My friend Brian and I had been planning a one day campaign for a couple of months and played this past weekend. I finally had the time to write the batrep for the first game.
You can find the rules for the mission here:
Battle in the Eye of Terror Mission 1
Primary Objective – Kill Points
Secondary Objectives – First Blood, Slay the Warlord, Line Breaker
Deployment – Hammer and Anvil
Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemons vs. Chaos Daemons
You can find the two army lists here:
Here are a couple pictures of the battlefield:
Here is my army:
Here is my deployment which consisted of Kharn and the squad of Khorne Marines in one Chaos Land Raider with the Berserkers in the second Chaos Land Raider. Note that my Berserkers had the Warp Icon (refer to mission 1 special rules).
My two Land Raiders both targeted one of the Soul Grinders and destroyed it during the bottom of the first turn for First Blood.
TURN 2
Icon #2 activated on the battlefield (refer to mission 1 special rules) and Brian’s daemon army advanced toward my tanks.
On the bottom of turn 2 my CrusherStar, Bloodletters and Heldrake arrived from reserve. I took a risky drop with my CrusherStar and unfortunately they mishapped – Brian got to then place them on the table in the very heart of his daemonic hordes… Oh noes !!! :'(
The Bloodletters came in scattering straight towards the mighty enemy daemons.
TURN 3
Icon #6 activated on the battlefield. Again the daemonic hordes moved forward towards my Land Raiders.
Flamers and Fiends encircle my CrusherStar while the Seekers go after my Bloodletters.
Both units of Khorne daemons are swept away by flame and claw.
The forces of Khorne welcome the arrival of Abbadon and his Mournival as their Chaos Storm Eagle zooms into battle to counter attack. My Berserkers dismount ready to charge the approaching line of daemons.
The Chaos Land Raiders destroy one Soul Grinder and immobilize the other. The Chaos Storm Eagle and Heldrake focus on one squad of Screamers and manage to wipe them off the table followed by a late charge from the Berserkers!
TURN 4
Icon #2 exploded harmlessly and Icon #1 activated. The daemons finally close rank with my Land Raiders.
One Land Raider falls prey to the other squad of Screamers while another squad of Flamers burninate the Berserkers. Kharn and his Marines stumble out from the burning wreckage.
All I can manage in return is kill two of the Screamers but Kharn and his squad are safely tucked away in close combat with the daemons.
TURN 5
Icon #6 exploded killing one Daemonette and Icon #3 activated. More daemons pile in around Kharn.
The Khorne Marines are gutted by the Seekers but Kharn survives the onslaught chopping down one daemon after another.
Brian surrounded the base of my Chaos Storm Eagle preventing Abbadon from disembarking this turn… dirty daemons !!! The flyers blaze away but cannot entirely destroy any of the remaining daemonic units.
TURN 6
Kharn finally drops but takes the last of a squad of Daemonettes with him. Again Abbadon cannot disembark and join the fight due to the Fiends and Seekers surrounding the base of the Chaos Storm Eagle. Flyers shoot and wipe out a squad of Daemonettes.
So it comes to a very bloody end…
Daemons – 9 kill points total
Khorne – 7 kill points total
POST GAME ANALYSIS
I made two big mistakes which cost me this game.
First I should have deployed my CrusherStar on the table rather than go for the risky deepstrike… that was three big kill points right down the proverbial drain. The CrusherStar can do a lot of damage and I ended up having to play without their brawn.
I had never seen anyone surround the base of a flyer to prevent a squad inside from disembarking so that caught me off guard and Abbadon never got to do his thing either… so basically I had to fight this battle without five of my heavy hitters (Abbadon-Mournival, Skulltaker-Herald-Bloodcrushers).
It was still a very close game right down to the last turn with Kharn doing more than his fair share of the lion’s work on my side of the table.
Note that the way the campaign was setup overall victory was achieved by the player who scored the most battle points over the course of all three games… so I was still right in the thick of it and I made sure not to make these two mistakes again… the proud Son of Horus went on a rampaging killing spree the next game as did my CrusherStar.
Cool report with some not so cool proxies. The thing I hate about allowing special rules in missions is that they affect the games a lot more than people realize. Having the demons start on the board with what he wanted to use gave him a huge advantage i.e. immediate board control on a large area of the board. Other than that cool stuff, nerds.
We both agreed to the rules before hand… it was a one day campaign with three special missions.
Yeah, just moving away from pick up missions can be a lot of fun. If you decide you’re going to mess with the missions and not worry if you screw up the balance it lets both players off the hook for winning and you can just have a blast.
I played a couple of games of planetstrike recently and really enjoyed playing a few different scenarios and not having to worry about warlord, first blood and linebreaker.