I want to begin this battle report saying that this is easily in the top 3 most frustrating games I've ever played in Warhammer 40k.  There were numerous contributions to this, the prime being the absolute horrendous dice rolling I had all game long.  While it may seem like an exaggeration, any one of my friends that witnessed the game can vouch for this.  When I rolled a dice this evening, a 1 result would come up at LEAST 70% of the time.  I've never seen so many double and triple ones in my life.  And it happened so frequently, the bystanders were having a great time laughing at my expense.  To make matters worse, where I was rolling so many 1's, Brandon was rolling equal amounts of 6's!  At one point, several of my friends were in tears from laughing so hard.  For example, it seemed that every time I needed a 2 or better to hit/wound, a one would come up. 

Still, as frustrating as it was that the dice wouldn't give me anything, I cannot totally blame dice rolling for the loss and that isn't even what made the night go sour.  What bothered me the most, was that my opponent was trying to gain unfair advantages to his already significant lead (such as claiming cover when there obviously was none, arguing my LOS to his units constantly, disputing what weapons could shoot at his units and from where, fighting with me over rhino fire points, etc etc).  Most semi-legitimate conflicts that were close to being in his favor, I gave to him.  Starting turn 5, it seemed like he fought everything I did.  Lets just say that I had to have a couple of beers to cut the edge off afterward.  But enough with the ranting, on the the battle report.

The list that I played, after rolling to decide, was the Light Mechanized AC List found on my BT army list page.  Brandon played a Blood Angels list containing something to this effect:

1x Mephiston
1x 5-man Terminator Assault Squad (3x PoLC, 2x TH/SS) in Land Raider Redeemer
1x Sanguinary Priest (with termies)
3x 5-man assault squads with powerfists/meltaguns in Rhinos
2x 5-man assault squads with jump packs and meltaguns
2x Baal Predators with Flamestorm Cannons and Heavy Bolters
2x Predators with Autocannons/Lascannons

We played an Annihilation mission, using the Pitched Battle deployment rules.  The board was 6x4 and terrain was evenly placed on it.  4 large ruins in each off-center corner, with 2 small ruins taking up the center spot.  Dispersed around the board were the pieces of the crashed Aquila lander to provide cover and difficult terrain.  We rolled off, I won, and chose to go first.  I placed 3 Rhinos (including EC crusader squad) and one land speeder off to the left side of my deployment zone.  I placed the remaining 3 Rhinos on the right side, as well as 2 of the land speeders.  A bit left of center, I deployed my dreadnoughts with the Venerable one a few inches back.  Then I placed my predators center to right of center to give them the best fire lanes possible.  Brandon placed Mephiston and the Jump pack assault troops in reserve and decided to outflank the Baals.  He then placed 1 rhino and 1 normal predator on the left side of his deployment zone (my left) to counteract my flanking move.  Doing the same with my right flank, he placed 2 rhinos and 1 predator there.  In the middle, a little left of center, he placed the Land Raider Redeemer.  With deployment done, we began.

Because my list was designed to play the objective game spamming redundant units, I was saddened when we rolled a kill point mission.  However, with the amount of firepower that my list can put out, I wasn't put off for long.  I set about moving all of my rhinos forward their max distance to ensure melta range the next turn.  All of them smoked, except for my EC rhino on the left side which had sufficient cover from the rhinos in front of it.  I advanced my left Land Speeder a full 24" towards his predator across the way, but behind the ruin there, providing nearly blocked LOS.  On the right side, I moved my two LSs forward 24" as well, but behind a ruin that blocked LOS to everything except his LRR.  The close range dreadnoughts advanced together along the side of a ruin, as to not block my firing lanes.  Finally, my Ven Dread moved a bit forward to get a better shot at its only visible target, the LRR.  Then I fired with everything that was able to, but instead of starting off the game right, I began a game long affliction of terrible rolling.

In his half of the 1st turn, he advanced his fast rhinos forward.  The one on the left side was positioned to block my front two rhinos.  On the right side, he rammed both of his fast rhinos into my rhinos causing one of mine to wreck.  I only manage to shake both of his.  The LRR moved up towards my dreadnoughts and unloaded its terminator squad with attached priest.  He shot and killed two of my unloaded marines, but they passed their requisite LD test and moved closer to his rhino that destroyed theirs.  During the assault phase, he charged his terminators into the front close support dreadnought.  I killed one of the terminators and he immobilized my dread.  Why he decided to charge into something he was very unlikely to win against, is beyond me.  They were stuck in combat with my dreadnoughts the entire game, with him barely managing to fell one of them in the middle turns.  As such, I won't talk about them much the rest of the report.

My turn two was where I really began to see the bad dice rolling start.  After moving up my land speeders and Ven Dread, my entire army had clear, perfect shots at everything in his army.  And with the exception of one master Multi-melta gun user wrecking up one of his rhinos (who post-humorously was promoted to the Marshal's Household), I failed miserably in my shooting.  I was awe-struck at the fail.  But, I've survived bad turns of shooting before.  I was playing a space marine army after all, they are more forgiving.  My other dreadnought charged into the terminator combat as I previously alluded to and I managed to kill the Sanguinary Priest with the dreadnought that was already in combat.  In his turn, he got all of his reserves except one jump pack assault squad.  He outflanked one baal each behind my rhinos on each flank.  Mephiston and the assault squad came on to the right side of his board edge.  He subsequently destroyed two of my land speeders, several of my rhinos, and the remaining members of the crusader squad on foot (the ones from turn 1 destroyed rhino).  Brandon was already starting to gain a large lead.

