Thursday 30 April 2009

Battle Report: Chaos Space Marines VS Black Templars

Played a 1500 point game last night at my local club. This week I was facing off against a Black Templar player who by all accounts was a punch in kind of player, as most people were saying he was going to kick my ass (I think I even said that as well). I'm not really that well versed in the Black Templar's list, but I knew a little about it.

My list was unchanged from last week, despite it's shortcomings. I'm taking Ron's advice from From The Warp, and I'm intending to play 4-5 games with the list before I change it around. Partly, I'm forced into this as all my new minis are still in boxes anyway.

My opponents list was roughly:
Captain with Jump Pack and Thunder Hammer
Emporer's Champion (he took a vow that gave the whole army +1S)
Chaplain Grimaldus
2 Initiate Squads of 10, meltaguns, one sarge had a power fist, one had a power weapon
1 Assault Sqaud of 5
20 (or so) Neophytes
2 Dreadnoughts (one with assault cannon and CCW, one with lascannon and missile launcher)
Vindicator


Mission was capture and control, with the pitched battle deployment. I lost the roll for setup and was forced to setup first and go first. The objectives were in diagonally opposite corners. I placed mine at the back corner of some area terrain.

Firstly, I remembered my lesson from last week: don't forget the mission. To win, I knew I'd have to hold my objective and at least contest his. I deployed 2 Plague Marine sqauds and the Defiler around my objective, and my Rhino mounted PM and Daemon Prince to move towards his objective. My Vindicator setup with a good fire lane across the board, and the Terminators held on the orbital space craft ready to deep strike where needed.

His setup was pretty much across the whole board. Facing my objective was Grimaldus and the Neophyte squads, a tactial squad and the lascannon dread. On the other flank was the captain, Champion, a tactial squad, assault squad and other dreadnought.

Generally speaking the game went OK. My Defiler did much better this game, using his battle cannon to good effect (before it got blown off), destroying a tactial squad in CC, then holding up the dreadnought, Grimaldus and the neophytes for 2 turns in CC. He only went down when the captain showed up and lamped him with the Thunderhammer. This meant that squad was then free to advance on my objective in turn 5.

My vindicator was able to put some serious hurt on the big group of Neophytes and tactial marines before being destroyed by the captain in turn 3. I used his ordnance to kill troops rather than shooting at his vindicator, as I learnt from facing a land raider in the last game that this is the way it can do much more damage rather than vehicle hunting.

My daemon prince was next to useless again. He lost two wounds to shooting from the Emporer's Champion and his tactial squad before being finished off by them in close combat. I suppose he held them up for a turn.

My plague marines went pretty well. Anthrax Squad lost the Rhino on turn 1 (going to make this cheaper, way to expensive in the current list) to the assault marines, then jumped out, shoot the assault guys up and then destroyed them in close combat. They were locked in CC with the captain and then got charged by a tactical squad and Emporer's Champion. They died. The other two PM squads just managed to hold onto my objective.

My terminators were a little better. They destroyed a dreadnought in close combat and then made a last ditch effort to contest the enemy objective. Unfortunatley, the Emporer's Champion showed up and spoilt the party. I should have DS'ed them further back, closer to his objective to get on it, in cover and contested it.

The game ended on turn 5 (luckily for me) and finished in a draw. If it had run to turn 6 it would have been game over, as the captain, Grimaldus and the Neophytes, along with the dreadnought were closing in on my objective.

Overall a fun game. The problem with my army is increasingly clear: there's no enough of it. I was easily outnumbered 2:1 in this game, so that's going to be even worse against IG or Orks for example. My marines can't put out enough damage to even the score up. I need to juggle the list, make squads cheaper and increase the model count.

2 comments:

jabberjabber said...

Sounds like a difficult game with being outnumbered so badly.

Of course, all elite armies such as Death Guard face this problem. See how your next few battles go before tinkering with the list :)

Tigerstyle said...

He also neglected to tell me (I'm assuming accidentally) that the vow he'd taken should have caused him to be at -1 I. Might have been a different battle.