#aus30k

Hello all!

Will and I have managed to play our first two games in the Second Golloch War campaign - set on Paters World. 

As a quick reminder, more information on the campaign can be found on the aus30k website - check it out!

Now without further ado... a bit of background, and a summary of the games with pictures!

The Board

The setting of this was a wrecked hive complex, which was in its death throes after being bombed by atomics and heavy artillery in the Traitor assault on Paters World. The Raven Guard and Salamanders respectively were being inserted into different parts of the hive to try to recover and protect vital material needed to supply the Last Light forces. 

The board is a Zone Mortalis board, which I have bought from wargame-model-mods.co.uk. I’ve built it, and I’m in the process of painting it and rigging it up with LEDs. The board is fully magnetised and modular - we used different layouts in each game. Check it out!

Game 1 - 750pts, Raven Guard v Night Lords

For game 1 I ran a Raven Guard force. I had to proxy (shame!) my Chaplain (Uriah Tomb) as a Salamander, as I haven’t gotten that model built yet.

Uriah Tomb - Chaplain w/ Jump Pack, Boarding Shield, Power Axe, Melta Bombs, Artificer Armour

5 Dark Furies, w/ Melta Bomb

5 Mor Deythan w/ Melta Bomb and Artificer Armour, 5x Combiflamers

10 Tactical Marines

Contemptor Cortus with 2x DCCW

Will ran Night Lords:

Chaplain w/ Power Axe and Artificer Armour

15 Tactical Marines with extra CCWs

10 man Terror Squad with an Apothecary

Contemptor Cortus with Kheres and DCCW

The Game 

We ran a simple objectives mission - Will was the Defender, I was the Attacker. We ended up deploying in table quarters next to each other, and I managed to infiltrate onto the objectives to make Will the de facto Attacker!

Note... we used a “blip” system - Until you got line of sight on an enemy unit, you didn’t know what it was! It was represented by a bit of paper with a number on it... so there was a lot of early cat and mouse trying to guess wha tunits were by how they moved. Once a unit was revealed it was then deployed. These rules are accounted for in Zone Mortalis. 

We also used the catastrophic damage table - every player turn you roll on it, and events from cave-ins to dreaded hivequakes to dust storms can occur to change how the game plays!

Deployment 

(You can just about see at the top a bit of paper which was a dreadnought)

Turn 1 

The blips cautiously manoeuvred around - nothing major! 

Turn 2 

A terrible cave in buried 3(!) Terror squad marines under rubble and rock!

The Night Lords reserves arrived, and immediately launched themselves at an objective, revealing the Mor Deythan! They were slightly outnumbered by the 15 tactical marines... 

The Night Lords then pulled back, satisfied what was nearby to them.

The Mor Deythan tried to do a tactical withdrawal, but some awful run moves prevented them from moving far - they were horribly exposed in a doorway. 

A Raven Guard dreadnought advanced up the main thoroughfare.

The Dark Furies managed to turn things around - they did a ballsy jump pack move, surviving the terrain checks, and slammed home into the Terror squad. They had initiative 5 on the charge... no Terror marines were left standing once they had gone to work. The Furies then pulled back into a corridor. 

Turn 3 

The Night Lords were reeling from the impact of the Dark Furies. The Tactical squad moved after the Mor Deythan, pushing a huge charge onto them. The Chaplain took a wound on the charge and a Tactical fell to overwatch due to the Mor Deythan blowing their combi flamers. 

The ensuing combat saw the Mor Deythan do a good showing and survive the combat... but they were then swept after they broke and ran!

The Night Lords Cortus ripped a HP and an arm off of its Raven Guard foe. 

The Dark Furies, emboldened by their victory, boosted into the Night Lords deployment zone to snag an objective. The RG Tacticals also came on, rushing down the flank to grab another objective. 

There were just dust storms and tremors this turn... nothing too dramatic. 

Turn 4 

The Night Lords Dreadnought pushed up to attack its Raven Guard foe - the combat was inconclusive, with no HP done. 

