Trials of the Mantis Warriors: First Blood

I played my first game with my Mantis Warriors last night against Tau4Eva's Blood Angels. I haven't painted a single model yet, mostly just trying things out. I've not played as Codex Space Marines before.

My whole idea with this Mantis Warrior force is to present them after the Badab War. They don't have a lot of anything - no spam, really, except a few tac squads in rhinos. The chapter has always been focused on stealth tactics and lightning strikes, so I'll include sniper scouts, land speeders, and bikes.

I was pretty limited to what I could take last night. My list:

Captain, storm bolter relic blade
Librarian, terminator armor
Terminators with storm bolter and powerfist (plan to get cyclone launchers)
Venerable Dread with Plasma Cannon (BS5 whuuuuuuut)
Sternguard squad with 2x combi plasma, 1 combi melta, 1 combi flamer, 1 powerfist, rhino
Tac squad with ML, Pfist, Flamer, Rhino
Tac squad with ML, Pfist, Flamer, Rhino
Scout squad, snipers, ML, camo cloaks
Scout squad, snipers, ML, camo cloaks
Scout squad, bolters, heavy bolter
Land speeder storm
Bike squad x6, pfist and meltagun

My general idea was to use the scouts to shoot at stuff and hold objectives while the tac squads reinforced where needed. The sternguard zipped to the area of need and the terminators were a fire magnet. The Speeder Storm went forward with its scout move, got assaulted first turn (he had first turn) and was wrecked.

I had to use my Chaos rhinos for now. I had an extra Rhino on the table at the beginning by accident.

We rolled the Chaos Space Marine battle mission where the world is on fire. This cut LOS a LOT on the table! the fire lanes were pretty narrow.

The tac marines in rhinos are backing up my right flank, the terminators and sternguard hold the middle, and the bikes and scouts hold my left flank.

Luckiest scout missile in the world.

On turn 1 Adam wrecked my speeder and killed the scouts inside. He moved up on my right flank and I realized I was probably outmatched there. The LOS blocking terrain made it tough.

In the bottom of turn 1 my scout on the left flank used a missile to blow up one stormraven. So awesome. I then got another lucky shot from a missile on his razorback on my left flank.

From there it was extremely bloody. He moved in on my right flank, I shot him up, he destroyed my scouts. I managed to drive off an entire 5 man assault squad with power weapon with 1 terminator late in the game to contest an objective. I then managed to kill his other stormraven with my PFist sergeant (needing a 6 to hit, glance, a 6 on the damage chart since his flyer went all-out).

It was a super close game, probably the closest I've played in 40k in a year. Props to Adam for the great game. We tied 1-1 on objectives with 5 down on the field!

My terminator broke the assault marines off of the objective.

My librarian. Two handed force sword.