Helldrakes!

Played Brian last night at 1850.  He brought the double flying fire chickens, something I (and everyone else) is learning to deal with.  Seems that two helldrakes and anything else is the new Chaos Marine build and damn is it effective.

I won the roll to go first.  We're playing 5 objectives, Kill points and the 3 add ons. I pretty much tore him a new one before he had a chance to get started.  Took out the squad of 10 cultists, 2 raptors, 2 obliterators, a hellbrute, several marines and 2 hull points off the defiler.  I was feeling really good about my first round of shooting. 

Brian maneuvers a bit to keep away from the terminators and starts laying what fire power he has left into the blob.  The demon prince assaults Azrael and friends.  Az and most of the blob are too spread out to swing back on the first round.

Round 2 I take off another would off the defiler....which it had recovers the previous turn. I finish off the last obliterator and another marine or two, definitely now what we saw for shooting in the first round.  I take out the demon prince in close combat from the previous turn.

One of the drakes show up and rips up the blob pretty good along with the defiler.  I manage to take it out with a luck lascannon snapfire the following turn...I still have yet to take out a flyer with Flakk Rockets.  No drake the next turn thanks to the Officer of the Fleet: such a no brainer for 30 points to add to the list.

The other drake comes on and nearly finishes off the blob.  I end up losing both my tactical squads to the Defiler and consistent bolter shots from his marines.  At the end of the game Brian manages to kill all the guard in the blob leaving Azrael by himself on the center objective.  His marines make a push out of cover on his side to take on of the objectives on his table edge and on the other side they push over and contest the guard covering the one on my right. 

The terminators which I misused are sitting idly on the objective in Brian's deployment zone on my right.  We each have one, so we tied up there.  I won the kill points by one or two and I got all 3 bonus points for a decent win. 

I had added 3 terminators to the list to make them more survivable...this ended up having a completely different effect.  Rather than surviving they became something to ignore and out run.  I was not at all prepared for this.  The fire power they usually soak up was completely thrown at the blob instead, which did not last nearly as long as it usually does.

This is not a problem with the list, but I definitely need to play it better.  I was expecting to have everything go at the terminators leaving the blob to run free as usual, which was not the case at all.  I should have instead put the terminators to the far right near the obliterators and chaos marines.  There was no terrain on that end to play effective keep away and I would have been able to take out a troop that was sitting on an objective with ease, instead of just sitting on an objective.

I should play the blob and the Deathwing such that they are an equal threat to take out troops and score and not assume one or the other is going to take the brunt of the attacks.....though this does make me consider if I should take two 5 man squads of terminators instead of the one squad of 8....something for me to think about.

Desptire a devastating first round of shooting Brian hung in there and played a great game.  If the second drake had not been delayed by the Officer of the Fleet, it actually may have gone much differently.