Nipple Armor Showdown: BA’s vs Emp’s Children

Now, I neglected to take pictures, but don’t worry so much about that. I personally can’t stand undocumented batreps either… Fortunately, this won’t be such a big deal, because the table was a little uninspiring, your basic GW store flocked realm of battle table with a handful of plastic terrain on it, nothing you haven’t seen before.

So let’s get into it. It’s sunday afternoon in San Pedro, California, and I’m taking my chaos marines against blood angels at 2000 points. I have an all-comers list prepared, he has to write one on the spot. Theoretically, this gives him a slight meta advantage as he can list tailor, but my opponent is an alright guy and doesn’t really abuse that privilege.

The mission we roll up is relic, the deployment type is Dawn of War, or, because I can never remember the dumb names GW gives everything, long edge vs long edge.
The table itself is a standard 6 section realm of battle with the 2 section hill along each long edge, and the crest of the hills have barricade lines on them. There is a 12” square ruin in the middle of the table housing the relic, and on either side of the center ruin are a GW forest, which would play little part in the game. I also had a ruin in my left flank that would be of no consequence. All in all it was a pretty flat, open table with no LOS blocks and some area terrain down the centerline. I’d complain, but whatever, the tables at the GW store are free.

My Blood Angel foe is bringing a pretty wonky, topheavy list, one that I’ll critique later. For now, let’s get to the numbers- For his troops, he bought 2 big squads of assault marines with double meltas and a fist sergeant, and with leftover points as an afterthought, he crammed some undermanned and undergunned tactical marines into a drop pod. He bought 2 fast blood angel vindicators, and a stormraven with bolters to completely fill his heavy support slots. (neither of us doubled our FOC charts.) The assault squads are accompanied by sanguinary priests with power swords. Where did he spend a fat chunk of his points? He went balls deep on a nator assault squad with a terminator sanguinary priest, a terminator reclusiarch, and a terminator librarian. I think he was betting on this fat deathstar to do his heavy lifting.

    My list was a variant on my typical all comers Emperor’s Children Purple People Eaters Punchface Parade. I prefer a very aggressive approach. Use that +1 Initiative, baby!
    PURPLE RAIN, PURPLE RAIN.

    For my HQs, I ran a terminator lord with MoS, the sigil, and the black mace, and a level 3 biomancy sorcerer with a sigil and a skalathrax, spell familiar, and boon. He rolled up Iron Arm, Speed, and Leech life. Both HQs were long war vets.
    For troops, I had my standard back line babysitters- A 20 squad of slaaneshi bolter marines with dual plasma guns and a power sword champ with the icon of FNP. They would sit at home and dump bolter shells into anyone that tried to grab the relic. My other troops choice was my troubleshooters squad of 10 BP+CCW marines in a havoc rhino with 2 meltas, MoS, the icon, and a power sword champ with a combimelta. Normally I like to get at least 3 troops in a list for objective play, but I was trying some models I didn’t often use, and cut a marine squad.
    For elites, I had six neshi marked and iconed terminators with a mix of combiguns and fists. These were my oldschool 2nd ed pewternators, so they all had ap2 axes and one guy with a mace, but I didn’t want to chop up classic models, so they would just have to sit on their initiative 5 and pout about it. Its a theme list, go with it.
    Now we come to the fun part of the Punchface Parade- Fast attack and heavy support. I brought 2 maulerfiends, 6 neshi spawn split into 2 groups of 3, and a flamerdrake. I rounded off the list with an aegis line with a comm relay to make sure my terminators and heldrake hit on turn 2 to support my spawn-fiend rush.

DEPLOYMENT
    The blood angels won the privilege, but opted to let me take right of first turn and first deployment. Don’t know what he was planning with that, but I intended to punish him mercilessly for it.
    I put my ADL right down my deployment line and dumped the 20 babysitters and the bio sorcerer behind it, carpeting much of my area in purple, spaced out behind the line to avoid demolisher cannon shells. The heldrake and the lord and terminators went into reserves, and I pinned either flank with a unit of spawn and a maulerfiend. The troubleshooter rhino went on the right flank with the right wing fiend.
   
    The blood angels deployed, and the 2 squads of assault marines went up the middle with a vindicator on each flank. The bird, the drop pod, and the 7 bajillion point terminator deathstar were in reserve.

