Pylonic Pounding
Overlord Trelev in command of the 452nd Decurion of the Gilakh dynasty moved to counter a raid by the Blood Angels under Commander Dante. The Blood Angels were aiming to destroy the Gauss Sentry Pylon recently arrived on Plemaba 91 in the Fretzian System.
He had two squads of warriors on his flanks, eight immortal with gauss blasters on his left, eight Triarch praetorians with rods of covenant and a cryptek, eight tomb blades with particle beamers, nebuloscopes and shield vanes on the extreme right.
The Overlord himself took station with his lychguard to the right of the massive newly commissioned Gauss pylon. In reserve, eight deathmarks brought his force strength up to 1841. The blood angels split their three squads of assault marines widely each supported by a priest. In reserve two storm ravens and Dante with his sanguinary guard.
Mindful of the power of the pylon, only the flank squads advanced initially, however the right hand squad was so concerned about avoiding the pylon that they walked into the particle beamers of the tomb blades which destroyed five of them, the pylon taking only three more.
The left hand squad took just one loss to the warriors on the left. Both squads closed to assault range whilst the centre one remained cowering heroically to the rear. The storm ravens both arrived but Dante didn’t. One Storm raven was hit by interceptor fire losing two hull points.
Fire from the depleted right hand squad was ineffective against the tomb blades but then both squads failed to assault despite being at average range. The tomb blades return fire now wiped out the three survivors of the right hand squad for first blood whilst the warriors on the left supported by the praetorians inflicted heavy loss on the left hand squad.
Dante and his squad now deep struck close to the pylon, but with the warriors immortals and lychguard surrounding it there was no space for his bloated unit and they returned to reserve. The storm ravens’ fire was disappointingly ineffective, though one raven scored hits despite having been forced to jink successively, the second time to avoid the warriors on the right who were benefiting from the skyfire targeting systems in their objective.
The left hand squad now managed to successfully assault the warriors and five fell, despite this their morale held. Our deathmarks now arrived deep in the enemy deployment zone, seizing an objective their and death marking the reserve marines. Unfortunately only one fell to their twenty shots. The warriors on the right shot down a storm raven and the pylon finished the other.
The praetorians joined the assault against left but the combat was drawn as two more warriors fell. Dante and his unit now deep struck in the centre, but the squad lost eight of its number to interceptor fire from the pylon.
The assault marine reserve attacked the deathmarks breaking them, the three survivors fleeing. The tomb blades moved to support them but failed to inflict significant losses, the praetorians however managed to finish off the left hand assault squad and its captain.
The lychguard now assaulted the sanguinary guard and Dante but could only stalemate though Dante was already wounded by crossfire from our warriors and immortals. They lost one of their number to the enemy counter, meanwhile the enemy reserve utterly crushed the deathmark survivors. This just brought them into range of the gauss pylon which wiped them out with its destroyer weapon aided by the tomb blades.
The overlord joined the assault against Dante and his guard, two guards fell to the Hyperphase swords and Dante lost two more wounds to the Overlord’s war scythe. His entire force eliminated and badly wounded, Dante teleported away.
Trelev rallied his forces: We had lost one unit, the deathmarks, eight warriors, one lychguard and two praetorians, total losses 334, less than 20%. The Overlord, pylon, immortals and tomb blades were undamaged. Enemy losses were estimated at 88% with Dante on his last wound.
The score somewhat academically, seven nil, the Angels had made no attempt to take the three objectives in their own deployment zone, no secondary objectives other than first blood were scored. The Gauss pylon would have been worth two victory points but was not even fired on.
1.8.15
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