Battle Report - Blood Angels vs. Salamanders

Hello boys and girls! It’s everyone’s favorite time here again. BATREP time!!!

Thought I’d start with something a little different, lol. As luck would have it, my wife let me sneak out again with my Blood Angels for a little game time at the LGS. I took the new list I just posted about and found some unsuspecting Salamander player to sink my vampire teeth into. He was a younger guy, but fun to play against. He had a decent looking army, and by decent I mean completely painted with no proxies or counts-as. I’m one of the worst offenders, so I look at a fully-painted army, suppress my jealousy, and tell them how cool it looks. I just really need to stop playing FF XIII and do some painting. Great game btw if anyone was curious.

So onto the game. I used my ChaplainHammer list posted earlier.
Salamander army was this:
Vulkan with obligate 5x TH/SS Termies in LR Crusader
2x Tactical squad w/ flamer and multi-melta w/ TL-heavy bolter Razorback
1x Tactical squad with flamer and multi-melta on foot
1x 5-man assault squad with flamer and plasma pistol + power weapon on the sarge.
2x multi-melta attack bikes
2x Dreadnought with multi-melta and storm bolter

Annihilation game with Spearhead deployment. 1750 points.

I won the roll off and chose to go first.

I put my Land Raiders centrally, a few inches off the center circle, and my 2 Razorbacks on the opposite side of a building next to my LR’s. They were deployed as far back as possible while still maintaining LOS on most of the other deployment zone. My attack bikes were put in reserve to try and do some backdoor melta late game.

My opponent set up just off the center circle with his own Land Raider, Razorbacks slightly behind and more leftward. His two Dreads were further back, one to each side of the LR. Neither Tac squad took advantage of the Razorbacks, which was bad, and they all deployed on foot a little behind the LR. That was also bad. He should have had everything way forward to take advantage of his mostly immobile multi-meltas. His bikes were behind the dreads ready to zoom around a large central building to flank my LR’s. His assault squad was deepstriking. Right at deployment I knew things were going to be easier for me. He was not aggressive enough with his deployment. I was afraid of all those TL-multi-meltas, and for good reason. I had 4/5 of my army tied up in LR’s and if those baskets were opened then all the eggs would come spilling out.

Turn 1
I had to get rid of his dreads; they posed the biggest threat to my LR’s. With the multi-melta and str 10 attacks, they had to go. So I moved my Razorbacks into position and fired away at them. I immobilized one of them, and stunned the second. Pretty good start. My LR’s stayed still for fear of all the melta on his side of the table. His side of the turn sees his bikes trying to round the building towards me, and everything that could advance did, although his LR stayed back for some reason. Neither of us wanted to commit just yet. No shooting from him, he was out of range.

Turn 2
I rolled for my bikes and they came on. Sweet! I had the perfect counter to his bikes. Things were looking good for me I thought. My Razors scooted away a bit to keep the lascannons firing without any kind of reprisal. My LR’s stood still again. My Razorbacks blew a HB off one razorback and that was it. Not so good this turn. Attack bikes get ready to fire and I roll snake eyes. What a joke. I just handed him an easy kill point. Things were not looking good here.

His end of the turn he still can’t draw a bead on my Razors in the corner with any of his firepower except for the HB Razorback. He fired at me but no effect. Then came the moment of truth, as he fired his attack bikes at mine. He hit both times, but rolled a one for the second wound! Lucky me, I only lost one bike, and still had a chance to protect my flank.

Turn 3
I still keep my Land Raiders out of striking distance from his multi-meltas, I am just not ready to jump in there and toss my LR to all of his multi-meltas. I don’t trust the dice this game. So I am still hanging back, from the middle of the board. I take my bike and run it into some ruins to try to get cover from the shots that will be coming that way. Shooting was ineffective this round from my Land Raiders, but my Razorbacks blew up one of his Razorbacks. Then my attack bike made good with his multi-melta and fried one of the opposing ones. Other than that it was an uneventful turn, again.

On the opposing side, he moved up a bit more to get some better shots at my Razorbacks. He blew up my last attack bike when I failed my cover save, of course. He also got one of my Razorbacks with his Land Raider. That was unfortunate, but they had lasted longer than I had thought they would.

Turn 4
This was time to get things going finally. I was sick of holding back, but I knew that whoever got the charge on the other was going to be in better position. So I got more offensive and moved my Land Raiders forward to put the pressure on him. They moved up, but I still had to take care of the last bike hanging out on my flank. A multi-melta from my Redeemer took care of it well enough. My Crusader managed to take out his Land Raider with a well placed shot from the multi-melta on top, while my assault cannon took the multi-melta arm of the adjacent dreadnought. I finally got Vulkan and his crew out of their box, and it was time to crush them. The rest of my shooting was effective, in that my last lascannon popped the final Razorback.

