After Action Report: The Softness of Gold

..their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord.

   - Ezekiel 7:19

ruins of some now-nameless place

Only a few months after being butchered by Camille's gold-clad enforcers of a soon-to-be-dead king, we have a new edition of Horus Heresy and a new opportunity for the sons of Mortarion to show their mettle. Of course, keeping up with the tradition of me not updating the fucking blog, this battle was back in late August and I have forgotten nearly all of it. Oops.

Death Guard tactical marines deploy

This was the first game of the new edition, hot on the heels of playing exactly two games of the old edition this year. Very excellent timing. That said, Camille and I are het* up about the new edition and both immediately bought a lot of new miniatures for it. I even started painting up a new Centurion, who didn't get finished in time for the game but was polished off that night. That's pretty good.

*ironically

Grave Wardens cluster behind a destroyed administration hut

We went with little 1.5K lists. I almost took oops-all-terminators but I didn't want most of my army to be unpainted (happily, I've since painted an entire unit and undercoated the third), so I took two tactical squads, the grave wardens, assault veterans, the newly painted Spartan, and a praetor, chaplain, and centurion. Camille took um oh fuck uh some Custode terminators, a grav vehicle thing, two squads of regular custodes, a couple of characters, and their dreadnought.

okay that's on me 

ruin-eye view. big pond.

Unlike last time, we got a good normal deployment and the mission was Take and Hold. Camille was forced to be aggressive, as Custodes basically all have Vanguard and have little use for holding objectives, while I was concerned that the objective decreases in value rapidly as we hold it.

It's also strange that only three (3) objectives are generated. Fine for this 1500 point game, but surely you'd like the map to... matter? more for the usual 3K Heresy game?

Spartan takes aim at the Custodes holding their objective, across the poisoned pond

I played a refused flank kind of deployment, clustering mostly around 'my' objective in the ruins on my right, with the Grave Wardens vaguely nearby to pincher/prevent flanking? After the last game, I was terrified of Custodes' resilience, especially as they all have Eternal Warrior in this edition.

The Spartan (holding the assault veterans and praetor) were deployed far out on the left to try and be a flexible hammer - but I was very cowardly with them, so they did little...

the accursed Telemon comes up past a wrecked refinery

Custodes advance

Camille and I agreed that it would be funny to have the Custodes simply walk into the field of fire. Without many heavy guns, I was relying on Fury of the Legion and sheer number of dice rolled to take down T5 A2+ multi-wound nightmares. If their guys reached my lines, they would eat me for breakfast, no matter how many officers stiffened their backbones.

hold your ground!

a Guardian stands amidst the smoke of battle

I did manage to take out two, long before they reached my lines, using that techique.

you cannot kill us

The Spartan and the Grave Wardens were less effective on the flank, as the lascannon arrays were mostly shrugged off by the near-invincible warriors. Eternal Warrior, baby!!

oh i should have used this photo to illustrate deployment (Turn 2)

You can see my Cowardice here. The Spartan has plenty of Hull Points and is a Giant Land Raider - I should have used it aggressively, as I intended to when I wrote the list.

skimmer drops from the sky!

Of course, the Adeptus Custodes also have rapid-moving armoured units which can also deep strike. But honestly, the Spartan is a match for this thing - over the course of the game, I burned some holes in it but it didn't do much to me in return.

of course, officers also have personal teleporters...

"Go ahead, legionary. Shoot me."

One of the regular custodes survived to our lines, taking an entire round of fire - yes, including the police's plasma pistol - so that was fun for me.

oh.

..and there are the terminators and Helena. good, this is good.

Telemon...

Telemoff eyyy

On the other hand, this was very satisfying.

Grave Wardens posing for the cover of their new album
(also i need to lose weight)

Grave Wardens got charged by Camille's other officer, some guy with an axe.

first, you hose down the legionnaires in burning fuel... 

..and then you carve them up!

This was a very brief combat, I must say.

Centurion v Custode Officer I Forget The Rank

I was really hoping we'd test out the new Challenge mechanics, and I was not disappointed! They really are so much fun. Of course, my Centurion in Cataphractii armour with Eternal Warrior 2 and everything did eventually get his skull smashed open against the corner of the ruin -- so effectively that the Wardens were Routed. They would eventually rally at the board edge (a rule I do really like).

veterans swarm the ruined office

The Spartan spun around and came back to the deploy the Centurion Command Squad and Praetor - I didn't get any photos of it, but the Praetor did successfully finish the dead Centurion's duel and carve his blackened sword through the fool's gilded breastplate.

ah fuck

The end of the game saw the Spartan and the assault veterans still on the flank, ready to maybe pile in and inflict some more hurt, along with the now-rallied Grave Wardens, while I was about to lose a second Tactical squad on the right. 

However, I had earned enough points from the Line on the objective that the Vanguard killing them (+ the few points the other Vanguard had earned from the other objective) weren't enough for Camille to win the game.