Battle Report: Alpha Legion vs. Death Guard (1500 pts)

Overview.

With a new mat from Game Mat EU, I had a game of 30k vs 40k with JK last Friday. I brought 1500 points worth of Alpha Legion using the Pride of the Legion Rite of War to make my terminators and veterans in to scoring units (as it means I can take them as troops).

I was using Skorr with a large blob of veterans inside a storm eagle transport and a master of signals. This was complemented by a squad of terminators riding in a land raider. A scout squad with rifles and a heavy support squad with missiles rounded out my list. More can be read about this style of list here which is essentially the same but without the transports.

My opponent was using a double vindicator approach coupled with two plague marine mechanised units (with flamers, melta guns) in rhinos with havoc launchers, a chaos dreadnought, heldrake and a Forge World blight drone. Templates everywhere basically. Oh, and did I mention the chaos lord on a bike with the Burning Brand? No? Well, he also had a pet chaos spawn for laughs. Or a meat shield. 

Set up and Early Turns.

The game was being fought over two objectives placed in the deployment zone of the enemy after regular squads had been deployed. I infiltrated my sniper squad on to my enemies as he castled up in the corner. This, I thought, gave me a tactical advantage. I had my missile launchers in a ruins on the lower right of the picture and kept the storm eagle in reserves.

The Death Guard, meanwhile, were deployed in a "castle" formation with the fliers in reserves. 

The early turns saw some significant damage to my forces thanks to all of the templates that were going around. Plasma carnage from the dreadnought saw off a heavy support marine, and the scouts got repeatedly whacked by a vindicator and havoc launchers. The land raider came through un-scratched though.

Middle Turns.

There was great carnage as the game progressed. My scouts got whittled down. My land raider moved up and disembarked the terminators to kill the rhino that they successfully charged. And the smelly Death Guard oozed out of the wreck to counter attack the terminators. The chaos lord and the spawn joined in the fun.

I immobilised one of the vindicators though from the heavy support squad.

By now though, the plasma dreadnought was truly whittling them down and the heldrake came on to finish a few off. I got a lucky shot in to kill the heldrake thankfully. But this did not stop the blight drone from killing off all my missile launchers a turn later.

Late Turns. 

Some unlucky reserve rolls saw my storm eagle spend a lot of time off the board. But when it finally came on, I disembarked the veteran squad on to the objective in my board zone. 

However, the other side of the board was looking grim. My scouts had been wiped out and the other Death Guard squad sat comfy on the objective inside their rhino. The storm eagle killed the rhino, but I couldn't dislodge the rest of the squad from the objective.

Meanwhile, the chaos marines slew my terminators eventually. The image above shows the near final board situation. We both have one objective each. And there is little that either of us can do to dislodge the other player from these objectives in time.

The game ends on turn 5 with a draw. Both of us have one objective each. If the game had continued, I think the storm eagle might have done more damage to the death guard on the objective. But equally, the blight drone and the chaos lord on the bike would have made it to my veteran's position for some template carnage. 

Overall, a very entertaining, tactical game full of carnage in the middle. And -- this is not our last 7th edition outing either. There's a tournament on Friday that we'll be doing using this (and more) scenery.