Rebel Imperial Guard vs. Blood Angels
1500pts Blitz Mission, 
table size: 4' by 5'6"
March 4, 2002

The board is divided into three equally wide zones running across the short dimension of the board.

Blood Angels placed markers across their deployment zone (a 22" wide strip roughly down the middle of the board) hidden deployment is used for them in this scenario. Fast Attack and Elite choices arrive via reserve rolls beginning on turn 2.

Imperial Guard then deployed in their zone, 6" in from the board side, here's how it looked.

The Blood Angels placed a tac squad in each flank bunker, and one tac squad in each center fortification as well. The Chaplain and Death Company began behind one of the center fortifications (their role was mobile reserve/counterassault). The Devastator squad of four missile launchers is in the building (with a commanding field of fire I might add) and behind the building is our whirlwind. A Typhoon Landspeeder w/multimelta and a Veteran Assault Squad are our reinforcements. With firing spaces in the fortifications already at "standing room only" we put our scout snipers just ahead of our line in the trees (hopefully the trees would help protect them from shooting a little). 

a note about this scenario

The idea of this scenario is that the defenders (the Blood Angels) are holding a line of fortifications, the attackers (the Imperial Guard) are supposed to smash their way through the line, and get their forces (ideally) into the last third of the board, the area behind the Blood Angels fortification zone. The task of the Blood Angels is to drop as many attackers as they can before they even reach the Blood Angels defensive line.

*on an interesting note - Imperial Guard Sentinals get an extra 6" move before the game starts - which put 2 of them in the far treeline (one is closer to the center of the board). Hidden ahead of the Sentinals in the far treeline are Imperial Guard Deathworld veterans - also in that same clump of trees is a unit of Blood Angel Scouts (snipers)... this is going to get nasty right from the start!

The Imperial Guard preliminary bombardment was freakishly accurate - wounding four marines in one of our tac squads and six in our Devastator squad positioned in that building.  The four tactical marines escaped unscathed, their faith in the Emperor and their power armour seeing them through....the same couldn't be said for the devastators as five fell victim to the falling shells.

Movement
Most of the IG forces held their ground and fired - the Sentinals and Deathworld veterans and a rhino were notable exceptions..

Shooting
The opening shot was a salvo from the Leman Russ - it was aimed at one of the fortifications (the one with the Death Company behind it) and as fate would have it it drifted a tad and threatened to kill three members of the tac squad, and five more of the Death Company (including the Chaplain) - well we rolled it all out and appartently this is what happened...

That's right - everyone but the Chaplain lived - so we figure he saw the shot coming in and jumped up to take the full force of the blast to protect the rest of his battle brothers... what selflessness! :-)
 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch - those Deathworld Veterans had run up through the trees and threw powerful explosive charges into the bunker - with devastating effect...

the bunker itself collapsed, but some of our battle brothers survived the blast...

In the forground there you can see the Blood Angel Scout Snipers - a Sentinal has run up through the forrest to be literally right on top of them... 

A different angle on the IG advance, the Deathworld Veterans are clearly visible - their infiltration move and run through the forrest had put them close enough to lob explosives, and in a moment they were going to assault - all on the IG first turn! See the rhino atop the trees there? Scott had forgotten to bring his Chimeras so I loaned him a rhino I had yet to paint (I figured a grey rhino was closer to IG than a blood red one with BA markings!).

The next thing we know a flurry of gunfire focused on the Scout Snipers, all but one fell...

 

IG Turn 1: Assault Phase

The Deathworld Veterans assault the last remaining Blood Angels from the collapsed bunker (several more had fallen to firing). the Blood Angels dropped one last guardsman before falling to their furious assault.

and this got real ugly real fast... a Sentinal decided to punt the last Scout Sniper.. we rolled scatter dice - the poor fellow landed some bit away...

Here's the worst though...

When the Deathworld veterans had finished off the last of the Blood Angels from the collapsed bunker they consolidated a bit away from the Death Company (the IG player knew the DC was going to charge the nearest enemy unit since their Chaplain was gone) but then a great and terrible moment (great or terrible depending on whose side you're on!) the IG player realized that his Sentinals could sweeping advance - and one of them was able to hit the Death Company! AAAGGGHHH!!!!!

A sweeping overview of the end of IG turn one... 

oh yes - see that raging fire in the center building? there was a furious storm of fire which pounded that position - not a single member of that squad lived through the IG first turn... but wait, there's more... all the scout snipers are gone too, and a tactical squad (plus the bunker they were in), and our Chaplain, oh - and the tac squad that was standing on that fortification there with the Death Company - they got gunned down too....
So out of 7 infantry squads and one vehicle that the Blood Angels began the game with we had 3 totally destroyed, one tac squad intact but so far away from the fighting that they could neither shoot (nor be shot at), which left one tac squad (with causalties) in the combat zone and a Death Company (stuck in place by a sweeping assault)... 

oh yes - the Blood Angels' first turn was going to be interesting....