Battle of Alonde

The Adeptus Astartes second salamander chapter flew by an unexplored planet, or so they thought. The filthy necrons had already landed and set up a few obelisks as they explore this strange new territory. Salamanders, wanting to claim the land for the emperor and make the planet an economical advantage for them, landed and prepared for battle The salamanders with 20 troops, a terminator Chaplain, Terminators,  a Rhino, drop pod, stormtalon gunship and the legion of the damned covered in spectral flames. They landed and the techmarine informed them how many and what the enemy is. 17 warriors, 7 scarabs, 10 immortals, 5 destroyers, 3 wraiths  and of course their warlord.

            The necrons almost immediately noticed them and began to charge toward objectives. The scarabs and wraiths charged quickly while the immortals and normal troops hang back. The space marines moved to where they can’t be seen but can see the enemy. The techmarine getting an unfortunate outcome and being separated from his precious rhino, looked out the window and noticed the charging wraiths and scarabs. The rhino moves up waiting for it; techmarine then sees the scarabs moving towards it ready to eat the rhino and the men inside.  It aims it’s heavy bolter at them and pulling the trigger, Being completely off guard when only one was wounded. Suddenly, they notice the scarabs eating holes straight onto the ship, forcing the marines out. Unfortunately for the scarabs, their was a flamer in their midst. When the scarabs finished their snack, the looked up to see a flame coming for 6 of them. They look to their left and see a frag coming to blow up the survivors.

            Meanwhile, the techmarine in a nearby building is assaulted by the wraiths, somehow forgetting he has servo arms and a flamethrower on one, he starts attempting to punch the wraiths. After 20 long minutes of fighting, the techmarine gets one wound off on the wraiths and then dies an honorable death. The marines in cover start firing on the destroyers, one falls but rebuilds itself.

             The legion of the damned come behind the horde of necrons in a drop pod. Their goal was to wither down the troops. The heavy bolter fires into the crowd as the storm bolter on the drop pod and the rest along side the heavy. To their surprise, they drop like flies. Then there were 4. They charge, the necrons getting intimidated, but not enough to retreat. The warriors fire blindly and kill the heavy bolter. The rest punch the necrons with them crumbling at their fists. The terminators and Stormtalon drop in to kill the immortals and prevent them from providing support to the normal troops. The Stormtalon brings the immortals to their knees as the terminators are ready to charge soon. The Stormtalon never knew they had the sky fire nexus and quickly crashes.

         

   Meanwhile, the wraiths and the squad that came from the rhino are in combat. The normal troops dying off leaving it to the sergeant to finish them off. The sergeant struggles for a little, but is eventually able to saw his way straight through one of them. He struggles to fend off the rest during the rest of the battle. The squad in front continue shooting at the destroyers and eventually kills two, but only after they kill a terminator.

        

    The terminator sergeant becomes enraged and swiftly slits one of the rusty bucket of bolts’ wires as the rest trudge next to deliver a mighty blow with power fists. They mow through the crowd until it reaches three immortals against three terminators. One of the immortals is able to catch the terminator off guard and put his gun to his chest and fire.

            Back with the legion of the damned, one legionary dies. But, the necron overlord can’t stand how terrifying the legion of the damned are and uses his only veil of darkness to teleport to the other side of battle. They appear behind my chaplain’s squad and begin firing on the closest target, the chaplain. The chaplain absorbs all of the gauss fire and shrugs it off. The salamanders hear the sounds of mighty engines and thrusters. Necron reinforcements arrive and the salamanders are forced to retreat. They are later informed this planet is named Alonde. This battle showing the necron’s fear and cowardice is known as the battle of Alonde.

           

Ethan's Debriefing

1.     This was a very excellent and close game. The final score was 11-8. Dad won with eleven. The techmarine (not painted) started off in the building to capture the objective, but couldn’t get to the rhino before it was swarmed. My rhino was waiting for my techmarine to arrive, but was attacked by scarabs first. Their was no point for my techmarine to waste a turn to continue descending the building. The rhino shouldn't have waited for the techmarine, I should have known that the wraiths would've killed him anyways. I was too worried about the scarabs even though I only had one troop to try to kill them. (Stupid honey badgers)

2.      I was attempting to trick dad to think another squad had the flamethrower. The positioning of the drop pod and the legion of the damned inside was risky and an excellent choice. The legion of the damned was attacked by less troops then if they dropped into the middle of the horde, showing strategy helps before blindly running into combat.   

3.     My stormtalon arrived and was going to the immortals to weaken them before the terminators charged. But the immortals had sky-fire nexus and was easily able to shoot the stormtalon down, but  they still didn’t shoot my terminators at all so they survived a little longer.

4.     When dad had killed 2 of my terminators with his destroyer, when I used their 2+ armor save I had terrible rolls of ones. If the necrons couldn’t get back up, I probably would have gotten a lot more kills…. I still can’t believe my stormtalon wasn’t even alive for two turns.

Joel's (Dad) Debriefing

1.  Great job, Ethan.  You made some solid tactical decisions.  My favorite was dropping the legion of the damned to the side of the necron warriors and forcing them into a choke point so that only so many could fire and engage in combat.  Great use of a choke point! The necron warriors and the overlord were quite surprised.  

2. Dumb luck on the stormtalon because who knew that I would get a skyfire nexus for my objective.  Otherwise, you set it up right so that it could have potentially gotten two rounds of shooting before it would have to move off board.  

3. Terminators did what they were supposed to do, kill effectively.  Bad dice rolls happen sometime.  I originally intended to have the overlord and his veil of darkness in the immortal squad figuring that you would attack the immortals full force with the legion of the damned and the terminators but when you dropped the drop pod and I recognized the choke point I had to move my overlord to stop the slow murder of my warriors.  Which gave you the perfect opportunity to kill my immortals in combat with your terminators.  Terminators supporting a drop pod dreadnaught would be scary.  Very scary. 

4.  Ethan, are you listening?  What do Rhinos do? Yes, go forward and drop troops off.  What happened?  Waiting for a techmarine?  Why wasn't the techmarine already in the squad?  He could have repaired it from the inside.  

5. Don't worry so much about the scarabs.  They will not destroy your army.  They are meant more as a tar pit that your infantry get stuck in and have to murder their way through.  At best they will take out a vehicle, which is their purpose, otherwise they are speed bumps.  

6. The Chaplain, your warlord, was how many points? 120? What did he do this game?  Take 6 gauss flayer shots and watch a squad of space marines die at the hands of the wraiths.  He could have taken those wraiths especially if you moved him at the beginning of the fight with the space marine as the wounds could have been placed on the other space marines while you bashed some phasing wraith faces.  

Destoyers killing terminators.