Space Wolves vs Chaos Space Marines 2500

Okay, today I played a pick-up-game with a guy practicing for 'Ard Boyz coming up in August.

I had brought a 2k list, but threw something together to match his 2500 pt list, and hopefully do a decent amount of damage, since it was identical to a list I got 2nd at a local tourney with a couple months back.

Anyways, my list was fairly straight forward:



His consisted of the following (more or less)
Thunderwolf cavalry x4 w/TH
Some sort of HQ on a thunderwolf that hurt like hell
5x devastators w/4x missile launchers
All the razorbacks had 5-6 grey wolves in them


Set up
Game type: Capture and Control
Deployment type: Pitched battle

My opponent gets the first turn, and the board looks like so:



I deployed with the following thoughts, unfortunately never having faced SWs and thereby just playing it like I normally do:

1. Mutually reinforcing units - Plagues, Oblits x2, defiler; zerker squads, tac squad screened with Abaddon's LR, worse case have kharn jump out and deal with something, have 3x oblit long range support

2. Aggressiveness! - this has gotten me in my past few games, I've been tentative with my in-your-face units, so I was going to make sure I charged these rhinos down my opponent's throat.

3. Take out his long range firepower - He had enough lascannon shots to get me a little worried, so I was going to dedicate my first turn's shooting to take out his lascannons then follow up turns to take out vindis once they were no longer in cover

Please note, at no point was I thinking "Hrm, I should probably blow the crap out of his thunderwolves with plasma weapons/other high strength weapons.' Error number 1. Those things suck...

I fail to seize the initiative, and so begins turn 1!

Turn 1:

Space Wolves:

Movement: Nothing crazy here, he drops his drop pod in right next to my huddled up armour and pops out the multi-melta dread.



The wall of lascannon razorbacks shift forward a little bit with the vindicators, then rotate to keep the vindis hidden to ensure a cover save in my impending shooting phase.



Thunderwolves move up as well as the lascannon dread.



On the far end of the board, bikes start hauling it while rhinos move forward conservatively.



For the shooting phase, nothing much to note. He shot missile launchers at my oblits and managed to kill one off. His dice are, comfortingly, pretty horrible this turn. His multi-melta at point blank range misses, all the lascannons damage results are nullified by my landraider's daemonic possession, and an assault cannon shot takes a wound from my 2-man obliterator squad.




Chaos Marines

My turn!

My landraider moves up 6 inches, since I know that I won't be able to range the assault with a 12" move and I figured it'd give me an extra turn of armoured protection before I got the meat of my army up in his objective's face. Kharn's rhino...immobilizes itself on some terrain, and the other two rhinos move up behind the cover given by the landraider. The oblits shuffle left to keep LOS of the enemy armour.



My plague marines stay put while my oblits shift forward to get LOS of everything, and my defiler shifts a little right to get LOS of his rhino with the librarian in it. Evil cackle is heard in the background...



Shooting... is disappointing. But let's look at the fairly good first. On the right side of the board, my defiler nukes the rhino with the librarian in it. I should have shot the Thunderwolves, but I didn't, and hey at least it killed it. Two plasma cannon direct hits add another 10 cover saves, which he fails 6 of. My plague marines shoot at the thunderwolves, resulting in zero wounds on the wolves and a dead plasma gunner. Yessss...



On the other side of the board, combined lascannon fire from the two oblits and the landraider get me a shaken and stunned result on one of the lascannon-razorbacks. From inside of the rhino, two melta hits get me an immobilized result and a weapon destroyed, which is of course the multi-melta, so the dread is now stranded for the game, spinning in circles waiting for someone to get in range.

No assaults made, on to turn 2, and the sadness begins.

Turn 2:

Space Wolves:

On the right side of the board, things begin looking grim for my objective defense. The bikers zoom up supported by the thunderwolves. The dismounted librarian runs his arse off to some cover and the two razorbacks shift up.



His vindicators move in range and the razorbacks move to either side to flank.



Shooting is painful... he lights up my obliterator squad on the top of the ruins, getting a multi-melta wound and enough bolter and assault cannon shots that I eventually miss two saves. Those obliterators are gone. The lascannon razorback shoots through the window at my defiler, causing it to asplode. My defiler is sad in the last moment of its life. Further west, he misses both vindicator rounds, a whole lot of lascannon shots at my landraider, then one gets through and makes it explode. Abaddon is pissed off in his crater.

His thunderwolves assault my plague marines, wipe them out, then consolidate 6" back towards Abaddon.



Chaos:

Time for me to get some, right? We'll see... let's just say I only took one picture.

