The Souless March - Vigilus

Points: 1000.
Mission: No Mercy.
Deployment: Search and Destroy.

An unexpected enemy has manifested in the deep deserts of Vigilus - the Necrons of the Mephrit Dynasty. The machines march forward and towards the holdings of the expanding Cult. It was a major engagement considering the forces arrayed against the Cult elsewhere on Vigilus at the time. It would see the Genestealer Cult forces decimated completely and several Cult outposts likewise destroyed within a few days. The Necron forces then faded back into the night leaving flayed bodies and burning wreckage, and a mystery for those who find the remains.

This past week our local club has had several new members brought to us. One new player was Sean and we had a cool game. Sean brought his Necrons to the table and I bought my Genestealer Cult. This was only his fourth game ever so we went for a basic kill mission. I set up first and decided to let my opponent have the first turn. I've not played Necrons with my Cult so while I expected to get hammered, I figured going second would perhaps be more helpful and I could see what Shaun did before I decided finally what unit was which ambush blip.

The Necrons advanced forwards across the table. His immortals claiming cover inside a ruin, while the lychguard marched into the central ruin which oddly halted their advance. At this point I revealed my units, and the machines opened fire. I lost an entire unit of brood brothers and my vehicles both lost a few wounds.

My turn and I drove the rockgrinder towards the immortals but they had inflicted significant damage and weakened it. I was just hoping to get in there and use the appropriate stratagem to detonate the cache of explosives onboard. Most of my fire went into Sean's annihilation barge and although it didn't explode this turn, it would not survive the second. Sure enough, the necrons destroyed my rockgrinder, while it did nothing on the charge. The cache detonated killing a handful models from the immortals and warriors, and knocking two wounds from his lord.

The next couple of turns were quite brutal. The necron shooting was incredible and I lost my leman russ battle tank but not before it destroyed a unity of scarabs and wounded the advancing nightbringer. I used the laying in wait stratagem to bring the hybrids in three inches from the immortals but the hand flamers did nothing, and the immortals then burnt them to the ground. Very ineffective but I didn't really have a better target. On my left flank I brought in my genestealers and patriarch. The idea being to charge into the necron warriors and cryptek but both failed their charges and took heavy casualties from the overwatch.

Sean then used veil of night to shift his lord and immortals closer to my genestealers. Their incoming fire dropped more genestealers though and that flank was beginning to crumble. In return I was able to smite a couple models but again things did not go well, and the souless machines gunned down my unit and the patriarch. Warlord kill went to my opponent.

Turn 5 and all I had left was my primus and one understrengh brood brothers squad. Despite being brave and charging in, the primus died horribly. At this point we agreed that victory was in the hands of the Necrons. Sean won this game 9 victory points to my 2.

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This was just the sort of game that I enjoy. Just the sort of game that Warhammer should be as. There were no twinky lists or aggressive play. This was a straight casual fun game. A big thank you to my opponent for that.

I think that I could have done better but my dice were, as usual, not playing ball. I may have focused too much on the wrong targets but in hindsight, if the dice rolled well, I wouldn't be saying that. I really needed to get the genestealers into combat but it was not to be.

Hopefully we'll get a rematch again soon.
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OPtv Battle #2

My friends over at OPtv have posted up a new battle report. I haven't had chance to watch all of this yet but it is on my watch list. Should be a interesting match up.

WIP - Rift Wardens Dreadnought

I've been getting that itch again to go back to playing Space Marines. I'm not giving up on the Genestealer Cult but I need something I'll find easier to play and to stop me getting bored with the same painting/gaming. Ever since 8th edition dropped I've pondered the idea of a Primaris chapter and I have finally taken the plunge!

The Rift Wardens are an Imperial Fists successor chapter. They are a fleet based chapter tasked with patrolling the Imperium side of the Cicatrix Maledictum and responding to any threats discovered.

I picked up the snap-fit Redemptor Dreadnought last payday and I'm working on him now. May I please present fallen brother Atticus.

Even back when I first started thinking about a Primaris chapter when 8th dropped, I had the mental image of a silver and purple colour scheme. As I remember Rogue Trader clearly and back then every powerfist was red (so were plasma weapons) so the dreadnoughts fist gets to share that colour. I just need to decide on some highlight colours for the purple.

The base is blue sand. I picked up some blue play sand from work a few weeks ago before we wrapped up our summer garden range. I thought it would look nice to be something more alien than the traditional proper orange sand. I picked up some stones as well for other model's bases too.

