RTT Report: Blood Angels w/ Dark Angels Allies Take On 90 Minute Rounds!

A few Saturdays ago I played in a ‘silly’ RTT at Village Games in Anoka, Minnesota. Why was the even silly? First, being Super Bowl Sunday, only five of us showed up. Second, we found out a few days before the event each round would only be an hour and a half despite the points limit being 1850. Third, though we didn't know this ahead of time, the missions, while from the rulebook, were hilariously described, with us all laughing together as we tried figuring out what we needed to do. With this in mind those of us considering going made a “gentleman’s agreement” to not only bring an army that could play five turns in that amount of time, but also to not bring any daemons. It is worth noting that every game did go at least five turns.

Everyone suspected that I would dust off the old Nidzilla to fill the ‘low model count roll’, but I have been aching to have a reason to bring out my unfinished blood angels, anchored by three land raiders. I spent a while playing with the numbers since I have not used my Angels since the end of 5^th edition, and made a silly list that looked like fun, and hopefully could show that assault angels – of all varieties – could be effective. I introduce…THE ANGELS OF DEATH!

Blood Angels

Mephiston

Chaplain (Meltabombs)

Sanguinary Priest

5 Terminators (5 TH+SS)

~Land Raider Redeemer (Multi-Melta)

5 Assault Marines

~ Land Raider Godhammer

10 Death Company

~Land Raider Redeemer (Multi-Melta)

Dark Angels

Librarian

5 Scouts (Camo Cloaks)

5 Tactical Marines

The essence of the list is three hard hitting assault units in durable vehicles which are also offensively potent. Mephiston, who should be improved by biomancy, deploys with the priest behind the empty Godhammer (as the ASM are in reserve with the other troops). On my first turn they split up, with Mephiston rocking the Godhammer, and the priest joining the terminators and divination librarian in a redeemer. The chaplain naturally rides with the death company. Lets break it down…Mephiston before biomancy will have 6 S6 AP3 attacks on the charge that have the force ability, the Terminators are S9 on the charge and should be durable with a 2+/3++ and FNP, and the death company who will have 55 WS5 S5 attacks on the charge that reroll all to hits and to wound on the charge. The list hits hard, plus the land raiders, sporting either two twin-linked lascannons or two S6 AP3 flamers with assault cannons, are nothing to forget about. The natural weak spot is the scoring units, which are only five marines strong in each. This hopefully can be mitigated by threat vectors and reserves.

I really like the list which has no spam (minus one dedicated transport) and lots of unique was of killing. But how did I do? Check it out after the jump!

Up first I was against Jorell, with mech tau. Not only was he counter meta, but he was doing it with models I sold him!

Shas’o (Plasma/Missile)
2 Crisis Suits (Plasma/Missile)
2 Crisis Suits (Plasma/Missile)
2 Crisis Suits (Plasma/Missile)
6 Fire Warriors (Devilfish)
6 Fire Warriors (Devilfish)
6 Fire Warriors (Devilfish)
6 Fire Warriors (Devilfish)
6 Fire Warriors (Devilfish)
6 Fire Warriors (Devilfish)
Pirhanna (Fusion Blaster)
Pirhanna (Fusion Blaster)
Hammerhead (Railgun)
Hammerhead (Railgun)
Hammerhead (Railgun) 

Each mission had Purge the Alien, Emperor's Will, and Crusade all weighted differently. I rolled hemorrhage and smite on Mephiston and prescience on the libby and I was going first. The table had zero area terrain, but lots of pillars of rock.

I moved forward, just out of the pirhanna's danger zone. All my shots bounced off his awesome Tau cover saves. My turn two all the shots bounce off again, but I disembark all my aggressive squads and they each kill a vehicle. Only the scouts come on for me, but Jorell gets in by deep strike his HQ and two suit squads. They all fire at Mephiston who only takes one wound. On my turn I get the assault marines on and my three aggresive units kill three of Jorell's. The number of attacks put out by the death company is unreal, and the terminators with S9 and prescience is hilariously effective. The only problem is they are now on his side of the table, and he is moving his vehicles toward the objectives on my table side! Egads!

This continues with my assault units shredding his army, but he has so many units that with the short game time I won't be able to kill them all. On turn five all he has is two devilfish, two fire warrior squads, and a falling back unit of suits. All I have lost is Mephiston (who took a ton of fire to finally go down), my scouts from shooting, one redeemer, and my assault marines who he tank shocked off the board. Both the terminators and the DC have not taken a wound yet. I move my units so as to cause a tie on Emperor's Will as I am winning purge the alien and have more bonus points. All I need is for one model in my tactical squad to survive contesting an objective. Jorell then tank shocks my tactical squad and they run off the board! We shake hands there as we know it is over.

He wins 8-4, clearly out playing me through his focus on the mission. I think the game would have been much different if the number of objectives was odd, rather than four. this would have provided us a dominant strategy and would have prevented him from being able to simply switch which side of the board he was defending. Another turn would also had helped as I not only could have gotten the terminators into combat with at least one fire warrior squad, but I also would have been able to shoot with the remaining two land raiders.

