Bloodbath - Vigilus

Having sustained numerous losses since the war on Vigilus began, the cult needed to secure at least a small victory to ensure their survival. A weapons depot in the wastelands was picked as a target as it was expected to be lightly defended while the major battles took place elsewhere. The cult made it's way through the badlands only to find that their expectations were very wrong. A detachment of Custodes lay in wait, having expected just such an attack from one of the Imperium's many foes on Vigilus.

1750 points.
Genestealer Cult (Twisted Helix) vs Adeptus Custodes.
Mission: The Scouring.
Deployment: Hammer and Anvil.
Battle Zone: None.

This was a battle that took place as part of a small day's gaming back in April and not part of the club's ongoing narrative campaign. The details will be sketchy but hopefully you'll get the idea of how the game went.

The first game of the day was against my friend Dan who had brought his Adeptus Custodes army to the table. I have only defeated Custodes once and back then I was playing Death Guard with Mortarion. I was going to do the best that I could here but without sounding too negative, I was fully expecting to get wiped out with my poor cult.

The six objectives were set up fairly evenly across the table and we rolled Hammer and Anvil deployment, which at the time I thought was going to be good for me. I figured as most of Dan's army was walking across the table I might be able to do something before he got too close to me. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way as you have probably expected.

Dan's forces started walking up the table, snatching claim on objectives as they went along. Knowing that I didn't want to get into assault too soon, I elected to stay put and pour as much small arms fire into his troops as they came forward. In theory I should have been able to whittle a few of them down but as is always the case with me, my dice didn't want to play. It wasn't his troops that were the problem though. Dan had brought a venerable contemptor dreadnought, some vertus preator jetbikes and a caladius grav tank. He was able to put a lot of firepower into me before I could do much damage back.

From what I recall, I did managed to strip a few wounds and kill a handful of his troops, but I couldn't do much more than that before he was in my lines with the jetbikes. With some of my cult tied up, the rest of his army had little to slow their advance up the lines. Nothing I had stopped him. I think the game got to turn 4 before he had annihilated me.

It was a good game but considering deployment was more in my favour than Dan's I felt I should have been more effective with my shooting. It wasn't a failing in target priority but just a mixture of bad dice rolls and a tougher army than mine.