Game 2 Throne of (Marine) Skulls - vs Lee's Blood Angels

After a thoroughly typical hearty lunch with the Caledonian Deathwatch guys were we all shared funny moments, boasts and epic fails it was onto game 2. And low and behold, I was drawn against one of my local opponents, Lee with his Blood Angels - another Deathwatch member, and a dude I teamed up with for the doubles earlier this year which was great fun.

I'm going from memory here, but Lee's list was something like this:

McPhiston
Librarian with lance and shield (warlord)
Sanguinary Priest with power sword
Sanguinary Priest with bike (+ power sword?)
5 bikes with x 2 plasma guns
10 Assault Marines with a meltagun, powerfist sarge
10 Tactical Marines with plasma cannon, plasma gun
5 Scouts with camo cloaks, missile launcher
5 Devastators with x 2 missile launchers, x 2 plasma cannons
Aegis defence line with quad gun

Game 2
Mission - Crusade - 5 objectives
Deployment - Hammer and Anvil
No Nightfighting

Pre-game stuff
For warlord traits I rolled FNP next to an objective with the succubus - fail, as I usually already have FNP with my pain tokens. Lee rolls scoring for his Librarian, which is pretty win. He swaps out his powers for divination, prescience and something else which I can't remember. I get a 1 for my combat drugs, which means I can roll three dice and pick which one I want, which is nonsense for 6th ed since DE have fleet where you get a choice of rerolling your run anyways. Happy days. I beat Lee for the choice of sides, and elect to take the side to my right hand side which has a nice big ruin to sit my Guardian objective campers in, and hopefully hide my raiders, as I like to steal a squad of wracks pain token with my Succubus to give the Incubi a bit of survivability so therefore can't flat out first turn, and there's a lot of no-mans land between my DZ and his..

Pre-game thoughts

I know that Lee usually runs a Stormraven, and I have to say I'm entirely relieved that its not here with him as my Razorwing would have a hard time taking it out, and almost nothing else in my army would hit it realistically. Anyways - marines on bikes are annoying as they get a cover save and their FNP from dark lances, I'm worried about the length of the table that my raiders have to cover with no LOS blocking terrain to hide behind as they advance on the impressive amount of firepower he has behind his wall. A quad gun, devastators and a tactical squad behind a 4+ cover is quite intimidating to fly towards with DE combat specialists. I have to say though - not too worried about Mephiston due to his non-inv save, and with me having the Farseer of no psychic fun for my opponents.

Set up - I deploy a lot of my stuff on the backline in case Lee seizes the intitiative to make the most of my nightshields, and also so my succubus can start with the wracks to nick their pain token and jump in with the Incubi. I know the wych raider can use aethersails and flat-out first turn, but the Incubi raider can't flat out if someone jumps in, so no point in drip-feeding both raiders to the quad gun, devastators. Guardian Defenders int the big ruin, wraithlord beside them, with the venoms and ravagers hidden as best I can.

Lee deploys his aegis along the 24" line, with the quad gun behind it for a 4+ cover save, and with the devastator sarge manning the gun and the devs against the wall. He puts his scouts in the ruins, and the tactical marines next to the devastators with the foot sanguinary priest, and the bikers all start with Meph on his right flank. Assault marines are in deep strike reserve - no doubt to try and come in to troll my Guardians of justice. Lee fails to seize and its DE turn 1.

Dark Eldar Deployment

Blood Angels Deployment

DE Turn 1 - The usual shimmying goes on, the succubus steals a wracks pain token and jumps in with the Incubi, whilst the Trueborn steal the wracks venom. These wracks are getting daylight robbed!. Fortune on the Wraithlord, and venoms move forward. My Guardians are sitting on an objective and its revealed as opposing units half their charge roll. Venoms move forwards to try take out the scouts for first blood and one ravager moves forward to try and take out quad gun.
 In the shooting phase, the Venoms kill 4 out of 5 scouts and the missile launcher guy passes morale. The ravager hits and wounds the quad gun but Lee passes his 4+ cover. 

Dark Eldar movement turn 1. Both the far Ravager and Venom become immobilised with devastator and scout ML shooting

BA turn 1 - Firstly Lee rolls for the objective that his sole remaining scout is holding, and its +1 cover save. Thats a 2+ for that little dude now. Warlord Librarian passes Prescience with the Devastators, and Meph perils himself and fails trying Wings of Sanguinius, and fails his FNP save from the nearby biker Priest. The Bikers and McPhiston advance from the BA right flank whilst everyone else stays still behind their wall
 

In the shooting phase, the prescience missile launchers and quad gun fire at the exposed ravager on the DE right flank, and immobilise it as well as a glancing hit, leaving it with one hull point. The lone scout fires at the Venom on the same flank, and scores an immobilised result as well, also leaving the vehicle with 1 hull point.

DE turn 2 - No Razorwing. Fortune on Wraithlord again. I elect to use my aethersails on both raiders, with the Incubi one rolling a mighty 11, whilst the Wyches raider rolls a 7. So thats 23" and 19" movement respectively. They fly into the vast amount of no mans land in between the two forces, awaiting their flat-out moves. The Ravager and Venom on the DE left flank position themselves to shoot at the bikers whilst hopefully getting some cover saves in return.

Leeeroy!!

