Kampfgruppe Engel: Ajax - Horus Heresy event game 3 AAR

Wednesday 1 August 2018

Ajax - Horus Heresy event game 3 AAR

This is the AAR from game 3 from the Ajax event of Horus Heresy.

My Alpha Legion Company would be facing my friend Olof, we have met before and pre-Ajax it was the Iron hands that was victorious.
The game we would be playing was ....
It meant that most of the army was left out of the board and would arrive as reserves. With all my reserve manipulation this should be to my force liking.

We had to roll a 4+ for each unit to see if they could be deployed on the table.
As it turned out Olof managed to deploy a rather sizeable force. And I did not...
The only of my units that showed up was the Preator with the Seeker squad in their Land Raider Proteus, a small unit of sniper Recon marines and a small unit of Recon marines in scout armour.
I would be massively outnumbered and out gunned at the start. But as much of my reserves had outflank I hope to hit my opponent in the side as he advances.

For this game both of us had one of our units exchanged with other players at the event due to a special event card.
I borrowed one of my Fire Raptor gunships to an comrade in arms and instead was given an unit of Emperor's children cacophonies in an Rhino.
My opponent was short an Shadowsword, titan hunter super heavy tank... and was given an Arvus Lighter...

The points different of the Shadowsword againts an Militia Arvus lighter is considerable but as Olof had met my Recon Company before he knew there was lacking suitable targets in my army and as most of my army was packing multiple meltabombs I had the means to take out one of those beast. This way he didnt have to pay any price of failure for losing a Shadowsword

As the reserves will arrive on 3+ I felt confident in this game and used my reserve manipulation to hinder my opponent thinking I could surly succeed in a number of 3+ reserves rolls...

In an attempt to move at the flank of my opponent I had a thought about trying to get to his quad mortar or lack of that bonding up and drawing his unit of Iron Circles away from my lines.
The fell back and tried to move out of the way from those big robots but in the end they were all destroyed. At least they occupied the Iron Circle a round or two.

This game turned out to be really really special... Even with my reserve manipulation my opponent managed to roll really good on his reserve rolls and his troops arrived one by one. Me on the other side somehow fail over and over again to roll a 3+ roll for my reserves...

My Sniper squad tried to take out and Iron Circle robot with their sniper rifles, they slowly started to chip away some wounds but it was far from enough.
My Land Raider tried to use some cover or at least position it self in such way that terrain blocked the enemy.
I was started to get really afraid of getting wiped from the table as my reserves round after round failed to arrive.
Im guessing my force was still cleaning up Loyalist Taghmata Mechanicum pockets of resisting from the last game in the city.
Not expecting enemy movement in the forest area I stumbled into this force of Loyalist Iron Warriors with my forward scouting troops. The word have been sent back to the way to stretched out force to gather at this location at the Iron warriors encounter.

Finally does my fore arrive. An Fire Raptor Gunship and a Storm Eagle are some of the first to arrive to my rescue.
Luckily for me the Iron Hands forces had been slow to reach my line, maybe fearing my outflanking forces closing in.

My unit of Emperors children Cocophonies exchange students had to bail out of their destroyed Rhino the same turn they arrived and was all taken out with ether the Scorpius or the Quad mortars rather quickly so they failed to contribute.

An "Valkyrie" using the Arvus stats can be seen behind an Leviathan Dreadnought moving forward between an shallow ravine between two small hills. Behind this you can see my air cover finally had arrived. That Fire Raptor gunship really had to work..

The reaper autocannons on the Fire raptor takes out enemy Rhinos and missiles from the Storm Eagle manages to immobilize on of the massive Leviathans, pinning it to the ground...

Finally my last ground troops arrive via outflank. And they all wanted to arrive at the same table edge, the edge were enemy Rhino bore infantry advances...
it all starts to look as a ambush...
Veterans and Recon marines engage the enemy forces stumbling out of their destroyed Rhinos as the Fire Raptor and the Storm Eagle harass them from the air inflicting massive casualties.

Wow what an strange game, and an excellent finish of the first day.
My forces refused to arrive time and time again and it was not until the very end I finally got all my forces on the table and they started working. I managed to hit the enemy infantry hard at the flank in the end and my mobility meant I had units in my opponents deployment zone earning me victory points. My opponents force had trouble reaching my lines and fail to get any victory points here.

A victory for the Traitor forces, huzza !!

And two extra pictures from other peoples games during my game: