So far in the campaign, The Cabal have had the run of things, but who could trust a traitor?
---
He stands in the pale light of the teleportarium dais, looking out through the great crystal windows of his warband's destroyer. The Total Heat Death, an Iconoclast class ship nearly ten thousand years old, has served as his base of operations for almost half that time.
It is time to move.
The view from the Observatorium is that of the planet below. Averment, surface marbled with the red of iron oxide deserts and the white of the ever-shifting polar wastes, hangs silently in space. The curve of its atmosphere dwarfs the ship. Thousands of kilometres below them, he knows, his troops are racing to battle.
It is time to fight.
There, tangled in a web of subwarp nodes, a breach to the Empyrean has opened like a fistula. One more rotten leak into the corpse of the Imperium, another wormway into the cadaver. The Cabal has served them well, bringing them here. It could, perhaps, have treated them better. Would that change this course of action? Of course not. The Black Legion have grandiose ideas that he does not care for. Reclaim the empire their warmaster lost, take revenge against their originator. The usual petty nonsense. The clamour of children, scared in the dark.
It is time to grow up.
Gormenghastly the Garroter knows only one payment for a task well done, for any task in fact. Death, grey, grim and foregone. Gormenghastly is a chokehold on the throat of men, the last gasp of the Imperium. Countless worlds have suffocated beneath his cloudy gaze. All worlds fall. He merely helps them get on with it. With a sigh, he gives the hunched heretech at the controls a quiet nod.
It is time for death.
---
The last battle was shooting armies, this one is a clash of brawlers: Warsmith Chris and his Black Legion will face the onslaught of Pootle's Purge!
We've also started to allocate bonuses to the warlords after each game (essentially a variation on the Chaos Boon table). The Purge's Terminator Sorcerer will be -1 to hit in melee, while the Chaos Lord will have an extra attack (to augment his many attacks).
And since this is internecine warfare, whoever prevails tonight - The Cabal wins!
++Victory is slipping as the moment we tighten our grip upon it. The Purge have betrayed us, as we know they would. They want the Breach for themselves and their early success against the Imperials has emboldened them to strike out on their own. Thanks to the timely warning of the Thousand Sons, our last true allies, we shall counter their perfidious stroke and serve these traitors their desserts.++
Warlord bonus: +1 Attack
Points: 500 | Level: 39 |
++The arrogance of the founding traitors will be their undoing. Did the Thousand Sons truly believe their Symbol of Thothmes could keep us from prying into their vox-comms with the Black Legion? And did Abbadon’s curs think they use our chapter to absorb the causalities so they could steal the prize unblooded? We fight for The Cabal, but it now time we took command of it. All life is worthless. Theirs especially so.++
"What then, master?" the cultist asked.
"What do you think, dolt? Mark them with the knife. This near to the breach, they will suffer their flesh change in minutes. And hurry! Bryahn is not as patient as I am."
Khol watched the little man struggle with the bag. When two of the other cultists had to come and help him, Khol growled and turned away.
Weakness was everywhere, these days. Nobody had the stomach for their tasks. None but him and his brother Raptors. He glanced upwards - there they were, the rest of his pack, roosting up in the tower that overlooked this benighted caravanserai. It was such a desolate spot for a tavern, hunched low in the shelter of a plateau of twisted rocks. Eerie desert winds moaned through those rocks. No traveller would find much rest here after a day trudging across the oxide wasteland.
There were travellers coming here this very evening, Khol knew. The rest they would find here would be very long, but far from peaceful. Everyone in The Cabal knew The Purge were mutinous, angry at being sent into the desert instead of the populated sprawls of Averment's main cities, where they hoped to reap their usual toll. Tonight's parlay with their leader was going to be a short one, and the Black Legion would have the last word. It was poor sport, ambushing The Purge was hardly going to be difficult. But Khol was looking forward to it anyway.
We're playing the Eternal War - Front-Line Warfare mission from Chapter Approved 2019. At the end of every round, points are scored for the four objectives (one for the objective in your deployment zone, two for the two objectives in the middle, and a whopping four for the one in your enemy's zone). Plus the usual First Strike, Linebreaker and Slay the Warlord points.
The Black Legion begin by putting the Raptor squad and Obliterator into deepstrike. The Chaos Lord needs to stay on the field (to stay legal to half the points and units starting off), so Violent Bryahn just poses behind the plasma generators.
The big pack of Chaos Spawn are placed centrally. One squad of Cultists join the Chaos Lord behind the generators, and the other huddle behind the building on the left flank.
There were so few of them! A single Rhino, drab and dark against the red sand. And thumping along next to it, a stubby-armed Helbrute, its powerful strides easily keeping pace with the transport. He'd hoped for more.
Hardly surprising, really, the Purge had been placed into the front lines wherever possible. The Cabal's Warmaster knew their value as shock troops, but also their liabilities. If the Imperials defending Averment hadn't been a particularly spineless lot, we wouldn't have to deal with these insubordinates, Khol thought. For the Imperium's degradation and weakness, Khol was momentarily pleased, and he allowed himself a feral smile.
He crouched low behind the parapet of the tower and waited for the signal.
The Purge are nominated to got first, and it's a very rapid turn. The Helbrute advances upfield, onto one of the middle objectives.
The Rhino moves up onto the second middle objective, and fires off its combi-bolter at the Spawn, to no avail.
And that is that. The Purge aren't going for a big footprint here.
"We are returned!"
The cultists leapt from their hiding places all around the caravanserai. And with them came the captives, the unlucky souls who'd been tending this back-of-beyond hostel when the Black Legion arrived.
Marked by the blades of the damned, the flesh change had taken them all. A mangled pack of scarely recognisable creatures bellowed and wailed as they rushed towards the Rhino.
Bryahn was there ahead of them all. His jetpack threw him in a flat trajectory just beside the Rhino's hull, his chainsword thrust just ahead of him at a sharp angle. Using it like as a sliding mountaineer would use an ice axe to stop his fall, Bryahn's impact jerked the Rhino upwards, tilting the tank so it teetered on one track.
The spawn slammed into it with perfect timing. The tank rolled, Bryahn jumping easily clear as it tumbled and crashed.
The signal had been given.
The Black Legion respond to the early aggression in kind. The furthest squad of Cultists move towards the Helbrute (they also open fire with everything they've got, but we can skip over that part).
The other squad of Cultists also move forward, followed by the Spawn and Chaos Lord himself. More shooting patters off the vehicle's armour - this isn't going to be settled at long range.
Leading the charge, the Cultists run into the Helbrute (grabbing the objective at the same time). They take no damage from overwatch, so the worst is probably over.
And then some big charges: the pack of five Spawn make it into the Rhino, followed by the Violent Bryahn himself.
With a tremendous roll on their random attacks and mutations, the Spawn get eight attacks each. This flurry of punches and tentacles is enough to rip open the Rhino. The Plague Marines inside stumble out, losing one in the process.
While Violent Bryahn isn't keen to pile into these newcomers, the Spawn take it on. This means a round of free hits from the Plague Marines, but assuming the Spawn survive, the Purge won't be able to charge into the Chaos Lord in their turn.
Accordingly, the plague weapons bring down two and a half Spawn, which means both sides have four models around the objective, and it remains contested.
Against the Helbrute, five Cultists are ripped apart. They do no wounds in return (really?), but Warsmith Chris pays 2CP to pass morale and keep them on the objective
With First Strike and one middle objective, the Black Legion take an early lead.
Black Legion 3 : 0 The Purge
"This was the signal!" Tergahn hissed. "Bryahn will..."
"Bryahn is weak," Khol said. "He relies on those cultists and on our allies. His moment is done. Wait but a little, and our time comes."
Below, the courtyard was filled with carnage. The Purge's Helbrute stood in the midst of a pack of cultists, its steel tentacles silently throttling the life from half a dozen of them even as their chief fled up a nearby ladder. The spawn were rampaging through the survivors of the Rhino crash, olive-clad Plague Marines who tried to thrash them down with flail and axe.
Twin flashes of nacreous light - a teleportarium. Bryahn, perched on top of the Rhino like an eagle on a rabbit, was suddenly blindsided.
There were two more of the Purge there now, a shambling hulk festooned with dripping cables that could possibly once have been a Marine, and the Purge's leader, Gormenghastly.
One corroded gauntlet held aloft, his bald and oddly vulnerable head underlit by the corpse-candle light from within his terminator suit, the sorcerer clenched his fist. Khol watched, delighted, as Bryahn clutched at his neck. A tiny but inescapable noose of warp matter had coalesced there, Khol knew. The Garrotter hadn't been named for nothing.
And before he could escape that noose, the hulking figure at Gormenghastly’s side enveloped Bryahn in a seething cloud of toxic chemicals.
But Bryahn wasn't quite as weak as Kohl had expected, in fairness. His thrusters fired and he leaped out of the sludge cloud, bounding down to meet the charge of the two newcomers. His chainsword screamed all the defiance that the choked warlord couldn't voice.
With the blood already being shed, here come the reserves. Gormenghastly the Garrotter and his pet Obliterator land behind the cantina - nowhere near an objective, but directly in front of the enemy warlord.
The Psychic phase begins brightly, with the Chaos Lord losing two wounds to Smite and one Chaos Spawn losing a wound to Infernal Gaze. Nothing killed so far, but they've been blooded, and that's what matters to The Purge.
In the Shooting Phase, the Plague Marine's plasma pistol misses, while Gormenghastly melta shot bounces off the Chaos Lord's Sigil of Corruption.
Violent Bryahn has to continue leaning on his invulnerable save as he's targeted by the Obliterator. In the end, only one shot gets through and the Chaos Lord is down to a single wound.
Going for broke, the Sorcerer and Obliterator attempt a charge at the Chaos Lord - and both make it in!
It's Turn 2 and we've already do warlord-on-warlord action!
Gormenghastly swings first, but all the hits he scores with his force axe are deflected by Violent Bryahn's invulnerable save.
And, living up to his name, Bryahn spends 2CP to interrupt combat. With his many attacks, relic chainsword and mortal wound warlord traits, he gets ambitious and tries to kill both Sorcerer and Obliterator in a single round.
Unfortunately, everyone's invulnerable saves are riding high, and both Purge combatants are left alive on a single wound.
Bryahn barely has time to contemplate his folly before an uppercut from the Obliterator's crushing fist sends him back into the ozone.
The Plague Marines do not fare so well against the Spawn. Despite having rerolls to attack, they're only able to bring down one of the beasts, and the surviving two roll so well for their attacks that they munch up the whole squad.
The Helbrute similarly underforms, only killing five Chaos Cultists (although with his Helbrute fist, he really killed them), leaving the champion alive. To compound the insult, the champion squeaks past his morale check and is left on the field.
It didn't have a behind.
From inside the lank mat of gas hoses that dangled across its back, a huge, clawed fist sprouted impossibly out and grabbed Bryahn round the face. Even from his perch in the tower, Kohl heard the crack of bone.
Now that was a signal worth acting on.
"Warpsmith!" Khol cried into his vox. "Deploy the Cult of Destruction! Target theirs!"
The Black Legion have lost their commander, but they're not finished yet.
With an athleticism only displayed when a monstrous war engine is trying to stamp on you, the last Cultist leaps out of the fray and scrambles up the nearest ruin.
The intact squad of Cultists move towards Gormenghastly, determined to show off their autogun marksmanship, and the last two Spawn move menacingly closer.
And then the reserves come in! The Obliterator lands on The Purge's home objective, while the Raptors drop in on their own home objective, making sure they are in charge and melta gun range of the Helbrute.
In Shooting, the newly-arrived Obliterator wipes out his opposite number, and the Raptor's melta guns scorch off two wounds from the Helbrute.
Moving into melee, the Raptors make a long - and somewhat hazardous - charge into the Helbrute. Their chainswords tear off one wound, which means it's down to the champion's power fist to take the remaining five wounds.
And he does! The Helbrute is torn down by the newcomers and that flank is now cleared of The Purge;s presence.
Meanwhile, the two Spawn take on Gormenghastly, but they can't continue their exceptional run - his armour preserves him and he chops down one of their number.
With one of the middle objectives and the enemy one in their hands, the Black Legion rack up 6VPs this turn. The Purge can lay claim to nothing (their single model on the field contesting the objective with the last Spawn), but they at least get Slay the Warlord.
It looks over, but Gormenghastly isn't going quietly into the night.
