Battle Report: Blood Angels vs Chaos Marines 1850

I went to my first tournament with the new codex over the weekend at The Unknown Comics and Games in Scranton, PA and had a great time! I want to begin by confirming what we already know... BA are Rock Hard. Here is game one.

My list:
Mephiston
2x Sanguinary Priest
3 Razorback assault squads
meltas, power weapons, 2x assault cannons, 1x TL Las
scout squad
fist and combi melta
3x Baal pred, 2 asscan 1 flamer, 1 heavy flamers 2 heavy bolters
2x Auto can preds with Las sponsons
1x vindicator

Chaos list:
Lots of plague marines, khorne berzerkers, and regular CSM.
Land Raider
Kharn
Full las pred
demon prince
rhinos
vindicator

Mission: 5 loot counters
Deployment: 12"

So, I won the roll to go first, and took the honor. I deployed, mostly in the middle. The objectives were set up in a triangle on the left, one in the center and one on the right. I flank marched my scouts and 3 preds.

My plan was simple. Ram that vindicator right up the middle with Mephiston hiding in it's ass. Support him with ass can fire and corral the enemy towards the objectives placed near the edges, and bring in the preds and scouts to mow them down.

Turn 1:
I open up with shooting at Rhinos and his Las pred. The pred is immobilized and I stun some rhinos. I ignored his Land Raider completely, and went towards the left. It would be a couple turns before I would have to deal with it. The Vindicator moved up 12" and fired, failing to do any damage, but it got his attention. Mephiston was hiding behind it. He tried to sneak a couple rhinos up on my left side towards objectives.

On his turn, not a lot happened. He returned fire but failed to do much damage. He moved up his transports on the left and popped smoke.

Turn 2:
I committed myself to destroying the two transports on the left filled with chaos marines and khorne berzerkers. I pumped all of the shots I had into them, destroying one and weapon destroying the other. Only my scouts came on that turn, and are the ones who popped the transport with the combi melta. So now I was faced with a decision. ASsault the scouts into the berzerkers, or try to escape! They would surely get cut down next turn. On the assault, Mephiston had jumped over to assault one of the squads, and got in on them, killing most of them. The scouts assaulted the other squad. I cant quite remember the exact details of this huge scrum at this point. Two scouts end up dieing thanks to Feel no Pain from my priest and they are locked in.

On his turn, we will get right to the assault, because aside from our tanks trying to snipe each other, shooting no longer mattered in this game. I did blow off the turret to his las tank though. In the assault, he brought in a demon lord that spawned out of one of his sergeants. Despite the fact that the sergeant was locked in combat, the lord moved out of that combat, and charged mephiston. Not sure if that was legal, but it made me happy because that was exactlly where I wanted him. I had to attack the squad since I was previously locked in combat with them, and was hoping to put free wounds on the demon. I failed to kill them all though. The fist survived. The demon scored a wound on meph, and the fist scored two. They would be locked in. Meanwhile, the scouts are fighting for their lives! I jumped in another assault squad to help him out with the berzerkers.

Turn 3:
On my shooting, my flame tank finally made it over to the middle of the table and was primed for laying down some hurt on his dev squad. My baal preds had been shooting futilely at his plague marines.

In the assault, mephiston decides to end the demon's life, and does. This forces a leadership test on the sergeant who also runs and is killed. Mephiston consolidates over to try to save the scout. I have to be honest here, I don't remember if they were simple CSM or Khorn Berzerkers, OR if this happened on turn 2 or 3. SO I will just compile the rest of this assault here.

Mephiston jumped into the next assault and saved the scout sergeant. I think this was all backed up a bit allowing him to do that on turn 3. Any way...

Turn 4:
He had moved his LR up now and was about to disgorge them on the next turn. I jumped over there with Mephiston and assaulted his Plague marines, killing 6. The scout jumped into a razor back and they high tailed it out of there while they could to go claim an objective. My other assault squad moved to claim an objective. My last assault squad moved all the way to the right to claim one. Some where in this mess, I lost an assault squad, I think to the squad that was locked in with the squads that the demon came out of. I really need to make more video during these games, but I get wrapped up in them!

On his turn, Kharn and the Berzerkers unload from the LR and pile in on Meph. He tried to move a rhino over to try to contest, but it got immobilized on terrain. Mephiston is forced to attack the plaguers, and kills them all, but is finally killed by Kharn. He rolled to fix the rhino, and did!