His turn was unfortunate for him, but good for me. His dread advanced on my Redeemer for assault, and Vulkan failed to reach my Crusader while struggling to get out of his wrecked ride. His dread failed to hurt my Redeemer in assault. But he had my assault ramp and tank blocked off from moving forward and frying the remainder of his foot slogging marines with my flamestorm cannons.

Turn 5
This was the beginning of the end for him. I disembarked all of my termies and prepared to erase Vulkan and his squad. The Redeemer smoked the dread blocking his path, while the Crusader sent a boat load of shots into Vulkan and his cronies. He lost only one terminator from the shooting and had a wound on Vulkan. My Las Razorback also managed to toast his remaining dread that had been immobilized turn one. The kill points were adding up for me! The scrum in the middle of the table was about to begin. I was able to charge Vulkan and Co with both squads for a total of 10 terminators, 2 Sanguinary Priests in Terminator armor, and a Reclusiarch in termy armor. It was epic. The Chaplain killed a termy; the priests took down another one and wounded Vulkan again. The 4 LC termies took another termy and Vulkan, while Vulkan took down one TH/SS terminator with his attacks back. Then I had 5 terminators with TH/SS attacking back. I hit 10 times out of 15 and wounded 10 times. His last Terminator couldn’t take the hurt and was wiped off the face of the planet. What an assault, I thought I was going to lose more men than that, but the LC termies and Priests really carried their weight in the assault. The chaplain didn’t kill much, but his re-rolls were great for the other 12 bodies in the assault. I then consolidated towards the remaining tac squads that he had ready for me to assault.

On his turn he just lined up to shoot me to pieces, as all my terminators were lined up 10” away from both his tac squads. He put down 2 termies each from the two squads, which wasn’t too bad I suppose. But it wasn’t enough for him. I asked him at this point if he wanted to continue, and he said yes. It was about 8 or nine KPs to 2, and he had no way to come back. He is a fighter I guess, and thought he could get some things done.

Turn 6
I was finally able to put my Redeemer to good use this turn. I ran it up 12” right next to a beautiful line of marines. I got 8 of them under the template and fried 7 of them. I love the smell of flamestorm cannon at any time of day. The pesky marines stuck around, and were assaulted for their foolishness. They were wiped in assault, but the other squad was too far into some terrain and I couldn’t come to grips with them with my other Termy assault squad.

His turn he shot me some more, killed a terminator maybe, and finally remembered his Assault squad. They dropped in next to my Razorback and other assault squad that was hiding out in the crater left by their ride. He shot at me, and I lost just one marine. I asked again if he wanted to call it, but he said no, so we rolled for it and the game went on.

Turn 7
My Redeemer put both templates down on his tac squad nearby and cleansed their filth from the Emperor’s sight. On the other side of the board, my two assault squads attacked his jump-packers and wiped them as well. All he had was one remaining tac squad in a fortified position in a far corner of the board that I couldn’t reach in
time to do anything about, and it hadn’t done anything all game. Game over.

Blood Angels were victorious! I kind of felt bad for the guy though. I don’t know how new he was to the game, but he made the game easy for me. He deployed so far from my army that he couldn’t use half the points in his army. His multi-meltas were all out of range for 3/4ths the game. And they were the real threat to my list. He should have packed some multi-meltas into the Razorbacks and bum rushed me. It would have made the game completely different. His dreads were a non-factor because of deployment too. They could have given me some fits, but were neutralized easily. It was nice to win a game again, but it unfortunately was not a hard fought game, and those are the types of games I enjoy the most.

My MVP was hard to determine. The large terminator fight in the middle of the table was fun for me, but I really think that the Land Raider Redeemer was the winner. He slagged the lone melta bike coming for me, popped a dreadnought, popped a Razorback, and toasted nearly 2 full tactical squads. Not too bad of a kill tally. I have always wanted to run a Redeemer in a game, and it fulfilled my expectations fully.
Now I just need to find a way to balance this list some more. It is such a “rock” type list that I don’t want to get stuck in noobslayer mode. I want to build balanced lists that can take all comers. The game was fun, but it is back to the drawing board.

New Blood Angel List - for funsies!

Ok, new army list time. I am going back to my roots, with extreme prejudice, lol. For those of you that followed my blog from the beginning, I used to run a dual Land Raider list with Mephiston, and some other assault elements, terminators or Dreads, depending on how I was feeling that day. The list worked well for me, and incorporated some of my favorite things about 40k. First, Land Raiders. I’m a sucker for the big beautiful anvils of doom. I just like them, one of my favorite units hands down. Second, I really like the assault phase. Like Goatboy and some of the other internet personalities, I like to win the game in close combat. I think it is time I go back to what I know how to do, at least reasonably well.

