SIsters of Battle vs. Chaos Marines, 750 points

I got another game of 40K played last Friday (Sep. 5, 2014) with my buddy Devon.  He had acquired a bunch of new Chaos units from another good friend (Russ, he of the Celesticon tournament). We upped the points value to 750, which is still pretty manageable for noobs like us.

This post again features unsightly pictures of unpainted miniatures. You have my apologies, but we are both working on our new armies whenever we get the chance. As I've just signed up for Geek Nation Tours Adepticon trip for 2015, I will definitely be getting these Sisters up to fully painted status asap. 

We played another Maelstrom of War mission.  Deployment was long-ways, with six mysterious objectives placed. We'd get 3 objective cards per turn, which we kept hidden from our opponents.  Devon won the roll off and deployed first. With his new Defiler staring me down I had to cluster my small army into two ruins to avoid his Line of Sight. There was no place for my proxy Exorcist (subbed in from my old Dark Angels army) to hide, so it would have to just rely on it's 13 front armor and cover save.

Big shot of the table:

Sisters on the left flank, hiding in a ruined chapel (does anyone recognize this building? A no-prize for the first one to guess correctly)

Sisters on the right flank.

A unit of Possessed, Daemon Prince (Warlord) and a unit of Cultists

The Defiler (!)

A unit of regular Chaos Marines (5) in a rhino

 The Chaos army got the first turn and all units except for the Defiler pelted it for the Sisters' deployment zone:

 

My new Dominion squad bravely stepped out into the open and fired their flamer and 3x meltaguns on the Possessed. The flamer actually killed one and a melta-gun got another.

 On Devon's turn, his Possessed returned the favor, firing their bolt pistols and killing two out of the Dominion squad. This ended up working against him, as when it came time to charge he rolled a '4', but his squad had 'Rage' or whatever the special rule is that allows a re-roll on one of the Charge dice. He rolled again. New total: 5 inches. Just out of range. D'oh!

Ultimately, it didn't end up costing him much, as the Dominion squad moved past the Possessed to try and execute the already wounded Daemon Prince.  They failed utterly to accomplish this and the Daemon Prince charged in and wiped them out easily.  Meanwhile the Possessed moved up and charged the Canoness.  A long, drawn-out battle would ensue in which the Canoness would eventually fall, but it took several rounds of combat to get there. The Daemon Prince would fall victim to the Multi-melta of the Sisters squad occupying the ruined chapel.

My Seraphim squad had managed to thread the needle of Possessed and Daemon Prince and landed in front of the Cultists, hand-flamering 9/10ths of the squad.  The lone survivor ran off and the Seraphim capped Objective #2. They were looking like prime targets for the Defiler, however.

On my right flank, the Chaos Marines had zoomed up to the ruin containing the Retributors with Heavy Bolters, backed up by my second Sisters troop squad.  The Marines jumped out of the rhino, but couldn't charge, so were subjected to a round of shooting that killed off 2. The remnants charged on the following turn, and as with the Canoness it took several rounds of pushing and shoving for the combat to be decided.  The weight of numbers the Sisters brought to the battle eventually saw the Marines defeated (and the Multi-melta glanced the Rhino to death, with assistance from the Exorcist).

The Seraphim squad made a miraculous triple-6 invulnerable save when they suffered a direct hit from the Defiler. They then made a dash from Objective #2 to #1, grabbing another VP.

Right after this, I got a card for Objective #1 again. So, back they went to secure that objective again. They'd pressed their luck repeatedly throughout the game and their number was finally up.  The Defiler hit them again and wiped out the whole unit in one shot. Boom!

The Sisters had made an insane number of armor and invulnerable saves through the early and mid-game, but probability snapped back into place by the game's end. I'd lost the Dominions, Seraphim, Canoness and a few Sisters from each of the Troop squads. About 50% or so.  Chaos had lost everything except the three Possessed. We're unsure now if the Defiler survived or not.  I glanced/penetrated it's armor at least 3 times, possibly 4.  

Either way, the final score was 6vp to 5vp in favor of the Adepta Sororitas. It was a closer game than it felt, with most of the carnage favoring the Sisters, but when it came down to VPs, it was really close. If those Seraphim had suffered a direct hit earlier in the game, Chaos would have won.

We've got more games planned for the immediate future. Stay tuned and thanks for reading.