Game 2
Mission: Capture and Control
Deployment: Spearhead

My army list:

Click here.

My opponent’s army (roughly):

Daemon Prince – Mark of Tzeentch, Warp Time, Doombolt, Bolt of Change, Wings
Chaos Sorcerer – Mark of Slaanesh, Lash of Submission

4 Terminators – Combi-melta, power weapons, some other stuff
5 Terminators – Mark of Slaanesh, lightning claws, some other stuff

10 Chaos Space Marines – Rhino, lascannon, plasmagun
7 Plague Marines – Rhino, meltagun x 2, power fist
6 Plague Marines – Rhino, meltagun x 2, power fist

Chaos Land Raider
2 Obliterators

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My opponent was a local gamer named Burt who plays a competitive list that suffers from somewhat of an identity crisis, seemingly unable to commit to one method of play or another. It certainly isn’t a bad list, and I was nervous having seen it deployed on the other side of the table. Chaos is my worst match-up for a number of reasons, first and foremost being my lack of psychic defense. Luckily, I only had to fear one lash this game.

Burt won the roll-off and wisely chose to go second. We each set the objectives up in our respective corners (but 6″ away from a board edge, as per the tournament rules). Burt deployed his forces mostly in the backfield, with the exception of the Land Raider and the larger squad of Plague Marines accompanied by the Sorcerer which were deployed along his board edge, but smack in the middle–close enough to support his troops, and still able to make a bee-line for the objective.

Most standard Chaos armies have a difficult time properly castling due to the high cost (and therefore low number) of their units. Because Burt had to divide his attention (and resources) between both objectives, he had to spread out. This provided me the opportunity to set my pods down pretty much wherever I wanted on the first turn.

On turn 1, I dropped my two pods + Vulkan right in the middle of his forces and separated into combat squads. I knew I would be taking heavy casualties, however Burt’s army’s weakness was plain to me. In order to win this game all I would need to do is take out his transports and pray he doesn’t deep strike his reserve Terminators near my objective. The first part of the strategy would be easy given the number of deep striking nastiness I have, but the second was a huge gamble. I planned on securing my own objective by walking on my third squad of Tactical Marines and sending the pod down empty.

My first turn of shooting was terrible. I missed both meltagun shots on his Plague Marine Rhino, despite being twin-linked. My other unit was able to take down the vanilla CSM Rhino (penetrating 6). The counter attack was fierce, but Burt chose to have most of his army shoot at me with rapid fire weapons rather than assault, allowing me to remove casualties in such a way to place his DP and Terminators out of charge range.

The big mistake he made was taking the bait; he sent his other Plague Marines and Terminators back towards his corner in order to assist in wiping out my scoring units. At that point he had over-committed his forces and I knew he would never be able to make it to my objective. Game, set, match!

Turn 2 started off well and I got slightly over half of my reserves. The Terminators came down in the thick of things ready to hammer some Plague Marines or take out the Obliterators due to the threat they presented to my speeders. The speeders themselves focused on taking out the remaining Rhinos, but failed to prevent the PMs’ escape. Fortunately the solo speeder was able to explode the Land Raider. Even better, Vulkan and his power fist buddy smashed through an entire squad of 6 PMs near the objective in a single round of combat. Take that, FNP.

Burt also got his reserves on Turn 2 and brought the Terminators down on his side of the board. This left my objective wide open for my remaining Tactical Squad to casually seize when they arrived. We battled it out in Burt’s corner and he killed most of what I had, but I was successful in killing his scoring units (and making sure the last was too far away to matter).

For posterity, I zoomed 2 separate Land Speeders within 3″ of the objective on Turn 5. We rolled a 2 and the game came to an end. I controlled an objective and held several table quarters, earning me the full 19 points to my opponent’s 5.

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