Battle Report: The Bloody Plains of Adel IV
As I was noodling around with my latest 2000pt Eldar list this week, word came through the grapevine that a gauntlet had been thrown down. This week’s gamenight had been declared a 3000pt per player Imperium vs Chaos Apocalypse grudge match.
From the moment word came down, the Fly Lords each turned inwards and began to craft our nefarious creations, glancing over our shoulders only to ensure the secrecy of our armylists. As we arrived at Battleforge Games, we had no idea how may players would show, but we had estimated 6-10. If was actually 16. We had a 50,000 point game on our hands. Both teams broke up into their factions and team leaders were appointed.
I was appointed as Arch-Heretic and across from me stood Jwolf, proud Tallarn General and Supreme Commander of the Imperial forces. Jwolf is a no-nonsense IG commander with years of 40k under his belt. He knows the odds and is unflappable on the battlefield. I have personally witnessed his cool utterance of “you know if I kill every model in your army I automatially win regardless of mission” been skoffed at before. His opponents just as often as not are left stunned by the bottom of turn three as they are picking up their last mini. This game was going to be tough. Mkerr and Bulwark choosing loyalist only made things worse.
On the traitor side, it was virtually a class reunion of our 2007 Heresy League. Many of our players had been quietly expanding their pre-heresy armies over the last year and were together again. My Death Guard would be joined by Adam’s World Eaters bolstered by Angron. Aventine brought a Khornate Demon army bolstered by some Alpha Legion elements, and Brandon’s Emperor’s Children were present.
Setup and Cunning Plan
The board was a 6’x16″ setup with the six objectives spread evenly out directly across the middle of no-man’s-land. Jwolf won the setup roll and choose to deploy and go first. The Imperials set up sixteen feet of armor across their deployment zone. They massed an enormous armored force on my right opposite my side’s only heavily built up cover. In the center a mass of transports stood ready, loaded with Crimson Guard, Imperial Guard, and Bulwark’s Arbites army. On my left flank a lighter armored force bolstered by a pair of baneblades stood ready. Chaos was outnumbered 6 to 2 on baneblades.
His forces didn’t add up and I knew Jwolf had something up his sleeve. I had a deepstriking vortex grenade and the new Corrupt and Despoil assets up my sleeve. I took a gamble. With such a long board and the loyalists going first I needed an edge. I ordered my forces to deploy as refused flank. Our mass of traitors deployed in the center and left flank. A token harrassment force was left on our far right in heavy cover to act as a lure for the massed Imperial armor. We loaded the area of heavy cover with every indirect fire vehicle we had and a handful of dev squads. They were doomed men.
The plan was to grab the left flank and center, securing four objectives. Brandon had three squads of deepstriking Emperor’s Children who were tasked with landing on and “Despoiling” one of the two abandoned objectives on our far right. His forces would not survive a single turn of fire, so he had to land exactly on target in the middle of a swarming Imperial motorpool. If it worked we could achieve a 4-1 or a 3-2 victory.
Turn 1
The game began and the Imperials lumbered forward. In the left and center their fire was relatively light but the harrassment force on the right got smacked hard. Massawyrm’s (from AICN) Blood Angel forces rolled forward and blazed away. A linebreaker squadron backed up by Dante’s command landraider was getting dangerously close to the Chaos position.
The bottom of turn one went better. The first of our strategic assets went off without a hitch as Arch-heretic Nick’s commander deepstruck on target in a small hole in the middle of the Imperial right and hurled his vortex right into a fully loaded land-raider. On our center, we moved up and started a mutual pummeling match as lines of Vindicators fired at point blank range into a line of loaded loyalist Land Raiders. On our left our Land Raiders raced forward full of traitor terminators hoping to deal with the enemy baneblades with chainfists instead of sporatic shooting.
