[BatRep] 1750 Emerald Fists vs. Raven Guard

Deployment

I took all of these photos from top down which should better illustrate the game.  Some are also a bit shaky so I'm sorry.  Anyway it was a 1750 point game with terrain placement as per the rule book.  Game was big guns never tire and deployment along the long table edges.  My army and his were very similar; I took 5 hammer terminators in a crusader, 2x 10 man tactical squads in rhinos (combat squaded into 5s), 2 dev teams (plasma and heavy bolters), an assault squad, a hunter and a command squad and librarian.  His army consisted of 3x 10 man tacticals, an assault squad, thunderfire, sternguard, 2 predators and 5 hammer terminators.  He deployed first and I followed.  In hindsight my deployment should have placed the spare rhino (from devs and empty) behind the land raider to protect it from his drop poding tacticals.  He probably should have put the thunderfire on the roof of his boltered ruin and not on the ground floor.

The RG went first, and put a lot of hurt on my transports.  The combat squaded tacticals melta/combimelta blasted my land raider and the resulting explosion killed a terminator.  

End of Game Turn 1

His predators also stripped 2 hull points of each combat squad's rhino and immobilized them.  His thunderfire barraged away at my plasma devs and killed 3 and the sergeant.  He also moved forward with his tactical rhinos and popped smoke.  On my turn my pod with command squad and librarian dropped on his back line (left) and destroyed the thunderfire (this REALLY needed to happen; it's very dangerous).  My razorback with a lascannon also blew up a predator and I put some glances on a rhino.  My back line decimated his combat squads though and I moved up my assault squads.

Turn 2

End of Raven Guard Turn 2

The Raven Guard 2nd turn resulted in his assault squad killing 4/5 of the combat squad in his back line; however tactical error on the RG commander resulted in him accepting a challenge with the Fist apothecary.  This assault would then drag out as no one had a special weapon.  His commander (Shrike) assaults my librarian and in some terrible dice rolling, he only inflicts 1 wound on the librarian (who was in power armour with no invul).  The librarian lands one wound with his force weapon and the fight is over.  His terminators deep struck in his own end to avoid being heavy boltered.  Worried about holding his home objective, he turned back a rhino to hold it.

End of Emerald Fist Turn 2

 



On my turn (Emerald Fists) I disembarked a combat squad from an immobilized rhino with the plan to jump into the empty dev rhino (chevron).  My assault team moved up and assaulted his rhino (mid field) and wrecked it.  My librarian moved to assault the sternguard hiding in his ruins and one of my combat squads assaulted his drop pod.  My terminators also moved up the field.

Turn 3



End Raven Guard Turn 3

The Raven Guard turn involved his terminators assaulting my assault marines (which killed 2 in overwatch and 1 in close combat; he rolled very badly and the assault marines faught on.  His disembarked tacticals shot up my librarian and his assault marines finally kill my apothecary.

 

End of Emerald Fist Turn 3

 On my turn 3 I move my hunter up the field (it is scoring) while maintaining cover behind the ruins and my terminators.  My assault marines whittle the terminators down to 1 model and my combat squad embarks in the dev's rhino which then immobilizes on the crater.  I've had no luck with transports.  My razorback on the top moved up the field slowly with a combat squad hidden behind it.

 

Turn 4

End of Raven Guard turn 4

The raven guard turn sees his assault marines assault mine to help his terminator out.  It is otherwise not very eventful.  His drop pod has continued to attempt to kill my sole plasma cannon dev for 4 turns now and not succeeded.

End of Emerald Fist turn 4

 The Emerald Fists move up further.  My razorback moved another 6 with it's combat squad in tow and my combat squads finally decide to disembark to make a move on the objectives.  The drop pod RG drop pod is finally glanced to death and my terminators fail a charge on his assault marines.  My hunter snap shots at his remaining predator and explodes it.

Turn 5

 

End of Raven Guard turn 5

Night Fight begins.  The Raven Guard move their disembarked tactical squad back to their home objective and switch places with the rhino (in an attempt to move and contest other objectives in the Fist backfield) and the rhino uses its search light on my hunter.  The assault marine/terminator combat is brutally long and not much dies due to good saves and few wounds scored.  The Raven Guard destroy the Fist's Hunter with the sternguard.

End of Emerald Fist turn 5

The Emerald Fist turn sees the combat squad behind the razorback embark and boost forward toward an objective in the centre of the field.  My terminators move up on the new rhino and the dev team with heavy bolters strips its hullpoints off.  Creative placement of Raven Guard prevents line of sight and I cannot charge with the terminators.  I manage to repair a rhino for next turn and my marines continue to move forward.  The close combat involving the assault marines continues to drag.  The game was 11-6 for the Fists at this stage however continued two more turns.

Turn 6

End of Game Turn 6

On Game Turn 6 the Raven Guard whittle my terminator squad down to 1 model and I charge his remaining tacticals.  The combat prevents his tactical squad from scoring or denying the objective and I move a combat squad onto the objective.  At the end of the Emerald Fist turn his assault marines and terminator finally destroy the last of my assault squad.  I continue to move up onto objectives.

Turn 7

End of Raven Guard turn 7

The Raven Guard move their assault marines into the Fist backfield in an attempt/hope to deny the rear objective.  After assaulting and forcing my combat squad to fall back (was not the goal) they are now in the open.  They consolodate to hold and claim linebreaker and pray to the Emperor for armour saves.  His terminator moves in to assault my combat squad and deny the objective.  The central objective now involved 1 terminator and 1 tactical squad per side in two seperate yet equally important battles.

End of Game

We play out the game and the Emerald Fists (2 combat squads) kill the RG terminator in close combat.  The remnants of combat squads in the rear destroy the 3 RG assault marines and claim that objective.  The Fist terminator continues to fend off RG tacticals and scores linebreaker.

The end result of this game was a score of 14 to 6 for the Emerald Fist victory.  Point wise it was somewhere around 600 to 300 points remaining.  There were some mistakes on both sides and the lists were fairly similar however I feel the Emerald Fists had a better list to exploit their chapter tactics.  The Heavy Bolter Dev team was not game breaking but did very well and was one of the star units as was the Fist command squad.  The thunderfire cannon for the RG and the predators performed well as always as did the RG assault squads (at least in the first round of combat).  The RG list did not fully exploit the chapter tactics though which are sub par (at least after seeing 1 game of it).  Deployment on both sides could also have been better and I don't think I'll be taking a lone land raider again any time soon and we both decided after the game that 5 man tactical squads with a special/combi weapon and rhino was probably the way to go.  The 10 mans did not bring anything to the table nor did the heavy weapons we both bought for the tacticals.