Thursday, April 29, 2010

Blood Angel Devastation-and not in the good way . . .

I got another game in last week sometime, can’t even remember what day. I took my same list and went up against a Chaos Marines army. I will spare the unimportant details, and try again to get to the important parts of the game. It was an ugly game for me; I was totally tabled. I hate being tabled. It has never happened to me before, and it sure hurts me inside to see it happen.

Anyways, on with the show. The Chaos list looked like this:

Demon Price, Wings and Warptime
1x Obliterator
3x Squads of Chaos Marines w/ 2x plasma guns, plasma pistol and PF
1x squad of Chaos marines w/ 2x melta and power weapon
1x squad of plague marines w/ 2x melta
2 havoc squads, one with 2x lascannons and 1 missile launcher. Other one had 2x heavy bolters and 1x auto cannon.
1x Chaos Dread with TL-las and missile launcher.

Game is 1750 points, Annihilation with Dawn of War deployment.

I won the die roll and gave him first turn, and reserved everything. He set up his army across the middle 2/3rds of the board. It wasn’t the best deployment, but it was obviously good enough. He moved around a bit first and second turns, not able to do anything.

My second turn I start to drop things in on him, and just like I have done previously, I split up my units as I drop them, meaning no support for each other. I really don’t understand why I can’t do a decent drop. I just lose focus and start putting squads all over the place and right in the lines of fire, it is really quite stupid of me, and it costs me the game. Secondly and less important, I can’t get even one squad of Vanguard in. This really cripples my army I think. Surviving to turn 2 on the board is difficult to do if his whole army can shoot me to pieces. Had I been able to get in one squad, then the two squads with plasma that I forced out of rhinos with shooting would not have been shooting me with 10 plasma shots. I could have multi-charged them and taken both squads out of the equation, and I would have really fared much better in the long run. But let me reiterate that I lost because of my crappy choice of landing sites.

I landed 2 naked 5-man squads and another 5-man squad with meltas and a priest attached behind them right in front of the majority of his army. It was utter madness is all there is to it, lol. They were subsequently eradicated with concentrated fire from his army. I have got to remember that 10 pistol shots will really get little done and that my jump marines have much more mobility then I give them credit for.

I got slaughtered turn 3. Completely shot to pieces. And I deserved it for my stupid deployment. Most everything was killed except for one Librarian I think. Next round both my Vanguard squads come in and they smash face. I kill the two CSM squads that were toting plasma, and my Libby hopped over and smashed the Chaos dread in the face with some Str 10 attacks. That round of combat was satisfying at least. At this point the kill point total was about 8-5, with me losing.
The next round his Prince comes over to mop up my Vanguard, but their Storm Shields hold out vs. the monster, but I still lose a few models of course. My Libby was hiding so he couldn’t be shot.

Turn 5 I take my Libby to the havocs and he fails to kill enough of them to make any difference. The prince finishes up my Vanguard. Turn 6 he torrents my Libby down in the ruins and game over.

That was a brutal wake-up call for me. Even more so than the last beating I took at the hands of the Space Wolves. It makes me want to drop the army in favor of a more user-friendly mech army. This army takes some finesse to run right, and I don’t know if I have the ability to make it work well all the time. Mech armies are much easier to run, and I tend to do much better with them.

What are your thoughts out there? Do I stick with my Descent of Angels Army, or do I start using a different list? Here are the options so far: Razorback spam army with some Predators, Assault Terminator based army with Land raiders, Assault army with RAS squads and Dreads(meched up or coming out of proxied Storm Ravens), or a Death Company themed army?

Please give me your thoughts and comments. And if you have a good army list idea you want to see me try out, then post it up. I will give just about anything a whirl. Just put it at 1750-2000 points, and I will play each suggested list that is put up here, at least once. Of course I am limited by models, but I am not afraid to proxy, or counts as. Just no blatantly crappy lists is all I ask.

So here is your chance to put up a somewhat gimmicky army and see how it performs in the hands of a not so skilled general! So let me have it all of you out there, I want to see some lists put up.

6 comments:

  1. I've been posting on my difficulty in building a workable Blood Angels list. I've got a solution in the works that's pretty cool - I'll have it up in a week or so.

    I'm at the point though, where I think the Blood Angels are going to be Hybrid or mostly Mech with some supporting Jump Pack squads.

    Brent

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  2. I've been following your progress as best I can brent, throwing in ideas here and there, and I'm anxious to see your final prodect.

    Anyways, I have thought about that idea myself. Put in some good mech elements, but then some suicide melta squads dropping down to really disrupt things. But at 250 or so for the whole squad, then combat squadding, thats 125 for about 3 melta shots, that probably won't survive too long after they blow their load. You will have a small combat squad left over for objective grabbing, but they wont last much either to a concentrated effort.

    It's gonna take some work for me, I see that now.

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  3. Don't feel too bad mate, my BAs had a more embarrassing defeat. Think how it feels getting tabled by Tau. :O

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  4. I hear you, the Tau army is one I would really feel afraid of with this army. All of their high-powered shooting will knock you off the board in a hurry if you can't get into assault immediately.

    With effective kroot screens and pirahnas in your way, they would kick the teeth out of my army before I could come to grips with them.

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  5. Heh, I think that combat-squadded Vanguard squads would be your 'trump card' against Tau. The ability to remove a broadside team and crisis suit team hiding behind cover in one turn is pretty huge :)

    Have you considered a FNP/FC-spam list? I know I was able to use (an unoptimized) one pretty effectively against an Imperial Guard Mech army, because he simply couldn't get through my saves. 50-60 marines w/ FNP is tough for just about anyone to get rid of quickly. Lots of anti-horde with their combat abilities, and lots of fast tank-popping with melta everywhere.

    Figured I'd throw it out there for you, since you seem unhappy with your current list. I think it has potential, anyways. It seems like I mentioned it (in more depth) on my own blog somewhere, if you feel the burning urge to dig it up.

    By the way, sorry you got tabled- I've been there myself, and to a guy I've never lost to except in that one game, lol.

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  6. I kind of tried that I think with my DoA list. The point was to drop in and FC everyone w/ FNP. I had 4 priests total in the list, and usually had good coverage.

    It was the deepstriking deployment that was getting me though. Maybe a rhino rush would be a better option for me. A bit more straightforward to use, aka more difficult for me to screw up.

    And I'll go dredge up your list Xaereth, I'd like any ideas I can get, lol

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