A good friend of mine who is collecting the figure magazine (I forget the name of it) has given me some intercessors, reivers, a chaplain, two characters (one for my chapter master and one for captain), and some aggressors to help found my new chapter.

Luna Assault - Thule Ultima narrative battle 1

Points: 1500.
Mission: Only War.
Deployment: Dawn of War.

Thule Ultima is a shield world protecting the approach to Holy Terra from the horrors of the Warp that spill forth from the ruins of Cadia. Garrisoned by over a dozen full regiments of the Astra Militarum. Thule Ultima stands as the greatest bulwark against the advance of Abaddon and his legions of chaos space marines.

Recently agents of the Ordos Xenos seized control of a rogue trader vessel suspected of engaging in illegal activities with alien species. On board they found a nest of genestealers and cultists. Records indicated that the ship had come from Thule Ultima, and psychic interrogation of the ship's crew revealed that the shield world had fallen to a genestealer cult calling itself The Cult of the Faithful. 

Aware that the Dark Angel battle barge - the Spear of Truth - was returning from a conflict in the Hera system, the Ordos Xenos asked them to investigate. The space marines translated in system and made for Solaris, the moon of Thule Ultima. A small strike force was deployed to catch the cult unaware and prevent them raising the alarm.

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This game started off simply as a means of crossing the Dark Angels off my list of armies I wanted to play against. I only know of two people who play Dark Angels, my nephew and my friend Joel. Joel hasn't played a game of 8th edition to my knowledge so it seemed like a good way to bring back into the hobby.

After our match I had the idea of getting some more games in with him and his Dark Angels, and the idea of a narrative campaign separate the club's Vigilus games seemed like a fun way to do it. Hopefully it will make for some interesting battle reports.

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The introductory mission seemed like a good way to get Joel back into the game easily and I quite enjoy the simplicity of it. We set up the four objectives up in a roughly T shape centrally, and then Joel decided on the classic Dawn of War deployment. Joel set most of his army up on the right flank of the table with some deathwing terminators and a terminator librarian in deep strike aboard his battle barge.  What worried me most though was his flyer, which I had no real defence against. Most of my army was deployed as blips which was unexpected by my opponent. My patriarch, primus, hybrids and genestealers waited in reserve, deep in the tunnels beneath the lunar surface.

We then rolled for the actual mission and it was the Relic special. The objective on my left flank turned out to be the one we needed - presumably the communications console to warn the surface. Joel had nothing deployed near it and I was going to have to use some stratagems if I wanted to ensure it remained safely in cult hands. Joel then infiltrated some scouts into a ruin across from the objective. All very sneaky.

I had the first turn. On my left flank I moved my rockgrinder forward towards his scouts. Next turn I wanted to burn them down with my clearance incinerator. One unit of brood brothers advanced behind it. The idea being to get them onto the objective as quickly as possible. My magus moved that way as well but only because I didn't really have a plan for what to do with him. Nothing else moved and I kept focused on the approaching ravenwing bikers.

First shot of the game and my second brood brother squad managed to take some wounds off of Joel's Nephilim jetfigher with their lascannon, although I used the free re-roll the mission gave me to increase the damage from 2 to 3. A good shot but I would have liked more. The cult leman russ tank got a good number of battle cannon shots into one biker squad dealing a good amount of damage and turning my opponent's ire upon it. My Astra Militarum leman russ executioner however did the opposite and I'm not even sure now that it inflicted any wounds.

On Joel's first turn he zoomed the two bike squads forwards, and even restored one to the living with his apothecary. He brought the nephilim swooping forward so that it was the facing the brood brother squad I had advanced towards the objective. His shooting decimated that squad, killing them to a man. The bike squads opened fire with their plasma weapons into my cult leman russ and although the recently restored battle brother blew himself up, they destroyed my tank with ease.

Turn two and my neophyte hybrids used a stratagem to vanish back into the tunnels. I decided to keep everything else on my right flank to occupy the Ravenwing bikers and the predator tank that Joel had hidden up on his corner of the table. I also used a statagem to have my acolyte hybrids pop up right next to Joel's scouts and burn most of them down with hand flamers. I managed to drop a couple more bikers and knock some wounds off of the nephilim as well, but I was having a hard time hitting that as it flew past.

Joel's turn two was fairly simple too. The Ravenwing bikers sped forward spitting fire into my troops and the executioner. A well placed high damage shot from his predator destroyed my executioner, which was disappointing as I had hopes for that taking out the rest of his Ravenwing.

