Nova Open Game 2: CSM/Daemons vs Grey Knights

And Ian back with another Battle Report from the NOVA Open, here with game 2!

For my army list, check the 1st post in this series.

This matchup was against a Grey Knights player, who took an interesting list:

Draigo
Coteaz
Paladins
2x Grey Knight Terminators
Henchmen, 4 crusaders, 3 Plasma guns, 2 jokero, a few acolytes
2 Dreaknights
Psyfleman dread

Deployment was Hammer and Anvil, mission was one of the objective ones, I believe 4 objectives.

I setup my Aegis on the right side of my deployment zone, 2 rhinos in front closer to the center, intended to move to where needed.On the other side, I deployed the other 2 rhinos and my cultists, poised to get in the rhino.

My opponent deployed his acolytes and Coteaz on the central hill, a squad of terminators on the right, his dreadnought toward the back of his deployment zone, and a dreadknight up front, looking to be the rusher. He opts to give 2 squads outflank (dreadknight and draigo w/Paladins), I believe, due to grand strategy, and deepstrikes the other terminator squad.


I go first and move my rhinos up, leaving the cultists near the back objective, and angle to take out the terminators with my plasma squads. If I can get close, I will erase those terminators.


My opponent does some shooting turn one, and blows up a rhino. On the top of my turn 2, the bikes come in outflanking (I rolled the infiltrate one for my warlord trait), and unknowingly get hammered by coteaz who has a supercharged interceptor ability. My own fault for not knowing. Still, my lord and plague marines open up on the henchmen, as does the quadgun. This dents the squad pretty badly.


Turn 2 for my opponent sees all 3 of his reserves come in, terminators, a dread knight, and paladins, all on my back lines. Whew, this is gonna be fun! my backfield forces are only a few hundred points, most of my army is in the forward push, so losing my backfield isn't catastrophic unless there are a lot of flyers in play. He does some shooting, I lose some pink horrors. On my turn, I take 2 of the terminators with a vector strike. I also wipe out the dreadknight with plasma shooting.


Draigo's squad blows up the plague marine and cultists' rhino, killing most of the cultists. Eventually they whittle down the plague marines, and the last marine attempts an epic charge, but fails the charge distance and is killed in the next turn of shooting. My other Plague Marine squad took the objective that was once under the Terminators, and the right flank plague marine squad finished off Coteaz's squad and settled in on my opponent's other objective. Draigo's squad would sit on their objective for the remainder of the game, so the drama was over the objective that my Pink Horrors started on. Over there, shooting resulted in the death of the Dreadknight, but the terminators got stuck in, and the pink horrors lasted until the lord could get into combat. The end result? 2 objectives for me, 1 for my opponent, with the Lord contesting the 4th. Victory for me against the forces of the inquisition.


That was one of my two victories of the event, so I'm especially happy about it! I'm not going to lie, my experience with this army was definitely part of what coaxed me to get my Ravenwing off the ground. Its hard to have your transports blown up and be stranded wherever you happened to make it, being able to quickly reconfigure is essentially. That's also why I want to get my Eldar Corsairs off the ground.