Another awesome Battle Report thanks to the great folks down at AFK Games in Holt!  This game pitted my Azure Flames against Nathan’s Imperial Guard @1500 points.  Here’s the lists:

Bozeman – Azure Flames (Salamanders) Space Marines

-Leonidas, captain of the 1st company (counts as Vulkan He’Stan)

-Tactical Squad x10, Veteran Sergeant with a Combi Flamer and a Power Fist, Flamer, Multi-Melta in a Drop Pod

-Tactical Squad x10, Veteran Sergeant with a Combi Flamer and a Power Fist, Flamer, Multi-Melta in a Rhino with extra armour

-Scouts x5 with bolters in a Land Speeder Storm with a Multi-Melta

-Ironclad Dreadnought with the meltagun replaced with a heavy flamer, in a Drop Pod

-Stormtalon gunship with Skyhammer missiles

-Land Speeders x3, with Multi Meltas and Heavy Flamers

-Bike Squad x8 plus Attack Bike, Veteran Sergeant with a Power Fist, 2x Meltaguns, Multi-Melta on Attack Bike

-Whirlwind

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Nathan – Imperial Guard (list below may be incomplete)

-Lord Commisar with Power Sword

-Command Squad, Power Fist on commander, Plasma gun, Vox Caster, Medic in a Chimera

-Imperial Guard Platoon Command with 2x Grenade launchers and a Power Maul

—–Squad 1 with vox and a Missile Launcher, with a regular Commisar attached who has a Power Sword.

—–Squad 2 with vox and a Plasma Gun

—–Squad 3 with vox

-Armoured Fist squad in a Chimera with a Plasma Gun

-Heavy Weapons squad with 3 Lascannons

-Heavy Weapons Squad with a Lascannon, Autocannon, and Missile Launcher

-Valkyrie Gunship with Lascannon, two Heavy Bolters, and missiles

-Stormtroopers x10 with 3 Plasma Guns

-Sentinels x3 with armoured cabs, 3x Hunter-killer missiles, 1x Plasma Cannon, 1x Autocannon, 1x Lascannon

-Bane Wolf with Multi Melta

-Leman Russ Punisher with 3 Heavy Bolters

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Setup: Dawn of War (long table edges)

Mission: Big Guns Never Tire (D3+2 Objectives, we had 4.  Heavy Support can hold objectives, Heavy Support kills worth VPs)

The Board Setup: We found a board already set up for us!  It looked like a dense city and both of us liked it.  Here it is:

Lots of ruins, razorwire, walls, etc.  Nathan selected the edge closest to the camera in the picture above.  We had 4 objectives, here’s where they were.  3 are white bases, i is a lamp post.

Here’s Nathan’s Setup.  The Veterans aboard the Valkyrie and the Sentinels are in reserve.

Here’s my setup.  The Scouts in the Storm, the Stormtalon, and the two Drop Pods are in reserve.

Initative not siezed.  No Night Fight.

Turn 1 – Imperial Guard.

Nathan’s squad of just Guardsmen use the Go! Go! Go! order to clear the defensive wall hurdle.  Bane Wolf goes All Out.  Squad with missile launcher fires at the one visible Land Speeder on Bring It Down orders, but the penetrating result is jink saved.  Other guardsmen not in buildings advance.  Lord Commisar with HQ goes up Nathan’s left side towards the speeders, while the Armoured Fist Squad goes up the right side.

GO! GO! GO!

The Guard move towards the Objectives.

Turn 1 – Azure Flames

Ironclad Drop Pod lands next to the tall building with the missile launcher squad and kills all but the commisar and missile with heavy flamer fire.  Multi-Meltas from the Land Speeders blow up the Lord Commisar’s Chimera, and subsequent Bolter fire from the bike combat squad whittles down the survivors.  Other bike combat squad blows up the Armoured Fist Chimera with a Multi-Melta.  Tactical combat squad runs to secure the objective near the bronze statue.  Leonidas and the other combat squad run through the building to get closer to the objective in the warehouse.  Whirlwind Castellan missile scatters off with no effect.

Armoured fist Chimera is toast!

So is the Lord Commisar’s Chimera!

Hello!  Do you want to know about… FIRE?

Imperial Guard – Turn 2

Lascannon squad picks off a Meltagun from the bikes.  Sentinel Squadron does not come in from reserve, but the Valkyrie with the veterans aboard does.  It zooms right at the Land Speeders and has a terrible turn of rolls, doing nothing.  Heavy weapons squad in the building blows up the Drop Pod, and it kills a guardsman in the blast.  The Leman Russ Punisher shoots Leonidas’ combat squad, and Leonidas takes two wounds before the punishing hail of fire ceases.  Devil Dog turns on the Ironclad but misses with the Multi-Melta, and a Guard squad charges the Ironclad, loses, and is run down.

One bike sniped!

Leonidas takes one (or two) for the team.

Where did my friends go?

Turn 2 – Azure Flames.

Stormtalon, Scouts, and Tactical squad all arrive from reserve.  The Tatical squad drops on Nathan’s right flank, splitting into two combat squads and flamering many guardsmen to death.  The Bikes move up and finish the Armoured Fist squad.  Leonidas and his squad continue to head toward the warehouse objective.  The bikes shoot the HQ squad down to the commander, and then run him over using Hammer of Wrath attacks in assault.  The Land Speeders kill two heavy weapons teams, and the third flees off the board.  The Stormtalon shoots down the Valkyrie and it scatters off the table, killing the Veteran squad in the process.  The Ironclad assaults and kills the Devil Dog.  Land Speeder Storm comes in from Nathan’s left flank and hides behind a building.

Shock and awe!  The Drop Pod gets results!

One guardsman and one Commisar remain guarding the top of the building.

Turn 3 – Imperial Guard

The Sentinels arrive, and blast the Ironclad to no effect.  The Leman Russ Punisher finishes off Leonidas and his squad.  Two remnants of squads charge one of the Tactical combat squads from the drop pod.  One is eliminated by snap shot fire.  The other has only a sergeant with a Power Maul who challenges the Space Marine Sergeant with a Power Fist.  The Guardsman gets an impressive 4 hits!  However, in an equally unlikely roll, rolls no wounds.  The Space Marine fists him to death.

A hail mary assault goes poorly for the Guard…

The Leman Russ Punisher lives up to its name!

After this, Nathan ceded.

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Final Thoughts:

-Whoopee!  Aircraft are fun!  I’m glad I have something to counter Chaos dragons and Vendetta spam in the future.

-Remember kids, a squad needs to do one job.  Mono-task your heavy weapons and put them where they do the most good.

-I should have had Leonidas and the squad board the Rhino and go right up the middle, smoke launchers blazing.  Perhaps they could have gotten into charge range and killed the Punisher.

-Nathan lost this on bad rolls.  The Sentinels would have been welcome on turn 2.  Sadly, they did not come in even after a Warlord trait let him re-roll.  There were some other crucial rolls that were just bad luck, such as not killing any Land Speeders, not killing the Space Marine Sergeant in the challenge, and several Look Out Sir rolls that killed the Lord Commisar instead of a punkie guardsman behind him.

Finally, here’s Stephen (right, black shirt) with his Dark Angels loaning 1/2 to Cole (left, blue shirt) for Cole’s first game!  Welcome to the hobby Cole!

Next: Grav Gun Veterans and possibly some Gothic or Epic