With three rounds gone, the Loyalists and Traitors have traded blows and are fairly even. Oh, and I should post pictures of everyone's armies while at it. They are really beautiful! There were Dark Angels, Night Lords, Blood Angels, Thousand Sons, Sons of Horus, Iron Hands, Iron Warriors, Raven Guard, and more! Well, the "more" is probably just my Imperial Knights and Imperial Militia. I think I'm the only one who played a non-Marine faction this Renegade. Heh.
Oh, yes. Speaking of which, I was able to field my Knights this time! For some reason, a couple of the Loyalists didn't show up - a Blood Angels player, and a Dark Angels player was late, so we now had 4 Loyalists versus 6 Traitors. I volunteered to switch sides quickly, and I was finally Loyalist again! YAY! Basically, my Thousand Sons pulled out after the beating by the Blood Angels, having secured the data caches and knowledge they wanted. And now my Knights - fresh from their victory in Aleph-1110 - march forth in defense of Ophelion. For the Emperor!
For the final round, I played against Iron Warriors with a small Night Lords detachment. Oh, no! That's bad because Night Lords are Distruted Allies with Iron Warriors. Oh, well...
My opponent actually had the Strategic Advantage and he deployed a bunch of tanks. Um, I think he had a Praetor with Thunder hammer attached to a 20-man tactical squad, a Primus Medicae (or a couple of apocetharies?), 2 10-man tactical squads in Rhinos 1 10-man tactical squad on foot, a Legion Baneblade, a Kratos with the melta blastgun, 2 Vindicators, 10-men heavy support squad with lascannons (of course) for the Iron Warriors, and a Master of Signals, a 10-man tactical squad, 4 laser-destroyer rapiers, and a Leviathan Dreadnought for the Night Lords. Nice.
I could finally field my Knights! But since this was a 4,000 point game (well, we both went up only to 3,900 points), I decided to just bring more Knights. So I had 4 Armiger Warglaives, 4 Armiger Helverins, 1 Cerastus Knight Crusader with the Aceutier upgrade, 3 Questoris Knights - an Errrant with Thunderstrike Gauntlet and the Seneschal upgrade, an Errant with the Dolorus upgrade (that's Tanaka), and a Preceptor with a las-impulsor and Avenger Gatling cannon. Backing them up is a small squad of Imperial Militia. Yeah!
Unfortunately for my opponent, after we deployed, I...rolled a 6 and seized the Initiative. And that changed everything forever.
The Armiger Helverins wiped out the Heavy Support squad, though the first Armiger took 2 or so wounds in the return fire, I'm not sure how. I rolled like 4 5+ saves or something. That was incredible. I was rolling hot, including the 6 from seizing the initiative. Moving all my other Knights forward, I wrecked a single Vindicator, did a bunch of damage to the Kratos but failed to kill it, though I did destroy its co-axial autocannon. The Baneblade took a beating from my Knight Lancer, but survived with 5 hull points. I also took out 7 tactical squads, damaged the two Rhinos, but First Strike was secured with the massacre of the heavy support squad. I think that's it, but that was brutal. Taking out the heavy support squad was absolutely game changing.
He did retaliate with the laser rapiers, Leviathan Dreadnought and Baneblade to destroy my poor Knight Lancer, who proceeded to explode and destroyed a Rhino or something. The Knight Errant Seneschal took a wound from the Kratos, who unfortunately, did not roll an Explodes! result for his one penetrating hit (I think I saved the rest with the front arc 4++ invulnerable save from his ion shield). I did manage to destroy a Rhino from the explosion of my Knight Lancer, and the tactical squad inside poured out and began to shoot the Imperial Militia to death. In the end, just a single soldier and the force commander survived, and they passed their Leadership because...Warrior Elite. Wow, that's a good provenance. Heh.
Um, I can't remember what's next. I did lose a Knight, so that's very painful. Oh, right. The Armiger Warglaive took damage from the Vindicator, and the Baneblade struck at a lot of stuff. The Armiger Warglaive did return fire and destroy the Vindicator with his melta, and the Seneschal also returned fire (thanks to his Warlord Trait), and did more damage to the Kratos and basically wiped out another 5 guys in the 20-man tactical squad and killed the Warlord. Yikes. Poor guy.
With the Knight Lancer destroyed, the Leviathan Dreadnought couldn't charge, and so...that's it for turn 1, with both of us scoring 1 point each. And he scored 2 points for Giant Slayer (or Price of Failure, we sort of used altered Heresy rules for Renegade for secondary objectives). Oh, I did score Slay the Warlord, though!
The surviving Knights continued to move up, and I wasn't able to destroy the Baneblade, but only took a few more hull points off it. The Knight Errant did manage to destroy the Kratos this time and wipe out more of the tactical squads. I think I managed to wipe out the 20-man tactical squad in this turn with the Avenger gatling cannon and the Armiger Helverins, but I can't remember. I also destroyed the second Rhino, and my Armiger Warglaives moved up to shoot and charge the first tactical squad, wiping them out in melee. I think that's about it? By now, the table was thinning.
