To start with, the Genestealer Cult began to work on the assumption that the various warring factions would not notice their presence, or at the very least, be more occupied with their more "traditional" enemies to worry about a few minor uprisings which could be left to the local Arbites to deal with. With this in mind, the Cult went about it's usual sabotage attempts away from the front lines and it was here that they came into conflict with a foe totally unexpected. Somehow, a small force of chaos cultists had made planet fall under the confusion of battle, led by a pair of mighty daemon princes associated with the Word Bearers legion of traitor marines. These two forces clashed in the hinterlands beyond the hive cities while both sides were hunting down stragglers and isolated enemy units.
1000 points.
Genestealer Cult (Twisted Helix) vs Chaos Space Marines (Word Bearers).
Mission: No Mercy.
Deployment: Dawn of War.
Battle Zone: None.
I haven't played against Marko for a good while now so we were overdue for a match. I figured a nice small game was in order and so we went for one of the rule book missions over a campaign round one. I also wanted to learn a bit more about my new codex so this made sense too.
Marko decided to play a Word Bearers army although what he actually brought to the table was more a mass of cultists, possessed, a pair of daemon princes and two large blocks of summonable daemons. Not really what I would have called a Word Bearers army but hey, it was different so good to face.
The first couple of turns went really quickly. Marko had summoned his daemons - bloodletters and horrors, and used those as his main shock troops - while the cultists basically sat back and did very little. I began by moving up my rockgrinder towards the bloodletters in hopes of burning a number of them down and then running a few over. This didn't really work as I rolled low on the flamer and once in combat, I was being whittled away far too nicely by the daemons. In the end I was forced to use a stratagem to auto detonate the rockgrinder which did thankfully sent a number of bloodletters back to the Warp.
Meanwhile on the left flank, the horrors were pouring psychic warpfire into my troops and completely obliterated one unit in a single shooting phase! In retaliation I popped up my hybrids behind his lines and tried to flame down a load of cultists but only about 3 actually died. As happens in every game lately, the hybrids then died to massed firepower.
Eventually Marko claimed the center of the table and was able to slowly take down my new cult Leman Russ tank, which also did very little this game. The one time it managed to do any damage, Marko managed to get them back with a stratagem and drop them behind my lines.
The game was eventually a bloodbath as my genestealers appeared and tore his army to shreds. The Patriarch charged and slew one daemon prince and the primus took down the second before dealing with the possessed with ease. The remaining bloodletters were taken down by the genestealers before they too died to cultist fire.
By turn 5 I had next to nothing left and Marko was on nearly twice as many victory points as I was. He swiftly took down what I had left with massed small arms fire. Not much I could do.
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So other than Marko's strange choice of playing a CSM list that was pretty much empty of chaos space marines... this was a good game. It went to show that you can have just as much fun with a basic 1000 point game as one with 2000 points or more.
I think I would have preferred to face a full CSM Word Bearers list as I would like to face more fluffy specific lists so hopefully next time I can convince him to do so.
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