Volscani 4th Vs Blood Angels Battle Report

I managed to get a rare mid week game in last night against my good friend ElPee, Parker and his blood angels. We decided that since we had painted armies and terrain (and we haven't done one in eons) that we should do a battle report on our game. Now Parker and I are usually up for some oddball stuff to make the game interesting. Since most of the terrain on hand was city ruins, I dug out "Ye Olde Cities O' Death" from the books and we played a 5th edition city fight.

 Right Flank

Center

LeftFlank

The mission was to hold as many ruins as we could. In the original game this would have been any unit, but since we are in a 5th edition world only our "troops" could hold. We had 10 buildings and the bridge out for a total of 11 possible scoring points.  We decided on stratagems as follows, then deployed.

Shadowvast: Booby traps, munitions cache, and siege shells
ElPee: Combat Engineers, tank traps(grrr), and a demolition charge

I took a fairly straightforward 2000 point guard army as follows:

Regimental command, autocannon, Meltagun plasmagun, chimera
10 man psyker battle squad in chimera
3x Scout Sentinels with Autocannons
Vendetta
2x 10man Veteran squad with 3 plasma in chimera
10 man veteran squad with 3 meltas in chimera
2x Leman Russ Demolishers
2x Medusa with Cammo netting (which I forgot)
Manticore

ElPee's Blood Angels looked like this
Epistolary Librarian, Jump Pack, using shield and lance
10 man assault squad with 2 melta guns an infernus pistol and powerfist
10 man assault squad with flamer, infernis pistol and powerfist
10 man tactical with flamer and rocket launcher in a rhino
2x annihilator predators
3x typhoon landspeeders
10 terminators with cyclone missile launcher

So with me deployed and stratagems placed, the board looked like this:

Those markers are my booby traps

So after ElPee decides to reserve everything I roll out to start taking a few buildings....but wait he has a surprise for me....

See those stone barricades? Yeah, those are tank traps, and they are impassible terrain to vehicles.....yeah good times....he basically locked me into my deployment and forced me to split through difficult terrain on my flanks with my vehicles...cagey buddy, cagey....

So after two turns of slogging through the ruins parker decided to show up and fight. He got about half his army, and deployed on my right flank, here:

Things would get crazy from here. My psyker battle squad immobilized itself blocking my exit on the left flank, and forcing me to just push into the marines on the right....can you see why that cammo netting I forgot about would have been handy here?

I moved up in the middle to get my command squad into the tower in front of me and move some troops into buildings. ElPee moved up on that single flank while he waited for those reserves and his HQ to join the fight. His tactical squad stayed in the rhino for now, content to snipe at my Medusas with their rocket launcher. That rocket launcher and those predators would prove fatal to the twin medusas , but that opened a path for my tansports to make a run through the building and take up positions to defend it.

This also allows a really good view of the blasted tank traps I was talking about....grrrrr! I moved my men out on foot to start taking ruins for end game results at this point. The squad on the ground behind the tower was moving to the left towards the manufactorum to the left of the picture. Right about turn 4 things got interesting though.....

The blood angels command joined the party, and downed a demolisher and the vendetta over the next two turns. I had hit them with my psyker battle squad's weaken resolve power to make them leadership 2 when they showed up, but I could not inflict that last wound I needed to force a test on them, so this was the result.

The right flank was a firestorm the whole game with my chimeras making a wall to stop the terminators getting too far into the terrain. I was hoping to knock the storage tanks down on their heads but failed to make that happen twice, and I didn't get the third chance. Elpee played his trump cards on turn 4. In the picture above you can see the crater from him dropping a building down (fortunately I wasn't in it) and then making craters out of my medusas over on the right. He was pressing in HARD on that right flank with the remains of his central assault squad. I used every gun left on that flank and finally killed the powerfist sergeant, but that left those terminators all but ignored until now....uh oh!

As you can see that sergeant about gave me a heart attack! Those terminators were really in my grill on turn 5. After 6 turns of blasting at each other the game ended with Elpee holding the storage tanks, bridge and processing plant, and me holding one manufactorum tower and a cathedral and contesting the second manufatorum. End result 2-2 tie. Awesome game against an awesome opponent. Having painted armies and terrain really made me feel like I was down in the action, looking through windows and doors for fire lanes and cover.

I cannot say enough how much good looking terrain and armies can enhance a great game. All in all we played this game for nearly 4 hours. It got bogged down for rules from cities of death converting to 5th edition, and pictures, but that didn't slow down our good time. Battles like this don't come along every day....just every time I play a game with a good friend like ElPee! And I want a rematch on this one!!