My first game was all of 500 points against Chaos Space Marines— a PERFECT game to try out the anti-Chaos army I've built. I took two full Tactical Squads and my Master Nathanael. I have to say, every single part of that game went exactly perfect...for me. The CSM army was small, and Tzeentch-based, so it was two small squads led by sorcerers and a sorcerer lord on a disc (essentially a jetbike). My opponent was just like me and hadn't played in a long time, and he made the mistake of trying to march right at my marines, leaving behind both the safety of cover and the objectives we were supposed to capture. He also made the mistake of flying his lord right toward my main block of troops completely unsupported, which I managed to finally kill of with my flamer-armed Tactical Marine (leading me to adopt the phrase "Kill it with fire!" when I shooting big and/or important targets). The sorcerers killed themselves with Perils of the Warp and the CSM squads failed to do anything useful at all. I won a resounding victory and only lost a small handful of models (like 3 bolters) in the process. Excellent start.
Immediately after that I got the chance to play against an Imperial Guard army. This game was 1,000 points. I took Master Nathanael, Interrogator-Chaplain Israiah, both full Tactical Squads, the Scout Squad, the Ravenwing Bikes and the Nephilim Jetfighter Fury. My opponent, a veteran of 6th Edition already and a very clever Guard player, took two veteran squads, 3 Basilisks, and a Valkyrie. If you're keeping track, that's two games in a row I've outnumbered my enemy, and I'm playing as Space Marines. This battle didn't quite go as well. Cues pictures.
This was my deployment. I was in a good position to take 4 of the 6 objectives right off the bat, but as you can see I was spread VERY thin. The Scouts are at the back of the picture in the cover of the trees. I knew my advantage would be the speed of my army and the sheer resilience of Power Armor. His advantage: sheer firepower. Three Basilisks can ruin an army very quickly, and ruin they did.
From that point things looked bleak, until my opponent put his Valkyrie in hover mode, and I killed it with Israiah. In close combat! The +2 Strength bonus for the crozius allowed Israiah to knock off the last two hull points, and wreck the vehicle wasting my army. At the end of the game we added up our victory points, and because I had claimed so many high point objectives, I had initially won. Unfortunately, because of the secondary objectives, my opponent took enough of his own victory points to force a draw. Even though my army got pounded and key units fell without contributing, I managed to hold out for a draw—very Dark Angels of me I think! My first day of gaming ended 1-0-1 (Win-Loss-Draw), very respectable and with a lot of room to improve, mostly on tactics.
Since that first day I've played four more games (6 total), for a total record of 2-3-1. My other win was this last week when I rocked another CSM army, killing a Helbrute with my Terminators and wiping out cultists left and right with my Tactical Marines in a 600 point game.
My three losses were rather hilarious in my opinion. The first was a total inability to get good dice rolls, it's as simple as that. I was playing 1250 points against Orks. I had everything from the 1,000 point game, plus my Terminators! He had two large boyz mobs, Ghazkhul Thraka with a nob squad, and a large, very large, mob of stormboyz that would be deep striking. My tactics were alright, but I couldn't land a shot with anything in my army that did anything useful. I have bought new dice since then. I'm not kidding, I really did, because I swear if I had rolled better on ANYTHING I did I would have won the game. For these pictures, I don't really need to add anything. Just look at how many dice he rolled on his Waaagh! turn!
The first turn.
My Deathwing charging the Nob Squad. The fallen terminator was killed by overwatch, the rest of the squad was killed in combat...that turn.
The SECOND close combat his Nob Squad got into. Guess how that ended...
Something like 90 dice that were rolled in ONE ROUND of shooting. I didn't survive that either.
...Or this. 30 Stormboyz that I couldn't shoot at because everything else was in close combat. The orks laid on their side didn't die, they just fell over. The Dark Angels in the tower died though.
The second loss was against Necron, and again, my dice rolls weren't great, but this 600 point game was lost by-sad to say- my own strategy. Instead of standing and shooting the Wraiths that would plague my whole force, I moved towards them, hoping to claim the single objective in the center of the field quickly. Let's just say I've learned not to use my Dark Angels as Blood Angels since then and move on.
The last loss was during a 4-Way Deathmatch (I just made that up, but that's what it was). Four corners, one 500 point army in each corner, fighting for victory points, with an arch-rival worth double VPs on opposite corners. My Interrogator-Chaplain and two Tactical Squads faced the Tzeentch CSMs from my first game, the Necron that had ruined me earlier, and for the first time, very large Tyranid which deployed closest to me. The game went very well for me actually. I lost maybe two models from my force (including the plasma cannon which blew itself up), but I managed to kill a massive Tyranid Trygon with, you guessed it, Israiah the Giantslayer (I just made that up too). It deep striked right in front of my line, so I shot it up with all 21 models I had available (suitable yelling "Kill it with fire!" while I did so), and then charged it with Israiah, whose trusty crozius beat the Trygon to a pulp and earned me the only victory point I got that match. The winner ended up being the Necron, who teleported across the field and killed all the Tyranid (getting the double VP for each unit) and easily took victory. So technically I lost, but I was easily the best off by the end of the game, so I'll take the moral victory.
Our deployment for the 4-Way Deathmatch. I need to deploy my heavy weapons better.
Alright, that's the briefest I could write to update how the Third Company of the Dark Angels have fared in battle. Hopefully my dice luck goes better in the future. Look for a tactics post soon when I will discuss why certain Raven-themed units have been completely ineffectual and how I can improve with them.
Thanks all!
