Post Battle Report: Evacuation

Hi everybody!  I'm very pleased to be able to say me and Coldsteel Dan managed to get in a game of 40K this weekend - a fantastic cut-and-thrust, back and forth game that came right down to the wire.  Dan has written up a report, which you are ordered to check out here.

To summarise what happened, it was a random game length scenario (written by Dan), where the Blades of Fire defenders had 1,000pts to stop my 1,500pts of attackers from destroying the launch pad of a Stormraven attempting to escape.  My attackers came on in waves, but 2 Platoon had to hold out on its own for three turns as I rolled a spectacular succession of '1's until turn three, when most of my army rolled on.

It wasn't until turn six that my numbers decisively told, and I managed to start shooting at the launch pad.  But it was very tough, and only through some excellent work from my Veterans and their meltabombs, coupled with two 4+ rolls to keep the game going into turn eight, that I managed to scrape a victory.  As I pointed out to Dan, however, of the 75 Palladians on the field, only eight walked off.  It was a messy battle.


Dan's done the full report but I got a few pictures - slightly blurry as they were taken in Ze Bunker:

2nd Lieutenant Denarius found himself in range for a charge - and was the first Palladian to voluntarily get into close combat in the campaign.

What?!  They won!  Thanks to some lucky rolls plus the power weapons, only one Devastator remained.
Denarius was Swiss-cheesed with bolter fire shortly afterwards.

Bring it on!  Scouts are a little more bitesized for Guardsmen but were still a tough nut to crack.

The dreaded Daxos and his Relic Blade (which killed Capt Nero).  He managed to take down this squad like a Relic Blade through butter.  They ended up being the only survivors on the field at the end of the game.

A very brave Death or Glory attack from the scouts.

As Dan mentioned it was a brilliant game, really hung in the balance until the last turn.  My post-battle report:

• Captain Severus, in his debut battle, actually found himself in close combat where he cut down three Marines with his power weapon.  Then, with his entire command squad killed, I moved him back out of harm's way - voluntarily, not a failed leadership check - although still a pretty cowardly thing for him to do!
• 2nd Lieutenant Aelius arrived on turn three and had his command squad shredded by Praxiteles, the Venerable Dreadnought counts-as.  He was promptly executed by the commissar.
• 2nd Lieutenant Denarius (exchange officer from Dai) was tragically cut to bits, but counterbalanced the others' efforts with a truly heroic charge.
• I was also very pleased with my Laser Destroyer, which managed to take out a tank and damage the objective as well.

So there will be more than a few empty spaces in the mess tonight, a very heavy toll paid for victory.  A lot of good officers died with nicely converted models, so I'll be re-using them at some stage.  Once again my thanks go out to Dan for his great scenario and a sporting, well-fought, enjoyable game.

Thanks for reading,

Ed