Sunday 20 June 2010

Spearhead Vs Bloodangels

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Game Rules: Spearhead, Get into the oppositions deployment area.
Points: 2000
Opposition: Blood Angels
                        Dante
                        Tycho (not death company)
                        Standard Chaplain
                        2 squads of sanguinary guard
                        1 tactical squad
                        Baal Predator
                        Vindicator
                        Shadowsword super heavy battle tank

Note: The tables in my local GW are limited to 4’ x 4’ in size as opposed to the 6ft tables recommended for spearhead, this meant that the blood angel player would be in combat with me a turn earlier then would normally be the case for spearhead. It also meant that the long range of my broadsides and hammerheads would be redundant.

The blood angel player won the roll for deployment and elected to deploy his entire army on the table with the exception of the baal predator which would be outflanking.

I kept my battlesuits in reserve with the intention of deepstriking behind the blood angels advance. Note, during deployment I forgot that the shadowswords strength D weapon would make the hammerheads disruption pods as useful as a sheet of wet tissue paper.




Deployment diagram






Turn 1:
Before the start of the turn I rolled for the damage to his shadowsword  and rolled a 6 followed by a 3, losing a structure point my opponent made his primary weapon save for his volcano cannon though. The main blood angels  force raced forwards forgoing their shooting and running instead. The shadowsword opened up with its volcano cannon taking out one of the hammerheads, as expected, the heavy bolters on the side taking out two pathfinders.
Two squads of firewarriors embarked the devilfish, and moved a few inches to the side. The broadsides opened up on the shadowsword failing to penetrate its armour. The remaining hammerhead shook the vindicator preventing it from shooting next turn and the remaining squad of firewarriors took out a solitary sanguinary guard from the squad on the right flank.

Turn 2:
The blood angels continued to move forward as fast as possible, Dantes squad took out all but one of the remaining pathfinders causing the survivor to flee towards the table edge as fast as possible for the tau. The shadowsword attempted to hit the second hammerhead but scattered off the board. the squad of sanguinary guard on the right flank blew the burst cannon off the devilfish in front of them


BA Turn 2

The XV9 battlesuits dropped in behind the shadowsword destroying it with their fusion blasters losing one of their escorting drones. the hammer head missed the vindicator. The battlesuits turned their railguns and plasma rifles on dante and his squad taking out three of the sanguinary guard despite their cover. The devilfish deposited their firewarrior cargo within 12" of the other sanguinary guard squad, combining their fire with the devilfish and crisis suits missile pods to take out the guard.
Tau Turn 2
Turn 3:
The Baal predator turned up on the left flank blasting away at th broadsides bringing down one of the shield drones. Dante and friends charged the broadsides wiping them out to a man (Tau?). Tycho separated out from the tactical squad bringing the nearest devilfish down with his meltagun. The vindicator shook the remaining hammerhead.

BA Turn 3
The battlesuit commander and escorts turned up firing up the vindicator, blowing the demolisher cannon off it and shaking it. the other crisis suits killed Tycho. The squad of firewarriors next to the remaining devilfish embarked and started making a bee line for the enemies deployment area while one of the other firewarriors and drones from the devilfish fired on the tactical marines killing 3 of them. The firewarriors at the back killed to of Dantes guard.

Turns four and five:
Over the next two turns Dante managed to kill the firewarriors in combat, though it took him two rounds He followed up by taking out the crisis suits on the right flank. The Shas'O and Suits finally took out the vindicator while the predator survived about 6 penetrating hits (curse my tendency to roll ones on the penetrating hits table). meanwhile my devilfish (tank=scoring unit) and firewarriors moved to become scoring units in the enemies deployment area. The remaining firewarriors and XV9 battlesuits whittled the tactical squad down to one man and killed the chaplain.

Conclusion: I think I performed quite well in this battle. Had I remembered the D weapon rules at the start of the battle then I would have deployed the hammerheads on the right flank and moved them around to fire at the shadowsword, or used the sky drop style spearhead.