Warpcon Game 3 – Blood Angels

Dawn of War deployment

Primary Objective: Annihilation
Secondary Objective: Capture and Control

Game 3 was against Blood Angels, the most beautiful looking Blood Angles I have ever seen, you can see a picture here: 

The army list was as follows

Stormraven

Furioso Dreadnaught

Assault Terminators 2 with TH/SS

Death Company in Rhino

Marines in Razorback

Marines in Razorback

Predator

Librarian

Sanguinary Guard with Infernus pistols

Honourguard with Melta Guns

We rolled off to deploy and I ended up with first turn, I deployed up front with a gunline arrayed, ready to open fire on any Marines that showed up. Marbo and Banewolf are in reserve. No marines were deployed, opting for them to roll on turn 1, with a squad of Assault marines and a Squad of Sanguinary Guard in reserve for deep striking.

Imperial Guard Turn 1: The rest of my force rolls and flies onto the board, I tried to get my Manticores hidden away and give everything else a god field of fire, with nothing to shoot at the turn ends.

Turn 1 arrival.

Blood Angels Turn 1: The army rolls on with a few tanks on my left flank. The Stormraven heads right up the middle. A predator manages to see a Vendetta and smashes it out of the sky due to it going flat out.

Imperial Guard Turn 2: The Chimeras move up and get into position. Everything that can fire does so, managing to take out the Stormraven forcing the Terminators with Librarian and dreadnought to get out and walk. Not much else happens in terms of shooting.

Blood Angels Turn 2: The Death Company move up towards my infantry, the terminators and Dreadnaught stomp forward towards my centre line. More shooting whittles down some of my troops and pops a Chimera as well as a Hydra.

Imperial Guard Turn 3: Marbo appears this turn, I deploy him overlooking the Terminators. Marbo loads up his Demo charge and throws it, at himself... He makes his cover save, thankfully. The rest of the army sits pretty still and tries to fire. This fails to make an impact, a fair few armour and FNP saves are made, a couple of the Terminators go down from some Melta fire

Blood Angels Turn 3: The deep striking reserves arrive behind my Manticores and have lots of Juicy targets. The dreadnaught and Terminators move up, as do the Death Company. The Sang guard and marines take out a couple of tanks. The Dreadnaught does the same, the terminators shoot at some of the infantry as they advance. The Death Company sweep in and destroy the Autocannon team.

Imperial Guard Turn 4: The Banewolf arrives and moves up to toast the Sanguinary Guard. Marbo moves towards the Terminators with the intention of throwing his life away, everyone else opts for shooting. The Banewolf shoots his Chem cannon at the Sang Guard, 5 dead marines... turns out no, 2+ save, I just wasted my shots there without realising, such a bad mistake, I’m still beating myself up about this. The rest of the shooting manages to take out a few of the Assault Marines but with FNP this is proving to be a hard task. Marbo charges, fights, and kills the Librarian then gets crushed by the Terminators.

Blood Angels Turn 4: The army runs rampant throughout my lines killing all sorts of things, it’s really not looking good for me, by this time I had really given up and I can’t really remember what went on after this turn, needleless to say it was a serious defeat and in the end I was tabled.

End Result: Loss

This was the last game of the day, and as Kill points, by far my favourite mission. Because of some early mistakes and underestimating the power of the Blood Angels I spread myself out and left my rear exposed to Deepstrike, I should have just made a castle, wrapped my tanks in troops and shot as much as I could. I was tired after 2 games and felt a bit burnt out, just wish I’d thought about it more and played better but it was a learning experience.