Maelstrom of War - Blood Angels vs. Twilight Ravens
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Warhammer 40,000 – My usual Chaos opponent has been building a cool Blood Angels force using bits from the Horus Heresy line. So far what he has looks very cool and pretty brutal. Having built a solid 1000 point core force he’s been borrowing models from my collection to see what else he wants to add for his final 2000 point army. I’ve been experimenting with my CP Farm list adding in other elements to see if I can make other thing i want to play more functional. I realize the Guard + Blood Angel battery might not be feasible after the next FAQ but until that drops I’m going to play as many games as I can. I really like how the small Guard contingent works, they can hold objectives, drop mortars on things they can’t see, surprise an attacker with Brutal Traps and combine to be a giant blob of surprisingly effective attacks.
This is our second battle with very similar lists so to change it up a bit we opted to play Maelstrom of War on my city table. We rolled up the first maelstrom mission with Dawn of War deployment so this was going to be a pretty standard game.
Turn One I lost the roll-off and watch in horror as my Fire Raptor got shot to death before doing anything. What it amounted to was a very expensive distraction unit that isn’t durable enough to withstand a list “built to take out flyers.” Really anything built to take out Knights is going to get lucky and murder any other vehicles as a by product so I should have been better prepared.
Things continued to go wrong as my Captain failed his charge and proceeded to fail his re-roll of said charge. The Death Company destroyed one of my guard units before they could do anything and poor deployment on my part meant they weren’t “completely on” a terrain feature so no Brutal Traps for me. The Storm Talons were able to clear out a large chunk of Veterans, even though Strafing Run had no effect (jump pack vets) I was able to kill them all leaving his commander exposed and alone. Sadly I had nothing in line of sight or range to capitalize on this so he proceeded to take out his vengeance on the Storm Talons.
As it pretty obvious from the above, the game was not going my way. Besides deploying poorly and underestimating my opponent, i couldn’t draw a easily obtainable objective to save my life. Looking back at it I should have spent my command points to redraw, with the Farm in effect I should be able to dig through my deck and find the things I can score on quickly. Every game is a learning experience and the more I play the more comfortable I am with the tricks this list can pull off.
The highlight of the game was the opposing Captain charging into my combined Guard squad and dying to the 40+ dice I got to drop. Taking the priest to buff the Catachans is pretty key, suddenly they are getting a bunch more attacks and re-rolling if you go on the offensive. With my priest I’m using the index, so he has a combi-flamer and inferno pistol (per my sweet model I uilt for a Rogue Trader RPG), this is shown as ok in Battlescribe so I assume it falls under the flow chart for options not in the codex.
At the top of four it was obvious I couldn’t win the game without tabling my opponent because he was so far ahead in points. Maelstrom games tend to be swingy like this so I was fine with calling it.
I’m not sold on the Flyers, the Knights can move almost as fast, can hold objectives, are more durable and can hide. I have a few more ideas I want to swap in but as of right now I think I prefer my original list.
