Planetary Empires: Round Two Battle (part 2)

For my second game of round two I played a game with one of the other Space Marine players in the planetary empires campaign against Salamanders. Because I had two more tiles and he has an additional manufactorium he had 200 points more than me for the battle, again - select your tiles carefully to avoid battles like this! So with my wolves at 1500 points we mounted up to face some 1700 point Salamander fury.

"On the Anvil of War are the strong tempered and the weak made to perish, thus are men's souls tested as metal in the forge's fire."

He had two squads of terminators, one of which had Feel No Pain as a veteran ability, coming in by deepstrike from reserve, a drop pod with ironclad coming in first turn, an outflanking rhino and a land speeder tornado. Other than that he had a predator and two rhino's with tactical squads deployed first turn. I won the roll for first turn and he failed to seize. My long fangs took care of the predator first turn and the rhinos moved up into assault positions, popped smoke and watched the skies.

The ironclad came in on the corner of the table right next to a pack of long fangs and killed one with its storm bolter when it landed, his tactical squad in rhino popped a shot at a rhino but the smoke worked so no damage. Top of the second turn I drove a squad of grey hunters into the ironclad to protect the long fangs as they made a break for it. The Ironclad killed two grey hunters and we did nothing in return. Bottom of the second and his squad of terminators with librarian landed using the beacon on the drop pod. The Ironclad did nothing to the grey hunters and they did nothing in return! My plan at this point is to continue the assault into his deployment area with my other three squads and abandon that corner, I really don't want to mess with Feel No Pain terminators!

Top of the third turn the grey hunters manage to blow the ironclad with their power fists and consolidate away from those infernal terminators with their damned librarian and Feel No Pain. My plan at this point is to move the army as far away from those terminators as possible and plink away at them with long fangs. In the bottom of the third the other squad of terminators lands near my sacrificial grey hunters at the site of the destroyed Ironclad while his flanking rhino comes in with an additional tactical squad on that side - all the more reason to get out of there. Here is what the corner of the battle field looked like at the bottom of the third:

Dead Space Puppies ain't much fun - they never come when you call them!

Now you are probably thinking that squad is toast, and so did I! The only other thing near them is the squad of Grey Hunters still in their Rhino, with the black dice on it, at the base of the hill above them. In a last shot of desperation to save that squad, and because their Rhino served no purpose at this point, I tank shocked the terminators with the empty rhino directly above them with the white dice on it. My opponent failed his leadership test on the tank shock and the terminators broke, running 8 inches backwards. Exactly the break I needed!

I dismounted the other squad of Grey Hunters and his second squad of terminators received a full hail of bullets from everything I could pile into them and lost three of their number. The combined fire of the two Long Fang squads fell  one Terminator and the Dreadnought dropped two with rending assault cannon shots. His second terminator squad broke as well and started falling back. For the rest of the game I used two rhino's to shadow the terminators so that they couldn't regroup and walked them all the way off the battlefield. I had to mop up two other squads of tactical marines but with Space Wolves on the charge it wasn't really difficult. The game ended on turn 6 with 6 tactical marines and the landspeeder still on the table while the Feel No Pain terminators continued to head for the edge.

During the game I realized that when running a unit off the table with a tank, keep tank shocking them! They have to run during their turn and if you tank shock an already broken unit they fail automatically so you get more distance out of it. I sent a squad of terminators from one side of the board to the other in 3 turns by doing this.

The game really came down to one tank shock on those terminators, without that I would have been trying an entirely different strategy by trying to stay away from them completely. The shooting of the three terminators really helped on that second squad, but it was the assault cannon of my dreadnought that did it with 2 rending hits. I gotta figure out a way to get him into the fight quicker, I'm debating using a drop pod on first turn like my opponent did, it might be a better way to get him into the thick of it. But without teleporting terminators, Space Wolves can't teleport, to follow it up; he could end up just being a costly speed bump in the back field.

Come to think of it - I should have used the long fangs on the drop pod to destroy the beacon! Lessons lessons... and one other lesson I have learned; reward your readers for making it to the end of the post!

still practicing_

Tallarn