    For warlord traits, my chaos lord lucked out hard on the CSM table and got black crusader. Very nice. For his, he rolled strategic on his librarian and got the outflanking one, ended up being useless for his deployment strategy. I should also note that his librarian was a divinator and rolled up the spell that allowed him to cherrypick his reserve rolls- However, as the librarian was in reserves with the nators, he would never get to use it. This was a mistake that would punish him the entire game.

    He failed to seize initiative, and we go into turn 1.

TOP OF ROUND 1, CHAOS.
    As is usual for my first turns, my army played fast, loose, and quick. The 20 babysitters sat behind the ADL and picked their noses to the tune of 385 points, while the biomancy sorcerer hit the weights and hulked out, turning himself into a junior monstrous creature. If anyone wanted to come by and deep strike next to him, he’d be happy to say hello. He also rolled up re-roll armor saves on his boon roll, so between being a T7 eternal warrior and rerolling power armor, him and his 20 best friends aren’t in a hurry to go anywhere.
    Not the same story for the spawn and the maulerfiends, however. They book it 12” up the table and get busy. My right and left flank both lurch forward into no man’s land on a mission, the troubleshooter rhino on the right wing follows the punchy parade, and stops to pop smoke.
    All is quiet on turn 1, no one shoots anything, and I tap the table. Your move, blood angels.

BOTTOM OF ROUND 1, BLOOD ANGELS
    Its right about now that my opponent’s eyes bulge out of his head. For my chaos brothers among you who don’t play the maulerfiend, allow me to explain a phenomenon that occurs when you do use them- You move that giant walking no-brakes-pain-train 12 inches, shout “Choochoo motherfucker,” and then your opponent gets tunnel vision. Suddenly maulerfiend is the only thing they can think about. Its the single most beautiful thing in the 41st millenium.
    On his turn, the assault marines step back and cower behind the barricades in his deployment zone. A drop pod lands on my right flank, 7 or 8 marines with bolters pile out, and begin shooting the rear of my rhino. Nothing happens.
    He then proceeds to pop his vindicators. This is really the only thing that can hurt me. If he can stop the purple people eater punchface parade with those S10 pie plates, then I’ll actually have to come out and fight him. Its time to see how big his nipple-armored, fast, red nuts are.
    The right flank vindi fires into the pack of spawn and maulerfiend, deviates into a suboptimal shot. It clips one spawn and kills it, and penetrates the fiend. He bricks the penetration roll and stuns the fiend- The demon promptly ignores it. Looks like that vindicator is going to meet Sanguinius next turn.
    The assault marines fire bolt pistols at the right wing spawn, dropping one of them. Only one spawn left on the right wing- He’s fearless, one is all you need.
    The left flank vindicator fires on my left flank punch parade, and achieves similar lackluster results. the maulerfiend ignores the damage, and the spawn make some miraculous 5+ cover saves in the forest (that they walk right through completely ignoring because they’re beasts) and only 1 bites it. Turn 2 is going to be a lot of pain.