Turn 3 and I dropped in my neophyte hybrids almost on top of the objective. I made sure they were close enough to be able to snag it if needed but within range of the surviving scouts. My primus scrambled up from the tunnels next to the objective so at least it was mine for the time being. Across the table I brought in my patriarch and his genestealers. The hope being to get into combat and tear through a few. I turned the rockgrinder towards a 5 man tactical squad that was inching forward up the table. The shooting phase saw my neophytes drop the last scouts and the rockgrinder dropped all but a couple of the tactical squad. Come the assault phase, I lost two or three genestealers to the bikers and then failed the charges of both the 'stealers and the patriarch.

Joel's turn 3 and down came his reinforcements - a 5 man deathwing terminator squad and a teminator librarian. Both came down on my left flank just able to deploy beyond the objective and my primus. He attempted to smite my primus but inflicted only a single wound. Unfortunately due to deathwing assault and an excellent shooting phase, the terminators decimated both my primus and the neophytes but it meant that no one held the objective.


And there we had to end the match as the venue was closing at the end of the evening. Although had the game continued Joel would have won because of his terminators, as they would have walked forward and pressed the off button. We both agreed however, that calling his first 8th edition game a draw was a fair and reasonable outcome given that neither of us held the objective at the end. We both had fun and I think joel learned a lot about the new edition.

After a long and hard fought battle, the Dark Angels had lost the element of surprise and the alarm had been sent to Thule Ultima. The Cult of the Faithful began to arm itself and prepare to the face the wrath of the space marines!

Dark Angels: 0.
Genestealer Cult 0.

OPTV battle 1

Some friends at our club have started their own 40K battle report youtube channel. This is their first one. Unfortunately it looks like Youtube messed up the formatting a little but hopefully the next one will be better quality.

Battle of Blood River - Vigilus

The battle of Blood River was an engagement fought between the the Genestealer Cult and a force of Khorne Daemons. The Cult was marching forth to engage the forces of the Imperium when they were set upon a sudden manifestation of daemons. The daemonic incursion cut off and surrounded the Cult, leaving them fighting for their lives.

1750 points.

Genestealer Cult (Twisted Helix) vs Chaos Daemons (Khorne).

Mission: Scorched Earth.

Deployment: Hammer and Anvil.

Battle Zone: None.

This battle was played as game #2 of our day event a couple months ago. With that in mind my memory maybe a little rusty so please bear with me.

This game was against Jon's impressive khorne daemons army. I had been looking forward to this game as I don't get to face off against daemons all that often. We rolled off for deployment and faced each other across the table old skool style. From what I recall Jon set up about half of his army in battle lines across from me and ready to march into battle.

The game was soon down to combat regardless of the mission. Despite blasting many of the infernal horrors into dust Jon kept bringing a few back and deepstriking those he had in reserve. I didn;t do too badly to start with as even my cultists were able to take many down with massed firepower and the fortifications did me well too. But once they reached my lines things changed for the worse.

Once again my forces proved incapable of handling a dedicated assault based army. We did end up with an awkward situation where we did have a small but friendly argument as to how something worked and in the end we went with Jon's interpretation (although I still think I'm right :p ). It did't matter though as it wasn't a situation that would have changed the outcome of the game.

The game went quite quickly but with an expected outcome and I believe that Jon's daemons were very through in tabling my forces. They even tore down my fortifications in close combat.

I wish I could remember more of the details as it was a good fun game. It was probably the game out of the three that day that I had better chance at winning but it wasn't in my favour. My dice that day were fairly pants.

Victory to the khornate daemons.

Summer Update

I have been fairly quiet again lately unfortunately. Real life issues and training for a new promotion at work have kept me quite busy. I haven't even had much opportunity for painting lately. I'm hoping that as the summer progresses I can get back to painting and catching up on my battle reports.

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.

The Drona Steppes - Vigilus

The battle of the Drona Steppes followed the Imperial attack on Mount Drona. The Black Templars, led by High Marshal Helbrecht and Grimaldus, a counter attack against the cultists pouring from the tunnels beneath the local industrial buildings. Although outnumbered, the space marines fought through to the heart of the Cult in the region.

1500 points.
Genestealer Cult (Twisted Helix) vs Space Marines (Black Templars).
Mission: Strategic Gambit.
Deployment: Search and Destroy.
Battle Zone: None.

A couple of weeks ago my friend Jamie challenged me to a game and brought along his Black Templars space marines. I was really pleased by this as I didn't think we had anyone at the club who played this specific chapter. To make things even better for me, Jamie included both Helbrecht and Grimaldus in his list.