Black Legion 9 : 1 The Purge
The Purge's Helbrute was so focused on trying to prise the last remaining cultist from his gantry perch that it was completely oblivious to their attack until the last moment. Brother Berefix landed on its shoulder and fired his melta into its head until it keeled over.
"Thank you, masters!" gasped the cultist. "Death to the..."
Khol shot him. It didn't kill the man, but the fall from the gantry probably would. The deal he'd cut with Gormenghastly would leave him firmly in command of The Cabal's forces here on Averment. He didn't want any of Bryahn's dupes alive after this to be telling tales.
There's nowhere to run and very little to do for the last model standing in The Purge.
So he kills the Spawn and waits for the inevitable...
And the traitors in the Black Legion's fold? Kohl and his band, with their predictable revolution? Oh, he would use them, of course. And then they'd die, along with everyone else on this dying planet.
The breach was already open. Once the viro-prions he'd designed were planted inside the relays on this world, even the Thousand Sons wouldn't be able to control it. A tide of pestilence would spill forth, and nothing would survive.
And best of all, he didn't need to live to see this happen. The prions were pouring from his armour vents even now. Anyone even near him would be infested, then anyone near them and so on, until his poison inevitably reached its goal.
Gormenghastly let his weapons drop from his hands and advanced on the cultists, laughing with joy.
The Black Legion may be hungry for the kill, but the still have time to form a firing line.
Gormenghastly's blushes are spared when all the autogun shots bounce off his armour. It take a proper, honest melta shot to dispatch the leader of The Purge, and put the battle grid firmly in the hands of the Black Legion.
With Slay the Warlord and three of the objectives in hand, the victory points start to roll in. No Linebreaker, as the Obliterator wandered out the deployment zone to get eyes on the Sorcerer, but they seem to have enough points already.
Black Legion 18 : 1 The Purge
It's the Black Legion versus The Purge!
He stands in the pale light of the teleportarium dais, looking out through the great crystal windows of his warband's destroyer. The Total Heat Death, an Iconoclast class ship nearly ten thousand years old, has served as his base of operations for almost half that time.
It is time to move.
The view from the Observatorium is that of the planet below. Averment, surface marbled with the red of iron oxide deserts and the white of the ever-shifting polar wastes, hangs silently in space. The curve of its atmosphere dwarfs the ship. Thousands of kilometres below them, he knows, his troops are racing to battle.
It is time to fight.
There, tangled in a web of subwarp nodes, a breach to the Empyrean has opened like a fistula. One more rotten leak into the corpse of the Imperium, another wormway into the cadaver. The Cabal has served them well, bringing them here. It could, perhaps, have treated them better. Would that change this course of action? Of course not. The Black Legion have grandiose ideas that he does not care for. Reclaim the empire their warmaster lost, take revenge against their originator. The usual petty nonsense. The clamour of children, scared in the dark.
It is time to grow up.
Gormenghastly the Garroter knows only one payment for a task well done, for any task in fact. Death, grey, grim and foregone. Gormenghastly is a chokehold on the throat of men, the last gasp of the Imperium. Countless worlds have suffocated beneath his cloudy gaze. All worlds fall. He merely helps them get on with it. With a sigh, he gives the hunched heretech at the controls a quiet nod.
It is time for death.
---
The last battle was shooting armies, this one is a clash of brawlers: Warsmith Chris and his Black Legion will face the onslaught of Pootle's Purge!
We've also started to allocate bonuses to the warlords after each game (essentially a variation on the Chaos Boon table). The Purge's Terminator Sorcerer will be -1 to hit in melee, while the Chaos Lord will have an extra attack (to augment his many attacks).
And since this is internecine warfare, whoever prevails tonight - The Cabal wins!
