Battle Report - Evacuation!

Greetings,

Tonight saw the third of a series of battle fought between my Loyalist Blades Of Fire marines and Colonel Scipio's Palladian Guard.

This time we played a scenario of my own devising, entitled Evacuation!
The story behind the scenario is simple - Task Force Minerva has been pushed back and now their encampment is under threat and Daxos has ordered the encampment evacuated. The Palladians are  spread over a wide area searching for the Blades.

And now they have found them.

The Exact rules will follow in a future post, however I've tried to capture the essence of an attacking army spread over and area rushing to the sight of the objective, with fast and scouty units getting there quicker than lumbering tanks and slow units. And the Attacker have the advantage of being able to bring more forces to the party/battle

Now onto the battle!

The forces where as such

I had 1000 points to play with and I chose -

1st Sergeant Daxos
5 man Vanguard Veterans (2 Power weapons, 3 Storm Shields)
6 Man Devastator Squad (2 Lascannons, 2 Missile Lauchers)
10 Man Tactical Squad (Meltagun)
10 Man Scout Sqaud (5 Sniper Rifles, Heavy Bolter)
Custodian Walker
Razorback (Multi Melta)

Scipio had 1500 to choose his army with he had -

Captain Severus with Command Squad in a Salamander Vehicle
10 Man Veteran Squad
2 Infantry Platoons (Infantry Squads with Heavy Bolters)
2 Leman Russ Demolishers
1 Leman Russ Executioner
Laser Destroyer
Sentinel (Missile Launcher)
Ratling Squad

Enemy Sighted!

 As you can see my (rather small) army is entrenched around the objective - in this case a landing pad and Colonel Scipio has just one Infantry Platoon in the top right.

In the first couple of turns, Colonel Scipio failed to get any other units on the table and the Platoon took a beating from the Custodian, although the HQ element managed to wipe out all but one of my Devastators in a single charge! however, said HQ element was then mown down by Bolter fire the Tactical squad close by. This was a devastating (excuse the pun) blow to me as Scipio had effectively eliminated one of my Anti tank units!

The Death of the Devastators

The Counter Assault (note the Palladian Casualties at the bottom!)

 On turn 4 all but 1 of Scipio's Forces where on the table and I was being over-run, with my Multi-melta wielding Razorback failing to take down his tanks and my left flank starting to collapse due to almost all of my opponent's army arriving on that flank and blasting the Custodian with shell after shell.

Even the Scouts had to get stuck in on the left flank!

Turn 5 saw Daxos rampaging through the remaining infantry on the right flank, supported by the Tactical Squad, however Palladian Veterans had managed to slip in behind the defensive line.

It was at this point that I just had too much to shoot at! I had been over-run completely and the landing pad had start to come under fire

Palladian Veterans slip through the Blades defences

 Turn 6 and only Daxos and one other Vanguard, as well as the majority of the tactical was all that remained, as the scouts had sacrificed themselves trying to destroy one of the Demolishers. The infantry killing was merely a sideshow compared to the bombardment the Landing pad was taking.

The landing pad was still standing at the end of turn 6, however, under the scenario rules the game only finishes after a roll of 4+ every turn after the 6th, and after a roll of a 3 victory was slowly slipping from my grasp.

Turn 7 saw the Veterans and Captain Severus' retinue had closed on the objective, the Tactical Squad lacked the firepower to deal with them all, and although the Severus' Squad was decimated the Veterans managed to get 2 Meltabombs on the Objective, weakening the structure.

Luckly for me Scipio's Tanks failed to finish it off, so it all depended on the end-of-game roll, the Die was cast......


........ a 1

And that was it, the last of the Tactical Squad was taken out, and Daxos was too far to do anything. In the end a Demolisher Cannon dealt the killing blow

I was Defeated

I was a cracking, nail-biting, exciting game - the scenario mechanics worked really well and it lead to one of the closest fought games I have played.

Next time I will share the Scenario rules as well as update Daxos' story

See you then

Coldsteel