At this time I had not had an opportunity to play any of the missions from Chapter Approved 2018 so Jamie picked one that he thought sounded good. We rolled Search and Destroy as our deployment which I thought considering the amount of LOS blocking terrain would actually do me good. Unfortunately the Space Marines got the first turn and I was extremely surprised at how quickly they got around the cover to be able to get some shots off at me. Once again I really found myself locked into my own deployment zone. Unless the dice gods were with me I would fighting to just hold my position.

As the first few turns progressed, the Templars charged down my right flank and assaulted the rockgrinder trundling towards them. They did some damage but the sturdy construction managed to absorb more wounds than the odds would have allowed. It didn't stop them bringing it down soon after though and although I used a stratagem to detonate the bombs on board it only succeeded in killing one marine.

On my left flank the main body of the space marine force was advancing forwards under cover of fire from a land raider crusader. That beast of a tank was decimating my brood brothers like they were nothing. Where the Templars charged my poor forces were cut down with ease.

Once I had the opportunity to bring in some reinforcements I figured I could at least do some damage even if the game was in the hands of a superior opponent. The genestealers, patriarch and primus clawed their way out of the sands behind his marines on the left flank although in an awkward position, and using a stratagem I popped up my hybrids 4 inches behind Helbrect, with their hand flamers pointed directly at him.

Molten premotheium poured from the hand flamers at the leader of the Black Templars. I rolled 21 wounds and even though Helbrecht has a 2+ armour save I expected to do something. Instead he passed every single one. In retaliation the mighty space marine commander sliced them down in assault. The genestealers did not fair much better. I charged but I could not make much in the way of saves and a handful fell on the way in. I did well in cut down a few marines but their attacks back decimated the genestealers and then the space marines turned all their firepower onto the remaining primus and patriarch.

Victory to the Black Templars.

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It was a good game but I don't think I really got to explore the mission as I was too busy fending off brutal assaults. This was another game where my dice let me down so many times while my opponent's dice were working entirely in their favour. It's hard to do anything when the game is against you like that. Even so, it was really good to play against Black Templars again - the last time was under 4th edition!

The Drona Conflict - Vigilus

The Drona conflict was a military campaign fought by the Imperium against the uprising Genestealer Cults. It took place around the industrial sites at the base of Mount Drona. 
The Imperium initially launched a series of artillery attacks against the Cult's fortified positions before sending in a large tank formation.

1300 points.

Genestealer Cult (Twisted Helix) vs Astra Militarum (Catachan).

Mission: Cleanse and Capture.

Deployment: Dawn of War.

Battle Zone: None. 

I this battle faced the might of Charlie and .. well, at the time I wasn't sure what he was going to be bringing to the tabletop. In the end I was surprised by a rather unusual Catachan tank detachment. Not at all what I was expecting.

Deployment was along the long sides of the table facing one another. I let Charlie have the first turn as I wanted to know where he was looking to move his horde of tanks and I wasn't 100% confident on where I had placed my blip tokens. I had deployed my vengeance weapon platforms on either side of my side of the table to cover whichever way Charlie came at me but he was focused on one side of the table only. Charlie did put firepower into one of my weapon platforms reducing it down a little bit. I lost a handful of models as well but not as badly as I first feared.

On my turn I was able to take out one hellhound by a mixture of shooting and ramming it with my rockgrinder. A few wounds where taken off a couple of his tanks but I didn't have the means to much more than that. This turn I wasn't in a position to move forwards either which didn't help. Like most of my recent games I have been forced to remain locked largely in my own deployment zone.

The next couple turns were largely the same with Charlie blasting my weapon platforms into dust and just burning out my troops from their positions. When I did bring my hybrids and genestealers in I was able to finally do something. The hybrids just drew fire but the genestealers and patriarch tore through a couple of tanks before they inevitably went down to massed firepower.

I think by turn 4 I had been decimated to the point of not being able to continue so the survivours fled back into the sewers and I conceded the match.

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First off, apologies for the shortness of this report. It was three weeks ago and I've just had chance to sit down and try to recall it. Had two other games since then and things are a bit fuzzy.

It was a good game and gave me the opportunity to see how I would or wouldn't handle a mechanized list. I guess I knew that I couldn't handle it but the fun came from seeing how well I could do it. I just could not do enough damage nor could I get out of my deployment zone to do anything else.

I'd really like to play a proper Catachan list. One more infantry based though as Charlie's list to me, wasn't all that fluffy. But as everyone else around here plays Cadian regiment I was happy.

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