In the shooting phase, the Trueborn inside the immobilised Venom kill three of the Devastators, including the sarge, with a plasma cannon guy and missile launcher guy apiece biting it. Their Venom kills the lone Scout FIRST BLOOD. I think I wound Mephiston with some dark lances to the face and possibly kill a biker with the wracks venom, and Small John kills a tactical marine with his blast plasma missile shots. Both combat units raiders go full flat-out. Do-or-die for them...

BA turn 2 - No assault marines. Mephiston fails Wings again, though I don't think he perils this turn, then he moves forward which is followed up by a run in the shooting phase. Warlord Librarian wounds himself  with a perils casting Prescience but gets it (two 1's and something else). He detaches from the devastators and runs back towards Lee's board edge as he's scoring and the DE assault wave is imminent to the aegis wall. Bikers move towards the inbound Raiders to get ready to unleash some plasma on the xenos, whilst Lee shifts the remaining plasma cannon guy to utilise the quad gun.
  The Blood Angels open up on the incoming xenos skiffs, but some terrible luck from Lee's dice rolling and a lot of plasma overheating, coupled with a couple of passed 4+ cover saves for flat out result in only a hull point being removed from the Wych raider with a glance. A biker kills himself with his exploding plasma gun, and the tactical marines plasma gun overheats too, but the marine passes his save. 

Blood angels manouvering - turn 2

DE turn 3 - Fortune on Guardians this turn. Razorwing arrives from reserve, and moves towards the ruins at the left of the Dark Eldar DZ so as to get a 4+ cover from the quad gun that can intercept it. The Wyches and Incubi raiders both move 6" and deposit their cargo. Thankfully the Incubi and Succubus roll high enough to all disembark over the wall, as without assault grenades they'd be going at Initiative 1 if they had to charge over it. The wyches don't roll as well, but they have plasma grenades so its not a big deal, and the leading wych is about 2" away from the devastators. Incubi are going for the tacticals with sanguinary priest. At the end of the movement phase Lee elects to intercept the Razorwing as he doesn't reckon he'll get another chance to fire the quad gun. I pass a cover save or so, but it still suffers a penetrating hit which is a 2 or a 3 and is therefore snap fire only next turn.
  With shooting, the razorwing snapfires at the tactical marines doing nothing. Other shooting reduces Meph to one wound. The raider that dropped off the Incubi spots the warlord Librarian making a break for the objective and zaps him with its dark lance, with the Librarian failing his cover save SLAY THE WARLORD. The Haemonculus liqufies a tactical marine I think. 

  

Wyches charge the devastators and wipe them out, now having 2 pain tokens.
 The Incubi and the Huntress charge into the Tactical marines, with an Incubus dying to overwatch. Huntress issues a challenge to the mon-keigh warriors, and the sargeant steps forward. The Succubus lands blow after blow upon the space marine, but cannot penetrate the armour, whilst the marine slams his bolter into the alien hell-bitch's head, which she fails to dodge and fails FNP. The Incubi however slay 5 or 6 of the marines, leaving about 3 left. Marines fail leadership, are caught but obviously nothing happens due to And They Shall Know No Fear. This succubus has been lax in her training. Fail!

BA turn 3 - Assault Marines arrive from reseve and deep strike next to the big ruin with the Guardians, Wracks and Wraithlord in it. Despite being on 1 wound, Lee needs Mephiston to get somewhere this turn and do something, so tries Wings again, but Meph's head explodes from Runes of Warding. No other movement for the BA as the other remaining squad is in combat.
 The assault squad open fire on the Guardians, killing a couple of them, but not enough for a morale test.
  In the BA assault phase, the Huntress wiffs her attacks and the Tactical sarge batters her to death with his bolter!! SLAY THE WARLORD! She is on a roll so far this tournament... The Incubi fail too, killing only one marine, therefore losing combat by one and running! This is the Blood Angels tactical squad of uber pwnage. Marines don't catch them though and they escape over the wall.

DE turn 4 - Incubi rally, but they can't assault this turn as xenos are not allowed to do whatever they want all the time. So the Wyches take it upon themselves to show the Incubi how its done, lithely running down the hill towards the remaning tactical marines of doom + the sanguinary priest. 

In my DZ, the razorwing turns 90* and heads towards the newly arrived assault marines, and the Guardians and Wracks shuffle out the way so that Small John the Mighty can get at them. Fortune on Small John (wraithlord in case your lost!) 

 For shooting, the combined Razorwing, Trueborn, Guardians, a Venom, a Ravager and the Wraithlord's flamers reduce the assault squad to just the powerfist sarge left. 

 In the assault phase, the wyches charge and kill the remaining Tactical marines, becoming Fearless. Sanguinary priest remains. We decide to call it there, as the wraithlord was just about to declare its charge on the only remaining scoring Blood Angel.

Victory for the Annihilated Souls!

Thoughts: Went better than I expected to be honest. I didn't think that zooming the combat stuff's raiders across the board was going to work at all, and they'd get caught and trolled by McPhistin'. To be fair, Lee's dice were rubbish when he tried to hit them, and if his dice had not let him down he would have got first blood too, considering a ravager and a venom were both reduced to 1 hull point each and immobilised in the first turn. At least he got the comedy value of his Tactical sarge beating the Succubus' brains out. Thanks to Lee for the game :)

Win unit: Possibly the Farseer - really shut down Meph and the other Librarian. The Trueborn did a fair bit of damage too.

Fail unit: Succubus!! Again! She failed all dodges and FNP. uberfail

And now marching off to turn 3, the last game of the Saturday. Hopefully I wont be playing marines again...