Chaos Space Marines - Black Legion
++Victory is slipping as the moment we tighten our grip upon it. The Purge have betrayed us, as we know they would. They want the Breach for themselves and their early success against the Imperials has emboldened them to strike out on their own. Thanks to the timely warning of the Thousand Sons, our last true allies, we shall counter their perfidious stroke and serve these traitors their desserts.++
- Violent Bryahn- Chaos Lord with Jump Pack (HQ) (Warlord)
Chainsword, Combi-Bolter, Frag & Krak Grenades
Warlord Trait: The Tip of the Claw
Relic: Ghorisvek’s Teeth - 11 x Chaos Cultists(Troop)
10 x Autoguns, 1 x Heavy Stubber - 11 x Chaos Cultists(Troop)
11 x Autoguns - 5 x Raptors (Fast)
Bolt pistol & Power Fist, 2 x Melta Guns, 2 x Bolt Pistol and Chainswords - 5 x Chaos Spawn (Fast)
Hideous Mutations - Obliterator (Heavy)
Fleshmetal guns, Mark of Nurgle
Warlord bonus: +1 Attack
Points: 500 | Level: 39 |
Surge ‘n’ Purge - Chaos Space Marines
++The arrogance of the founding traitors will be their undoing. Did the Thousand Sons truly believe their Symbol of Thothmes could keep us from prying into their vox-comms with the Black Legion? And did Abbadon’s curs think they use our chapter to absorb the causalities so they could steal the prize unblooded? We fight for The Cabal, but it now time we took command of it. All life is worthless. Theirs especially so.++
- Gormenghastly the Garrotter - Sorcerer in Terminator Armour (HQ) (Warlord)
Combi-melta, Force Axe, Frag & Krak Grenades, Mark of Nurgle
Warlord trait: Blessed Mission
Miasma of Pestilence, Warptime - 5 x Plague Marines (Elite)
Plasma Pistol & Plaguesword, 2 x Flails of Contagion, 2 x 2nd Plague Knife, Blight & Krak Grenades - Helbrute (Elite)
Helbrute fist (combi-bolter), Power Scourge, Mark of Nurgle - Obliterator (Heavy)
Fleshmetal guns, Mark of Nurgle - Rhino (Transport)
Combi-bolter, Mark of Nurgle
Warlord bonus: enemies get -1 to hit the character in Fight Phase (does not stack)
Mission and Deployment
"Chain the prisoners there," Khol snarled, throwing a heavy bag of manacles into the cultist's arms. The scrawny weakling staggered back, barely able to stay upright. Khol hated their wretched followers, but he hated menial tasks even more."What then, master?" the cultist asked.
"What do you think, dolt? Mark them with the knife. This near to the breach, they will suffer their flesh change in minutes. And hurry! Bryahn is not as patient as I am."
Khol watched the little man struggle with the bag. When two of the other cultists had to come and help him, Khol growled and turned away.
Weakness was everywhere, these days. Nobody had the stomach for their tasks. None but him and his brother Raptors. He glanced upwards - there they were, the rest of his pack, roosting up in the tower that overlooked this benighted caravanserai. It was such a desolate spot for a tavern, hunched low in the shelter of a plateau of twisted rocks. Eerie desert winds moaned through those rocks. No traveller would find much rest here after a day trudging across the oxide wasteland.
There were travellers coming here this very evening, Khol knew. The rest they would find here would be very long, but far from peaceful. Everyone in The Cabal knew The Purge were mutinous, angry at being sent into the desert instead of the populated sprawls of Averment's main cities, where they hoped to reap their usual toll. Tonight's parlay with their leader was going to be a short one, and the Black Legion would have the last word. It was poor sport, ambushing The Purge was hardly going to be difficult. But Khol was looking forward to it anyway.
We're playing the Eternal War - Front-Line Warfare mission from Chapter Approved 2019. At the end of every round, points are scored for the four objectives (one for the objective in your deployment zone, two for the two objectives in the middle, and a whopping four for the one in your enemy's zone). Plus the usual First Strike, Linebreaker and Slay the Warlord points.
The Black Legion begin by putting the Raptor squad and Obliterator into deepstrike. The Chaos Lord needs to stay on the field (to stay legal to half the points and units starting off), so Violent Bryahn just poses behind the plasma generators.
The big pack of Chaos Spawn are placed centrally. One squad of Cultists join the Chaos Lord behind the generators, and the other huddle behind the building on the left flank.
The Purge's set-up is pretty straightforward: Terminator Sorcerer and Obliterator into deepstrike. Rhino- filled with Plague Marines - on the left, Helbrute on the right.
 |
| The non-existent red line. |
Turn 1 - The Purge
Khol was almost disappointed when their guests arrived.There were so few of them! A single Rhino, drab and dark against the red sand. And thumping along next to it, a stubby-armed Helbrute, its powerful strides easily keeping pace with the transport. He'd hoped for more.