He retaliated by moving his Leviathan Dreadnought forward, and his Baneblade slew my Armiger Warglaive, but not before I retaliated with Return Fire, destroying the Baneblade once and for all! With an explodes! result too! WOOHOO! The Seneschal took fire from the laser rapiers, and he used his special Warlord Trait to return fire, and though he died from that (and probably the Leviathan Dreadnought's meltaguns), he took out a bunch of tactical marines and 1 rapier gun. Yikes, those things are dangerous. Hmm, I can't remember what else, but I think nobody charged? We were still somewhat tied on points, with 8 to him, I think because he scored 2 points on primary, 4 for giant slaying and First Strike. Oh, and Slay the Warlord, which meant he had 8. As for me, I had 2 for primary, 2 for giant slaying, First Strike and Slay the Warlord, which brought me up to 6, so I was behind by 2 points even though I did destroy more.
In my third turn, I finally took out the rapiers through a combination of firepower from my Armiger Helverins and the Knight Crusader with las-impulsor. The Leviathan returned fire when my Armigers and surviving Knight Errant fired at him, and I think by the time shooting was done, the Rapiers were destroyed, and there were only two tactical squads and a Rhino left for the Iron Warriors, and the tactical squad, Master of Signals and 1 dude from the rapiers, and the Leviathan for the Night Lords. My Knights charged the Leviathan, and though my Knight Errant took a couple of hull points from his siege drills, he and an Armiger Warglaive finally slew the Leviathan Dreadnought. Excellent! His explosion did little to either of my Knights, and we continued. Oh, the Armiger Warglaives moved in to contest the objective, and I managed to kill 1 tactical squad with them. However, the Rhino denied me the objective, so I only pulled ahead 7 to his 8. Yikes. It's a very close game.
He decided to charge me with his infantry squads, and I killed the Master of Signal and the other guy with overwatch, ha ha! The Night Lord squad did get in and smacked the Armiger Warglaive around, and he lost combat before failing morale and running away. He didn't get swept because we tied on Initiative. Oh, well. Fortunately, he regrouped the next turn. The other Armiger Warglaive fared better, but they were still tied in combat. I did deny him the objective, so it's still 7 to his 8.
The fourth and final turn! I destroyed the Rhino with my Knight Crusader, then proceeded to shoot the Night Lord squad until there was just the Sergeant in relic armor remaining. He then made his special Night Lords reaction to run away to avoid getting charged by my Armiger Warglaive. My Knight Errant charged into the last remaining Iron Warriors tactical squad, and between him and the Armiger Warglaive, killed a bunch, leaving maybe 3 or so? They failed morale and ran away because we tied in initiative again, so goodbye. And the objective is now mine, giving me 3 Victory points. That means I finally pulled ahead 10 to 8.
My opponent spent his final turn running away because, quite frankly, there's no way his surviving guys can hurt my Knights, and he risked getting a Return Fire that would see the Sergeant obliterated by melta. So, yeah. Oh, well. Anyway, that's it! I won in the end, and that's what matters, I guess? That means I won 10 to 8, but I did also score Linebreaker or whatever that secondary objective is (Renegade only), which brought me to 13 to 8 or something, but I didn't really count. The result was what mattered.
It was a really close and fun game! I did lose a bunch of Knights, but I also wreaked havoc in the Iron Warrior lines and slowly whittled them down to pull ahead. My opponent was way ahead in Victory Points at first, especially when he killed two Super-heavy Knights (ouch), but somehow I managed to claw my way back (okay, by destroying lots of stuff).
That meant I scored a win for the Loyalists, and...with the other battles coming to a conclusion, it came down to Dark Angels versus Thousand Sons on another table. I'm not sure what happened, but I think the Dark Angels won or something. Fortunately, the Loyalists pulled ahead for this round, and when we tallied up the scores...it was a draw!
Whoa! A draw! Nobody lost this campaign! I guess we denied each other the resources, and achieved what we wanted. Ophelion is left burning in its wake, with neither force having any acccess to its ruined infrastructure and vast resources. The Thousand Sons have fled with their precious data caches, knowledge stores and information, while the Knights of House Yato have successfully defended the relic and archeotech, allowing them to defend the Imperium better. That was a great campaign! YAY!
I think that's about it, I think? I don't know. It was fun, I'm a bit exhausted, and I'm still over the moon regarding my win with the Adeptus Titanicus campaign. My Knights have rested a day after slaying Titans, and they marched out in the last day to successfully deny the Traitors the resources on Ophelion. Pretty awesome narrative twist, and one more for the archives of House Yato to record. Another mark of victory leading to the Siege of Terra. Awesome! Not only that, I received Mark III Marines after all that is said and done. So yeah! I don't know what to do with them...yet, but I suspect I'll just purchase a bunch of Achaean heads, assemble a squad of Despoilers so that I can make them Pyrae, and use them as replacement for one of the tactical squads. We'll see. Anyway, that's all I have for now, so yeah. Till then!
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