Today I played a battle against my fellow Epic enthusiast Mikkel!.

I played Black Legion Chaos Space Marines and Mikkel used Index Astartes Space Marines.

I used a lot of time going through the list and making what I hoped would be the perfect army… I then took the bus to the gaming hall… without the armylist!!!

So I had to make one up on the fly!Anyways I opted for a armoured comp of 4 lands and 1 pred. They were placed alongside a banelord titan and a set of two Death Wheels.
The rest of the army was a mechanized retinue, a bikes retinue, a retinue with 3 dreads, 3 doomfires, 6 raptors, 2 x forlorn hope of slaaneshi marines..First of all – Death Wheels… OH MY GOD those are effective!

It’s almost insane what you can make them do for the mere value of 550!!!!
They completely took the one flank on their own killing 4 landraiders and 4 whirlwinds.. taking the blitz obj. in no time!

My opponent didn’t adress any further formations in their way, which I understand as the games focal point switched to the centre of the board. Here the banelord and a warlord titan were having a firefeast.

Unfortunantly my severely limited banelord never made it to CC as it was shot to pieces solely by the warlord before it got a chance. I had placed my armoured company along side the warlord as I knew they’d come in handy if a fire fight emerged giving supporting fire. (there weren’t any other formations around).

But as I saw the banelord coming down in flames I decided to trash the plan for the AC and advanced them towards the other flank where a devastator det. in landraiders were making a mockery of my forlorn hope garisoned at one of my objectives. Unfortunently I failed to notice the presence of a supreme commander and a assault detachment which quite quickly swept down from a nearby ruin and alongside the devastor det. ruined my AC without taking a single casualty it self… devastating!!!

My two retinues on the other hand were quick to seize the initiative and rush forwards towards one of the enemy’s objectives that I had decided before battle commended that they should concentrate on. (as advised by jaldon I always make plans for each formation before game-start.)

As mentioned earlier my objectives were guarded only by forlorn hopes. I’m aggressive so I normally always have all of my units and the enemy’s units on the ENEMY’s side of the table, meaning that I don’t need to worry about my own objs. Unfortunantly I made a real by the book mistake: I had forgotten all about the enemy using terminators during my setup. Teleporting down from space the terminators quickly turned my noisemarines into wimpering circus monkeys fleeing faster than teleport-speed!

I lost the one objective..He tried hard to push for the second obj using the devastators mentioned earlier. They advanced and fired at my bikes who were at my blitz obj. They hit nothing.

Meanwhile my raptors flew over and killed the aforementioned assault detachment avenging my armoured company! After this they proceded towards an enemy assault bike formation, breaking in taking two casualty itself. Unfortunently two (two killed by doomfires) vindicators that had been banging at my forlorn hope at my last objective, cut through to the raptors and killed two, breaking them!

During the whole game my doomfires had been bombing formations to place BM’s after which an engage action could be commenced by some other formation. A deadly combo to say the least. But during turn 3 it became clear that the game would end in a draw. The enemy had sneaked a tactical formation (with 4 stands left and 3 dead rhinos) over on my half of the table taking away my “they shall not pass” goal.

The only thing that could prevent a draw was that my doomfires, which were the only ones able to reach, made the tactical detachment break… I rolled for the barrage weapons, but lacking the rhinoes as targets I wasn’t really able to make enough damage to break them… I killed 1 stand of marines, giving them 3 BM’s – which meant exactly squat! (by the way we have a house rule saying that the majority of the formation must be on opponents side of table in order to negate “they shall not pass” in this case the whole formation was on my side.. but I just thought I’d mention.)

The doomfire pilots must have felt a lot of pressure.. so I guess it was too much for them.. anyways the game ended in a draw of course, with me having Take and Hold, Blitzkrieg and the enemy having Break Their Spirit.

Great game – cool opponent!

In retrospect I think that the banelord is really not worth it’s points!!! For 850 pt I’d rather have 5 Death Wheels and 25 pts for a sacrifice!!!! I think they might be slightly underpriced. How come the BL has worse firefight than Warlord? I understand that we don’t want them to be identical, but I think the one could be CC and the other FF… seems strange that WL is better or equal at both.