Hardly surprising, really, the Purge had been placed into the front lines wherever possible. The Cabal's Warmaster knew their value as shock troops, but also their liabilities. If the Imperials defending Averment hadn't been a particularly spineless lot, we wouldn't have to deal with these insubordinates, Khol thought. For the Imperium's degradation and weakness, Khol was momentarily pleased, and he allowed himself a feral smile.
He crouched low behind the parapet of the tower and waited for the signal.
The Purge are nominated to got first, and it's a very rapid turn. The Helbrute advances upfield, onto one of the middle objectives.
The Rhino moves up onto the second middle objective, and fires off its combi-bolter at the Spawn, to no avail.
And that is that. The Purge aren't going for a big footprint here.
Turn 1 - Black Legion
The Rhino didn't even have time to brake. Even as it slowed in the courtyard below, Khol heard the voice of his leader, Bryahn, scream the time-honoured cry."We are returned!"
The cultists leapt from their hiding places all around the caravanserai. And with them came the captives, the unlucky souls who'd been tending this back-of-beyond hostel when the Black Legion arrived.
Marked by the blades of the damned, the flesh change had taken them all. A mangled pack of scarely recognisable creatures bellowed and wailed as they rushed towards the Rhino.
Bryahn was there ahead of them all. His jetpack threw him in a flat trajectory just beside the Rhino's hull, his chainsword thrust just ahead of him at a sharp angle. Using it like as a sliding mountaineer would use an ice axe to stop his fall, Bryahn's impact jerked the Rhino upwards, tilting the tank so it teetered on one track.
The spawn slammed into it with perfect timing. The tank rolled, Bryahn jumping easily clear as it tumbled and crashed.
The signal had been given.
The Black Legion respond to the early aggression in kind. The furthest squad of Cultists move towards the Helbrute (they also open fire with everything they've got, but we can skip over that part).
The other squad of Cultists also move forward, followed by the Spawn and Chaos Lord himself. More shooting patters off the vehicle's armour - this isn't going to be settled at long range.
Leading the charge, the Cultists run into the Helbrute (grabbing the objective at the same time). They take no damage from overwatch, so the worst is probably over.
And then some big charges: the pack of five Spawn make it into the Rhino, followed by the Violent Bryahn himself.
With a tremendous roll on their random attacks and mutations, the Spawn get eight attacks each. This flurry of punches and tentacles is enough to rip open the Rhino. The Plague Marines inside stumble out, losing one in the process.
While Violent Bryahn isn't keen to pile into these newcomers, the Spawn take it on. This means a round of free hits from the Plague Marines, but assuming the Spawn survive, the Purge won't be able to charge into the Chaos Lord in their turn.
Accordingly, the plague weapons bring down two and a half Spawn, which means both sides have four models around the objective, and it remains contested.
Against the Helbrute, five Cultists are ripped apart. They do no wounds in return (really?), but Warsmith Chris pays 2CP to pass morale and keep them on the objective
With First Strike and one middle objective, the Black Legion take an early lead.
Black Legion 3 : 0 The Purge
Turn 2 - The Purge
"Hold," Khol hissed. The rest of his pack exchanged glances."This was the signal!" Tergahn hissed. "Bryahn will..."
"Bryahn is weak," Khol said. "He relies on those cultists and on our allies. His moment is done. Wait but a little, and our time comes."
Below, the courtyard was filled with carnage. The Purge's Helbrute stood in the midst of a pack of cultists, its steel tentacles silently throttling the life from half a dozen of them even as their chief fled up a nearby ladder. The spawn were rampaging through the survivors of the Rhino crash, olive-clad Plague Marines who tried to thrash them down with flail and axe.
Twin flashes of nacreous light - a teleportarium. Bryahn, perched on top of the Rhino like an eagle on a rabbit, was suddenly blindsided.
There were two more of the Purge there now, a shambling hulk festooned with dripping cables that could possibly once have been a Marine, and the Purge's leader, Gormenghastly.
One corroded gauntlet held aloft, his bald and oddly vulnerable head underlit by the corpse-candle light from within his terminator suit, the sorcerer clenched his fist. Khol watched, delighted, as Bryahn clutched at his neck. A tiny but inescapable noose of warp matter had coalesced there, Khol knew. The Garrotter hadn't been named for nothing.
