First Offensive - Abraxes III

Planet: Abraxes.
Region: Ceres Sector.
919.M41

Death Guard vs Astra Militarum / Genestealer Cult.
2000pts.
Mission: Spoils of War.


Abraxes III had largely fallen to the Death Guard invasion. Those who did not die from the virus bombing soon turned from the Emperor's faith to praising Nurgle. But not all. A sizeable portion of the PDF seemed resistant and fought all the harder to defeat the invaders. It was only where monstrous hybrids and foul genestealers emerged from the sewers that Typhus realised that another force had already set their eyes upon the Abraxes system.

This was a tournament match against my friend Ashleigh. I knew he would be playing Astra Militarum and so I expected my poor Death Guard to get pummelled by either mass small arms fire or mass tank shots. What I did not expect was massed guardsmen (no tanks) with genestealer cult allies. I was looking forward to this even more now.

Game set up saw us playing length ways down the table. His guardsmen positioned deep in his own deployment zone but his hybrids infiltrated half way up the table and his broodlord sat in outflank. Almost immediately the broodlord and genestealers came in and proceeded to decimate one chaos marine squad before being blown apart by two squads of cultists.

The hybrids proved to be the most annoying with two mining lasers which despite missing for the first two turns soon were stripping hull points from my Chaos Knight and wrecking a Rhino I needed to get my plague marines to their destination. It soon became a game of attrition as his fire power knocked out a few models at a time and pushed me back. With the Knight's help I soon cleared the center of the table and Typhus with his terminator squad managed to slaughter through any enemy units in the central ruins.

Even so this game did not go well for me. As seems to be my luck lately I just could not get the tactical objective cards that I needed and Ashleigh's army managed to contain me centrally so I couldn't reach the ones that I did have. His cards, as expected, were all perfect for him. By the time our three hour limit came round he was so far ahead on VP's that I had no chance of catching up.

The Death Guard had made planet fall but found the world far from weak. Alien forces now opposed them and Typhus knew what must be coming. The Death Guard prepared to move street by street burning out any trace of the xenos filth while preparing for what was to come. Even now his sorcerers began to complain about voices in their minds and a terrible shadow moving through the Warp.