Battle Report by John Swann

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I can not take credit for the name. This site was named by Aaron Cains.

I played against a Dark Angels army from a friend of mine who's taking them
to the Baltimore GT. This was kind of a warm-up and list shake down game.
Anyway, he had lots of marines!

He had two Dreads, that annoying tank with the honkin' HUGE gun on the front
(I'll call it a Vindicator), three Land Speeders, two 10-strong "basic"
tacticals with H. Bolter and plasma gun, three 5-strong tacticals with
lascannon and plasma guns, a Devistator squad with 4 Heavy bolters, a
whirlwind, and a commander. I may be forgetting something, but that's the
bulk of it.

My Sisters army was:
Canoness with 9 Sisters (Sisters have 1 Heavy Flamer and 1 Meltagun/Rhino
with smoke and H/K missile);
"Tactical" squad one (Sister Superior/9 Sisters/1 Heavy Flamer/1 Melta/Rhino
with smoke and H/K missile);
"Tactical" squad two (same as 1);
Seraphim squad (Sister Superior/9 Seraphim/1 flamer);
Retributor Squad one (Sister Superior/9 Sisters/4 Heavy Flamers/Rhino with
smoke and H/K missile);
Retributor Squad two (6 Sisters/4 Heavy Bolters/Immolator with smoke);
Immolator with smoke.

All of the Sister Superiors had plasma pistols, power swords, and
meltabombs.

We played Dawn Raid as that's the "basic" GT scenario (or at least it was
last time). He set up his units first and got the first move. We set up
the terrain just like at the GT and so there was a decent amount of terrain
(8 pieces). The middle was fairly crowded with terrain, but the flanks were
more open.

I placed one Tactical squad and the Heavy Bolters on my left flank with a
nice open field of fire. In the middle, I placed both Immolators, once
Tactial squad, and behind them the Flamer squad and Seraphim. My Canoness
with her squad was in reserve.

He deployed fairly similarly. His Devistators were opposed to mine along
with a couple of the little tactial squads. In the middle he massed both
10-strong squads as well as the Vindicator and one of the dreads. On the
othe flank (my right) he placed the other dread and one of the little
tacticals. His Whirlwind and Speeders were held back behind a hill as
reserve.

His first turn fire was *totally* ineffective. Everything that could see
far enough to shoot at me missed! But my turn was just about as bad. Both
Immolators got within shooting range of the two 10-strong units, but only
one took any damage and fell back. I unloaded my tactical squad in the
middle. On the left flank, my tactial squad got behind a hill and
dismounted. The flamer Sisters popped smoke and hid in their rhino. I cut
loose with a couple of H/K missiles, but all missed. All in all, my
shooting was a waste as well. I took a couple of desperation shots with the
dismounted tacticals at the nearby Dread as the marines in front of it had
fled due to the flames of the Immolator. Nothing came of it, of course.
One thing I noticed is that Dreads (and Wraithlords) are going to be a
serious problem for my Sisters.

In his turn, he advanced most of his forces. The speeders swept out of
their hiding place and maneuvered into position to take pot shots and
contest quadrants at the end. In his shooting phase, he managed to
immobilize one of my Immolators and destroy the other. The Rhino in the
middle of the table got slagged as well. But again, other than that, his
shooting was pretty poor. I do like Power Armour!!! And then his Dread
charged in and I started to lose sisters left and right.

In my turn, I moved my Seraphim up to shoot and charge one of the 10-strong
marine units while my flamer squad advanced, dismounted, and got ready to do
the same to the other. My Retributors traded fire with their opposite
number on the left flank to no avail. The Seraphim did little in the
shooting phase and the ensuing charge was a bust as well as they killed a
whopping single marine. My Flamers did a *bit* better as the four heavy
flamers had a lot of targets. I killed a couple of marines, but that was
about it. I then charged them into his commander, but failed to get a kill.

Both of the combats in the middle (the Seraphim and Flamers) would last the
rest of the game with neither side breaking or even falling back. His Dread
killed some more Sisters, but they were immune to breaking due to sacred
rites and so they held him up.

His turn 3. His unengaged dread wandered towards my immobilized Immolator
(that dread had the TL-Lascannon) and failed to penetrate the front armour.
In fact, his shooting was pretty piss poor. One of his Speeders did manage
to glance my Canoness' Rhino and the Rhino couldn't shoot next turn. He
wasted a lot of fire on that Immolator to no effect. He moved the
Vindicator up to try and get at the two squads of sisters on my left flank.
And that was about it for shooting. All in all, he did little. The
remnants of the 10-strong marine unit that my Flamer shot up charged in to
help his commander out. I actually managed to kill the commander in HtH (it
was the wimpiest Commander you can buy mind you).

