Faith No More

Spent Saturday night painting up a few replacement models for the Raptors army as well as getting a game in.   I was also inspired to put brush to model, as I had ordered a missile launcher conversion from Irondog Studios.  When it showed up on Thursday I spent some time to finish up some Black Reach termies to build two.  I'll talk about the resin conversion pieces in a separate post, but the short version is I liked the look of them.  I had primed up a modified terminator as well as the Black Reach captain I was going to use as the Raptor's chapter master.

A few notes about the paint job the Raptors are wearing...

The army wasn't painted by me, it was painted by a good friend who is a much....much better painter.  I do want to put that on Front Street, I don't want any semblance of trying to take credit. No shenanigans like the 2010 Grad Waaagh here. The army was done by him trying paint up right before a Dundracon a few years ago and the rapid painting techniques employed to finish the models in a hurry look better then what I put out when I take my time.  So matching the look was going to be a challenge.  I was able to approximate the look of the models and finish most of the terminator and the captain model in the afternoon/early evening so we could actually get in a game that night. 

Without going into a ridiculous level of detail ( I hate battle reports in most cases, because they seem so self absorbed) I did take a few pictures and had some thoughts to share about the game.  My buddy (the same one who painted the Raptors) had brought his Sisters of Battle over to my place for a game.  We played at 1850 as I had wanted to try the Raptor list I was running.  The list I had included:

• Lias Issodan (Raptors Chapter Master from IA9)
• Assault Squad, ten strong with 2 flamers
• Terminator Squad, 5 strong with a cyclone missile launcher
• Two Sterngaurd Squads, 5 strong with 2 missile launchers and 2 combi-meltas
• Four Tactical squads, 10 strong with a flamer and missile launcher
• Two Devastator squads, 5 strong with 5 missile launchers

The basic idea of the list is to sit on objectives/blast the opponent.  It sometimes works, but usually runs into trouble in assault.  I've found basic marines are pretty good at not dying, but terrible at actually killing anything. 

We rolled up a spearhead deployment with annihilation as the mission.  I ended up getting to pick my side but the Sisters stole the initiative.   It turned out to really cost me, not getting the opening round of shooting.  His list, as you can see had many transports.  By the end of the first turn he was on top of me with only one transport popped.

The next few turns saw the Raptors getting whittled down one or two squads at a time.  I thought my assault squad could finally take the fight to the Sisters after both of my Dev squads getting cooked (along with my HQ) by marauding Sisters of Battle.

Regretabbly that didn't happen the way I had hoped, and my assault squad got stomped and made a beeline off the board.  Emperor's finest my butt.....

At this point my entire left flank had been crushed as the Assault Squad ran off the board, the Terminators got crushed (I failed 4 saves in one turn) so I fell back into the building, and tried to pick off what I could to get some KPs.  The Sisters moved up and began to return the favor.

The game went on for one more turn, I was able to pull out another kill point but the sisters got two more.

At the end of turn six I rolled a one to end the game.  Although the game ended with 9-6 it was a bit of a deceptive score as my opponent really shwacked me well.   The sisters had lost a few squads and a few transports but I was down to 3 of my original squads.  The Raptors were combat ineffective.  It was a fantastic game for me, even though I lost, as I got to play a round against the Sisters and learn how faith points work.  I also have to give anyone who plays the army credit as that is a painful army in the wallet.