Club night again and finally a chance to play Shaun who has been at the club for ages but for whatever reason I've never actually played him (the same was true for his brother Ash, who I finally managed to play a few weeks ago!).

Shaun has an amazingly well painted and converted Soul Drinkers army and runs it with the Space Marine Codex. He is also coming to Throne of Skulls with us in October too, which will be cool.

We had Capture & Control with Pitched Battle. I won the roll, chose the side and he didn't manage to steal initiative.

Turn 1 wasn't particularly effective, apart from the Ravager with Disintegrator Cannons wiping out seven vanguard veterans. Other than that, it was mostly a moving exercise. I lost the Mandrakes immediately - the mass death of the vanguard vets left them out of charge range so they just got shot up and then charged by the Chaplain and remaining two Vanguard Vets! He also took out the Ravager - unsurprisingly - it was very dangerous to his army. He also shook one of the Razorwings.

My initial setup, with the Baron joined up with the Wracks and the Haemonculus with 
the Hellions. The Mandrakes had limited options for Infiltration...

On the other side of the battlefield, the two Razorwings prepared for action whilst 
the Reaver Jetbikes lurked ready to shoot off after some tanks

Turn 2 things looked better as one set of Reaver Jetbikes took out a Razorback, the remaining two Jetbikes from the other squad blew up a vindicator after getting a side shot on it. The Baron and Hellions wiped out the remaining VVets and the Chaplain. Blew the weapon off of the other Vindicator with the Razorwing. On his turn his Land Speeder arrived, hit terrain and mishapped - I got to place it where I wanted so I placed it on difficult terrain facing away from my models - he then rolled a 1 and it was immobilised. His turn his scouts popped a Venom in close combat, the dreadnought took out the last two jetbikes in one squad.

The Baron & Hellions after finishing off the Vanguard Vets hope the rest of the army can 
stop the Vindicators... luckily one is destroyed and the other loses its weapons!

Turn 3 The Hellions went after the tactical squad on his objective and multi-charged the land speeder as well. The marines were beaten but held the land speeder blew up. The other Jetbikes managed to stun the dreadnought. The warriors who jumped out of the wrecked Venom killed the scouts. His turn he rolled successful reserves and brought on some assault marines who landed behind the razorwing and didn't do anything, and a drop pod with full tactical squad landed on my objective (as one of the guys pointed out, it should have come down turn 1 - d'oh!) - they failed to shoot anything too. The Hellions beat the tacticals up until there was one guy left then Hit & Run and went after the other tactical squad.

The Jetbikes finish with a Razorback and eye the weaponless Vindicator, the immobilized 
Landspeeder and the Dreadnought as their next possible target

Turn 4 The Hellions shot up the other tac squad, jumped them and almost wiped them out - they also multi-charged the remaining gunless Vindicator blowing it up. The Jetbikes immobilised the Dreadnought. The assault squad was killed to a single marine. The tactical squad was taken down to 2 men who failed their leadership test and ran away towards their board edge (and off my objective). In his turn the last assault marine attacked a Venom and missed, the running guys ran again, but also shot a venom and wrecked it. The Hellions killed the remaining tac's and consolidated back towards the last guy holding his objective.

The drop pod of marines that should have come down turn 1 but came down turn 3 instead. Whilst I couldn't shift 
the pod itself before the game ended, I could shift the scoring troops.

Turn 5 The Hellions took out the last tac guy and took his objective. The Jetbikes shot the last rhino and stunned it. The assault marine was killed. A Venom went to my objective but I couldn't shift the drop pod so it stayed contested. I did blow the weapon off the drop pod so it couldn't do anything. Shaun only had 5scouts left (who did nothing all game) an immobilized dreadnought that couldn't shoot anything because it was all behind him and a gunless drop pod - 2 marines were running for the board edge and kept being within 6" of me so he couldn't rally them. We called it there.

Despite not killing all the marines on the objective, the Baron led the Hellions after another tactical squad and also multi-charged the weapon less Vindicator for good measure wrecking that too. They then managed to get back to the objective and kill the remaining Space Marine to seize that.


I still had left:

Baron
11x Hellions (out of 13)
Haemonculus & 2 wracks (one died fighting the assault marine)
2x Venom & 5 warriors
5 warriors
1 Jetbike
2x Razorwing Jetfighters

Shaun gave me a really tough fight - tougher than the end showed and a couple of times I thought he was about to swing things in his favour. So a 1-0 win - which could have ended up 2-0 if the game had continued and I could have shifted the drop pod. 

Great game though. Nice to finally have faced Shaun too! :)