Battle Summary: Dark Angels vs. Blood Angel Dreadnought Party

Quick battle report for Monday's club session. School League rules, which means 650 points and battle forged between the two armies:

 

Dark Angles:

• Primaris Company Master with power fist and Plasma pistol
• Intercessor squad with Auto bolt rifles and aux. grenade launcher. Sergeant carries a power sword (because Dark Angel).
• Hellblaster squad (because Dark Angels love plasma)
• Deathwing Knights squad

The Dark Angel player is very much a student of my battle philosophy, and has been tweaking his army to fit my ideas about list building and strategy. His chosen skirmishing unit was the Deathwing Knights, since he felt his army lacked real punch against tough targets.

Imperium Dreadnought party:

• Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnought
• Venerable Dreadnought
• Venerable Dreadnought
• Venerable Dreadnought 

The Dreadnought army was faction key worded to Imperium, so that it fits the elite formation detachment. The student neophyte opted for losing the chapter tactics and other benefits do he could have an all dreadnought army, and still use Venerable Dreadnoughts.


The game was a straight capture-the-flag style mission, and the dreadnoughts managed to grab the objective first. They were able to walk through most of the enemy fire and sent forward two dreadnoughts to "clean up" the Dark Angel infantry whilst a lascannon wielding dreadnought and the Librarian sat on the objective.

 

Judge Dreadnought, filling in for models still at home, leads the charge.

The Dark Angels are actually in a reasonable strong defensive position here, despite the dreadnought pincer manoeuvre.

The battle really went poorly for the Dark Angels this turn, losing quite a few Primaris marines to heavy weapons fire and dreadnought charges.


But then the Deathwing Knights deep struck in for a counter charge, obliterating one with a concerted strike of mace and flail blows. The company master significantly wounded the other, with the Hellblasters shaving off wounds from the centre dreadnoughts.


The game was effectively won in the 4th turn, as the Company Master and Knights charged the centre dreadnoughts, keeping them locked down whilst the Intercessors moved on top of the objective. Unable to do enough damage to take out the knights for the next two turns, the dreadnought player was defeated.

Evaluation

This was a shockingly good example of perceived strength versus the smart strategy. The dreadnought player knew he would have an advantage over the more diverse Dark Angel player, and was looking for a complete annihilation of his opponent to secure victory. He wasn't able to carry on the momentum of his charge, and was beaten back to his own lines. With no objective secured troops to hold the objective, he lost the game.


But that's to be expected. Using my framework for list building, you can understand what the Dreadnought party is; an army of skirmishing units. There wasn't enough firepower to take out key units, and there wasn't a Troop to score objectives. The dreadnought player did a great job of aggressively disrupting the Dark Angel player's plans, but was unable to counter the Dark Angel's own skirmishing unit effectively.


The Hellblasters on the Dark Angel side did a good job softening up the Troop threatening Dreadnought, before the Knights finished it, allowing the Troops to advance towards the objective.


A good game, overall, and it played a lot closer than I'm making it sound. The Dreadnought player knew what he was doing when he built the list, and played to the army's strength. Had the dice rolled a little more in his favour, I would be saying how my strategy lessons had helped him to understand the best way to use His Dudes to gain victory. Overall I'm just impressed at how tactically savvy this teenagers played their armies. I've seen plenty of YouTube battle reports whose adult players have far worse ideas when pushing around their toy soldiers!


Can't wait for next week's session!


Until next time.

 

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