BATTLE REPORT: NIGHT LORDS VS THOUSAND SONS

You read that?  Exciting frontline action!

Before I get into the game and such, I would like to send out a big thanks to Sean who, for no reason other than to play me, made a trip into Winnipeg from Brandon.  It made me feel all warm and fuzzy right before he pounded me into dust.

Now that I got that out of the way, lets talk army lists.  I'll keep these quick and simple starting with my army.

Outrider Detachment
Daemon Prince with wings and axe
Chaos Lord with a jump pack and Claws of the Black Hunt
Warp Talons
Raptors with 2 meltaguns
Raptors with 2 meltaguns
Raptors

Battalion Detachment
Daemon Prince with 2 sets of talons
Dark Apostle
Exalted Champion with power axe and plasma pistol
Possessed
10 Marines with meltaguns
10 Marines with flamers
20 Cultists
20 Cultists
3 Rhinos

Sean's army is a Thousand Sons army from the Index, but because of taking Thousand sons, it forced him to take a couple auxiliary detachments in order to take Raptors and Oblits.  His list looks like this

Battalion Detachment
Daemon Prince with wings and 2 sets of talons
Exalted Sorcerer on a disc
Exalted Sorcerer on a disc
Tzangors
Tzangors
10 Rubric Marines with flamer and reaper cannon
Predator with autocannon and sponson lascannons
Mauler fiend
Heldrake

Lord of War detachment
Magnus

Auxiliary detachment
Obliterators
Raptors

For the mission, we decided to try out those fancy new Open War cards, of which I just so happen to be writing a review of, and this game actually does not affect my view on them at all.  That sentence will only make sense if you've read both posts.  We got the Courier, which means that Sean and I each have to choose a model in our army, other than our warlord, and the opponent has to kill that model.  The first player to kill that model wins.  We misread the card and didn't realise that the game essentially ends when one player kills the others Courier, so we continued to play out the whole game.
Our deployment was another wonky one, where one player (Sean) takes a triangle shaped deployment that extends from the corners on his side to a point in the very centre of the table.  My deployment was the opposite that was 2 triangles in each corner measured from the centre of the short edge to the centre of my table edge.  It sort of looks like chevrons if you look at the card.
Finally, the Twist was that everyone adds one to their A characteristic.  This was fine by me as I was looking to assault all the things.  Sean had fewer PL points than me, so he did get a Ruse, but as it was "Dug In" and he ended up moving everything turn 1, it didn't com into play at all.

So, as always, I make a mistake in my deployment.  My first 5 drops were all in reserve, being Raptors, Warptalons, and my Lord with jump pack, so he had a couple units on the table by the time I actually had to put anything on the table.  He had a Predator down on my far right flank, and some units of Tzangors I think when I put down my first unit, the Rhino with Possessed, Dark Apostle, and Exalted Champ, in the triangle on my right side closer to the middle of the table.  I then proceed to place EVERYTHING ELSE ON MY LEFT SIDE.  God damn noob mistake cause it costs me double in this game.

At the end of deployment everything looks like this...

  

Yeah, you see that Rhino in the top left corner of the pic on the right...stupid stupid spot.  Anyway, I got all my backside covered from the deep striking Oblits and Raptors so I'm content, I guess.  Sean gets the first turn and pulls a swift one on me moving Magnus up then casting Warptime to move Magnus again and get him here...

Oh fuck...I did not see that coming.

Now, had I not been an idiot and put the Possessed and their Rhino with the rest of my army, there is a good chance I would have had to move models to close that perfect landing pad for Magnus.

He also drops in the Oblits right next to my Possessed Rhino, flies the Heldrake over there, and moves his Predator to get a shot on it, he really wants that thing dead.  Of course he kills it but not with his Oblits who shoot like this...

The skulls are 1's.

He does bust it open and the Heldrake burns 3 Possessed.  He then assaults the Heldrake and Oblits into the Possessed, Apostle, and Champ and loses an Oblit for his troubles.  Magnus does not get the job done and fails to kill my bird prince(leaving him on 1 wound), who then turns around and deals 3 wounds back.  The Maulerfiend kills a couple cultists...yay.

During my turn I bring in all my reserves around his backfield and look to take out his predator and his Rubric Marine squad along with his Exalted Sorcerer.  I then proceed to NOT kill the predator with 4 meltaguns and fail 4 out of 5 charge attempts, and I had re-rolls for all of them.  The one unit that did make it in dies.

Cultists back off from the Maulerfiend who is then nuked from meltagun fire form the marines while my other cultists advance, flamer, and assault the Tzangor unit and wipe them out.

Sean then gets a little cocky and splits Magnus's attacks, putting 2 on the wounded prince and the other 6 on the one.  Well the birdy lives and manages to hit back for 9 wounds!  The other prince died...

The rest of the game I can actually swing through pretty quickly.  Thanks to my failed charges, my Warptalons and Lord were gunned down while his Prince jumped up and smashed a unit raptors.  His predator and Haldrake took out the other unit of raptors but for one meltagun who then teamed up with the last Possessed, Dark Apostle, and Exalted Champ to not kill the Heldrake...

See where the Warptalons and Lord used to be?

Magnus finally got that last prince but was then dragged down by the wight of 20 marines who were able to tear off those last 4 wounds while his warlord Exalted Sorcerer experienced a similar fate and was swarmed by a mob of cultists.

It was about this time, the end of turn 4, we realised that Sean actually won so we talked out the last turn as though the game didn't end as soon as my courier died.  It looked pretty close once Magnus was out of the picture, but thanks to First Blood, we were thinking Sean would have won.

Now, having said that, there is a caveat that I need to address, and it's of my own damn stupidity.  I ended the game still with 5 command points.

Can you read his lips?

I could have used From the Shadows to, maybe, keep my Lord alive.  I could've used VotLW to boost the green princes hitting power and maybe killed Magnus sooner.  Or even to re-roll some meltagun shots and maybe that predator would be dead.

Hey, that's how we learn right?  We get so badly butt hurt that we will never forget that feeling aver again...

I forgot what I was talking about...

Looking back on this post I realised I went picture crazy, mainly because I remembered to take pictures, but also because pictures are way easier than typing stuff.  They must be worth, like, 50-60 words at least.

Thanks for reading and as always if you have any comments feel free to leave them anywhere.  I desperately crave vindication for wasting so much time.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.