
Tacs x5 combi-melta + melta
Drop pod

Inceptors x3 assault bolters
Inceptors x3 plasma gun things

 

His

Cawl

Dominus

3 of the treaded dudes with big guns

3 of the treaded dudes with big guns

2 Sniper squads

2 Skitari with 2 plasma gun squads

2 Dune Crawlers

1 of the chicken leg mechs with autocannon

10 of the 2w hand to hand guys with taser swords

3 Blood Angel scout squads

2 BA captains with thunderhammer and jump packs

I Gallant Knight

 

So my starting force was a whopping 5 man intercessor squad on my objective, everything else in that group was a deep striker.

He got first turn and managed to get the vast majority of his stuff on the board from reserves. The only shooting on his turn one was my Intercessors overwatch shooting his captain that landed nearby and tried to charge and fail. They did a wound to him.

My turn one had the Intercessors sight down on the Captain. My reserves were much less impressive than his. I had a drop pod with the melta tacs, the plasma intercessors, both scouts and the terminators minus Moloc, and the dreadnought. The dread just walked past the captain and the scouts walked up to him point blank. I didnt have a lot of options and way overestimated the damage my thunderhammers would cause. So I wanted to take out the Knight ASAP and since it was mostly out in front on the edge of his area, I centered everything around it. So my drop pod released its melta teams and the meltas shot up the knight(or gave the impression that was what they intended) and the bolter dudes killed a single skittarri. Melta guys wiffed, plasma inceptors managed a single wound and the terminators did 6 and lost 3 guys in return. The intercessors did another couple wounds to the captain and the scouts unloaded mass 12ga slugs and took him down. Yay, first blood.

 

Turn Two

His knight walked over to the inceptors leaving the terminators(falling out of combat should allow a parting shot grrr) the taser sword guys moved into assault range of the tacticals. The rest of his army sort of moved up. His captain and everything but a scout squad came in(we found out later at the end of T2 everything was supposed to come on). His captain DSd onto the middle objective. He shot a bunch of my tactical marines up and charged them wiping them. The knight charged and killed all bu one Inceptor. The dudes with the treaded wheel chairs wiped my terminators.

 

On my turn my Inceptor fell back. Dreadnought moved towards the knight. From reserves I got everything except my other inceptor squad. The plasma squad drop pod landed close enough to the knight so they could rapid fire the knight. The Caestus flew in and lined up an attack run on the knight. Moloc landed close enough to support the tacs and inceptor. Needless to say the knight went down to mass fire and the final shot was a lucky hit from an intercessor firing long range. The enemy captain managed to avoid the firefury missiles from the Caestus but then took a wound from the scout's heavy bolter.

 

Turn Three

He moved everything forward while keeping fairly castled. He forgot his scout squad that never made it on. He had a scout squad start to get into the ruin in the middle of the board to support the captain. His hand to hand dudes moved closer to my tac squad. He did a few wounds to the dread. Not alot happened his round.

 

My turn moved everyhting up and I got a bunch of dudes in rapid fire range of his 2w guys. My Caestus flew across the board to a gap and managed to not do anything of note aside from 7 wounds to a dune crawler which he promptly repraired with cawl. His Dominus which was the closest model to the caestus caught the fire fury missiles out of the air appearently and ignored everything. Managed to kill two of the hand to hand guys with all my shooting there. Yay. My other inceptor squad landed behind his line and killed a Skittari squad.

 

Turn Four was the turning point. He lumbered everything forward. Accidently forgot about my inceptors somehow, and charged my tac squads and Moloc after shooting a zillion frikking pistol shots that killed 4 tac marines of one squad. HeHe then proceeded to shoot down both vet squads and got the captain down to one wound. My overwatch was more effective than my regular shooting and killed three hand to hand dudes. He put everything into Moloc who laughed and killed a couple. He tried charging the Dominus into the captain, failed and took an overwatch wound. The tac squad failed battleshock even with the reroll and left.

 

My turn was the best. My Inceptors moved forward behind the Dominus and the tread wheelchair guys. Captain moved an inch away from Dominus. The remaining tac squad moved towards the captain who was literally backed up by the scouts. Dread stepped forward to an inch from the hand to hand guys. So I wiped the wheel chair guys with the inceptors. Killed the captain with rapid fire from tacs. Charged them into the scouts thanks to the charge reroll from Moloc and wipes them. Remaining plasma inceptor kills two of the other tank-wheel chair guys. Dread shoots something, dont remember what. CHarges and wipes the hand to hand guys. Full squad charges the dominus along with the captain. He does decent wound but it doesnt matter since the repair themselves. Dominus kills the captain.