The Tacticals consolidated onto an objective and waited to see if they could survive the Dark Furies...

Then... HIVEQUAKE! Every model had to take a Strength Test or die... 

2 Raven Guard Tacticals and a Dark Fury were crushed... but so was the Night Lords Chaplain(!) and five(!!) Tacticals. 

The Raven Guard exploited this shocking turn of events - the Dark Furies blended the remaining Tacticals, as the Raven Guard Cortus punched its Night Lord foe into paste. 

Wipeout by the Raven Guard! Loyalist Victory!

Game 2 - 1,000pts, Salamanders v Night Lords 

For this game I ran some Salamanders...

Urodela Brate - Cataphractii Delegatus, TH/SS (Covenant of Fire)

5 Firedrakes - 2x Chainfist, 3x TH/SS

13 Tactical Marines - Power Fist, Artificer Armour

10 Pyroclasts - Artificer Power Sword, Melta Bombs x10

Will ran Night Lords again...

Ophion - NL special Praetor (Terror Assault)

10 Terror Marines with an Apothecary

10 Terror Marines with an Apothecary

Cortus with Kheres + Fist

Cortus with Kheres + Fist

The Game & Deployment

We did the same setup, except this time I was the Defender and Will was the Attacker. We changed up the board layout, and I managed to get lucky with deployment and objectives and ended up being able to sit my (hidden by a blip!) Firedrakes very near one, and my Pyroclasts directly on another. Will Infiltrated up some Terror marines.

Turn 1 

The Night Lords immediately pushed out to identify the Firedrakes, and then whipped back round the corner to try to draw the Terminators out. 

This basically worked - I moved into the main central room to dominate the objective. 

Turn 2 

A dust storm obscured shooting!

The Terror marines moved in, and the Dreadnought on the board revealed itself. The other Dreadnought arrived, as did the other Terror Squad. 

The Firedrakes were the centre of a storm of fire - Plasma, Kheres, Grav and Bolter shots rang through the obscuring dust... a single wound was done to a Firedrake, and a Night Lords marine was killed by a grav shot from his own side!

The Terror Squad charged in, committing a full unit with Ophion!

The combat was brutal and sustained. Three of the Firedrakes were dragged down, with the rest and the Delegatus on one wound. However all but Ophion and a single Terror marine were left standing!

The Tactical Marines arrived, and secured an objective, shooting up a marine from the other Terror squad. In the next phase of combat, Ophion and the other Terror marine were turned into paste, but only the Delegatus and a single Firedrake on one wound were left!

Turn 3 

The Night Lords showed they had a talent for murder... the other Terror Squad swept into the wounded Firedrakes... and did a lot of wounds. 

They didn’t survive.

The two Dreadnoughts then hunted the tacticals, but were blocked by walls. 

On the Salamanders turn, the Pyroclasts and Tacticals fell back onto the objectives, protected from the Dreads by walls, and the Terror Squad would have to assault through a load of flamers. 

Turn 4 

The Dreadnoughts started ripping apart the walls (AV14, 3HP, need pens to remove HP) and did a lot of damage... the Terror Squad spread out, and sat on an objective. The Salamanders pulled back further and hugged the objectives. 

Turn 5 

HIVEQUAKE! A whole NL contemptor was crushed... as were HALF the Pyroclasts (5!!) and 2 Tacticals! The Salamanders were now in a massively weakened position!

The Terror squad smelled blood, and rushed around the corner, eating the overwatch and tanking all 10(!) wounds. 

They ripped 30 wounds into the Pyroclasts... and the Pyroclasts tanked them all, killed a Terror marine in return, and forced them to run!

The Pyroclasts rallied up, flaming 33 wounds onto the fleeing Terror squad and wiping them out with the help of the Tacticals. With a single Dreadnought on one HP left, the Night Lords called it. 

A stunning turnaround and counter-turn around on the final turn!!

