3000 point Planetstrike

Saturday was a 3000 point planetstrike game vs. Alec and his Chaos Daemons w/ Choas Marines allies.  My list was approximately as follows:

Space Marines
Captain - relic blade, storm bolter
Tac Squad x10 - power fist, flamer, lascannon
Tac Squad x10 - power fist, flamer, lascannon
Tac Squad x10 - power sword, melta gun, heavy bolter
Assault Squad x10 - power fist, 2x plasma pistol, flamer
3x Landspeeder - typhoon missles
2x Landspeeder - multi-melta
Devastator Squad x5 - 4x missle launcher
2x Vindicator - siege shield
2x Predator - lascannon sponsons
2x Storm Talon - assault cannon, heavy bolter

Blood Angels
Chaplain - power fist
Death Company x8 - Power Fist
Storm Raven - heavy bolter, assault cannon

I honestly don't know what he had, but here is a guess.

Chaos Daemons
Khorne HQ
Khorne Daemon Prince
Tzeentch Daemon Prince
20 Bloodletters
20 Bloodletters
20 Pink Horrors
10 Flesh Hounds
3 Blood Crushers
3 Screamers of Tzeentch
Soul Grinder of Nurgle
Chaos Space Marines
5x Marines, Melta guns
Helldrake
8x Terminators w/ Landraider

     I chose to go with 3 bastions, using the dropzone denial strategem.  I feel it is usually the way to go.  This lets me set up right on the board edge and stay as far from the other 3 edges as I can.  He then chose the short edge to the right of my board edge.  I like to have a ring of difficult terrain around my buildings, just to slow down anything that is looking to charge in.  Here is how I set them up:























     I put the Devastator squad on top of the small bastion in the middle.  The 3 Tac squads were spread out between the other 2 bastions (top and inside), the rhino, and inside the middle bastion.  My tanks were divided onto either side. 

    He started the game with the Firestorm attacks, of which he got 7.  I don't think a single one of these didn't wreck some face.  When Planetstrike came out, blast weapons only got half strength if the center hole wasn't over the target.  Now, in 6th edition, they can scatter and hit multiple targets at their full strength.  Which happened.  A LOT!  Here is my setup after the Firestorm:

     One of the bastions colapsed completely, killing 4 guys inside and 2 on top.  I lost a Rhino and a Vindicator, too.  All my other tanks lost at least 1 Hull Point.  Then he rolled for his reserves and got most of what he wanted.  He also had instruments in most of his daemon units, so he could bring another unit on from reserve if the unit with the instrument comes in.  Here is how he deployed:

     One unit, which I think was a big group of Raptors with a lord attached, scattered onto my guys and were destroyed.  His shooting was pretty devastating, taking out all of my tanks.  He then assaulted the Tac squad with a big Daemon guy, killing the sergeant in a challenge.  Overall, he did quite a bit of damage, but I still had my heavy hitters coming in....

     My reserves showed up.  I got everything except for my assault squad, which had a mishap and had to go back into reserves.  The melta speeders hit their mark next to the Landraider and blew it up.  The first storm talon scattered, but remained behind the Helldrake for rear armour shots.  The second one scattered almost onto the other, but I could rotate it to prevent it from touching.  This, however, meant the Helldrake was no longer in his arc of fire.  The storm raven came on from the short edge to the left of my bastions, not wanting to risk a deep strike mishap.  The first Stormtalon got some great rolls and took down the Helldrake.  My Sternguard dropped in on the Pink Horrors and Bloodletters.  Taking a decent chunk out of both.  Overall, I didn't make a big enough dent in them to prevent what was coming, but it still felt good to kill some Chaos scum....

     At this point, he started killing everything, and I esentially stopped taking pictures as I was too busy putting away my dead models.  I his flying Daemon Prince used vector strike to bring down my Stormraven, killing all but 2 Death Co and imobilizing the Dread.  Another Daemon prince took down a Storm Talon with vector strike, too.  His Bloodletters all had Melta bombs due to the strategem that he chose, as so were ruining my bastions. 

     I have to say that Chaos Daemons as Planetstrike Attackers is a really rough army to beat.  I think Alec will be using this to his advantage in our campaign on Thursday nights.  I feel that the best strategy is to reserve as much as you can to prevent the firestorm damage.  Then maybe I will deploy in the center and use the force field strategem that protects from firestorm damage.  I definitely need to get in some more games to see how I like Planetstrike in 6th edition.