Second Battle of Alonde

          The second salamander chapter finished were informed 2 days later that the Black Templars had attempted to finish the necrons off when we had gotten a distress signal over the vox. They had a fly-by to see the results. What they saw was a massacre. The Black Templars had almost been completely annihilated by the rusting necrons.  They landed and disembarked, seeing all of the enemy troops. Their was one man still mostly alive, and the heartless necrons had missed this lone survivor in the Imperium’s own factory. This was the property of the Emperor…  not the necron’s, we needed to do something about that. They had many reasons to fight, show no weakness to their recently discovered forge-father, avenge the fallen Salamanders and Templars and more importantly satisfy the God-Emperor and provide divine vengeance to the filthy necrons.

Salamander Deployment

1500 points Salamanders

Combined Arms Detachment

1 x Vulkan He'stan (represented by captain)

2 x 10 Space Marine Tactical Squad

1 x Dreadnought

1 x Iron Clad Dreadnought in drop pod

1 x 10 legion of the damned

1 x 8 terminators

1 x Storm Raven (represented by storm talon)

Necron Deployment

1500 Necrons
Decurian Detachment

1 x Overlord

2 x 10 Warriors one in a ghost ark (large black and blue thing)

1 x 10 Immortals

1 x 10 Flayed Ones

1 x Spyder (represented by broken monster)

6 x Scarabs 

3 x Wraiths

3 x Tomb Blades (represented by thin black things)

1 x Monolith (represented by tau Hammerhead)

1 x Doom Scythe (represented by tau hammerhead on flyer base)

           

We deployed with just a Dreadnought and marine squad. The marines were attacked almost immediately by wraiths and Tomb Blades.  While the dreadnought was attempting to flank the scarabs and warriors. But what we failed to acknowledge was a monolith that had dropped in and teleported the warriors, the dreadnought was trying to flank, to the dreadnought. The warriors were shooting the dreadnought to death while the wraith was attacking the marine squad.

The marines were doing poorly and were dying swiftly due to the wraiths decapitated them slowly. Soon it was just down to the sergeant as he fought them back ferociously, eventually being forced to make a tactical retreat. The wraiths follow close after. As soon as they make it to him, one looks down at his chest and notices a chainsword straight through him, slowly advancing to his head, as hard as the wraith tried he couldn’t phase out of existence.  The sergeant accepted his honorable fate of death as the other wraith tore his legs from his body and decapitated him as a present for those that lurk in the shadows. 

            While the others were dying, a drop pod arrived with an Ironclad Dreadnought ready to attack the Spider, a scarab barfing beast.  The scarabs quickly swarm it, taking 2 hull points. He take a swing with his seismic hammer, then again with a power fist. He kills the unlucky scarabs and goes for their creator. As he makes his way towards it, he shouts , “Come here you coward! Face me like a respectful being, not like the trembling bucket of bolts you are!” The spider getting intimidated as the ironclad shoots at it, projectile vomits another scarab. The scarab attempts to slow the ironclad, but he easily swipes it away and continues walking toward the retreating spider. The legion of the Damned deep-strike in a few feet from the Immortals and the intimidated overlord hiding behind them. The legionaries fires upon the  immortals and launches a missile at the center of the crowd to weaken them, then charge. The charging legion of the damned yelling,“For the Emperor!”, strikes fear into the metallic hearts of the immortals and they try to run, only delaying their inevitable doom.

         

   The storm raven fires a stormstrike missile and assault cannons at the retreating Spider and seeing the Spider sprawl out in the field and a few parts dragging on the ground. The spider gets up, still missing a few key parts, throws up another scarabs to attack the advancing ironclad. Like the previous scarabs, the ironclad is only slowed a little while it moves forward and it’s occasional gunfire. In the distance, we notice Flayed Ones burrowing up from the ground, it did so through a ruined building. All of us were thinking of how stupid the flayed ones were but we had to focus on battle. 

The storm raven containing another tactical squad and Vulkan He’stan himself leading battle.  The storm raven notices warriors attempting to capture the objective and lets the tactical squad led by Vulkan get out to fend them off. As we charge, Vulkan is yelling our battle cry, so we join in yelling, "Into the fires of battle, unto the Anvil of War!"  Pummeling the warriors to pieces. We all watched in awe as Vulkan brought the warriors to their knees with his Gauntlet of the Flame and his trademark spear.

