Kampfgruppe Engel: Ajax II, game 2

Monday 22 July 2019

Ajax II, game 2 - Horus Heresy event

This is a small AAR from the second game from Ajax II, Horus Heresy event that was held in Alvesta Sweden.
A small village in the middle of nowhere but its a good train junction so that was the main reason to locate it there.

In the second game I would be facing the new deamons of the ruinstorm list. This could be a fun and learning experience.
Apparently the deamons can switch out his mission objectives before the game and opted to go for killpoints instead of as the mission stated to capture the objectives on the maps.

The main objective for me was the central ruined ziggurat with a portal and then lesser ruin ziggurats.
If I could place an independent character close to the central portal and roll really good on a table I could potentially close the portal. As my only independent character is Lord Marshal Alexandr him self I did not fancy my chances to be able to to this unfortunately.

The deamon player started with the deployment and placed three warp portals that would spawn his deamons during the game.
One of these portals was so close and apparently i could not deploy within 12" of it, it pushed my deployment area somewhat back.
I had heard that the deamons gets bonuses the first couple of turns and in the later turns they instead get negative rules. The plan was to deploy as far back as possible and wait out the storm...
My men assembled for battle to investigate these strange light phenomenals...

The deamons started to spew out of the portal, all but one unit materialised into the realm of the living round one.

Not wanting to let the deamons get the chargebonus in I charged on my first turn, completely opposite the initial plan of evading the enemy...
But the Knights would have to delay the initial deamon push long enough for my weak S3 T3 mortals to be able to do anything in later turns when they can be harmed.

The Scion Uhlan Lancer rushes forward, the plan was to stun this Lord of War greater deamon beast before closing in with the lance... But as the deamons were all using the Biomancy psychic school the beast was now up to T10 and I could not hurt it...
But the lance was still able to hurt it...
Time to stick a barbecue skewer through this oversized chicken...

- I will save you puny mortals... The Knight tries to cut these fast deamonic beast with his clumsy oversized chainsword in an attempt to bind them up and give my soldiers time to engage other targets further away.

The Lord of war is destroyed, huzza!

Or so I thought... The blue avian daemonic beast is materialising behind the back of my Scion Uhlan Lancer...

The daemonic Lord of War managed to fail an psychic test and damaged it self... Excellent...

But it was not good enough and the smaller daemons chipped away enough hullpoints to give the avian daemonic Lord of war an easy kill... Struck in the back as he valiantly tried to stem the tide of this daemonic filth and save his soldiers on the ground...

Finally the Air cover enters, but the enemy is already in my lines, pounding my men...

The Avian Lord of War charges my line... Troopmaster Natalia Testova order her men to ready the krak grenades, lets hurt this huge bird-xenos...

As the daemonic entity swings with its weapons, the brave soldiers of the Imperium falls in droves...
Lord Marshal Alexandr did not manage to inflict a wound.
Troopmaster Natalia punches the mighty beast with her powerfist but the gigantic xenos just shrugs it of.
Things starts to look dire indeed...
With a lot of his friend crushed by the might lord of war Lasriflemen Kuklev finds an opening between the swings. It is not long before the mighty weaponry of the enemy will swing again but is just enought for Lasrifleman Kuklev to ready his krak grenade and throw it. The grenade hits the bringer of death in the head and explodes. The mighty beast has fallen...

My right flank is crumbling...

Lesser daemons charges the Aegis line.
Sergeant Valentina Testova orders her men to hold the defence line, ready the bayonets..

As the daemons are pounding the lines from one side, Lord Marshal Alexandrs eyes picks out what can only be an warp xenos hq entity... A worthy challange...

With the words of "- How though can it be..." Lord Marshal Alexandr jumps over the defences and charges in an issues a challange...

The epic duel ensues...

And with a mighty swing with his trusty sword, the head of the daemonic entity is cut of...
The warp xenos.

Unfortunately this was enough...
The Daemons had opted to go for killing units and I had suffered a lot of casualties. I managed to capture a couple of objectives, kill an Lord of war and so on but this was not enough to oppose the number of units killed on my side.
It ended in an Traitor win.

It was a real interesting experience facing daemons, they really get in your face from round one.
The lasfire from my large 20men squads does didely against daemons... I will need heavier fire-power to be able to stop something like this next time.

Hero of the people, Lasrifleman Kuklev will be given a medal for his effort in killing the strange gigantic avian xenos.
I plan to ether greenstuff an medal to give him or maybe start painting on medals on the back on the base.

Here are some pictures taken during our game of other player boards.

As long as the warp portal on our table was still open the daemon player could place random daemons on other players tables, supporting the traitor causes...
Unfortunately I had no real opportunity to stop this.