And before he could escape that noose, the hulking figure at Gormenghastly’s side enveloped Bryahn in a seething cloud of toxic chemicals.
But Bryahn wasn't quite as weak as Kohl had expected, in fairness. His thrusters fired and he leaped out of the sludge cloud, bounding down to meet the charge of the two newcomers. His chainsword screamed all the defiance that the choked warlord couldn't voice.
With the blood already being shed, here come the reserves. Gormenghastly the Garrotter and his pet Obliterator land behind the cantina - nowhere near an objective, but directly in front of the enemy warlord.
The Psychic phase begins brightly, with the Chaos Lord losing two wounds to Smite and one Chaos Spawn losing a wound to Infernal Gaze. Nothing killed so far, but they've been blooded, and that's what matters to The Purge.
In the Shooting Phase, the Plague Marine's plasma pistol misses, while Gormenghastly melta shot bounces off the Chaos Lord's Sigil of Corruption.
Violent Bryahn has to continue leaning on his invulnerable save as he's targeted by the Obliterator. In the end, only one shot gets through and the Chaos Lord is down to a single wound.
Going for broke, the Sorcerer and Obliterator attempt a charge at the Chaos Lord - and both make it in!
It's Turn 2 and we've already do warlord-on-warlord action!
Gormenghastly swings first, but all the hits he scores with his force axe are deflected by Violent Bryahn's invulnerable save.
And, living up to his name, Bryahn spends 2CP to interrupt combat. With his many attacks, relic chainsword and mortal wound warlord traits, he gets ambitious and tries to kill both Sorcerer and Obliterator in a single round.
Unfortunately, everyone's invulnerable saves are riding high, and both Purge combatants are left alive on a single wound.
Bryahn barely has time to contemplate his folly before an uppercut from the Obliterator's crushing fist sends him back into the ozone.
The Plague Marines do not fare so well against the Spawn. Despite having rerolls to attack, they're only able to bring down one of the beasts, and the surviving two roll so well for their attacks that they munch up the whole squad.
The Helbrute similarly underforms, only killing five Chaos Cultists (although with his Helbrute fist, he really killed them), leaving the champion alive. To compound the insult, the champion squeaks past his morale check and is left on the field.
Turn 2 - Black Legion
Drawing on an impossible reserve of strength, Bryahn deflected Gormenghastly’s first swing, crashed headlong into the sorcerer and tore his chainsword through the terminator's greave. Bounding back from the first impact, he managed to leap clean over the armoured hulk as it tried to mash him in its armoured embrace. Making a perfect landing, he span, poised to run the Obliterator through from behind.It didn't have a behind.
From inside the lank mat of gas hoses that dangled across its back, a huge, clawed fist sprouted impossibly out and grabbed Bryahn round the face. Even from his perch in the tower, Kohl heard the crack of bone.
Now that was a signal worth acting on.
"Warpsmith!" Khol cried into his vox. "Deploy the Cult of Destruction! Target theirs!"
With an athleticism only displayed when a monstrous war engine is trying to stamp on you, the last Cultist leaps out of the fray and scrambles up the nearest ruin.
The intact squad of Cultists move towards Gormenghastly, determined to show off their autogun marksmanship, and the last two Spawn move menacingly closer.
And then the reserves come in! The Obliterator lands on The Purge's home objective, while the Raptors drop in on their own home objective, making sure they are in charge and melta gun range of the Helbrute.
In Shooting, the newly-arrived Obliterator wipes out his opposite number, and the Raptor's melta guns scorch off two wounds from the Helbrute.
And he does! The Helbrute is torn down by the newcomers and that flank is now cleared of The Purge;s presence.
With one of the middle objectives and the enemy one in their hands, the Black Legion rack up 6VPs this turn. The Purge can lay claim to nothing (their single model on the field contesting the objective with the last Spawn), but they at least get Slay the Warlord.
It looks over, but Gormenghastly isn't going quietly into the night.
Black Legion 9 : 1 The Purge
Turn 3 - The Purge
Khol and his Raptors leapt into the fray on plumes of black fire.The Purge's Helbrute was so focused on trying to prise the last remaining cultist from his gantry perch that it was completely oblivious to their attack until the last moment. Brother Berefix landed on its shoulder and fired his melta into its head until it keeled over.