            Near us, Terminators had dropped in, bracing for the impact of landing, provided support from invading warriors. The tomb blade, doom scythe, monolith and the warriors had overwhelmed the terminators with explosions and gauss shots. When the smoke cleared, we could see five out of the eight terminators menacingly standing ready to charge the warriors. Sadly, still a little shaken from the blasts, they fall short allowing them to be sustainable to further injury. Two more Terminators fall in combat, but the remaining three successfully charge and kill a few warriors. The rest become terrified at the losses and begin to run. The terminators, yet again being vulnerable, die leaving it up to the sergeant. He runs in and yells, “I will take one of your heads as a prize and bring it to the emperor to show a job done right!” He brings four warriors down with him as he dies due to the overwhelming number of warriors.

            Our focus is no longer on the warriors and instead on the recently monolith teleported Flayed ones attempting to steal the objective from us. We would not sacrifice any of our brothers, salamander or not, so we fight for our lives, Vulkan’s life and the fallen Templar’s. Vulkan stabs them with his mighty spear and kills three of them, the other getting back up. We proceed to punch them knocking one down and the sergeant knocking down another. Wraiths appear shortly after Vulkan kills all but one flayed, and Vulkan rapidily stabbed and kill one wraith before he can do any damage and sends a crippling blow to the other.

            While the wraith and flayed one contemplate their strikes carefully, The legion of the damned numbers are quickly depleting, as the overlord occasionally steps out of hiding to attack on of the legionaries. It is quickly down to one man, one fearless man. 

He fended them off until we all hear a familiar sound. It is the gentle hum of our smooth running engines. The one thing we needed to see the most was the symbol of our chapter, especially the second company, and that is exactly what we saw. We pulled out our bolt pistols and shot at the remaining necrons, forcing them to run or get shot if they stayed. We are one of the luckiest set of men alive, I don’t know if it was Vulkan strength, the Emperor’s encouragement and wisdom or both, but we won. We beat the filthy necrons off of the land they thought was theirs.

Salamanders: 4 (Linebreaker, Secure the Relic)

Necron: 2 (First Blood, Linebreaker)

Ethan’s Debriefing

            This was an all around great battle. The only correction that might be needed is not holding the deep-strikers so late, the ironclad was fine, but putting in the Legion of the damned, stormraven (didn’t have the model so I used the stormtalon) and Terminators in so late wasn’t very effective because he had many troops that were available to shoot at them. Just to let you know, I didn’t have the Vulkan He’stan model, so I used the captain. 

Justin, remember when you left a red die at our house? That die won me the game. That was the die that was rolled to end the game, and it did. I guess for saving your guys, your die lets me win… I will make sure they make their way to a dreadnought.

Joel’s Debriefing

Good win, Ethan.  You did a great job of recognizing what you needed to do to win (get the relic), the rules for your models, and taking risks when necessary.  Switching the storm raven to hover mode and making that dangerous terrain test to have it hover over the building to drop Vulkan and the scoring marines on to the objective was brilliant.  However, I have two suggestions:
·       Don’t wait on your reserves.  Yes, you may want it all together but that will almost never happen.  Take what you can get when you can get it.  Leaving only a handful of units out at a time leaves you vulnerable to me autowinning by killing all of your units.  The game is over if you have nothing on the battlefield at the end of the turn, which could’ve been possible if I had made my charge roll with the scarabs on the dreadnought on turn 1 and better shooting in turn 2. 
·       Second, don’t leave your units isolated.  Bringing in your terminators in your deployment zone after I had pretty much destroyed your deployed marines and dreadnaught when I had the ghost ark, monolith, doom scythe, 20 warriors, 3 tomb blades was not a smart move.  Even with a 2+ against nearly 60 shots per turn they will die. You were so lucky they survived the death ray Strength 10 AP1 large blast and he made 6 of 8 invulnerable saves.  Unbelievable!

On my end, I didn’t realize the choice of detachment was so important.  Ethan won not because he tactically out maneuvered me but because he built his army with a combined arms style which gave objective secured special rule for his troops and took a chance when things got desperate. This gave his troops the objective if they are not up against another combined arms force and even though they were fighting off necron warriors, wraiths, and flayed ones by the end of the game.  I built my army with the decurian detachment which gave me +1 to reanimation protocols.  After losing this game I am thinking I will build combined arms from now on because that is a huge advantage and the +1 didn’t help as much as I thought it would. Plus, I have to take units that I am not thrilled with, like the tomb blades.