 

Turn 5

Game continues and he pushes to the center objective. This is clean up phase. He shoots the tac squad off the objective. Cawl charges and kills 2 inceptors, he shoots and kills the plasma inceptor.

 

My turn 5 has Moloc advance and take the objective with his trusty named dreadnought sidekick right behind him. So Moloc and Aikotos  stand there the rest of the game and take fire.

 

We apparently did an extra turn we didnt catch.

 

So for an entire turn the pair take the firepower of his entire army. The dread finally goes down leaving Moloc on his own. Cawl charges and fails and Moloc shoots him with his Black Spear doing 3 damage on overwatch. Moloc himself goes down to two remaining wounds after phenominal feel no pain rolls and the game ends.

 

We decide to play out the fight in the center since he said he would have it next round. Moloc shoots Cawl on my turn and on his Moloc takes another entire army's worth of fire and remains standing. Cawl charges and Moloc beats him down and holds the center for the win.

SPARTANS!

 

Was a very fun game. My games with this opponent are always extremely close. The scenario gutted my army's main plans and coming on piecemeal like I did hurt me, especially when he had his entire army on for the most part on turn 1. Maybe next time i can see how it works. Moloc is a frikkin beast, especially when you give him the FNP warlord trait.

 

 

 

 

[TheBattenBurger]

Wow, that sounds like an awesome fight! :D

 

Moloc fighting in the Center of the board was very Minotaurs and I loved your SPARTANS! shout :D

 

Whats the Caestus like in 8th? I was tempted to get one when it gets back in stock but wanted to be sure before I put over £100 towards it :)

 

One thing I would change in your list, just one, would be your Warlord Trait. The 6+FNP is great, but if you went for the 'Iron Resolve' Warlord Trait from the Space Marine Codex, not only does he get that 6+FNP he also gets an extra wound :D Thats 8 wounds in total! He's nearly at Guilliman levels of toughness then and can't be dropped by a single Lascannon or a Vindicare Assassin :D

Suitable toughness for the Chapter Master of a load of Badasses :D

[autek mor]

moloc still rules, i'm patiently waiting for forgeworld to update the badab war chapters. what do you think of the storm eagle roc pattern gunship?

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Congratulations on your victory!

[Galron]

@Thebattenburger- That was the trait I took for him out of the codex and he was a saving fool since for some reason he couldn't make storm shield saves.

 

The Ceastus I am using totally because I have the model and wanted some use out of it. Not sure what prompted them to hike the price when IMO it should have dropped a good 25-50 points. It does an ok job with an alright amount of fire power but with all the nerfs it took this edition I would probably be more successful with a Storm Eagle or Storm raven. The endless firefury missiles are nice but losing its 5++ kinda sucks and only being able to ram other flyers kind of hurts too. Really didn't like that it exploded and even with the command point reroll didn't get more than 2" radius.

 

I haven't actually read the rules for this editions Storm Eagle since I don't actually own the model.

[autek mor]

@Thebattenburger- That was the trait I took for him out of the codex and he was a saving fool since for some reason he couldn't make storm shield saves.

 

The Ceastus I am using totally because I have the model and wanted some use out of it. Not sure what prompted them to hike the price when IMO it should have dropped a good 25-50 points. It does an ok job with an alright amount of fire power but with all the nerfs it took this edition I would probably be more successful with a Storm Eagle or Storm raven. The endless firefury missiles are nice but losing its 5++ kinda sucks and only being able to ram other flyers kind of hurts too. Really didn't like that it exploded and even with the command point reroll didn't get more than 2" radius.

 

I haven't actually read the rules for this editions Storm Eagle since I don't actually own the model.

 

i also dont like the rules of what they did to the ram, why give it a super duper ram attack on a 5+ to hit?

 

as for the roc pattern eagle, maybe this will tickle your taste buds?

 

transport capacity 14, 4 lascan shots, a twin heavy bolter that can be replaced with a typhoon ML or twin MM, the roc missile launcher does 8 strength 8 shots on a -2 rend with 2 damage a piece for every wound. all around the 350pt mark in total which isn't bad considering the stormraven has now entered the 300pt plus range thanks to chapter approved.

[Galron]

Wow, no joke. That is pretty high speed. That's cheaper than the Ram. Might have to keep an eye out for one.