Turn 5:
It has come down to this. I had one assault squad using an immobile Baal as cover and trying to claim an objective at the top of a triangle of objectives. The bottom left one was contested by a razorback, but Kharn and his squad destroy it, claiming that one. The bottom right of the triangle my scout was claiming from inside a razor. The 4th objective went unclaimed, and the 5th I controlled. I managed to immobilize his rhino again with shooting, so was not really concerned with it contesting. At this point, I controlled 3 and he controlled 1. The die roll? Game goes on.

Turn 6:
I had been shooting at his berzerkers and Kharn for 2 turns now and whittling them down. There were only a few left. He destroyed my Baal with his Land Raider. And tank shocked my squad at the top of the triangle with a rhino, and they failed. (Unfortunately, I forgot until after that this squad was fearless due to rolling a 1 on the Red Thirst, they would have actually not fallen back.)

Now the game would end again on a random roll. I controlled 2 and he controlled one. The die roll? Game continues.

Turn 7:
I failed to destroy Kharn and his berzerkers, and they managed to spread out between two objectives and claim them both. At the end of the game, He held two and I held two. Great game man!

Summary:
I know, it was a convoluted batrep. I have been out of it for a while and forgot to pull out the cam... all day. But the essense of the game is there. A slug fest ending in a draw. Cant complain about that!

The star of the game was definitely Mephiston. He destroyed a demon prince, a squad of Berzerkers, a squad of CSM, and a squad of Plague marines. I took the combined might of a full squad of berzerkers and Kharn to finally bring him down, while he was distracted with plague marines.

So, point one, Mephiston is boss. To all of you BA band wagon jumpers out there, or veterans who cant get past the fact that he is not an IC, get over it. He is truly a monster. Use him smart, keep a priest nearby for when he rolls those silly 1s, and he will rock. But what do I know, I'm only Jawaballs!

Point two: Blood Angels get way more for less. You heard it hear first... don't waste the points on Sanguinary guard, vanguard or Death Company. You can get the job done with assault squads and priests. Sure they are pretty units, and powerful, but smart players can figure out how to use the assault squads effectively and win games with them. If I had to choose between a 200+ point Sanguinary Guard squad, and a 5 man RAZ with PW, Melta and ASs cans on the raz for 180ish, give me the troops baby!

During this tournament, I fought two huge Chaos armies in a row, decked out for assault. Both squads had multiple Berzerker squads, plague marines, and variants from there, T-sons and CSM squads. In both cases, I was fighting upwards of 40+ hard units, and I have a total of 23 infantry size bases on the table including Mephiston and 5 scouts. To say the least, I am not tooled out for prolonged assaults, but I held my own in both games, getting a draw that should have been a win, and in game two, a win.

Blood Angels are for real boys! In the hands of a smart player, this codex will wreck. Game on.

Jawaballs

EDIT:
Oh, the only exception to not taking veterans would be Honor Guard. They are cheaply priced enough to not have them be too much more than an assault squad. For 195 points you can take an HG with a Razorback, power weapon and meltagun. That is only 15 points more than my RAZ squad but they are veterans. BUT they come with a priest. Subtract the cost of the priest you would have had to take normally, and you are saving 50 points. That makes them a steal. You can drop a priest, and throw the Ass Can on the razor and give the squad another upgrade.

One further is that they do not take up an HQ slot, but count as HQ on the Force Org chart. Why is this important? In this tournament, in all three games you scored bonus points for clearing out an entire slot. So killing mephiston earned my opponent two bonus points since he was my only HQ. With an HG with transport, now he has to kill the squad, transport and Meph to get the bonus points. It makes it harder to surrender those bonus points, and adds another element that you can use to thwart those blood thirsty opponents by forcing them to commit way more resources than they would normally need to take down the transport.

Just imagine, it is game 5 of a major GT and you are in it to win it. A draw would hand the win to the other guy because he has more tie breaker points. The game is coming down to such a close result, that it will come down to bonus points to decide the winner. You tally up the results... it comes down to the HQ slot. You killed his two commanders and earned the 1 bonus point and take the lead. He counts up your HQ slot, Mephiston... dead... Honor Guard... dead... "A Draw... I WIN!" Sorry sucka... you missed that weaponless razor back that slipped away and is now hiding in the corner of the table. That counts as part of the HQ slot and you had to kill it... the victory is mine. Blustery arguments and nerd rage ensue... you get the picture.

Of course, feel free to correct me if I am wrong on that HG transport counting as an HQ unit.