Dissolution

After the latest encounter with the Iron Warriors, Brother Techmarine Divico moved the remnants of his warhost into a ruined ancient city in the hope to find cover until reinforcements arrive. Unfortunately, although the Blood Angels moved swiftly, the Iron Warriors didn't lose their trace and soon opened a new torrent of fire.

This is how we set up. On the closer edge of the table you can see my half where two units of sniper scouts can be recognized with their yellow camo cloaks. I placed everything else in reserve in hopes to minimize the damage done by the Iron Warriors' fire power. Unfortunately, I was immediately to realize that this was a grave mistake. Sin's warlord trait allowed him to Infiltrate with three units, so because I had no units on the table, he could place them anywhere, i.e. on the mission objectives (MO) midfield. Once it was my turn to infiltrate with my scouts, I could only occupy the two MOs they are currently sitting on in the picture above.

Better pre-game view of my Scouts.

At my forward Scouts' 10 o' clock, this band of Chaos Space Marines occupied these ruins.

Further down the street at 11 o' clock, these Obliterators and the Vindicator was waiting.

Behind them in these ruins a mob of Cultists.

Finally, at the Scouts' 2 o' clock this Land Raider.

I managed to seize the iniative, but the Scouts' missile launchers (ML) proved to be of no value against the heavily armored tanks. Therefore, the game quickly moved on to Sin's turn 1; I didn't even take a picture of mine.

On turn 1, the Land Raider moved forward and fired, but the Scouts were deeply dug in in cover.

Not so lucky were the forward Scouts who lost three brothers to the approaching Vindicator's fire, but the remaining two should stay there for the rest of the game.

The arrival of turn 2 saw no victory points (VP) scored yet.

My turn 2 saw the arrival of the Stormraven...

...and my third units of Scouts who moved into the ruins behind the Land Raider to score on that MO.

Also my Assault Squad with two Flamers dropped from the skies right next to the Cultists.

The Stormraven unloaded onto the Land Raider, stole one hull point (HP) and managed to immobilize it.

The Assault Squad activated their flamers and sent the Cultists to hell.

With a lucky roll, the backyard Scout Squad with its ML managed to grab another one of the Land Raider's HP.

My turn 2 saw quite some firing, but due to an unlucky draw of my mission cards no VP.

The Iron Warriors' turn 2 saw this Vindicator...

...and the Obliterators fire onto the Assault squad to remove this thorn in their flesh.

That's why Sin got 1 VP for First Blood.

My 3rd turn saw the Rhinos coming from reserve with their buts forward so the Multimelta (MM) would be within half distance range to the Land Raider. One was able to hit and penetrate for a Weapon Destroyed result.

The Storm Raven was pressing on and fired at the Forge Fiend for 1 HP damage, but the Forge Fiend repaired it in the following turn.

The Land Speeder came in from reserves as well, sneaked up on the Chaos Space Marines, and carefully stayed out of their Bolters' range.

The Scout Squad stepped down from their ruin with the MO in hopes to damage the Land Raider with the Veteran Sergeant's Powerfist. Unfortunately, they failed their charge roll. In hindsight, this was a huge mistake and they should have stayed put on the MO, although their Bolters would have been ineffective against all the Iron Warriors' vehicles, but they'd have at least had that god damn' MO.

So Sin was still the only one with 1 VP.

Overview of the board at the start of the Iron Warriors' turn 3. I was optimistic I could win this game because the Land Raider was bleeding life like a wounded duck in a Siberian winter.

Well, then the Warpsmith exited the Land Raider to kill the Scouts.

The Obliterators exited the Land Raider as well because someone had to kill a vehicle according to Sin's mission cards.

Which they managed to achieve, so one of my Tactical Squads got a bit of fresh air.

This bumped Sin to 3 VP and me to my 4th turn.

The Death Company arrived and I placed them as far away as possible from the Obliterators, yet they still were sitting ducks for an entire turn.

The Multimeltas from this Rhino finally killed the Land Raider.

The Tactical Squad with the fresh air moved closer to fire away at the Obliterators.

Finally, the Stormraven turned to stay on the board and had the Obliterators right in front of its guns, but because of the Jink Saves in the previous round it hardly hit anything.

Still I got 1 VP at the end of my turn 4. I was positive that I still have all the important cards to win the game - I had two Tactical squads pressing on the Chosen, two units of Scouts that were hard to remove from their ruins, a Stormraven at full health plus the newly arrived Death Company who would hopefully survive for a turn and make it to the MO in the ruins where the Cultists originally hid. Plus with 1 to 3 VP this was still very winnable with good mission cards.

The Warpsmith moved on to the MO that was foolishly left by the Scouts.

The Chosen moved around the ruin to fire at the remaining Rhino to score another VP.

Not pictured is the disposal of the Death Company and the Stormraven ( I guess that was too dramatic), so Sin got bumped up to 6 VP.

I don't know why I didn't take any picture of my turn five. Either way, my two Tactical Squads moved like pincers around the Chosen and covered them in Bolter and Melta fire plus my 2nd VP came from some lucky MO card draw, I guess.

If I still had any hopes for vitory in turn 4, Sin's Iron Warriors were now on full swing in their turn five.

The remaining Chosen assaulted the Tactical Squad and the two Sergeants dueled.

The Chaos Sergeant killed the Loyalist Sergeant and received a gift from the Chaos Gods - he turned into a daemon Prince!

With these horrors in sight, the rest of the squad tried to flee, but got caught in the process.

So at the beginning of my turn 6 it obviously was 2 to 12.

In my turn, the remaining Tactical squad and the Scouts first fired onto the Daemon Prince, killed him...

...and finally also the last remaining Chosen.

So now the score was 3 to 12 and killing that daemon Prince was at least some nice moral victory for me in this shitty situation. However, after rereading the rules we realized we misplayed this; a Chaos Space Marine who turn into a Daemon Prince still retains his Power Armor with its 3+ Armor Save, which would have been way more beneficial than the 5+ Invulnerable Save we played the model with. However, Sin decided to leave the model off the table and not replay this situation again since he was in the lead anyway.

Sin's turn 6 mostly saw a Vindicator moving closer to my backyard Scouts, but once again they didn't really care about enemy fire.

Because Sin's units could freely roam on two thirds of the board, he accumulated three more VP. Especially the Forge Fiend was busy running from MO to MO depending on the mission cards sin drew.

I honetsly don't remember what we did in turn 7, it hardly was a turn anymore, but we both moved up a little again for the 4 to 18 final result.

Once again I had an awesome evening with Sin despite my terrible defeat - it's because he's such an awesome guy to play with that the score doesn't really matter. Yet it is obvious I still make many terrible mistakes, especially my bad decisions during pre-game made me essentially lose the game. And the Death Company playing sitting ducks for one turn without doing anything - this was basically 400 points thrown out the window.

For this game, Sin already toned down his list by removing the Basilisk, but for the next game he will leave all his armor at home, so it will be about infantry vs. infantry and we'll see if that tilts fortune to my favor.