Flight of The Valkyries : Raven Guard vs Catachan AirCav 1850 pts

I had a game on Friday, against one of the most veteran player around here. Haven't fought him for more than a year, our last fight was his Alaitoc Rangers vs my 13th Company Space Wolves.

This time, he brought one of his Imperial Guard armies. The Catachan AirCavalry.

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RAVEN GUARD

Chapter Master - Thunder Hammer, Shield Eternal, Artificer Armour, Jumpack, Auspex

Dreadnought - Multimelta, Heavy Flamer 

Drop Pod with Deathwind Launcher

2x10 man Tactical - Plasmagun, CombiMeltagun in Rhino

10 man Assault Marines - Thunder Hammer

10 man Assault Marines - Power Axe, Meltabomb

2 Typhoon Speeder

3 GravCenturions

Storm Raven

CATACHAN AIR-CAV

Colonel Straken + Command Squad

5x10man Veterans - 3 Special Weapons each

2 squadrons of 2 Vendettas  

2 Valkyries
Basilisk

GAME : Big Guns Never Tire (5), Night Fighting

DEPLOYMENT : Hammer & Anvil, Raven Guard deployed first

RG deploy:

- Deployed everything as forward as possible. Both Tactical Squads broke into 2x5 man combat squads but stays in their Rhino.

- in reserves : Grav Centurions (inside the Storm Raven), Dread (in Drop Pod).

IG deploy:

- a Basilisk right before the table edge, 3 Veteran squads doing a blob formation to protect the Basilisk from Drop Pod Assault.

- in reserves : Straken unit (in Valkyrie), 2 Veteran Squad (One in each Vendetta Squadron).

Before the game began, both Rhinos scouted 12 inches forward. Then the Catachan attempted to seize the initiative, but failed.

TURN 1

Drop Pod deepstriked with minimal scatter, putting the Dreadnought within 12 of the Basilisk. The Dread shot it with the Multimelta, hit, but I rolled 3 on 2D6 for armor penetration. The rest of the army moved forward, but stays 36 inches away from the Basilisk to take advantage of the Night Fight.

Vet 2 circled around the Dreadnought and wrecked it with several shots to the rear armour. Basilisk shot the front Rhino, immobilising it.

TURN 2

Storm Raven didn't came (Note : this is okay result since I will need it to counter the Vendettas)

4 Combat Squads disembarked from the Rhinos. Supported by the Deathwind Launcher from Drop Pod, and Storm Bolters from the Rhinos, they wipedout Vet 1 and killed several in Vet 2.

Chapter Master called Orbital Bombardment to take out the Basilisk. The shot scored a penetrating hit and I rolled 3 for result, which turned into immobilised due to the shot being AP1. Typhoon Speeder followed through with 4 Krak Missiles and destroyed it.
(Note : back home only I remembered that Basilisk was open-topped vehicles. Which means that the Orbital Bombardment would have actually destroyed it).

The Assault Squad 2 moved forward to support the Tacticals.

With an officer giving them +1 to reserves, all the Catachan's air support came in on time. Vedetta Squadron 1 killed 6 marines from Assault Squad 2 while Vendetta Squadron 2 annihilated the Typhoon Speeders.

The Valkyries targeted Tactical 1(b) with 4 S4 large blast and numerous support weapons, causing 9 wounds to Tactical 1(b), 4 wounds to Tactical 2(b) and 2 wounds to Tactical 2(a). However my armor saves were superbly good here and each squad suffered only 1 casualty.

On the ground, his Veteran unit 3 shot plasmaguns at Tactical 1(a) and killed 3.

TURN 3

Again, my Storm Raven failed to come. I really need it to come this turn. Too bad.

Tactical 2(a) and 2(b), reembarked their Rhino and make a move towards Vet 3 by circling the Drop Pod. Tactical 1(a) tried their luck, snapfiring the closest Vendetta Squadron but achieved nothing. Tactical 1(b), Deathwind Launcher and Storm Bolters from the Rhinos reduced Veteran Squad 3 to just 4 guys, and pinned (they choose to go to ground) the Veteran Squad 2.

Assault Squad 2 moved closer and tried to assault Vet 2, but failed to roll anything higher than 4 inches when assaulting through the difficult ground.

Chapter Master and Assault Squad 1 moved forward.

Came enemy turn, both Vendetta Squadrons flew out into ongoing reserve to counter my Storm Raven.

The Valkyries hovered backwards, safely out of my Chapter Master assault range. They shot the Tactical 1(b), causing 8 wounds but none got through the 3+ armour. Then Vet 2 (Snapfiring) and Vet 3 shot the same unit and killed 2 hahaha.

TURN 4

Storm Raven came in and targeted Valkyries but failed to cause anything.
(Note : I knew it wouldn't survive the next turn, but decided to keep the Centurions inside because at that moment I mistaken the Crash and Burn result to be S6 AP-. Not something that my Centurions should worry about)

Having no range for assault, I pulled the Chapter Master and Assault Squad 1 backwards to guard the 3 objectives in my deployment zone. I sent Assault Squad 2 to assault Vet 3. They lose one guy from overwatch and the assault failed.