TOP OF ROUND 2, CHAOS
    I roll up my reserves and both my terminators and my heldrake come in. The drake swoops up the table on my right wing and I take a dangerous drop on my terminators on the left flank, right between his vindicator and left wing assault squad. I’m feeling ballsy.
    The terminators direct hit, and are now standing six inches from the side armor of the left vindicator.
    In the movement phase, my spawn and fiends again lurch forward with insane speed on both flanks. What I lost in turn 1 shooting, I aim to make up in turn 2 punchface. The rhino putters up on the right flank and the boys pop the sunroof to stick their guns out. But we’ll get to that, I’m about to unleash an unholy amount of pain on some blood angels cowering behind a barricade.
    The heldrake and the rhino unload a buffet of templates into the bunched up assault squad. A combination of AP3 flamer hits, a havoc launcher, and some melta shots evaporates the 10 man assault squad into a sanguinary priest and a powerfist sergeant and 1 or 2 friends sitting there wondering what happened.
    On the left side of the table, my terminators fire combimeltas into the side of the vindicator, and knock out the demolisher cannon. Threat neutralized. Things are looking pretty awful for the handful of blood angels on the table.
    My 20 babysitters and biosorc continue to sit behind the aegis line and lift weights, waiting to pounce on the relic in case the plan goes south. So far though, everything is coming up roses for the Sons of Fulgrim. We are prettier than you, Sanguinius. So much prettier.
    In the assault phase, things start to get messy.
    The right wing maulerfiend charges the vindicator, and promptly lands all its hits and destroys it- It didn’t move last turn. It barely skipped a beat as it made an 8” charge handily with its fleet reroll. If anyone tells you fleet isn’t that good anymore, they’re wrong.
    The sole remaining right wing spawn charges the sanguinary priest and assault squad remnant. I don’t expect it to kill all of them, but I want that unit tied up on his turn so he can’t make use of that power fist. He kills the remaining normal assault marines and not much else happens, but the spawn is fearless so no one is going anywhere.
    The left wing spawn and maulerfiend charge the wounded vindicator. The maulerfiend fails its charge (first time I’ve ever seen that.) but the spawn are in, roll up a bajillion attacks, and promptly smack all the remaining hullpoints off the rear armor of the vindicator and then consolidate six inches, effectively leapfrogging 14” up the table. Both vindicators are toast, one of his troops is trashed, and the only healthy looking assault squad is surrounded by terminators, spawn, and maulerfiends within charge distance on their next turns. Somebody needs to make some hot reserve rolls.

BOTTOM OF ROUND 2, BLOOD ANGELS
    It looks like Sanguinius is gonna need some serious heat to get back in this game. Specifically, about 8 hundred points worth of heat that has been sitting in reserves all morning.
    He goes to make his rolls, and bricks it. The stormraven comes in, but the terminators stay home. I am reminded of how much I love my ADL with comm relay. To be perfectly honest, the game is over with that roll. The rest of the show is just Fulgrim’s boys pounding coffin nails.
    The stormraven swoops in from the left and multimeltas terminators, killing one of them. He then dumps bullets on them, but fails to get rends with his assault cannon, and my boys laugh it off. He POTMS a blood missile into my leftwing maulerfiend, immobilizing it and making it useless. I don’t complain though, because he had done his job- Scare the crap out of him.
    Combat continues with the lockup spawn, who finally gets punched to death by the sergeant but I don’t mind, he did his job- Keeping that fist from doing anything on the opponent’s turn. I should remind everyone that MoS makes that spawn I4, so he is batting at the same time as the sanguinary priest that needs 5s to wound him. Its no mark of nurgle, but it sure ain’t bad.
    Things get fuzzy with the other assault squad, I honestly forgot what he did with them, I remember it not working out so hot. I think he charged my terminators (charge or be charged) and things went badly. My unit champion answered the challenge so that the chaos lord could go psycho with his black mace. My terminator bricked his rolls (even with preferred enemy!) failed to kill the fist sergeant, and then bricked his invulnerable save and died. Well played, power fist sergeant. Well played. The rest of the angels did not fare better- They got chopped up by power axes and lost by a large margin, killing most of the squad. They failed their morale check, but were saved from being swept by ATSKNF.
   

TOP OF ROUND 3, CHAOS
    All my stuff is on the table and I’m in good shape. The only thing we’re worried about now is that giant brick of terminators showing up, and even then, things still look grim for the blood angels.
    The heldrake flies off the table, I don’t need him currently, and he doesn’t have a good approach angle on any targets.
    The biosorc and his 20 best friends talk about their feelings.
    The maulerfiend that killed the vindicator last turn scoots 12” over to that remainder assault squad that the spawn was tying up, and so do the 2 spawn. Shooting is of course, largely irrelevant, and the pair of spawn and maulerfiend pounce on the wounded assault squad- They mop them up, but not before the sergeant manages to immobilize the maulerfiend. Whatever, he’s earned a break. He’s running out of stuff to kill anyways. The 2 spawn consolidate back down the hill to get into another fight.
    Over with the doomed assault squad, who are locked up with my chaos lord and a pile of AP2 terminators, things get sorted out rather quickly. The chaos lord is forced to challenge the fist sergeant, and promptly beats him into the ground like a railroad spike after rolling up 5 bonus attacks on his black mace. For his boon roll, he gets ETERNAL WARRIOR. I am no longer worried about that force weapon or those hammernators that are destined to show up next turn. The terminators mop up the remaining marines, and take a smoke break.
    My rhino full of marines parks near the relic.
    Did I mention this mission was relic?

