Horus Heresy Battle Report: 600 points

The Emperor's Children getting pwn'd

The Horus Heresy campaign moves onward! At 600 points my army is really starting to come together and have a unified look. Although I plan on using some Mechanicum allies down the road, right now I am running a pure Emperor’s Children army based around the loyalist elements. In my first 600 point game I faced off against some Salamanders that confused my army with the traitors so we battled and it was bloody…

My army consisted of Saul Tarvitz, 10 Legion Marines with power sword wielding sergent, and 10 assault marines with one basic marine wielding plasma in addition to a sergeant armed with a power fist.

I fought against a Salamanders army consisting of a bare bones Preator (using Pride of the Legion), 10 Legion Marines without upgrades, and 5 Firedrake Terminators.

Our mission was Hold the Relic and our deployment was long table edges. The terrain density was moderate.

Turn 1 was spent mainly in positioning. I realized that I deployed poorly since I was too spread out trying to cover objectives across the battlefield, while Matt (the Salamanders general) decided to group up his units together so they hit in unison.

Turn 2 I tried to pick off some of the Salamanders marines on the periphery with my assault marines. I got one kill (insert sarcasm)! In exposing my unit to return fire on the following turn I lost a whopping 7 marines due to Fury of the Legion bolter fire. I would say that from this point on it was an uphill battle for my poor army.

Turn 3 I finally got my other unit with Saul Tarvitz into firing range of the Firedrakes and I tried desperately to get a lucky kill. My assault marines that survived took to cover in order to mount a counter attack.

The Salamanders had already claimed the objective and were moving the terminators in to finish me off.

 By turn 4 the Salamander Fire Drakes Assaulted my Legion Marine Unit and hastily beat them down without suffering a single wound in the assault. Saul's Charnable Broadsword was not very effective against the terminators.

Without a realistic way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat I conceded victory to the Salamanders.




I try to use a loss like this as a useful lesson for the next game. I believe it would have been better to hold back my assault marines until later in the game instead of exposing them early to massed bolter fire. I definitely spread myself too thin and will keep that in mind when we play our Horus Heresy battle at 1000 points. I also keep thinking that my lack of Rhinos or Drop Pods is detrimental and may be including them in the near future.