A Bloody Battle

I was trying to teach my friend Horus Heresy today, so we had a 3,000 point game of Imperial Knights (and Mechanicum) versus Blood Angels. It was fun, and it wasn't as one-sided as the usual 9th edition games are (which usually just end in 1 or 2 turns).

To make things simple (since this was his very first Horus Heresy game ever), we played Blood Feud on a Dawn of War deployment zone, and he went first. I had to put together a list from his available models and write one for him, and it looked something like this:

Zephon Dominion, the Bringer of Sorrows

Librarian Consul in Tartaros Terminator armor

10 Cataphractii Terminators with power fists and 2 chain fists

5 Cataphractii Terminators with lightning claws

Contemptor Dreadnought Talon, 2 with gravis lascannons, 1 with Kheres assault cannon, all 3 with graviton gun in gravis power fist

Tactical squad

Tactical support squad with meltaguns in Rhino

Assault squad

Leviathan Dreadnought with 2 grav-flux bombards and iliastus assault cannon

Predator with flamestorm cannon

2 Predators with gravis lascannons and lascannon sponsons

Heavy support squad with 5 multi-meltas

I think that was pretty much it. Whoops, now that I think about it, there should only be 3 Heavy Support slots, not 4, so I screwed up with building his list. Never mind...

My list was the standard Knight list with the Questoris Knight Seneschal with thermal cannon, 4 Armigers Warglaive, Cerastus Knight Lancer Dolorus, and then Mechanicum allies with an Archmagos Macrotek, 2 Tech-priests Auxilia with their servo-automata, and 4 Armigers Knight Moirax - 2 with a pair of grav pulsars, and 2 with a pair of lightning locks.

My opponent rolled poorly during his shooting phase, and I believe his Predators and Contemptor Dreadnoughts only took two wounds off one of my Armigers Moirax, which I simply healed back up with my Tech-priest Auxilia during my turn. I was also rolling very well with my invulnerable saves, rolling 2 6s against the lascannons for one shot. That was just insane. In any event, he didn't roll very well, and I proceeded to move all my Knights up the table. Despite shooting a lot of haywire grav and rending lightning locks, I didn't kill any of the Contemptor Dreadnoughts or the Predator tanks that the haywire grav scattered into. They took a few wounds here and there, but that was about it.

I did manage to blow up a Rhino with two of my Armigers Warglaive, which the melta support squad spilled out from, and then my Knight Errant shot them off the board with his Stormspear missile pod and heavy stubbers. My opponent rolled a 1 and a 2 for the heavy stubber shots...and the 2 survivors (after the Stormspear missiles) promptly died. Ugh.

A combination of melta from my Knight Errant's thermal lance, a couple of thermal spears from my other 2 Armigers Warglaives, and the shock lance from my Knight Lancer killed a couple of Cataphractii Terminators, and my Knight Lancer charged in. It took his lance and a couple of stomps to slowly whittle the Terminators down, but their 4++ invulnerable saves made them really tanky.

He continued to shoot my guys, with his Predator flaming two of my servo-automata to death. His assault squad and Zephon Deep Struck, only to scatter right into my Tech-priest Auxilia and his servo-automata entourage and suffer a Deep Strike mishap. I promptly put them less than 18" away from the Tech-priest Auxilia and right next to my Armiger Warglaive. Then my Knight Errant Seneschal fired an Interceptor reaction to blow up 7 of the assault marines. Heh. Yes, Seneschal gives super-heavy Knights the ability to perform Reactions even though they normally can't. And I get an extra reaction during the shooting phase.

Zephon and the Assault Marines charged my Armiger Warglaive, dealing maybe a wound or two to him with Shred? The Dreadnoughts continued to shoot my units, and my Knight Errant took 3 hull points worth of damage from both a lascannon shot and the Leviathan Dreadnought's grav-flux bombard. The Cataphractii Terminators failed to wound my Knight Lancer, and even when the lightning claws Cataphractii Terminators charged him, they didn't do much because...quite frankly, they needed Rending to even do anything, and they couldn't get those rolls.

I finally killed a Contemptor Dreadnought with grav, and the explosion damaged a Predator tank. I eventually managed to kill 2 Predator tanks with grav, while the lightning locks damaged a second Contemptor Dreadnought. The Armigers Warglaives failed to wound the Dreadnoughts, though the Knight Errant actually took a wound off the third Contemptor Dreadnought, leaving him with 1 wound. His Stormspear missiles did nothing to a Predator, though. The Knight Lancer continued to kill the Cataphractii Terminators, but he failed to finish off the first squad, leaving just one guy after the shock lance, though the Armigers Warglaive charged in and killed maybe 2 or 3 lightning claws Cataphractii Terminators, who promptly failed morale and ran away. Whoops. Oh, at initiative 1, the Knight Lancer finished off the last surviving Cataphractii Terminator with his stomps. He was so dead. The Armigers Warglaive failed to sweeping advance the fleeing Cataphractii Terminators, though. Yikes.

At this point, my opponent forfeited. We were running out of time (the store was about to close), and he only managed to kill 2 servo-automata, failed to destroy any of my Armigers or Knights, whereas I had killed 1 squad of Cataphractii Terminators, 1 Rhino, 1 melta support tactical squad, 1 Contemptor Dreadnought and 2 Predators. Oh, well. I understood his frustration, but he did have 2 Contemptor Dreadnoughts, 1 Leviathan Dreadnought, the heavy support multimelta squad, and a Predator left. If the game went on, he might be able to finally kill a couple of Armigers. But yeah, I was clearly in the lead.

Anyway, it was a good learning experience for my friend, who finally had a taste of what Horus Heresy is about. Hopefully, we can get another game next week, but this time I'll bring my Thousand Sons instead. Or Imperial Fists. I don't know. As I said, we'll see! Until then!