My first raptor squad comes in from reserves and hits the deepstrike directly behind a vindicator. I get a shaken and stunned result from my one hit. The oblits fire at a lascannon razorback and get a shaken result.

I now have nothing left on my objective... so I get Kharn out of his immobilized rhino and move him back towards the ruins to claim them (and send kharn off to murder crap).

The remaining two rhinos move up to just about the crater where the land raider had been.

Abaddon and friends move over towards the thunderwolves. If anything can take them, it's big-bad-Abaddon and his crazy-khornate Termie guards. I can't risk taking any shots, since a single killed model would mean that they wouldn't be able to range them. Abaddon and friends charge the thunderwolves... AND! He rolls a 1, misses the armour save, and takes a wound. The rest of the terminators fare no better, though abaddon only takes another wound. Three of my four terminators die, and Abaddon and the remaining one is locked in CC without getting a single unsaved wound off against the thunderwolves. Combat is locked. I am sad.

Turn 3:

Space Wolves:

Bikers move behind the ruins towards my dismounted berserkers squad. They fire all their crap at Kharn and friends, killing one berserker. The other two rhinos move up 12 inches and don't really do anything overly productive, other than forcing me to use up the rest of the day's made armour and cover saves as they pump rounds into my berserkers.



His dreadnought moves to my board left towards the hapless raptor squad. The combined fire from the long fangs and the dread, coupled with the assault wipes out the raptors. Please note, picture no longer has raptors...



Lascannons and a vindicator round take out my tac squad rhino and my other berserker rhino, two tactical marines die and one berserker dies. Maybe Abaddon can do something in CC this turn, eh? NO. He rolls another one, and winds up getting killed. The other terminator survives... somehow, and stays locked in combat. Still not a single wound has made it through the storm-shield toting thunderwolves.



Chaos Marines

My other raptors deep strike, just off the ruins where the long fangs are. They shoot at the nearest vindi and get a shaken and stunned result. Berserkers run into cover towards the cluster of vehicles, and my tactical squad (in the crater of their rhino) roll a 2" move... they gimp forward and get a shaken and stunned result on the other vindicator. My last two oblits shoot at a lascannon razorback and get a shaken result.



Kharn splits off from his berserkers to go after the bikers. The rest of the squad gets a 1" move into cover... awesome. Kharn wounds the assault bike with a plasma pistol shot, assaults them, and gets 5 dead guys. Conveniently, they only manage to get a single wound back on him, hooray for WS 3 blood claws.



Meanwhile, the last terminator finally dies during my assault phase, and the thunderwolves consolidate towards my tactical squad.

Turn 4:

Space Wolves:

The thunderwolves continue doing what they've been doing all day, and assualt my tactical squad. The tactical squad is wiped out, still without a single unsaved wound going through on the thunderwolves.

The razorbacks on the right move up just outside of the ruins and don't shoot at anything since nothing is in LOS. All of the other armour on the left of the field shifts around, except for the two vindis that can't move. The dreadnought assaults my raptors, killing 1, and I actually manage to get a krak grenade to blow off his CCW. Small victories, I suppose...



Kharn kills the rest of the bikers and consolidates 6" towards the assault cannon rhino.

Chaos Marines:

Crap's looking pretty grim for me at this point, and my berserkers roll another 1" move through difficult terrain. They're still on the edge... awesome. My second squad takes potshots at the thunderwolves, and wound one! Four turns into the game, approximately 815 points of my army flattened by them, and I finally get a single wound. Yesss... my two oblits pump rapid-fire plasma shots into them, none of which get past their storm shields. I assault with both my zerkers and oblits at the thunderwolves, knocking another wound off of the entire squad, and getting both of my oblits and a couple of zerkers killed. My skull champ and a single other zerker lives.



Kharn takes a pot shot at the side armour of the assault cannon rhino (I can't range far enough to get the back) and gets a shaken result on it. He assaults it... and gets a stunned and shaken result. Woo!



A single raptor dies in CC with the dread.

Sadly... that's my turn.

Turn 5: The next turn and a half go rather quickly, so bear with me as I speed through them.

Space Wolves

A squad of grey hunters assault my raptor that's already locked in CC with the dreadnought, killing two, and suffering a single casualty from my raptors.

The thunderwolves kill the rest of my berserkers and consolidate towards my last squad. Sadness...

The librarian does some hurricaine-o-tons-o-shots at Kharn and knocks a second wound off of him, so he's sitting at one. He insta-attacks the razorback that he's standing by and, of 6 base attacks, gets 6 pins, and it explodes. It only took me four turns to blow up another vehicle, but hey, small victories again, right? RIGHT? Crap...