BOTTOM OF ROUND 3, BLOOD ANGELS
    Its getting rough in the blood angel corner. Do those terminators finally show up? Yes they do!
    He drops his fat unit of terminators right next to mine, and they do not scatter- Lucky for him, a unit with that many 40mm bases is bound to get sad if they clip anything on a deviation roll.
    The stormraven flies forward, blows up my rhino, and my boys pile out, using their emergency disembark to crawl into the ruin and that much closer to the relic. None of them are hurt by the rhino popping.
    The terminators shrug at each other, as naturally he can’t do anything on his deep strike turn.
    The drop pod marines scoot up the hill to say hello to my tea party of 20 traitors, if they’re going to accomplish nothing, they might as well trade some bolter shots doing it. They call up to say hello, but the results of the dice rolling are no consequence.
    All in all, nothing really happens. My opponent is out of steam and his deathstar is a turn too late.

TOP OF ROUND 4, CHAOS
    My 2 remaining spawn move into charging position on the terminators, and my newly immortal chaos lord turns to his buddies and says, “yea, I got this.”
    My giant squad of marines shifts over to the right, and the biosorc casually walks over. They trade a handful of bolter rounds with the drop pod squad, and the sorcerer skallywags half the squad off the table, puts on his cool guy glasses, and gives zero fucks.
    My heldrake returns, goes right up the terminators’ asses, and flamers the crowd of them, but they pass armor saves. Too much to hope for.
    My terminators open up with rapidfire combi plasma to thin out their foes, but a funny thing happens- I roll 2s! I would have happily taken 1s due to my warlord’s preferred enemy reroll, but I hit 3 2s, and only half of my plasma landed, and was then ignored by storm shield saves. Oh well, dice happens, and I’ve been punching him around the table all game. I can afford to brick few rolls.
    My 10 man marine squad hops onto the relic, points their melta guns up, and goes for the miracle shot on the stormraven. Nothing happens. No big deal, didn’t expect a miracle there anyways. Oh hey, we’ve got the objective though. remember the objective?
    Things are winding down now, and the game is largely over. I seal the deal by charging his terminators with my terminators, and my spawn join in as well.
    Normally, I’m a big believer in the idea of a bully unit. My best guys should never fight your best guys- I’d rather pick on your weaker stuff. But his most elite troops were the only thing he had left, and all I had to do at this point was lock up his only models on the table to win. I had first blood and the relic.
    In combat, my chaos lord issued the challenge and was answered by the librarian, who had a force staff and a storm shield. My lord naturally swung with the black mace at initiative 6, hoping to end the fight before it started. He got a wound in on the librarian, but the libby passed his toughness test and stayed in the fight. Didn’t matter though, he had no AP2 and even if he did land a wound with his force weapon, I’m immune to Instant Death. This was the challenge that fundamentally ended the game- We both had fearless models due to my chaos lord and his terminator reclusiarch, but I had forced him into a pointless challenge that would last forever, and locked up the unit until the game ended. My chaos lord also had a free power axe that he got with his terminator armor in case I wanted to actually kill the libby, but I opted to stick with the Black Mace, as it was more fun, and I accomplished more by NOT KILLING his models and being stuck in a challenge than I did fighting hammernators who could actually hurt me.
    Blows were traded in the combat and both sides suffered losses, but to little effect. The black mace went off and killed a model from my wound on the librarian, but neither side was going anywhere. I had effectively stalled his deathstar, and it would be the last hammerstroke in what was to be a game of pounding coffin nails.

BOTTOM OF ROUND 4, BLOOD ANGELS
    The storm raven hooked a hard right and came at my 20 marine brick, unloading everything it had and evaporating 4 of them, but it was too little, too late. The drop pod marines rapid fired their bolters, and due to positioning, my sorcerer actually took a wound. However, again, this would be irrelevant.
    In the deathstar combat, my chaos lord and the librarian failed to hurt each other with their duelling 2+ armor saves, just as planned. The reclusiarch and a lightning claw terminator finished up the spawn, and hammernators and axe/fist nators fought each other to a standstill. The result would not matter, the whole bajillion point unit was locked up in a pointless fight while my chaos marines sat on the relic.