Just so we can get this out there, this is a “rock” list, as in paper, rock, scissors. I expect this list to do well against a few armies, and not so well against the others. My support elements will have to be designed to pick up the slack when my assaulting units don’t have the strength of numbers to take down horde Orks or ‘Nids. And that is ok with me, I can live with that.
So onto my list. I’d like to talk this through a bit so stay with me. It’s important to get the evolution of the thought process down, so you can find the weaknesses and fix them. So let us get to evolving.

First off HQ. Librarian with Blood Lance and Shield of Sanguinius right? Wrong. I’m mixing it up here. I have loved Librarians in the past and still will, but this is going to be an all-out assault army, and I’m not sure they fit the bill here. So onto another HQ unit I have wanted to try, the Reclusiarch. He is a combat machine, and with the Blood Litanies, he makes a squad of Terminators even more dangerous. Rerolling to hit is dangerous when swinging thunder hammers around. So we have a Reclusiarch and a little gaggle of Termies following him around. Let’s put that hammer unit into a Land Raider so they can get where they want to ideally. Now the question is what kind of Land Raider. There is the Crusader and the Redeemer to choose from in my mind, but which one suits my purposes better? In this case it is the Crusader. I want this unit to be super killy so I will throw in a Sanguinary Priest for the Furious Charge and Feel No Pain. Str: 5 I: 5 lightning claw Terminators that reroll to hit are absolutely ridiculous. So that makes for 7 models in the unit, and a Redeemer isn’t capable of holding that many Terminators so the Crusader will have to do.

Now one Land Raider is good, but two is better. So this time we take a Redeemer, because flamestorm cannons are super cool, and I at least need to play test with them a bit. I may make some lists with flamestorm Baals in the future, and I’d like to be able to gauge their effectiveness. We don’t want this sweet ride to be empty so let’s get some more Terminators, of the assault variety of course. This leaves us one empty seat in the Redeemer, and who better to fill it than another Sanguinary Priest. This ensures both squads of Terminators will have FNP and FC at all times.

So we have our super killy units of death and destruction ready, how about some Troops to make things legal. We are going to have to minimize these squads because I have already used most of my points for my standard 1750 list. What to take in this slot? I am surely lacking in any kind of long range fire support, and the cheapest way to get some of this in is with assault squads and Razorbacks. Two assault squads with a Razorback apiece fit the bill. So we will throw some heavy weapons on the Razorbacks so they can open up tanks from the other side of the board. I will need all the shots I can get, so let’s do the lascannon and twin linked plasma gun. I will lose some accuracy at long range, but the extra shots at close range will make up for that loss. For when the marines get taken out of their Razorbacks I will give them some goodies to help them retain some kind of effectiveness. Let’s start with a meltagun and finish with an infernus pistol on the sergeant. That should give them a bit of punch still. And discourage people from trying to tank shock them off objectives late game. Death or Glory ftw! I could also put in a power weapon instead of the infernus pistol, but I’d rather not but a CC upgrade when I don’t really want these guys in CC.

This leaves me with about 125 points or so left over. What to do with these points? I still have the need to pop tanks and give my Terminators juicy targets to assault. I like speeders, but I don’t have the points to fit in some with melta and Typhoon missile launchers. The long range of the missiles would be nice, but I don’t know how I would squeeze them in. I could try Predators for long range support, but again, only one autocannon/lascannon Predator won’t do the job. A Vindicator could possibly work, but I don’t have the model so that is out. This leaves me with some attack bikes with multi-meltas on them. This is a unit I have used before and really enjoy. They have some tactical flexibility that I like. They can be reserved easily to come on the board later game to pop tanks that are getting into your own deployment zone. They have a 36” threat range for light armor, and a 24” threat range for heavy armor. They are resilient to small arms fire, and they can tie up weak CC units for an entire game. Lastly, I can put 2 of them down for the points I have left over. Sounds like a winner to me.

So to recap I have:
Reclusiarch with Terminator Armor-170
Sanguinary Priests x2 w/ Terminator armor and power weapon -160
5 man Terminator Assault Squad, 2x LC, 3x TH/SS - 215
Land Raider Crusader with multimelta-260
5 man Terminator Assault Squad, 2x LC, 3c TH/SS - 215
Land Raider Redeemer with multi-melta – 250
5 man Assault Squad w/ meltagun and infernus pistol – 125
Razorback with TL plasmagun and lascannon - 55
5 man Assault squad w/ meltaguns and infernus pistol – 125
Razorback with TL plasmagun and lascannon – 55
Attack bike w/ multi-melta x2 – 100 points
Total: 1730

This leaves me 20 points for some upgrades. I was thinking about a combi weapon on my Reclusiarch and maybe some melta bombs for my sergeants. That would round out my squads with some extra tank killing up close, and I can’t see anywhere else to use the points.

So let me have it. I want to hear some opinions on the list, even if it is to tell me that I am half retarded for even putting this list on the intarwebz. Be honest with me, I’m ready for the truth.