Out of spite, he shoots a bunch of crap at my immobilized rhino and knocks off his TL-boltgun. Harsh... harsh.

Chaos Marines:

My last berserker squad moves to assault the thunderwolves. I foolishly shoot their bolt pistols at the enemy... and actually kill a guy. Now they're out of assault range, and sit their the remainder of the turn.


As the Skull Champ says "wooooops"

Kharn debates whether to try to pop another rhino or just satisfy his bloodlust. Since I knew I was pretty much screwed at this point (well... I was screwed a while back, but who's arguing?) he went ahead and annihilated the guys sitting in the assault-cannon-razorback's crater. He kills them all, and consolidates 5" back to the door of the ruins, where he stands challenging the world, waving his giant axe-o-doom triumphantly, as my one not-utter-and-complete-failure of the game.



Another raptor dies, one left!

Turn 6:

Nothing happens in the dread CC. The thunderwolves proceed to curb-stomp my last berserkers, kharne gets nuked (though makes a HELLUVA lot of saves before he dies), and my last rhino gets blown up.

Since I have one raptor left on the table... I concede before I go. It is only the gentlemanly thing to do, and I have to meet my wife for church/mexican. Who am I kidding, I was mainly concerned with the mexican food!

Thoughts:

Okay, as much as I dislike whining, my dice sucked balls for me this game. Mainly with Abaddon. Had he actually managed to pump out a decent number of attacks, (hell, let's just say "average") he could have killed off the TW cavalry, at least a few models, and things could have been a little different. Who knows, he's just a guy, but he did not perform remotely as well as needed. Not to mention all the crappy armour pen rolls with melta weapons... ugh. He had some pretty crappy pen luck with his dice as well, but his luck turned around (or statistics favoured him more) around turn 3. But, sad-rant complete, and now for some actual, hopefully constructive, comments.

Deployment: I think I actually didn't deploy too stupidly this game. Yeah, the right side of the board wound up overwhelming me (from the T-wolves over), but I reacted quickly enough considering I lost all three of those right side defensive units in turn 2. My units were fairly mutually-supporting, but with the battering ram that was the T-wolf cav I still had the problem of getting pounded one unit at a time. A big part of this was Abaddon not quite being cut out to what he should have been, but you live and learn, then get adult Depends.

Mutually Supporting HQ: I had thought about sending Kharn and Abaddon together in the LR, and maybe I should have, I'm still undecided. On the bright side, Kharn could have cut through several of those Twolf guys (barring rolling 1s, of course!) and maybe given Abaddon a shot, but at the same point, there shouldn't be too many instances where I should be pushing 2x HQ choices at the same target at the same time, especially when one has the ability to kill the other...

Target Selection: Was it necessary for me to use the defiler to nuke the rhino in Turn 1? Heck no, and I shouldn't have. It would have been far more beneficial for me to try and get a battlecannon shot off on the T-wolves, sure they'd get the 3+ invuln, but at the same time it'd be more wounds they'd have to take. Had I coupled the plasma cannons from those oblits (and switched the two squads positions, had the 3x on the far right side) with the battlecannon and plasma guns, maybe the combined firepower could have forced some more wounds onto those T-wolves. Don't shoot at something in case it could put you out of CC range! I'm normally pretty good at watching this, but I didn't the last turn against the T-wolf cav, and it cost me my assault with the berserkers. A little too late to matter, but still a learning point, none the less.

Thunderwolf Cavalry: Kill them first. That is all. Haha, nah but really, this was my first time playing against T-wolf cav, and if you haven't ever played them before, it's just a group of T5, 3+ ar/invuln models running around with rending attacks and a whole slew of other pain in the butt stuff. Not to mention all models with individual wargear for target allocation (can spread wounds around not kill off models). I didn't really understand their true threat until they cut through Abaddon's squad with ease, and at that point, short of sending Kharn at them (I was hesitant... again) there was really little I could do.

Abaddon: Well, as I've said before, I tend to use him sparingly. I threw him in the list to mimic the spearhead list I did well with a few months back and, needless to say, he failed miserably. Between him and his terminator escort, that was 700 points I could have spent on other stuff. Maybe a couple more berserker squads, maybe a warp time or lash daemon prince, whatever. When he works, he works beautifully, however when he doesn't... it isn't pretty. I think I'll give him another go or two in non-Apocalyptic scenarios in the hopes that he redeems himself, but things aren't looking good for the Despoiler.

Well, this concludes my BatRep, hope you enjoyed it. If you have any thoughts, I'd be more than happy to hear them too!