So here is my battle report, the first part is meant to be somewhat story like, read it in your head in the most inspiring voice you can think of, at the very least, try the voice from the narator of 300 (the local GW SM force are called the spartans so its fitting):
The Wolves squad charged forward at the sight of the enemy, eager to join battle and win glory for Russ no doubt. The fools couldn't even hit one of the chaos rhinos at range, probably unused to wielding the melta weapon as anything other than a club. Thankfully we spartans, and our eldest, most noble warrior in his iron sarcophogus was more than up to the task, disabling the chariot with ease. They died in droves to the massed firing of the 3 squads that exited their transports and faced them. They weren't incompetent though, merely out of their element, for a mere 3 of them faced up to the assault from 10 of the enemy marked by tzeentch and striking first, and not a single one fell. They took 4 of their foe with ease. As we joined them we killed 3 more, and cut down the others as they turned to flee.
To our left, our brothers rained assault cannon shells on the hated vindicator, tearing its weapon free, and penetrating to its heart, rendering it a useless lump. They charged forth, and struck a hefty blow to a rhino, blowing it from this world with a single, crackling upper-cut from a power-fist. The khornate troops that faced them were no match, and were soon fleeing from the field. As the dust settled on the second phase of the battle, it was obvious we would seize the day.
This was my introduction game at the local GW to get me back in the swing of playing, refresh the rules and all that. It was only a couple of turns as there was only an hour in which to play. I don't think the sides were particularly balanced either, but I did get to run out my somewhat painted grey hunters unit which was nice.
Space Marines:
10 Grey Hunters with melta-gun, captain with power-weapon (acting as a regular tac squad, no special rules)
2 x 10 Marines, flamer, missile launcher, captain with bolt-pistol and CC weapon
6 Terminators, storm bolters and power fists, captain with power-weapon, mounted in Land Raider Crusader
Dreadnaught with multi-melta
Chaos Space Marines:
10 Marines with mark of Khorne in Rhino
10 Marines with mark of Tzeentch (+1 I) in Rhino
10 Marines
Vindicator
Set up was on a city type board, 4'x4', a grid of streets like a naughts and crosses board. Rolling for mission we got capture and control, my objective was the central ruins (imagine the bottom middle square on the naughts and crosses board) and the chaos objective was the opposite square, deployment was pitched battle. I placed one combat squad with missile launcher on my objective, another with ml up in a ruins on my left hand side, and the crusader with terminator and a combat squad next to them to go up the left side. The wolves, last combat squad and dreadnaught were on my right. The chaos side deployed the vindicator opposite my land raider, and the three rhinos in a column opposite the wolves et al. (I was going first and the member of staff didn't steal the initiative).
Turn 1:
I move the wolves, combat squad (cs) and dreadnaught forward along the road on my right, the cs remained in cover behind a ruined building, and the land raider and second cs forward on the left. The cs up in the ruins fire the missile launcher at the vindicator, but it sails
off into the distance somewhere. The crusader then opens fire with its assault cannon, rolls 2 rending hits, blows off the main weapon, then proceeds to do the same again immobilising the vindicator. On the left, the wolf with the melta-gun takes a shot at the lead rhino and completely misses, as my opponent pointed out, and I have to agree, being a wolf he's probably more used to using it as a club than a gun. The dreadnaught then stunned the crew of the rhino.
Chaos now have nothing on the left, and the lead rhino on the right can't move, so I think his plans were a little scuppered (I'll point out that the sides were far from even for this game, at least it seems to me so it was always going to be a bit unfair) but he moves the two rhinos, the one carrying the khorne troops towards the centre, to provide some cover for the left, and the other to the right. All troops pile out, and the two squads from the rhinos that moved fire on the wolves. They kill 7 - ouch! The tzeentch squad from the stunned rhino then charge the wolves. However, they fail to kill a single wolf, despite rolling something like 30 dice in the attack, and I even managed to kill one of their number.
Turn 2:
On the left, I move up the crusader so it can see round the central building, and the terminators disembark. The cs on that side also moves forward, and would run in the shooting phase to get them as close to the objective as possible. On the right, the cs and dreadnaught move forward to charge the combat involving the wolves. The only shooting is from the land raider that kills one khornate marine, and the storm bolters of the terminators that kill a further 3 (this almost backfired on me as only 2 of my terminators could then get into range of the squad for combat. The terminators then charged (those that couldn't reach the squad charged the rhino), as did the cs and dreadnaught on the right. In the combat with the terminators, I chose to resolve the rhino combat first, and it was a mighty uppercut from one terminator caused the rhino to explode with a 5" blast radius, killing 1 more khorne marine but not harming the terminators. The ensuing combat with the marines was a success, killing 2 despite the captain completely failing to hit anything with his power-sword. The marines then fled, but got away to run off the edge of the board. On the right, the combat wiped out 2 more of the tzeentch marines but not before they killed two of the spartan marines (the wolves stood up to more combat blows and survived). The chaos marines then turned to flee but were cut down.
There wasn't too much left for chaos to do, the remaining squad fired all it could on the wolves but couldn't kill them, and then time was up for that session.
I really, really enjoyed the game, and it is super fast compared to the games I remember for 2nd edition, and I can see how tactics are much more important in the newer versions. I couldn't really call this a victory as I'm sure I was gone easy on, and the sides were horribly unbalances (I couldn't guess at the points difference, but I imagine it was large). I'm looking forward to getting some more units painted up so that I can put together a small force and go join the evening battle club and get in a few more games as soon as possible.
Sorry for the long post, cheers, bG
