Shhh! Be vewy vewy quiet..

We've hit the January doldrums and with a tournament on the horizon I really should be posting endless Blood Angel lists and trying to talk myself into something which is obviously flawed which I will only realise as such after my first two losses. However it's been almost a month since I submitted my list, the troops are all painted and I've even played a practice game with them which resulted in a fairly solid victory, a 2-0 tabling. I say fairly solid because if the game had ended on turn five I would have managed a tie at best and could well have lost 1-0.

Graham and I were playing Roll Dice and Tie ... I mean Capture and Control. 1750pts of my Blood Angels vs 1750pts of his Chaos Marines. The game started well for Graham, he managed to either destroy or immobilise all of my scoring units' transports which meant my MSU Assault Squads were now going to have to foot-slog it across to his objective if I wanted to ensure a win - not a great start for me!

No problem I thought, My Land Raider is still up, I'll just disembark my Terminators so that they can help defend my objective and one of my Assault Squads can board it and scoot across the board to try and score. I've got a fair amount of shooting in my list even without my Razorbacks so I felt I could whittle him down to the point where a 5-man Assault Squad could have a chance at taking on his objective.

So turn 2 arrives and Boom! there goes my Land Raider! Damn those Raptors, they got pretty lucky with their one meltagun shot but that's all it takes some times. Right, back to footslogging for the Troops. However, here's where my luck began to change.

At the bottom of turn 2, my Rifleman Dreads cracked one of the Rhinos on his objective and the resulting explosion killed enough of the unit to break the squad inside, nice! My Sternguard dropped in next to his Raider and blew it to kingdom come! Whoop whoop! Then I immobilised his Defiler and took the Battlecannon off it. Sweet!

Things were suddenly going very well, however I still had a large unit of Bezerkers, with a Sorcerer, bearing down on my objective, which was protected by only a 5-man Assault Squad in an immobilised Razorback! I was hot-footing my Assault Terminators and another 5-man Squad across the table to support them but would they make it in time?

On the other side of the table my Sternguard, Librarian and Sanguinary Priest had managed to see off the three Terminators in the destroyed Land Raider and moved on to explodify the Predator. Sword of Sanguinius is ... "AWESOME!" for this sort of thing. Now I had a 5-man Assault Squad and the remnants of my Drop Pod squad bearing down on Graham's objective, being ably supported by the Rifleman Dreads and a lonely Devastator. Oblits killed his buddies and now it was time for some revenge.

With my Assault Squad just over half way across the board, having run from my own lines, and my Librarian, a Sanguinary Priest and a lone Sternguard also closing in from the right, Graham made a critical error which, I think, cost him the game. Rather that sitting back on his objective he charged his last Obliterator into the Assault Squad and his diminished Chaos Marine Squad (they rallied at the top of turn 3) into my Librarian Squad.

My Assault Squad had a Power Weapon in it and amazingly (they never usually do anything for me) it killed the Oblit before he could swing! Ker-ching! 6" consolidation move out of cover and towards the objective, thanks very much. The Librarian's unit did not fare so well, being outnumbered 2-1 they could not put enough wounds out to win combat and they were finished off in turn 6.

Back to the top of turn 5 and the action at over on my side of the table. Thanks to some clever maneuvering Graham was still in a winning position as, due to a desperate rush from his Bezerker's Rhino, they were contesting my objective. I needed to wreck it and do a number on the dudes inside. Enter the dice of doom and shot after shot rang off the hull of this seemingly indestructible Rhino. My remaining Rifleman failed, a meltagun within 6" failed, a Krak Missile failed, finally it all came down to my remaining but immobilised Las-Plas Razorback and wouldn't you know it ... the most beautiful 5 you've ever seen appeared when I rolled on the damage table. So the 'Zerkers had been de-canned now all I needed to do was blend them with my Assault Terminators.

If you trawl YouTube frequently you may be aware of a channel called "Will it Blend?", the answer to this is, very frequently, "Yes, yes it will". But I' bet they've not tried Bezerkers. I charged them with Lightning Claw Terminators and 2 5-man Assault Squads, one of which was also packing a Power Sword. Those little sons of Khorne hung in there until the bottom of Turn 7 and took the entire Terminator Squad with them thanks to their Power Sword-wielding Champion.

So, as it happened, at the bottom of turn 5 those pesky Bezerkers were still in range to contest my objective and I was not quite in range of Graham's objective. By the bottom of Turn 6 I had killed enough Bezerkers to move them out of contesting range and I had wiped out the unit defending Graham's objective. By the end of Turn 7 I had tabled Graham but that does not really do justice to what a close game it was.

Well, with one practice game under my belt I'm already in a far better position than I was before the Freebootaz Open and I've still got a couple of weeks to play the list in even more. Yet again though I forgot to roll for the Red Thirst, I may have to scrawl it on the back of my hand before the Tournament so I don't get caught up in the excitement and forget again!