The rest of my army shot at Vet 2 (2 guys left), but the Catachans showed us why they are the best at jungle fighting, surviving through all that shots, coming from all angle.

The Vendettas came in from reserves. One squadron destroyed the Storm Raven in the air with 6 TL-Lascannons. The explosion instakilled 2 Centurions, and the lone survivor were later killed by 6 TL-Lascannon from the 2nd Vendetta Squadron.
(Note : It was now that I realized my mistake, the Crash and Burn causes S10 hits with no armour saves to passengers, not S6! The S6 was for damage from falling debris. What a silly mistake.)

The Valkyries shot my Tacticals but didn't kill a single model.

TURN 5

This could be the last turn, so all Tacticals disembarked to capture the objectives. Chapter Master and Assault Squad 1 moved further backwards to prevent the Catachan from getting close to the objectives in my deployment zone.

All bolter and Deathwind Launcher focused on the remaining 2 guys from Vet 2, but again they survived like Rambo in The First Blood.

Assault Squad 2 destroyed Vet 3 in assault.

Colonel Straken and his unit disembarked from the Valkyrie into the forest. From the Vendettas 1, Veteran Squad 4 disembarked behind the immobilised Rhino. The other Vendetta Squadron flew across the table.

This time the Catachan's shooting was devastating. Gone was my spectacular armour saves and the IG successfully wipedout all 4 Tactical Squads in this shooting phase.

Without anymore troops, there's nothing I can do to stop the Catachans from winning since they held 3 VPs (First Blood, 2 Heavies) already against my 1 VP (Linebreaker), but we kept on playing.

TURN 6

I tank-shocked a Rhino 12 inches into Vet 2 causing them to flee. The path went straight into Straken and his boys but did nothing since they are fearless. 

(Note: I should have stopped the tank-shock at 6 inches only. That way Straken boys would be perfect target for my Deathwind Launcher. Another mistake.)

Deathwind Launcher shot the Vet 4 and killed 4 guys including 3 guys with special weapons. The rest of were later destroyed by the Chapter Master and Assault Squad 1, coming from 10 inches away. 

Since Vet 2 required Insane Courage to rally, Assault Squad 2 ignored them and moved to assault Straken. They die to overwatch fire.

To my surprise, Collonel Straken can force the Vet 2 to rally with the "Get Back To Combat" order or something. They rallied and proceed to capture the objective nearby. Veteran Squad 5 disembarked from Vendettas 2, into the woods to capture the same objective.

With nothing else on table, the Catachans now focused on the Chapter Master and Assault Squad 1. All that shots killed 9 Assault Marines and wounded the Chapter Master once.

FIIIGHT!!

Straken led his unit to assault the Chapter Master. At initiative 3, they wounded the Chapter Master twice and killed the Assault Veteran Sargeant. Chapter Master fought back with 4 attacks but not a single blow hit the enemy. All that wounds must have reach some vital organs, affecting his swing. Suddenly a Priest came from the back and hit him with the Eviscerator. The attack got through the Eternal Shield and killed the Raven Guard Chapter Master.

With that the game ended.

RESULT : Catachan WON by 5 Victory Points to Raven Guard 0. With not a single infantry left alive, We can say the Catachans even succesfully TAed my Raven Guard forces! Wow!

POST GAME ASSESMENT:
The Air Cavalry was certainly good. My list had no means to handle so many Flyers, and so I focused on killing the Veterans. The hard part was keeping my men alive untill turn 5 when the IG would begin to make their move towards the objective. I think I would have better chance if I were to play my Shrike+Cypher (Shadows of The Fallen?) list with Stealth, Shrouded and Infiltrate to take advantage with.

Another difficulty was to keep up with the speed of the Flyers. They are fast and can easily cover large ground to suddenly drop their passengers on objectives at the other side of the table. So the best approach to prevent this from happening is to keep the objectives close together. That would cancel the advantage of such mobility, and keeps the objectives within charging distance of my jumpacks. In this game I made mistakes by putting 3 objectives on my line, forcing me to split my forces in order to guard the objectives. Now I knew better.

I really missed Shrike in this game. My alpha strike felt lacking without him and 10 Jumpackers infiltrating somewhere. Maybe I should put him back in the list, replacing the fragile (though certainly useful) Typhoon Speeder. 

The Deathwind Launcher works really great in this game, killing Veterans many times over the 15 points I spent on it. 

In the end, my Raven Guard was totally butchered this time. I did several mistakes in the game, the biggest mistake cost me 2 heavy supports casualty in a single shooting phase. This is one of the game where even a single mistake would cost me dearly compared to my opponent. Some more my opponent is a veteran with many tricks under his sleeves. I should be extra careful but went the other way instead hahaha. 

But what a fun game it was thanks to the funny moments we had such as the invincible Veteran Squad 2 that refused to die and my funky armour saves (8 wounds - 1 dead, 4 wounds - 1 dead, 2 wounds - 1 dead, 1 wounds also 1 dead :lol:) in the first four turns. Thanks to my opponent, Bro Lan a.k.a Spunkybass for the fun game.

You wait, I will have my revenge someday :-)

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That's all for today. Thanks for reading through the battle report.

Have a nice day.