After making some advancement moves, with my EC rhino and Dakka Predator, I began my turn three shooting.  Turn three was just as miserable in my shooting phase, with all the shots pinging off armor with their "1" rolls.  The only useful thing I managed to do was stun both Baals, but that took several units of fire to accomplish.  I was starting to look forward to the "Law of Averages" and its swing back into my direction, as I felt this game was going to quickly get out of hand if I didn't start rolling something, anything good.  The last reserved unit came on the board during Brandon's turn.  He took out one more of my rhinos, the last land speeder, and one of my crusader squads between his shooting and assaults.  Brandon also managed to destroy the first dreadnought via destroyed weapons/immobilization rolls and stunning both my AT predators.  So I had a badly mauled army with 3 functioning predators, 2 semi-intact dreadnoughts (one being ven dread), 2 rhinos with crusader squads, and 2 wounded crusader squads on foot.  Against his entire army save one rhino and his Sanguinary Priest.  This wasn't looking good for me.

At this point, a friend suggested I roll my "ghetto" dice instead of the ones I normally use.  These dice are basically a random collection of dice that I've come across over the years.  With these, I found semi-better rolling the rest of the game (but still overall bad).  I tried to play damage control at this point (turn 4), positioning units to prevent charges and give me the best remaining shots I could.  Fortunately, this turn was slightly better for me.  I wittled down three blood angels squads down to one man each, setting up my next turn.  His turn ended up being pretty ineffectual because of my preventive movements in my half of the turn.  He did, however, run all of the 1-man squads into cover and as far away from my squads as possible.  One of his assault squads charged a crusader squad on my left flank and caused one casualty.

Ah, yes.  Finally, I was getting some of the dice to go my way in turn 5.  Because of my previous turns movement, I was able to get pretty decent fire lanes for my remaining forces and managed some kills.  My EC squad charged into a combat that was began the previous turn by Brandon, and did minimal damage (EC rolled triple 1's to wound when I needed 2's).  During the turn, I managed to kill two of the three 1-man squads, one rhino, and one Baal.  I also stunned the other baal.  It wasn't much, but something was better than nothing.  If nothing else, it was KPs.  During his turn, he destroyed the autocannon on the Dakka pred (and stunned it) with Mephiston and killed 1 more rhino.  Rolling to see if the game continued, and it did.

The game ended up going two more turns, with me trying to get as many Kill Points as possible with what I had left on the board.  Even though the dice had improved, they failed me at several key moments and I was only able to gain a few more KP before the end of the game.  However, I only gave up only one more kill point (via a blown up rhino) through two turns, so that kept me in the game until the end.  The score at the end was:  Brandon -- 13; Bob -- 9.  A loss.  :(

Final Thoughts:
Well, as I mentioned at the beginning of this battle report, dice played a very huge factor in this game.  I firmly believe that the list that I fielded clearly out-classed his in nearly every way.  I was very happy with the way that it performed, even under the sub-par rolling.  It did exactly what it was designed to do, which was put out massive amounts of melta fire at mid-ranges, while providing so many targets to your opponent that they have target priority issues.  The last few turns gave me a glimpse of what the game COULD have been like, had I made average rolls and I was pleased.  However, I was not too happy with the way my Ven Dreadnought performed this game.  It usually manage to hit, but because of how I deployed it, the only shot it really had all game was at the LRR.  7 turns of shooting only managed to kill the Pintle Mounted Multi-Melta.  I was very disappointed.  If it had the fire lanes to the predators or rhinos, it would have been much better off I think.  Other than that, I don't think there was a whole lot I could have done different during the game to give me a better chance at winning.  As it was, I nearly tabled him in the seven turns even with my very poor rolling.

In retrospect, I would probably have gone 2nd though to allow me one more turn of shooting from the multi-meltas in my crusader squads.  Plus, I forgot to use my "Abhor the Witch" vow but in the end, it didn't really matter with the way the game played out.  I also would have not deployed the way I did.  Splitting forces generally isn't the way I like to play, but I was trying to draw out some of his units so he also split off.  Had he refused flank me, I would have had to spend several turns getting into position to fire.  I won't be doing that again.  :/

Brandon played a pretty good game, and his few mistakes were covered up by his insanely lucky early game rolling.  One of the bigger mistakes was him charging his terminators at my dreadnoughts.  He was relying on Furious Charge to give the Thunder Hammers a shot at killing it, but he failed and was stuck in that combat the entire game.  Granted, where he put them on the board would have made him hard pressed to get them into combat with my units, nor would I have cared should he have killed a 5-man crusader squad.  I had 5 more.  He also made a larger mistake by deploying forces on each of my flanks.  This allowed me to engage them from turn one (even though I rarely did any damage), rather than having to move to get there.  But other than that, he did pretty good.  I just really disliked the poor sportsmanship he displayed during the game and it made this one of the not fun games I've ever played.

One thing I really did notice though, was how incredibly ineffective the Flamestorm Cannons were for both the Baals and the Land Raider Redeemer.  It took zero effort to avoid the effects of the weapon and proves once again to me why a LRC is a better choice without a doubt.  I was told after he made the list, that it was his army's way of dealing with mobs should he have the pleasure of playing such an opponent.  Even still, I think there are better ways to deal with that problem that don't put you at a disadvantage should you be playing a mech list like I did.

I really hate putting blame on dice, but had you been there, you'd have understood my pain.  All I could really do was play to the best of my ability and manage as best as I could.  I have to put the game behind me, and get a rematch in to settle the score (with hopefully a bit more luck in the dice!).  :)