Battle Report: Blood Angels vs Imperial Guard Deep Strike army

I went to the Glen Burnie battle bunker after Gamesday to try to get a chance to take on any one who may want to come play. A reader was supposed to, but sadly Ryan fell asleep and failed to make it. But luckily there was a guy there willing to play! Doug had also traveled down to the area for Gamesday. He had an IG army made using the older codex and asked me if I cared that he use that one. I did not and we started rolling.

1750
Blood Angels standard Jawaballs mech list
Imperial Guard 2 basilisks, inquisitor and retinue, calidus assassin, and a LOT of deep striking infantry bristling with melta and plasma guns.

3 loot counters
12" deployment zone



My opponent had some Inquisitor fun that allowed him a +1 to win the die roll to go first. He used it and won the roll. In his triumph, he claimed the honor of going first. (Which I would have given to him any way.) My standard procedure for a deep strike army is to take second turn and reserve every thing. He deployed his 2 basilisks and inquisitor/retinue and I reserved it all much to his chagrin. The 3 loot counters were in easy range for my rhinos and troops to get to.

Turn 1:
Nothing happens. Every thing was in reserves.

Turn 2:
A good portion of his infantry deep strike into the center of the table. He then runs them into a large terrain piece in the center. Right around here he confidently announced that he has not lost a game in over 2 years...

On my turn, only Dante and a Baal come in. Again, my legendary ability to roll 1s. So, the pred lights up a squad causing them to fall back, and Dante jumps in to assault a squad, killing it.

Turn 3:
A lot more of his stuff came in. Dante found himself surrounded by at least a planets worth of Guardsmen. The Baal exploded to melta fire from some veterans, and Dante would go down in a hail of Las and Plas shots. The remaining troops that did not fire, ran to spread out and receive my charge. His assassin came in and simply deployed in the center. He also lost a squad that deep striked to close to Dante and then failed on the mishap table.

On my turn, about half of my remaining forces came in. I spread out my Rhinos to get into position to take objectives, and rammed my Death company and corbs right down the middle. They moved in and finished off some squads and the Baal preds cut down droves.

Turn 4:
All of his forces came in. He began to see my plans, and started to make moves to prevent them... It was at this point that he realized that unless he got extremely lucky, I was probably going to take the win. He shot up my Death Company, then using direct fire from this Basilisks, destroyed a rhino and a Baal. Thats ok, I have more. :)

On my turn, the rest of my stuff was in play and the game was on. I put my tanks in position to move fast on turn 5 and take objectives. I cut down a lot of guardsmen trying to hold objectives on my side and made shored up my troops to withstand Basilisk shots on turn 5 by spreading them out and arranging the rhinos to block plasma fire.

Turn 5:
He mad his move to claim objectives and took two. But it was too late. On my turn, I simply tank shocked the crap out of him, losing one rhino, but successfully rolling over and pushing away 4 squads from my path towards the objectives. One rhino, that I was using to hold an objective, stormed away 18" to actually claim another one, while an assault squad who lost their rhino moved over to claim the first. I used a rhino to skillfully push him off the last objective. At the end of turn 5, I held all three objectives and there was little he could do to stop it. I rolled the die to end the game... and of course... a 1 popped up. Game ends... Jawaballs wins!

He had a sick army. He was sort of sharking me... He knew what he had, and had a chance to see my army before agreeing to play. Every squad was decked out with maximum plasma and melta shots. He thought he was going to roll over me and had I deployed my army like he was expecting, I would have been run off the table turn 3. However, he was a perfect example of a good player being "Behind the 5th edition curve". He was trying to play 4th edition tactics with a 4th edition army. The game is NOT about overwhelming fire power, which he definitely had. A lot of players are slow to change with the times, and their old stand byes no longer work. This guy who had been crushing people with this army for 2 years finally came up against some one who thinks in the 3rd dimension (credit to Fritz for coining that term) and epic failed. I feel badly for him because his army was strong and nice looking. But now it is totally illegal. He is going to have to rebuild the entire thing according to the new codex, and hopefully got a taste of what it means to play 5th edition. Video to come soon.