Turn 2
At the top of turn two, Jwolf unleashed his first cardtrick. Mkerr rolled his force of four flank marching Land Raiders loaded with ticked off Relictor terminators on my left flank behind my advancing forces. They were joined by Grand-Master Larry’s Deathwing Redemption Force which deepstruck 45 Deathwing termies right beside their Relictor brothers. As Jwolf smiled and arrogantly cleaned his glasses I realized that over 60 termies were within 6″ of my advancing forces in the critical left flank. If they weren’t dealt with immediately the battle was lost.
The center became a bloodbath as the loyalists reached the Chaos lines and disembarked. Over 100 marines were hacking into my forward lines. On the right, the armored force split up in a panic after the vortex claimed another 2 victims including a second Land Raider. They reached the harrassment force and killed almost every man. Finally to add insult to injury a string of Dark Angel drop pods landed along the Chaos deployment zone deploying a handful of squads that had to be dealt with while a pair of Thunderbolts thundered overhead.
The bottom of turn two saw the battle in the balance. Aventine’s Alpha Legion baneblade “Hydra’s Claw” made a miracle bank shot right into the center of the massed Deathwing force, killing over a dozen. Worse for them, Kugath Lord of Corruption was unleashed and stampeded into the survivors, killing eleven in a single turn. Every chaos weapon which could reach the loyalist termys laid into them killing even more. It would seem the Imperial surprise might just be contained after all.
In the center, the traitor infantry struck home led by Aventine’s 60 Bloodletters and vanguard of four Heralds of Khorne on Juggers. They cut into the the loyalists while the slower Death Guard and World Eaters had to pull back and deal with the Dark Angels in our rear. High overhead a pair of pink Emperor’s Children Hellblades’s arrived and engaged in Austin’s first 40k dogfight! They blasted a Marauder from the heavens in a burst of flaming wreckage.
On the right, the loyalists were in firm control. Our harrassment force was gone, and the armored force was starting to reposition to support the center. There was little to stop them. Our first attempt at despoiling one of the far right objectives failed horribly as the Emperor’s Children Lord and his 10 terminators had a deepstrike mishap that destroyed them!
A single surviving Tallarn Leman Russ that had seen its brother tanks destroyed by the nearby vortex grenades called in for instructions from Lord Jwolf. He ordered it to close to pointblank range with the vortex to gain a hulldown cover save while firing into the traitor lines over it! Lord Jwolf remarked that service in the Tallarn Armored Corps is not for the weak-willed.
Turn 3
As the top of three arrived, even more Imperial terminators arrived to reinforce the first wave of loyalists on the left flank. This time it was a force of two dozen Grey Knights. They eyed Kugath with cold fury. The assaults were bloody, but Chaos held the upper hand in the end.
In the center the traitor luck ran out. Rumbling into view a Tallarn Marauder Destroyer assault bomber appeared overhead, and dropped its heavy bomb and missile payload into the heart of our rampaging daemon forces. Over 50 fell in a rain of explosives. Our push was snuffed out.
On the right the traitors were pulling back what they could and simply trying to delay the onrush of Imperial tanks.
The bottom of three was it. With the clock running out Chaos had only one last desperate chance. On the left we consolidated our hard fought gains and cut off the Grey Knights with walls of Land Raiders. Both left objectives were ours.
In the center the brutal assaults continued. With our demons incinerated by the thrice-damned Marauder bomber, we ringed a single objective and took it by a hair. The second center objective was securely in loyalist hands.
The game came down to the right flank. One objective was covered by a parked Imperial baneblade. A force of Chaos flank marching marines hit it and charged in with 120 attacks… and only scored four guncrew stunned results. CURSES! Brandon was next up and his last two deepstriking Raptors made for the last exposed objective. Both deviated, but one landed in difficult terrain within potential assault range. If we could reach it, we would despoil it! A crowd gathered round and gasped as Brandon rolled a 1 and a 3…not enough.
~Tie Game, 3 to 3. …And Chaos would have pulled it off if it wasn’t for those damned meddling kids!!! 🙂 Leaving our dead to the carrion birds Jwolf and I swore this would be settled another day, on another world. Adel IV was not the end, but only the beginning.
