1000 point Imperial Guard vs Sister of Battle
Ok so after a long break from 40k I decided to throw myself against Battlefield Bangkok's Nat and his bolter bitches but little did I know how much of a beating i was about to take. I never played against Sisters of Battle before, sinply because they are only a handful of human beings who play such an old army, and naturally assumed that because they have yet to recieve an update that they would be an easy opponent for someone who just got back to playing 40k.
So at 1000 points, I went with my standard mech guard list:
HQ:
1xCCS w/Lc + 2 Plasma
+Chimera
Troops:
4xVet Squads w/ 3 Meltas
3 Chimeras
Fast Attack:
1x Vandetta (one vet squad inside)
Heavy Support:
1x Leman Russ Demolisher w/ Lascannon
1x Leman Russ w/ Heavy Bolter sponsons and hull
Sadly I can only recall a few elements of his army - and my poor knowledge on the Sisters does not help. But I can recall that he used roughly three immolators with meltas on then, two excorcists, three troop squads with meltas and a hq that just wouldn't drop dead...Saint Celestine.
As the game began we set up deployment and since we were playing only a small 1000 point game we made the board even smaller - if you look in the picture above its the four squares closest to the camera - and sadly this meant my tanks would be at a slight disadvantage.
The demolisher started it all off by throwing a pie plate on an immolator (predator proxy) and blowing it up immediately. The range of the explosion hurt a nearby sister squad with a multi melta in it and ended up removing the multi melta model as well ($$)
The command squad disembarked from the chimera and went to fire down at the HQ alongside the chimeras. It was killed but strangely since it had the ability to regenerate or something like that - all that I ended up doing was rendering Saint Celestine immobile for the next turn or so.
Since the heavy bolter russ could see a squad of sisters hiding at the back he fired all three heavy bolters and tried to pie plate them just for good measure. The russ was successful and got rid of all but two of the sisters in that squad who passed their leadership test. The chimeras moved up in an attempt to seize the points and so did not manage to do much this turn.
On his first turn - his immolators and excorcists immediatey prioritized the veterans in the chimeras and the demolisher (since he now knew what a Strength 10 Ap 2 round was fully capable of) and proceeded to move into positions where such targets were visible and struck several of my chimeras. Unfortunately many (ok most of them) troops were injured as a result of chimeras going pop and his dice rolls, needless to say were lucky. He landed his sixes on the vehicle damage table on all but one chimera who became immbolized as a result and the demolisher was tracked from the excorcists six S8 shots to its side armour. He moved the sister squad who had been shot up by my heavy bolter russ behind a excorcist for cover. And luckily his HQ was not back yet...
This was not looking good.
The sister squad in a nearby building unleashed their ammo and killed more guardsmen whilst the immolators dealt with the rest, I then failed leadership tests and numerous squads were then pinned for the turn. To make matters worse they were still far from the objectives. Only an excorcist sat on one and since it was not a scoring unit this did not count.
My next turn began with me rolling for viva vandetta who decided not to show up. Great. Just my luck.
The CCS HQ sat down and blasted at an immolator leaving it with one hull point and a crew shaken result. The Demolisher had one more round fired at the building where the bolter bitches sat in but lucky for him the round missed completely and so did the lascannon.
The squads in the back raced behind the chimeras for cover. A move I will later regret.
Then my bolter russ decided to miss the shots he took against the exorcist but luckily stripped him of a hull point.
The remaining chimera moved up to sit on an objective and deploy troops dangerously close to an immolator. I had hoped my meltas would do the job but unfortunately today they decided to miss every shot.
Now that it was back to his second turn, the HQ somehow came back to life and went after my HQ who had now taken cover in a building.
Against power armoured flame wielding units like his HQ - they were pretty much doomed and they me their demise within this turn and the next through an assault by his lone winged angel HQ.
His immolator fired a melta round into the side of bolter russ and screwed with his weapons - he could now only snap shot and at the same time the excorcist fired at the russ immobilising it.
He proceeded to outflank an immolator with several troops wielding meltas at the back of my deployment zone and within seconds destroyed the last russ and any hope my guardsmen had left. The Excorcist unleashed its remaining payload on the Leman Russ Demolisher and blew it to smithereens.
The leman russ bolter could do nothing more than take more rounds leaving it with barely a hull point left. However in all that chaos, he still didn't seize the objectives.
So now that most of my guys were pretty much screwed, the vandetta decides its finally going to come on. It luckily blows a hole in the outflanking immolator whilst zooming and one chimera that remained tried to burn some sisters sitting afar. That did not work so well even if it did kill the handful of troops and it soon saw its own demise from a nearby squad. The bolter russ's shot but failed its hits against the immolator and it casually looked on in glee. And my troops managed to finish off the three remaining sisters who outflanked.
The assault phase was pretty much a one hit ko as his HQ punched my seargent and turned to hunt down more kills.
The sisters then struck back against the vandetta - the excorcists madly firing d6 s8 shots at it in a futile attempt to down the flyer. Meanwhile - the excorcist and immolator were joined in their attempts to down the remaining russ. Funnily enough that failed miserably with all eight shots not penetrating the side or frontal armour. His HQ proceeded to hunt my remaining infantry squads and rapidly anhilated one of them.
So a few troops who were left had their last chance to get away from the HQ or immobilize it for another turn - I chose the latter much to my own regret. Could only make two wounds but he succeeded his invulnerable save on one of those hits.
Right away my russ also pounded at the excorcist - dealing a nasty strike against its side that sent it going up in flames.
The vandetta turned around and destroyed the last two sisters in a squad from before. I would have chosen to kill an excorcist but that was beyond my line of since zooming flyers are restricted to 90 degrees rotation.
Then finally that immolator saw its opportunity and struck the leman russ again only to fail with rolls of ones. The remaining squad of sisters fired at the vandetta with not a scratch and the HQ swept away the last line of guardsman and sat on my deployment zone for the rest of the game...
Ultimately we finally concluded the game after the vandetta destroyed an Immolator leaving Nat with only his HQ, one dying excorcist, one troop squad and me with a badly damaged Leman Russ, a Vandetta and veterans in the Vandetta who then helped to sit in the deployment zone. Ultimately I thought I lost but it turned out to be a draw both in kill points and in primary and secondary objectives. He slayed my warlord, but I got first blood. He sat in my deployment zone but so did I with my vandetta and the troops.
It was a great game, and an intense experience for me as well as a heart warming welcome back to the game once more. Overall I wish I wasn't so stupid as to crowd all my troops like that and if only I had known that his HQ couldnt be slayed then I'd have prioritised other targets.