My third turn started pretty uneventful. His moving the Vindicator up
basically pinned my Canoness back behind cover. If I had tried to advance
her up to help out the middle, she would have been stuck right in it's
sights. So I moved the Rhino up a bit and the Canoness and her retinue
jumped out to shoot up a Speeder that had gotten too close (i.e. in my
deployment zone). My shooting was pretty limited. The Retributors wasted
more H bolter shells on DA power armour. And The canoness and her squad
totally missed the Speeder. The one bright spot was that, by moving up the
Vindicator, he'd given me a flank shot at it with my immobilized Immolator.
And boy did that pay off!!! S6 vice side armour of AV11 and I rolled a "6"!
After that, the "6" for damage was a foregone inevitability. Boom!!! In
the HtH phase, as I'd mentioned, the two melee's in the middle were boring
affairs where little happened. I was ticked at my Canoness' poor showing in
shooting, so I charged the Speeder with her Powerfist (needing "6"'s to hit)
and managed to get a hit, glance, and "4" for damage!!!) Woo Hoo!!! The
Canoness managed to pull the thing out of the air!!! But disaster struck
when his Dreadnought killed the last two Sisters it had been in contact with
and could consolidate closer to my Canoness.

His turn four. Basically, little to do. Everyone of his that could move
out to contest a quadrant did. The dread that had just broken through my
lines moved closer to my Canoness while the other one charged into the
battle between his tactical and my flamer squad.

In his shooting phase he didn't do that much, but his Dread did manage to
skrag my Canoness' Rhino (now empty) with it's multi-melta. That sucked as
the Rhino still had it's H/K missile and I was hoping to use it to go
skimmer hunting. The Dread then charged my Canoness' unit. In HtH, it
killed a couple of sisters, but they too were immune to breaking and so held
their ground while the Canoness consolidated into contact with her
powerfist. In the middle, again, little happened. The Seraphim and his
tacticals continued to battle to a stalemate. The other Dread charged in an
only managed a single kill on my Flamers. That unit was a 50% now and
dangerously close to falling below the magic number needed to claim a
quadrant.

In my turn, I didn't have a lot of moving to do. Belatedly, I moved the
tactical squad on my left flank up, but it was *way* too late. Other than
that, I had no movement to make. In the shooting phase I wasted more H
bolter Shells to no avail, and that was about it. In HtH, the Seraphim
continued to do nothing, but neither did the marines. In the other "middle"
battle the dread missed with both it's swings, so it was up to the 4
tactical marines to try and kill one Sister to "break" the unit. The rolled
4 hits and 4 wounds... And I made 4 saves. Woo Hoo there's still hope!
And then to his Dread against my Canoness. He took his two attacks, hit
once, and failed to wound. I took my 3. Hit twice and actually managed a
glance. I immobilized the Dread! And so it ended. We counted up quadrants
and he came out ahead 1-0. All the others were contested. But I realized
later, that I had only put 9 of the 10 seraphim on the table! Since there
were 4 left at the end, we thought they were under 50%, but there should
have been 5 of them on the table and they were in his deployment zone (the
one he had taken) so we should have tied! That and since I killed his
commander, I would have gotten an extra VP in the tourney.

Not too bad really, considering that's the first time I've played Sisters
and Shane didn't make many mistakes and his army is pretty solid. I did
decide that I *really* need more AT firepower. I simply have to have some
way to kill Dreads. There's nothing that I can do once they're in HtH. So
I'm jiggering my army to get some Multi-meltas in there. My Sisters Superior
were totally useless. S3 just isn't enough even if you have a power sword. I want to
keep them for the morale and sacred rites bonuses, but I'm going to drop the
power swords (that's partially how I'm paying for the multimeltas). Also,
the H/K missiles were a bust. At 15 pts per, they're just too expensive as
they are only S8 and only hit on a 4+. So there's more points for
Multimeltas...

But all in all, I'm pretty happy with how they did. Not great, but not bad.
I made some serious errors on my part. I totally wasted one entire
tactical squad (they just hid behind a hill all game and did nothing). I
made a couple of miss-steps with all the Rhinos (it sucks that your own
vehicles block your LoS) and I could have positioned both units (the first
tactical squad and my Canoness') to avoid charges by that damned dread if
I'd thought of it.

Hope that was interesting.

Vale,

John