Saturday 29 July 2017

Dark Artisan Video Battle Report- Astra Militarum vs Chaos Space Marines

Today I have a new video battle report to share with you, as well as some of my own photos of the game. I was fortunate enough to feature on the Dark Artisan's youtube channel once again. 

This time, my Astra Militarum army took on Harry's Chaos Space Marines. 

For my Guard army, I decided to go for an infantry heavy force, backed up by a couple of tanks. The army was led by Commissar Yarrick, who I recently faced at Caledonian Revolution and knew could be very useful in a game. Check out the video and be sure to like the video and leave comments if you enjoyed it. 

Due to the time constraints of the club night, I was not able to take full notes for writing up the battle report, but did manage to take some photos of the game. 












































My army was made up of two Battalions to give me some great bonus command points. The army consisted of:
Commissar Yarrick
Two Company Commanders
Two Platoon Commanders
Primaris Psyker
Two Command Squads- one with four Flamers and one with two Plasma Guns
8 Infantry Squads- Lascannons and Grenade Launchers
3 Heavy Weapon Squads- Missile Launchers, Autocannons and Heavy Bolters
Chimera
10 Ratlings
10 Tempestus Scions
2 Wyverns
Leman Russ
Leman Russ Punisher
Valkyrie

This was my first game with the Guard in 8th edition. They were a lot of fun to play with, but so many units meant a LOT of dice rolling.

Some thoughts on the army:

  • Automatic orders are great. Issue orders directly without the Leadership test is great, allowing you much greater control of how the army will function when you build it. Move, move, move is vastly improved, allowing a unit to move between 14-24" per turn, brilliant for quickly moving around the battlefield to grab objectives. 
  • Wyverns can put out a lot of damage. 4D6 shots are awesome when you get a great roll. 
  • I didn't get to see how improved the Leman Russ tank is in 8th edition. Harry targeted them pretty quickly, so I'll need to play another game to see how they perform. 

Some highlights of the game were:

  • Harry failed both psychic tests for his Sorcerer on turn 1. This left the Bezerkers in a precarious position, as Harry had disembarked them to charge using his psychic power. This allowed me to target them and wipe them out in my first turn. 
  • On my first turn, the Wyvern did 5 wounds on the Chaos Bikers. Harry then failed four of his 3+ saves and two Bikers died (that's my level of rolling right there!). 
  • The Valkyrie managed to kill the Sorcerer outright with its Lascannon. 
  • My four flamers managed 20 hits on the Chaos Space Marines. This was especially amusing, as in the previous turn, Harry's Defiler managed only two hits with his twin Heavy Flamers. 
  • When on 3 wounds, I fired at the Heldrake with my Lascannon. I hit and wounded, but only rolled a two for damage. Fortunately, I managed to take the final wound off the flyer with a Lasgun from the squad! 
It was a really fun game, despite getting cut short due to time constraints. I should get another game in with my Guard to really test out the army at some point in the future. 

7 comments:

  1. Good to see another proper gunline guard army! I was quite worried about the wyvern with changes to templates, but its still pretty good, there are some advantages and disadvantages but overall its still very effective.

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    1. It's how I always run my Guard Steven. Choke the enemy with the corpses of your own men, just like a proper Guard commander!

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  2. Hey man that was a good battle! You shot them up pretty good, no need to continue anyway when time was called.

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    1. Yeah, failing the psychic test on the Bezerkers was huge. If he had charged me on turn 1, I imagine they would have romped across my lines quite easily.

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    2. Well, yeah, but I also thought disembarking them was a bit reckless - why not leave them in the Land Raider for another turn? Risking an important unit on a dice roll like that... and then they'd still have to make the charge, and you could've just pulled back and shot them the turn after.. I don't know.

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