New battle report:
Seeing as how the IN player is spamming NCs, for this battle report I felt it only fair that the Chaos player can spam Slaughters, so with a little bit of Proxying, Steve put forth this list:
Warmaster Ld8
Pair of Slaughters Ld8(WM) & Ld9
Pair of Slaughters Ld6 & Ld 8
Pair of Slaughters Ld7 & Ld7
Pair of Slaughters Ld6 & Ld8
4 Iconoclasts Ld8
I used the same 1500pt list as before:
Admiral Ld8
Mars Ld8 (Admiral)
Pair of Dominators Ld7 & Ld8
Pair of Dominators Ld7 & Ld8
Pair of Lunars Ld7 & Ld9
Deployment ended up 110cm apart, with the Imperials forming a tight group around the Mars, and Chaos spread behind a skirmish line of Iconoclasts in a thin arc equi-distant to the Imperials at about 120cm.
Imperials got first turn, moved forward 10cm, and targetted the Warmaster's Slaughter. 1 squadron failed the check and shot at the Iconoclasts, missing and doing nothing. The other five Novas scored one direct hit, and 2 points of damage, with a blast marker on the other ship in the squadron.
The entire Chaos fleet went AAF (after using up the re-roll), with the Iconoclasts (50cm) closing to 50cm of the Imperial fleet, and the Slaughter pairs moved 51cm (WMaster 56-5cm), 51cm, 48 and 36cm to close to between 59cm and 74cm.
The Imperial fleet moved forwards 10cm to 40cm from the Iconoclasts and 49-58 from the cruisers, and fired again. Again, one squadron failed its leadership test and fired on the Iconoclasts. The Nova Cannons scored two direct hits against the closest Iconoclast, rolling a 6 and a 2 to obliterate it four times over. At this stage, Steve was doing a slow hand clap. "[sarcasm]Nice one mate! You killed the **** out of that destroyer![/sarcasm]. The other five shots scored one direct hit on the Warmaster's vessel, doing 1pt of damage, and the other four scattered.
The Chaos fleet closed to entirely within 40cm and went abeam across the Imperial vessel's prows. Firepower 121 and 16 lances leapt out at the closest Imperial Dominator Squadron, which despite bracing took 19 hits, hulking one of them, with 1 hit carrying over to the shields of the second Dominator.
The Imperials, now well within Nova cannon minimum range were a bit stuffed for options. With 6 ships remaining, 1 of which braced, they could go abeam and lose to the Slaughter's overwhelming firepower, or they could attempt to break the line, which is what they chose to do. They moved 20cm towards the Chaos lines, and managed to get a couple of shots off, which were mostly absorbed by shields. The Iconoclasts were obliterated.
In the Chaos turn, two squadrons went on Lock On orders, whilst the second half swung round to maintain a close-range fire.
The Locked on Squadrons managed 19 hits against the closing lead Lunar Squadron, turning one into a blazing hulk.
A third squadron crippled the Mars, which needed to reload and so refused to brace, doing 4 hits past shields.
The fourth squadron did three hits on the orphaned Dominator, which had braced.
So at the end of turn three, it looked like:
Chaos fleet, 8 Capital ships remaining, none braced, 3 hits past shields on the Warmaster's ship, 4 Iconoclasts lost.
Imperial fleet: 5 Capital ships remaining, of which 2 braced and 1 crippled.
This was a bad tactical situation, and only going to go more Chaos's way, but I decided to see what one more turn brought.
The undamaged Dominators went on Lock On, and managed to get between the two ships of one undamaged Slaughter squadron, Moving Away/Closing at close range. The squadron braced, with the closing slaughter being crippled with 5 hits, and moving away slaughter being crippled with 4 hits. The remainder of the fleet managed to get only abeam profiles, with the orphaned Dominator the only other ship managing to line up both broadsides, but was braced.
The focused fire of the rest of the fleet failed to get through shields.
Steve disengaged the damaged slaughters, and went Lock On with the two squadrons which had turned in the previous turn, whilst the final squadron turned around the Imperials. One pair of Lock-On Slaughters did 3 hits past shields to the lone Dominator, which braced, and it was finished off by the non-locked on slaughters. The second pair of locked on slaughters targeted the Mars, which evaporated in a Plasma Drive overload, which put blast markers in contact with the shields of the remaining Dominators and did a hit on the Lunar.
At this stage the Imperials were outnumbered 2-1 by nastier ships and were not pointing the right direction. I disengaged.
The tally was: Imperial kills: 4 destroyer escorts and 2 crippled/disengaged slaughters. (2 Capital Ships Crippled/Disengaged)
Chaos kills: 2 Dominators, 1 Lunar and 1 Mars. (4 Capital Ships Destroyed)
This was a massacre victory to Chaos.