Ulthwe vs Ultramarine Written 2K Battle Report (Photos)

I want to be clear that before the game I did not know what was in my opponent's army, in fact I did not even know which of his armies he was taking.  While I was anticipating him using guard with a baneblade I had a test I really wanted to try out. Please keep that in mind.

The forces of Ulthwe:

The forces of the Ultramarines:

Setup:

With the Ultramarines having a smaller force they had a +1 to go first.  They were prepared to take the field aggressively... and then Ulthwe stole the initiative.

The Wave serpent full of Banshees swept forward to take the centre of the field.  Dark reapers slaughtered all but two of the Assault Marines while their Exarch's Starhawk Missile, Hemlock, and the linked fire of the Prisms sundered the Storm Raven and sent it crashing to the ground, slaying two of the terminators inside.  All while the two Nightspinners thinned the centre Primaris squad to a single model.

Reeling from the initial onslaught the marines looked to be aggressive, moving forward, but as the Reivers entered half their numbers were cut down by the Dark Reapers as the Farseer's precognition warned them of the impending arrival.

The marines moved aggressively towards the Aeldari Falcon, getting into close quarters, but unable to ruin the tank.  The Reivers slaughtered the rangers in their firing nest and pushed forward into the guardians that were defending an objective.

Turn two for Ulthwe kicked off with the banshees disembarking and as the Wave Serpent flew off to safety they approached the marines that had been assaulting their transport.  The guardians in combat retreated under the covering fire of the NightSpinners and Prism.  A large unit of Guardians appeared from the webway behind the forces of the Ultramarines keeping them locked in a pincer, as the Hemlock flew over to support them.  By the time the shooting was finished A librarian, Assault Marine and Primaris Lt were being charged by banshees.  

At the end of the turn a Primaris Lt on 3 wounds was left facing a few banshees, the terminators were slowly trundling towards A fire prism, Marneus Calgar was running across the back of the field towards the guardians, and A Primaris Lt with a small squad of Primaris, its numbers reduced by casualties, were all that was still standing.

The Ultramarines had a mostly ineffective follow up, not making it in to combat with the terminators, advancing marneus, and assaulting the wave serpent but not killing it.  At this point my opponent conceded.

Things I learned: Night Spinners are an absolute nightmare for a force with Primaris marines. In addition the Forewarning Stratagem is positively beastly when paired with Dark reapers.  Opponents that don't know about it will learn to hate it very quickly.  It's easily the match of Webway Strike and Linked Fire when it comes to usefulness.  It's potential means opponents will have to account for it and play extra smart.  If they fall asleep at the wheel it's going to really mess up their day.  The stratagem allowing extra attacks on 6's to hit paid off for me big time.  It won't always, but when it does... in this game it netted me 6 extra attacks, all of which hit, 5 of which wounded.  The banshees finished off the Assault Marines, Slaughtered a Librarian and put two wounds on a Lt in one assault phase.  even the Starhawk missile felt worth the 1 CP when it put 3 mortal wounds on the Raven.  Considering my last Fire Prism firing put on exactly the last 3 wounds needed to kill the storm raven those three mortal wounds were likely the difference between the Raven surviving the turn on 3 wounds and being dead.  the Hemlock  lowering LD and the mass number of casualties I caused on turn 1 gave me hopes I'd actually wipe marine units in the Morale phase, but with my opponent getting a bonus LD turn 1 for being Ultramarines AND rolling a 1 three times for the units affected meant he only lost 1 or none from each unit, but without that negative I wouldn't have caused the two extra morale casualties that were inflicted at all.  The Linked Fire for Prisms resulted in about 7 wounds to the Raven because I needed so many rerolls for the hits and none of my initial rolls to wound actually wounded, so without that stratagem my firepower would have been embarassingly meek.  In many ways I felt bad that my opponent walked into a force that was effectively a hard counter to the army he brought, but since the release of the codex I have been consistently rewarded by aggressively spending CP in turns 1 and 2.