Victory again to the Loyalists!

Hey all!

Its been a long time since we updated this blog... but in the meantime, we have been doing a lot of Heresy!

I have built a Word Bearers force, with demons (which I’ll feature!) I’ve finished 3K points of Salamanders, and started a fledgling (~750pts done so far) Raven Guard army. I’ve also built (and I’m in the process of painting) a Zone Mortalis board!

What we are currently excited about is the SECOND GOLLOCH WAR - look at aus30k.com for more information! Basically it is a global Heresy campaign, run by 11 different podcasts, who each have a month to present cool fluff, etc. You can record your forces and games on the website, and at the end of each month the fluff will update.

Currently we are fighting over PATERS WORLD - a ruined ash-strewn rubble heap, which the Traitors have smashed to pieces, and now the Loyalists are scrabbling to retrieve material and ammunition from.

Now... what forces am I using in this campaign? 

I am fielding Salamanders and Raven Guard, as Loyalists. I will be using both armies separately, and maybe as a shattered legion eventually. Will is of course using Night Lords. Sean will be using Emperor’s Children and Adam, surprise surprise, will use Orks. 

The fluff, briefly:

Force: The Last Light 

Leaders: 

Solomon Krayt - Salamanders Praetor

Urodela Brate - Salamanders Sub-Praetor

Alvarex Maun - Raven Guard Master of Descent

Uriah Tomb - Raven Guard Chaplain

These four lead a rag-tag force which made it off of Istvaan V alive. 

Everything changed at Isstvan.

In the black sands of that benighted world, brother fell upon brother and the Galaxy turned to madness.

Alvarex Maun, the Raven Guard Master of Descent, guided hundreds of thousands of dropships, landing craft, drop pods and spacecraft into the Urgall Depression at the start of the Isstvan V retribution operation. Utilising his Nightfall Pattern Strato-vox, the deployment of the Raven Guard Legion was a flawlessly executed ballet.

At the end of the bloody purge he barely managed to extract his personal Thunderhawk, with a wounded Corax aboard. The ship took more hits than even a phalanx of Tech Priests could have repaired in flight, and the ship went down hard miles outside the Depression.

Maun was thought to be dead, and Corax tearfully abandoned one of his most loyal captains as he fled into the wastes of Isstvan V.

But Maun lived.

He was dragged from the wreckage by a senior captain of the XVIIIth – Solomon Krayt. Krayt had managed to rally a force of mounted infantry and dreadnoughts to punch out of the Depression, scything through Night Lords led by the fearsome Sevatar. Most of his contingent had been lost in the mad dash to the jagged mountains surrounding the blood-soaked depression, where the Thunderhawk had gone down.

Krayt himself was badly wounded at the hands of Sevatar himself – but what was worse was the haunted look he carried. He had seen Vulkan consumed by the traitorous Perturabo’s holocaustic artillery barrage.

Maun managed to raise scattered Raven Guard elements using his Strato-vox, as Krayt’s artificers coaxed the ailing machine spirit of the venerable Thunderhawk back to life, against all odds. A menagerie of Raven Guard rendezvoused with the remaining legionaries, and they sped for orbit in the Thunderhawk.

A pair of vessels slipped through the Traitor blockade to pick them up – Nocturne’s Pyre, and The Nightslip, belonging to the Salamanders and Raven Guard respectively. The captain of The Nightslip – Lukas Duskborn – managed to stealthily manoeuvre the shattered survivors to the nearest Mandeville Point, where they made an emergency warp jump to safety.

Since then, the combined forces of Krayt and Maun have been a waking nightmare for traitors all over the Ultima Segmentum. They call themselves the Last Light – a candle in the darkness of the Heresy War. 

Most recently, they have made warp translation to the Golloch Cluster, following Imperial distress calls. They’ve arrived on the ruined and burning Paters World, and have made landfall, searching for supplies... 

We’ll be posting some battle reports here, which will also be on the aus30k website.