CONCLUSION
    At this point, the store was getting ready to close as it was sunday, but the game was effectively over on turn 3. Turn 5 would have seen me skalathraxing the last of the drop pod marines off the table or drowning them in bolter fire, the stormraven was in no position to threaten anything, my chaos lord could fight the terminators indefinitely. (That unit had a libby, a reclusiarch, a sergeant, and a sang priest in it, and only the sergeant had AP2. I could have held that unit in combat until turn 36!) I had first blood and the main objective, He had linebreaker when we stopped, but naturally he would have lost it to my giant brick of marines ventilating his if we continued to play. He had hoped that his terminators would mop up mine and that he could continue onto the relic and take it from my traitor marines, but that would be mathematically impossible as my chaos lord would continue to just lock his characters into pointless personal combats.

WHAT WENT WRONG?
    Naturally, my opponent was ill prepared and made a bunch of mistakes. The first of which was investing in that overblown deathstar. Its something that everyone must learn to appreciate- It only takes one terminator to stall an entire unit with a character that doesn’t have AP 2 solutions. Terminators are back in 6th edition in a big way thanks to the changes to power weapons, and guys like Mephiston and Draigo, who were formerly powerhouses, can get stuck in a fight all day against a bad opponent. His investment into such an expensive unit was a major gamble that he lost- Especially considering that he didn’t use any of the options he had to make sure it arrived on time. He could have put the librarian on the table to use his divination cherrypicking, or invested in an ADL comm station like I did.

    He also failed to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of my list. My hard-punching purple rain caught him off guard, but if he handled it correctly, he could have stayed in the game. His big squads of assault marines could have tarpitted my maulerfiends indefinitely, and eventually killed them with krak grenades, but he hesitated, and bunched up his men behind a barricade where my heldrake made an easy meal of them, and this operational freedom allowed one of my maulerfiends to harvest his vindicator. He got scared of my aggression, and forgot that the safest place for a marine, especially against the tons of anti-meq that chaos can bring, is usually in combat.

    The game was largely about handicaps after that. My 20 marines and sorcerer sat at home and didn’t do much, but they never had too. They weren’t useless, however. At any time they could have hopped over the picket line and thrown their bodies at the relic if I needed them to, but it was never required.

    My opponent on the other hand, spent the whole game fighting with both hands tied behind his back. He had somewhere in the range of ~600 points in terminators and characters balled up in one unit that not only showed up late, but got tarpitted when they did. During my turn 1 rush, before either side had reserves in, I had 632 points worth of models waiting in reserve. He had about 800. During turn 2 when my reserves came in, I pulled ahead with all 2000 of my army on the table, while he still had his ~600 point deathstar on the bench. The game went from a 200 point advantage in my favor on turn 1, to a 600 point advantage in my favor on turn 2.
    What did I take away from that? Well, if you’re going to use reserves, you had better buy the strategic assets that allow you to control them. Another problem that his fattynators caused him was that he lacked the freedom to deep strike his melta-toting assault marines for lack of having models on the table, and lost the opportunity to use one of his army’s best perks, Descent of Angels. Aggressive Descent and proper handling of my assault units could have given him a completely different game, but because he had 800 points sitting in reserve, he needed boots on the ground.
    I also want to point out the beauty and grace of the assault based army- While its true that I would have had a harder time against a list that wasn’t so top heavy, what would have been the same regardless was that most of the game was fought on my opponent’s side of the table. My fast assault units had turn 2 charges, and I had cramped my opponent’s maneuver space, which allowed my rear line units to lay down picnic blankets and enjoy the afternoon sunshine. I could have chopped down my 20 marine unit into more tactically flexible units, my army did suffer from a lot of weight in the troop department that could have theoretically been trimmed down and put into other assets that would have allowed me to continue tipping over my off-balance foe, but at this point, that’s just hindsight and minor griping- The fact of the matter is, he was so understaffed through the crucial early turns of the game that even if I was able to mobilize my assets better to take advantage of his weakness, there wouldn’t have been anything else for them to kill. Did I do anything else wrong? Probably. But my army? Hardly. The Sons of Chemos are poetry in motion. Our princely primarch expects nothing less than perfection.