Hi everyone! As the first Chaos test battle was underway since yesterday, I let my son use the fleet he wanted instead of using Horizon's fleet list suggestions, which we will use this weekend. Because a seven-Dominator Imperial fleet left me 170 points shy of 1500 points, two of them were swapped for Mars battlecruisers. Here's how the fleet list broke out (neither fleet had commanders, re-rolls, special bonuses, etc):
Imperials
Dominator x5 (no squadrons)
Mars x2 (single squadron)
Chaos
Executor
Acheron
Slaughter x3 (no squadrons)
Murder x2 (single squadron, one was lance variant)
Devastation
Iconoclast x3 (squadron)
Rolling randomly, we had two asteroid fields on his side of the table and three gas clouds on my side of the table. He used the asteroids to great effect, using his high-Ld ships like Eldar to navigate through them to keep pushing toward me while I couldn’t shoot at him with NC’s. His Slaughters skirted the asteroid field until they couldn’t hide behind them anymore, then instead of going around them to give me an extra turn with NC’s, he actually turned toward the field and then AAF’ed THROUGH it (ballsy!) to close the range. For this two of his three Slaughters failed the navigation Ld check against 3D6, but one took two hits and one only took one. He kept his Iconoclasts way out in front and spread far apart to force me to do Ld checks to ignore them, which proved successful in one instance.
My son is no noob- he’s been playing Chaos for the better part of ten years, and I have seen him routinely smoke grown adults. He is experienced playing against any fleet in general, and as Imperials are my favorite fleet, he is experienced against them in particular.
I would love to sit here and copy down a detailed BatRep from my notes, but that would be pointless. I completely wiped out his fleet, leaving only one capital ship alive but crippled (the all-gun Murder), though admittedly one of his Iconoclasts survived as well. In exchange, he crippled ONE of my Dominators, another took two hits and the rest of my fleet was untouched. As a Chaos player he said afterward the rule needs to be one NC for 500 points, but I said we would not be restricting it that much even if we did so.
Taking a look at the Chaos fleet lists recommended here, is this the way we want to go? I spend a lot of time prow-on and closing. Closing lances would probably be the best bet against my favored strategy so I think we will do the next test battle with Chaos fleet #2:
1x Styx + 2x Devestation
1x Hades + 3x Murder
Any objections?
Regardless of the outcome, I will provide a more detailed BatRep tomorrow. My son likes this fleet list, by the way.
Admiral, we are not going to rush into this decision. Frankly, there is no rush, and we are NOT basing this on one test battle or one bad report at a single game store. We can and will test this again and again before any call is made, and I can take this over to Campaign HQ (now Atlantis Comics) in Norfolk this weekend and throw other players besides my son against my all-NC fleet to see how it goes.
- Nate