Battle of Skalathrax

My battle last week was supposed to be Battle of Skalathrax, Lucius versus Kharn. Four players in a 3k battle based in a city, the side that captured the most buildings won. Circumstance (the wife) saw to it that I arrived very late for the game so instead it became a straight-up fight between World Eaters led by Kharn against Emperors Children led by Lucius. As I arrived so late the table had been set up and the players were almost through their first turn. As such there was little I could do to influence the end result of the battle, victory for Khorne and his World Eaters. Lucius bought the big one at the end of a Dreadnought’s Powerfist; Kharn ran into a Greater Daemon and failed three out of four invulnerable saves.

We will re-fight this battle in a city with better rules, but it made me think Beserker Marine versus Noise Marine, who is the winner? For 21 points a World Eater has WS5, so hits on a 3+ and furious charge giving it an effective S5 and I5 and fearless all for 21 points. Against him for 20 points the Noise Marine has I5, if he does not get the charge then they strike simultaneously and he too is fearless. It is no contest the Beserker wins hands down; I do not see how they pointed the two figures on the same matrix. A Noise Marine can be upgraded to carry a Sonic Blaster S4 Assualt2, which effectively means that at over 12” he gains a second shot, and if he wants to assault that turn gains a second shot, all for the princely sum of 5 extra points. If it were included in the price of the Marine perhaps it would be a worthy addition, as it is not it just becomes and overprices weapon for an already overpriced model.

So what can be done in the Battle of Skalanthrax to make the two sides more even? What can the Emperors children take to make more competitive? In short nothing until the Chaos Codex is updated in 2012, so I need to look at what went wrong last time and try to secure a fix. The biggest weakness of the Emperors Children list was the lack of anti-tank weapons. My compatriot player was playing Noise Marines without any Sonic Weapons, however apart from the odd plasma pistol there were no weapons to punch through the armour of the three Chaos Dreadnoughts or six Chaos Rhinos. The single Destructor class Chaos Predator failed to stop a single Chaos Rhino and only managed to destroy a single Chaos Dreadnought. The second Chaos Dreadnought died a mutual death against our Chaos Dreadnought with a Plasma Cannon, the third killed Lucius. My forces were mostly Noise Marines with Sonic and Blast weapons, and I was wasting shots at Chaos Rhinos that ignored my damage rolls due to extra armour.

I will have to blow the dust off my two Chaos Dreadnoughts and equip a Chosen squad to tackle something in armour, lots of plasma guns or meltaguns. Squads should all carry a special weapon of some sort to penetrate armour, preferably an extra one with the Aspiring. I will take two squads at ten men with two special weapons, taking a heavy weapon I wasting the squad just like when I was firing the Blastmaster at a Chaos Rhino.

Well I have a few ideas to get me going now; I just need to dig out all the Chaos Marine torsos I have kept for just such a purpose and get building them asap. They will be more to come with potential armylists and complaints over lack of heavy weapons in the army.