An Epic Disaster

This weeks game was to be the first outing for my recently painted Epic Armageddon Blood Angels, against Fraser and his Orks.

 

We played a standard tournament scenario, with 3000 points each.

Having played Guard in Epic for the last fifteen years or so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect so took a bit of everything:

Tactical Detachment
Tactical Detachment
Assault Detachment
Devastator Detachment
Death Company
Terminator Detachment
Bikes
Land Speeders
Predator Annihilator
Thunderhawk
Thunderhawk

Fraser brought (very roughly)

STompa Mob
Stompa Mob, with super stompa
Blitz Brigade
Boyz Brigade
Big Gunz
Fighta Bomber
Fighta Bommers
Stormboyz Brigade
Speed Freaks

Pre-game saw Fraser put his objectives on the extreme edges of my table edges, while mine were placed more centrally.

 

The blood angels deployed fairly centrally, hoping to make use of the cover and their faster units. Fraser put a stompa mob on each flank, obviously looking to take the objectives he had deployed on each side, while putting his infantry in the centre.

 

Fraser has a habit of being a jammy git, and this started of looking like it was gong to be no exception as despite the odds being in my favour he won the initiative roll to go first.

 

Early game saw the Blood Angels advances into cover, while the Orks advanced strongly on the flanks, leaving their centre on overwatch. I decided to take a punt with the first Thunderhawk and did a ground assault on the large Stompa Mob on my left flank.  The marines managed to survive the interception from the Ork Bombers, wiping them out in the process but in the ensuing assault the terminators were wiped out, for the loss of only one killa kan.  As usual Fraser had passed all of his armour saves, while I had failed mine, resulting in the Terminator formation and accompanying Thunderhawk being wiped out.

 

Fraser retaliated with some fire from a few formations, resulting in a few blast markers and one stand of marines being eliminated.  The marine land speeders then engaged the Ork Speed Freaks, wiping them out for no losses.  Fraser retaliated by killing two of them with his blitz brigade.

 

I then brought in the second Thunderhawk, carrying the Devastators and Death Company.  Fraser reacted with his other squadron of Fighta Bombers, and after all of my anti aircraft fire had missed completely he managed to inflict a single hit on the Thunderhawk.  I was not worried as Thunderhawks have a 4+ re-rollable save and 2 damage points, so they should have been safe.  However I failed the save, and the re-roll and then to add insult to injury I rolled a 6 for the critical, bring the Thunderhawk crashing out of  the sky, killing everyone on board!

 

Turn 1 was complete and half the blood angels were dead, for the loss of 3 planes and a single Killa Kan on the Ork side, so I decided to call it a day.

 

So a fairly typical game against Fraser, with him being a jammy git and me failing miserably. In the end he did not really have to do anything, as my assaults all turned out to be suicidal, thanks to poor dice rolling on my part and excellent on his.  In hindsight I probably should have continued playing, but at the time I couldn't really see the point as the main assault elements of my army were gone, and I had no real answer to all the Stompas and mini titan.

 

It was a pretty disappointing evening, as I was hoping for more from the mighty Space Marines.  I am trying to make a point to play them differently from my Guard, so I went for an aggressive assault based approach, which in this instance didn't pay off (although to be honest, nothing generally ever pays off against Fraser).

 

Next week we get to go through the charade all over again, except this time it is with the new version of Basic Impetus!

 

In other new Gary managed to actually pass a cohesion test, which is apparently pretty noteworthy.