A Chaos Space Marine experiment for Comikaze: Annihilation!

So I am going to Comikaze: Annihilation! this weekend and I was getting a bit tired of my Grey Knights, so the question becomes what army to play?

I saw that Ragnar (Mannahnim on Dakka) was having a lot of success with his Chaos Space Marines and so I had a brilliant idea of not only playing Chaos…but to play his list!

So I started by trying to see what models I have, and what I need for his army, and I have just about everything painted up and ready to go. The one thing I did not have though, was his termicide squad. I converted all of my chaos terminators back into Grey Knights (I used Grey Knight models for them). The good thing is that Ragnar played at 2000 points at the Battle for Salvation, and I am playing at 1750, so I have to trim a couple of units out of his list and so the terminators are getting dropped.

I would also like to remind people that I am no Chaos newbie and I am very well versed in the ways of the Warp! There are 3 armies that I would say that I am expert in and those are Grey Knights, Eldar, and Chaos (and not in that order).Still it will not be easy to win because I am playing someone else's list, and I am ..well, playing chaos. This is also an example of why I do not do consistently well at tournaments because I am always doing stupid things (like bringing Demonhunters to Adepticon)

Battlefoam RTT

So to get into the spirit, and to knock some of the dust off because I have not played my chaos in a while I took them to a local RTT. I wanted to get use to using some of his units that I normally don’t take, so I played in an RTT Saturday at Battle Foam’s Gaming Saloon, and the list I used was a close version of Ragnar's Chaos list, with some improvising with the units that I had ready. 

I took:

HQ

Demon Prince w/MoS, Wings, Lash of Submission

Demon Prince w/MoS, Wings, Lash of Submission

Summoned Greater Demon

Elite

Dreadnaught w/Autocannon

Troops

9 Chaos Space Marines w/2Melta Guns

1 Aspiring Champion w/Power Fist

Rhino

9 Chaos Space Marines w/2Melta Guns

1 Aspiring Champion w/Power Fist

Rhino

7 Berzerkers

1 Aspiring Champion w/Power Weapon

Rhino w/Extra Armor

5 Summoned Demons

5 Summoned Demons

Heavy Support

3 Obliterators

3 Obliterators

2 Obliterators

I made some major changes to his list for the RTT because I was really busy this week and I was unable to finish the models. For example, all of my missile launchers (for the havocs) have broken off of the models and I have to glue them back on. I also wanted to try his chosen in a rhino, but I do not have enough melta guns. This will shock people (and especially Stelek) but I have not been a big user of Melta weaponry. So rummaging through my extensive bitz, I was able to find 4 melta guns for the troops, but that was it. I have a lot of chaos bits for my Night Lords and I thought that I bought some Iron Warriors melta guns for them, but it looks like I only bought the Iron Warriors Lascannons. I might have some space wolf ones because I think they had a plastic melta gun on the Space Wolf upgrade sprue, so I hope I can dig up 3 more.

Here is some video I shot:

Quick Batreps of the RTT

Game #1 vs. Chaos Demons

5 Objectives

Pitched Battle

So for the first round I find myself going up against Chaos Demons (where are my Grey Knights now?) and I was able to kill off his troops through shooting and tie up his last squad of bloodletters with my dreadnaught and I ended up winning 2 objectives to 0

Note: As a funny story I forgot my Greater Demon at home and I was playing 100 VPs down. I was able to run home and grab him during the lunch break.

Game #2 vs. My Nova Open Grey Knights

Mission: Annihilation

Deployment: Pitched Battle

You heard me..this was an exact copy of my Nova Open list! Now the real bad news is that I got to beat it in an Annihilation mission. This will not be pretty.     

He ends up deepstrking his whole army other than his dreadnaughts. I get in a gunnery duel with them with my Oblits, and it is mostly a slap fight. My army is mostly in the center of the board and he got all of his units on in turn #2 and deepstrikes all of his army on my left. Well, I know that he has short range shooting, and is killer in assault so I do what every chaos player should do and I ran! I used plasma cannons to do a lot of damage to his strikes/interceptors and crippled them early. I also managed to lash the Paladins and move them back even father.

In the end I had a lot of trouble killing his dreadnaughts and I had to send my Demon Princes after them. Even then I ended up in combat for a long time and I just whiffed like crazy and killed just one of them.   

At the end of the game he killed 2 of my rhinos and one of my chaos space marine squads (mostly when he dropped down). I killed his strike squad, his interceptor squad, and 2 dreadnaughts.

Game #3 vs. (wait for it) Grey Knights!

Mission: Capture and Control

Deployment: Dawn of War

This is an odd build. He had the Libarian, and a Grandmaster and then he took 5 Paladins, 2x5 Termiantors, 2x10 Purgation Squads w/4 Psycannons.

For some reason I got really aggressive (and I am not an aggressive player because my dice hate me) and I started by lashing 5 of his terminators to me and shot them and do nothing to them, and then I charge with my Demon Prince and my Berserkers and I get my teeth kicked in. He kills my DP and he kills one in return. Then my Berserkers hit him and kill a couple. Then in the next round he kills some berserkers and they kill the last 2 terminators. Then I move my Berzerkers to his objective marker and I get the greater demon on. I choose to pop him out of my berserkers and he goes after 5 terminators+librarian and the berzerkers goes after a purgation squad. The bezerkers are in a close fight with the purgation squad, and then the Greater Demon takes 3 unsaved wounds, and then he gets to attack with his 6 attacks with his WS8 and Str 6 and misses with all 6 attacks! That made me sad. I was hoping to kill a few of them so I could shoot down the rest, but that whiff killed the GD and he did nothing in return.  I have nothing near my objective marker, and I deepstrike a demon squad on them. Then he counters and drops his paladin squad near them. I was hoping he would get his paladins in sooner, so he would place them somewhere else, but that did not happen. Lucky for me he does not have psycannons and only kills 3 of my Demons. Then on my turn I unload into the paladin squad with 8 Lascannons from the oblits, and they kill all of them but the Grand Master (who they finish off next turn). My CSM squads have their rhinos shot up by the purgation squads, and then they start to get chewed up by them. My berserkers finish off his Pergation squad and have 2 left, and then I shoot and charge his terminators and I kill a couple from shooting, and I was able to do enough with my attacks that I was able to kill them. Then what models I have left were shot off of the objective by his last purgation squad. Then I unload my Oblits into them and I wipe them out in turn #7 for a tabling by me. I had my one objective, and he was gone.

So I went 3-0 and took 2^nd place. I learned a lot, and that is why I went to the RTT, for practice with CSM (and my video camera) for the big GT in LA next weekend and also to win some store credit for a Battle Foam Pack Air. 

My greater demon did nothing in all three games and I blame the fact that he was angry because I left him at home for game #1.

So now I need to get the army together, and pair it down to 1750 points.