A Batrep?!?!

Today I have a battle summery to share.
Wait, I actually PLAY this game? Yes, crazy but true, I do play this game from time to time.
My wife is awesome, and let me run off to the FLGS on one of the rare Wednesdays she has off. I haven't played a non-tournament game since April (about 8 months).

I brought a practice list for this Saturday's charity food drive tournament at the FLGS. 1500 points.
The list looked generally like this:

Chapter Master (plasma pistol, artificer armor, power sword)
Seven Honour Guard (4 swords, 3 axes, and the Banner)
Land Raider Crusader with multimelta
Two Tac Squads in Rhinos
Seven Scouts led by Telion, with a missile launcher
Dakkapred
Thunderfire Cannon

I played against an IG artillery gunline. Lots of infantry squads, a PBS, two Griffons in a squadron, Basilisk, Lord Commisar, Primaris Psyker, Ratlings, Stormtroopers, and Harker-led Vets.

We played an older version of Divide and Conquer from Thor over at Creative Twilight.

The board had a river crossing it diagonally, and a bunch of hills and trees. We went for simple terrain.

Guard deployed behind an Aegis, massed infantry in front of the Griffons and the Basilisk way off in the back corner. Stormtroops, Harker Vets, and Ratlings were to infiltrate.
I deployed my LRC with the Chapter master and Honour Guard front and center in my corner. I wanted to see if it would survive the first turn, so only parked it behind a small hill for a 5+ cover save from the front. Predator just to the back right of the LRC. Combat Squad in a Rhino on the left flank, the other half on a hill with cover from a small ridge at the top. Thunderfire poking out on the left of that hill. Full Tac Squad in a Rhino on the right flank. Scouts to infiltrate.

The Guard won the rolloff for first placement of infiltrators, and put Harker's squad on my far left, in the river. I placed my Scouts mid-right flank, out in the other end of the river. Guard then placed Ratlings in some woods back center of his side of the board, and Stormtroopers out of LOS behind a hill on my extreme right flank (right along the short board edge).

We had Night Fight on the first turn, and I succeeded in seizing the initiative. I pushed the Rhinos forward into the non deployment quadrants, and sent the LRC right up the gut. In shooting, I hammered the main infantry unit behind the Aegis with my Thunderfire. Night Fight is a joke to any unit with an Ignores Cover profile, and the TFC has just that. 12 models were killed in the opening salvo alone. That felt like it was a morale buster for my opponent, and may have drawn more of his attention than it should have.
Return fire at me was of minimal effect due to Night Fight cover saves and limited ranges.
In Turn Two, I floored the LRC forward again, right into the teeth of the enemy guns. I knew there were meltaguns in the units behind the Aegis, but didn't care. It's an Assault Vehicle, so even if I wrecked or exploded I could still charge next turn with those Honour Guard and Chapter Master.
The LRC was indeed exploded about 4" short of the Aegis, and I piled all 8 models out into the crater. 2+ armor kept me from losing any models, and Ld10 kept them from being pinned. Then the PBS hit the unit with Weaken Resolve. -7 to Ld. I wasn't paying any attention when my opponent was going over his psychic power rolls at the beginning of the game, and was unaware that the nearby Primaris Psyker had Psychic Shriek. I lost 5 models to that, plus a wound on the Captain (he saved one with his Iron Halo). Oops. They broke, ran out of the crater, and later auto-rallied.
The game dragged on into a shooting gallery, with my Marines holding as best they could, and Guardsmen dying in droves.
My Thunderfire continued to light up the units behind the Aegis, reducing them from 3+ and 2+ cover to 5+ armor.
The game went a full 5 turns before we called it. We both had only a few models on the board, but mine were spread across the quadrants, and his were largely huddled behind the Aegis. I took all the victory conditions due to that.
MVP of the game was the Thunderfire with its reaping toll on infantry without cover saves. Goat of the game would probably be the Dakkapred. I think it killed one model in five turns? It was simply a matter of either range or cover saves denying its damage output. I also had trouble getting both sponsons on a target due to the stubby shape of the heavy bolter mounts and tracing LOS across the nose of the chassis.

I was disappointed that I hadn't paid attention to the selection of psychic powers, as it would have probably caused me to hold the LRC back a turn instead of gunning forward. That would have let my Honour Guard get into the fight instead of being gutted by Psychic Shriek. If they'd not been reduced to Ld3 as well, I'd have taken zero casualties (I rolled a 10 on the 3d6 test for Shriek).

All in all, a good, fun game and not because I won. I had to make several target priority decisions throughout the game, and corrected myself from making poor ones about halfway through. I was focusing too much on grunt infantry in the early going, when I should have been smacking around the PBS and the squad with the Primaris in it.

I'm not sure I'll run this list on Saturday. I ran into my 'ideal' enemy army last night, but I'm not sure the same will apply in a wider field (though Guard is rampant at the shop right now). I do have some tricks int he list that I did not utilize, but I'm not sure they'll be enough to turn the tide against different builds or armies.
I'll definitely be removing the Dakkapred, both because it didn't do much, and because I discovered something went wrong with my magnetized sponsons, and the heavy bolters refuse to go fully onto the mounting pin. The lascannons work just fine though. I'll have to poke around and figure out what went wrong. They worked fine when I built them...