The battle of the two engine whisperers

sin's Iron Warriors @1'500pts

The incoming information was unclear, but something was moving fast at the sulfuric spires in Alpacel IV. Brother Techmarine Divico redirected his small force to have a clearer look and assess the situation.

Iron Warriors Tactical Squad.

Iron Warriors Chosen with Warpsmith (he was also their warlord) and Land Raider.

Obliterators, shooty Dreadnought, and Vindicator.

Those who formerly proudly served the Imperial Army, now reduced to Iron Warriors Cultists.

After a hiatus of several years, sin and I managed to play a game of 40K together again. I never played against him because back in the good old days my Blood Angels were always fighting side-by-side with his Adeptus Sorroritas, but this time he picked his Iron Warriors. Since I don't have any sympathies with the traitors at Istvan, I was curious to see how this game turned out. We played the Maelstrom Mission where every player always has three mission cards and we both played at 1'500pts.

This is how the IW set up to the left of the street.

This is how my BA set up to the right of the street.

sin's turn 1 didn't really mark any special moments other than the Land Raider's twinlinked Lascanon destroying one Rhino, forcing the included Tactical Squad to disembark.

No points were scored because sin's Maelstrom cards said his mission objectives (MO) were in my table half.

I didn't even take any pictures of events in my turn because my BA just moved and didn't score anything either. It turned out my MO were in sin's table half, too.

The Assault Squad successfully weathered the incoming fire and I was really lucky with my saving rolls.

This was not so true for my second Rhino and its Tactical Squad, so their numbers slowly but surely started to thin out. The even bigger problem now was that I didn't have any mobile Multimelta left against the Land Raider other than on my Stormraven.

At the end of sin's turn 2, he had 3 MO points, all based on shooting.

My turn 2 saw me performing this risky move. My Death Company failed the charge by 2 inches and stood in the open.

End of my turn 2: same old, same old.

In sin's turn 3, the Death Company and most importantly the Librarian got reduced from this...

...to this...

...and the IW templates finally gnawed away the Assault Squad.

Pointswise it didn't affect anything, though, because that last Assault Squad Marine simply didn't wanna go and made all his saves, thus preventing sin from fulfilling his MO card.

On my turn the remaining Death Company charged the Chosen, killed a few, forced them to fail a leadership check, so they ran right back into their Land Raider, leaving the Death Company out in the open right in front of enemy guns again.

At the end of my turn 3, I finally managed to get my first MO point.

sin's turn 4 was pretty uneventful other than his shooting and wiping up the Death Company. Here he shot my Land Speeder with his wounded Obliterator, but thank the Emperor all shots missed.

So at the end of his turn 4, he got another point on his scoreboard for a total of 4. I was still trailing with 1 point, but with a good end game I could still win this one.

On my turn 4, the still living Tactical Squads joined the Scouts in the ruins to form a defensive belt.

The Land Speeder and the Stormraven managed to finish off the Dreadnought. Crucially, I forgot to repair the lost Hull Point on my Stormraven with the Techmarine (with Servoharness) and the Servitors inside. Had I remembered, the repair roll would have been successful on a 2+.

Because of the dead Dreadnought, I managed to crawl 1 point close to sin's score of 4.

On sin's fifth turn, the Land Raider advanced into my defensive belt, but didn't really do any harm because everyone hid in the ruins. The Chosen would have to exit the Land Raider again for a kill, but if they did in turn 6, my chances would be dim.

The Obliterators unloaded onto the Stormraven with Assault Canons and managed to take off two Hull Points. Because I forgot to repair the missing Hull Point in the previous turn, these were also the Stormraven's last two remaining and it went down crashing.

Because he also killed my Techmarine/warlord, sin got bumped up to 7 MO points.

In my 5th turn nothing really happened anymore. The Tactical Squads and Scouts again took a few shots at the IW infantry, but their Armor and Cover Saves prevented any significant losses. The game ended on turn 5 with a score of 2 to 6.

This battle report was quite dull to write; unlucky mission cards, badly placed models on my part and sin's fire power proved to provide a pretty uneventful game. However, we still had a heck of a good time as we had an extremely laid back atmosphere and cheered for every dice roll, be it good or bad. :D

We are going to play again with the same armies, but I will have to improve the placing of my miniatures. sin thinks I should deepstrike, but I am always hesitant because the Jump Packs are sitting ducks afterwards for a full turn. Well, we'll see.