In round two I am paired against Hulksmash. Despite playing in at least a dozen events together, we have never faced off before. He was playing his converted Iron Warriors with Imperial Guard allies which looked something like;

Chaos Lord (Juggernaut/Axe of Blind Fury/Khorne)
Sorcerer (Terminator Armor/Lvl 3/Burning Brand)

5 Chaos Space Marines (2 Plasma/Rhino)
10 Cultists
10 Cultists  
5 Spawn
Heldrake
Heldrake

5 Havocs (4 Autocannon)
5 Havocs (4 Autocannon)
Commissar (Or a CCS?)
10 Vets (Chimera/3 Plasmagun)
10 Vets (Chimera/3 Melta?)2 Hellhounds

Mephiston rolls up smite and warp speed. I am getting sad about the biomancy table as my dreams of iron arm and endurance dance away. Brad is going first, which is fine as it should move some units into my charge ranges. I put my death company on the right flank as they have enough attacks to take down the spawn. Mepheston is hanging out nearby, hopefully to challenge the Juggerlord.Terminators are in the center, and I leave the ASM in their ride on the left.

Brad does in fact move the lord and spawn forward, but what I didn't expect was his hellhounds to move and flat out up and completely block the terminator redeemer from being able to move up...I guess he took my jokes about ramming seriously. That or he was treating this as the silly nonsense game it was destined to be!

I hopped out the death company and moved Mephiston toward the spawn unit as well. The DC have enough attacks to off the spawn, but I need someone who can stop the lord before he eats up all my guys with his ridiculous attack load, and I figure a S6 force weapon would be a good start. The mistake comes with me keeping the priest with Mephison, forgetting to move him into the terminators. The terminators disembarked as their raider backed up and melta'd one hellhound. They slapped the other around causing an explosion, but are now sitting in the open without FNP. The death company did 30 wounds to the spawn, killing them all, and in a huge turn of events the juggernaut lord rolled a '1' on his daemonweapon during a challenge with my chaplain, resulting in me doing two wounds to him and him only doing one to me!

Hulksmash got one dragon in and its flame attack killed three terminators and the librarian! I couldn't pass a save, truly understanding the pain of people who played 2+ armor armies but couldn't roll for crap! The fact that I messed up with the priest placement really hurt here. He also mishapped his sorcerer in my backfield and I placed him by Mephiston.

His shooting finished off the terminators and in combat because of the two rerolls and some bad rolling by Hulksmash the chaplain survived combat with the Juggerlord, doing one wound.Not at all what I expected.

My land raiders do what they do, flaming whole squads off the table and popping his tanks. My scouts who walked on took one wound from the sorcerer and Mephiston finished the job.

Going into the last turn the heldrakes reign of terror has killed all of my infantry (except Mephiston and the ASM in the raider) leading to me only having one scoring unit, Hulksmash also only has one cultist unit on an objective which is screened by havocs. I know I can win, but I need precision.Carefully moving my two surviving land raiders forward I am able to flame and shoot the havocs and then get a 5" charge with the ASM to kill the cultists, consolidate on the objective, and take the game.

In the final round I was playing Matt, who won the Bugeater GT last summer with Orks. today he was playing a three land raider Dark Angels list with Grey Knight allies. I don't have a paper copy of his list, so this is rough;

Librarian (Lvl 3/Powerfield)
Command Squad (Banner of Bolter Death)
Too Many Deathwing Knights
10 Tactical Marines
5 Scouts
Land Raider Crusader (Melta)
Land Raider Crusader (Melta?)
Land Raider Crusader (Melta?)

Grandmaster (Terminator Armor/Hammer)
5 Strikes (Rhino)

Out table was marred by a giant wall down the center of it. It had two land raider sized doors, and we declared the whole thing to be difficult. I choose to go second so I can play reactionary. We line up on the same side of the wall, prepared for a game of maneuvering and pre-measuring. He moves his army toward my left flank, and I realize I made a mistake by having the tank with the longest range on the inside edge of my formation. I rotate to the right, keeping my models just out side of his melta death zone.

We agree that simulating the Land Raider 500 race is pointless, and he commits to start shooting. With his first shot he explodes Mephiston's Godhammer with an assault cannon. That's no good. Come my turn I disembark the terminators and charge a land raider...only for it to survive with one hull point thanks too the powerfield. My shooting does nothing and things are looking dark.

Matt shoots and kills the full terminator squad dead. He brings the strikes from reserve onto an objective on the far side of the wall and deepstrikes the grandmaster in my backfield to screw with my reserves. Mephiston gets in the terminator land raider which then immobilizes itself on the other wrecked raider. My shooting does nothing again and it is looking about over.

Matt shoots and take some guns of my vehicles as well as immobilizing the death company. It is about over now so I get the death company out and they charge a land raider, exploding it with the one meltabomb. Way to be awesome chaplain. Matt gets the deathwing knights out but they fail their charge on the death company. I sent my death company off to chase his scouts (failing the charge) and send the chaplain off to charge another land raider...WHICH HE EXPLODES! 5pt meltabombs take out 500 points of tank. Boss. The game ends here with Matt winning big.

MVP: Chaplain. At 105 points this guy personally led a Tau genocide, challenged a Khorne Lord on a juggernaut and killed it, and blew up two land raiders by himself. I wish I was as cool as that guy.

Question: Can the Dark Angels librarian get in the Blood Angels land raider? No one asked about it, but I wonder because the rulebook clearly says this is a no no. My logic is that the he is a part of a blood angels unit, so it is ok (similar to how you can fortune Vect when he is in an Eldar unit).

A special message to all my Village Games RTTers...please don't rip the papers and could you keep it down, I can here you at the front of the store. Which of you is Max? Seriously? You get the bye.