Tactical Review: Massacre in the Narrows

Tim:

Well this game went very well for me from start to finish.

My wife, Gill, and I had played an almost duplicate game in the Narrows on pretty much the same board layout. In that game I took massive losses to shooting early on but managed to use the terrain to limit her ability to win by concentrating my dwindled forces on one part of her army at a time.

Recalling this, I laboured to recreate the same conditions... minus the loss to shooting.

I held back initially, hoping she would close, lowering her shooting accuracy then closed in as she approached. With stand and shoot Strength 5 Bolters, I had my work cut out for me but I managed to get my Exalted Bloodthirster, Prospertine, into combat on turn 2. After that he worked his way in from the right while my Bloodletters dished out the armour slashing attacks front and left.

Redeploying my entire fast left flank (Screamers and Seekers) so that she spent three turns in a traffic jam was also a game-winning move.

All in all there isn't anything I would have done differently.

Though it did look very dicey for a minute in the mid-game when the dice turned against me for a while.

Massacre in the Narrows

Tim (Daemons) vs Gill (Space Marines) 

The Men of Stone had forged south before into the Narrows and been repulsed.by the Daemons of the Pernicious Gate but they knew no fear. Lead by their brave lord, Felix Wulf, they pushed south immediately following their withdrawal.

Their determination to break through to the Pernicious Gate was without compromise.

But again they were caught in the hemmed-in defiles of the Narrows. And immediately the force of Daemons that came to meet them withdrew on the left flank, redeploying their faster elements elsewhere and leaving the mighty warriors and their fire sticks with no targets.

Prospertine crashed through the foliage, a towering Exalted Bloodthirster, and ripped apart the greater knights of Ebon Scar with his huge halberd.

Ploughing through them he struck the second line of warriors and ripped them apart as well, barely breaking stride.

The monstrous beasts that the Men of Stone held in thrall lumbered forward, goaded by the strange magics of the dark and silent warriors as Raptor Riders swept up alongside them, but Bloodletters bounded forward and hacked the Raptor Riders down.

And a Soulgrinder used its lethal claws to tear chunks from the mammoth that led the counter attack.

One of the Triceranoughts smashed into the Bloodletters, impaling several daemons on its horns, but the rest brought it down, Skulltaker himself hacking the gigantic head from its shoulders.

The Bloodletters pushed forward, attacking the second Triceranought but what they had done to one they could do to the next. It fell too as Prospertine led the daemons that had devastated the right flank and centre towards the last remaining knight.

The last knight fell, fighting valiantly, but he could not stand against such powerful adversaries on their home ground.

The daemons had used the terrain to their advantage and now, once again, they had thrown the Men of Stone back from the Narrows.

This time however their army was scattered, all elements of it thrown to the winds.

This land belonged to the Daemons!

Battle for the Narrows

Tim (Daemons of Chaos) vs Gill (Men of Stone) 

Deep in the Blood Wood, there is a place where the trees twine and thrust around dense and close-set rock formations - the perfect place for an ambush, and it was here the mighty knights of the Men of Stone set one.

Exactly as their whispering scouts had told the knightly lords, the burgeoning and chittering forces of the Daemons of the Pernicious Gate were flowing northward here in this cramped location.

The Men of Stone were ready.

Ranked in efficient gun lines they let fire at the striding behemoths, bringing down a Soul Grinder and a greater daemon before the soulless creatures even knew they were lying in wait. A shoal of Screamers fell next under a fusillade of mystical fire spat from the strange weapons the Knights of Ebon Scar carried.

Reacting quickly, the Horrors and Flamers fled east, concentrating their forces on the left flank of the Men of Stone.

But it wasn't going to save them.

The mighty dinosaurs that the Men of Stone's enchantments had coerced crashed into the oncoming Daemonic horde, crushing the second Soul Grinder, even as its death throes tore the beating heart from the Triceratops.

Then Bloodletters led by the indefatigable fiend Skulltaker sprinted int from the east, slaying first the Mammoth, then the Knights waiting beyond. And then the general and his bodyguard waiting beyond them!

They took casualties but they kept on coming, even though all had seemed lost.

Meanwhile, fully half of the mystically armoured  warriors were trapped between the narrow rock formations, struggling to redeploy into a useful position. And as they struggled they were picked off by searing flame and sorcery, hurled at them from lurking Horrors and Flamers of the dark god Tzeentch.

Where once an army had stood, smugly tearing down the daemonic advance, now, only a few Knights of Ebon Scar remained.

The daemons were unstoppable!

On the Painting Table: Men of Stone Space Marines!

Well the mighty Men of Stone are looking nice.

I've embellished them with shoulder pads from Scibor's SF range and love the way they look ranked up for games of Warhammer.

Incidentally, I'm planning to use these guys as Sternguard Veterans in my conventional 40k Space Marine army (though I may repaint them first with my new Crimson Blade colours).

I have a game with these guys coming up in the next three games so they should demonstrate their worth on the tabletop before you know it.