"Thank you, masters!" gasped the cultist. "Death to the..."
Khol shot him. It didn't kill the man, but the fall from the gantry probably would. The deal he'd cut with Gormenghastly would leave him firmly in command of The Cabal's forces here on Averment. He didn't want any of Bryahn's dupes alive after this to be telling tales.
There's nowhere to run and very little to do for the last model standing in The Purge.
So he kills the Spawn and waits for the inevitable...
Turn 3 - Black Legion
Gormenghastly stood over the corpses of his foes. Good, there was plenty of good pure death here. His bodyguard was dead, torn apart by plasma blasts. Bryahn was dead. These onrushing cultists, their guns pattering uselessly against his armour, they were dead too.And the traitors in the Black Legion's fold? Kohl and his band, with their predictable revolution? Oh, he would use them, of course. And then they'd die, along with everyone else on this dying planet.
The breach was already open. Once the viro-prions he'd designed were planted inside the relays on this world, even the Thousand Sons wouldn't be able to control it. A tide of pestilence would spill forth, and nothing would survive.
And best of all, he didn't need to live to see this happen. The prions were pouring from his armour vents even now. Anyone even near him would be infested, then anyone near them and so on, until his poison inevitably reached its goal.
Gormenghastly let his weapons drop from his hands and advanced on the cultists, laughing with joy.
The Black Legion may be hungry for the kill, but the still have time to form a firing line.
Gormenghastly's blushes are spared when all the autogun shots bounce off his armour. It take a proper, honest melta shot to dispatch the leader of The Purge, and put the battle grid firmly in the hands of the Black Legion.
With Slay the Warlord and three of the objectives in hand, the victory points start to roll in. No Linebreaker, as the Obliterator wandered out the deployment zone to get eyes on the Sorcerer, but they seem to have enough points already.
Black Legion 18 : 1 The Purge
Victory to the Black Legion!
Kohl stood over the shattered corpse of his master.
"Bryahn was weak!" he shouted. The remaining elements of the Black Legion listened, either in person around the caravanserai or on the vox. "Bryahn thought The Cabal would forgive treachery within its ranks. He thought he could turn on our allies and live.
"But I know better! See the fate of those who defy the will of The Cabal!" He kicked Bryahn's chainsword from his hand. Some of the warlord's fingers came away with it.
"You serve me now! All of you!" None of them met Kohl's stare. Not the cultists, not his Raptors, not even the wounded Purge sorcerer, who knelt on the sand nearby, ichor steaming from the melta wound in his side. "Fail me, and you will be destroyed!"
He bent and picked up the chainsword. It was a terrible thing, a daemon bound in a snaggle-toothed machine. Its red eye twitched madly as it stared back at him, but its teeth roared willingly enough as he revved it and held it aloft.
"Now I am Bryahn! For The Cabal!"
And they all screamed back at him in allegiance.
"Bryahn was weak!" he shouted. The remaining elements of the Black Legion listened, either in person around the caravanserai or on the vox. "Bryahn thought The Cabal would forgive treachery within its ranks. He thought he could turn on our allies and live.
"But I know better! See the fate of those who defy the will of The Cabal!" He kicked Bryahn's chainsword from his hand. Some of the warlord's fingers came away with it.
"You serve me now! All of you!" None of them met Kohl's stare. Not the cultists, not his Raptors, not even the wounded Purge sorcerer, who knelt on the sand nearby, ichor steaming from the melta wound in his side. "Fail me, and you will be destroyed!"
He bent and picked up the chainsword. It was a terrible thing, a daemon bound in a snaggle-toothed machine. Its red eye twitched madly as it stared back at him, but its teeth roared willingly enough as he revved it and held it aloft.
"Now I am Bryahn! For The Cabal!"
And they all screamed back at him in allegiance.
Campaign Map
Following some internecine strife, the Black Legion claim the central hex for themselves and The Cabal.
Locker Room
That was an exceptionally fun game to witness. Despite being an objective-grabbing game, these armies were set up to go at each other hard, so it was always going to be bloody. It makes me keen to see what full armies of Purge and Black Legion would be like going against each other.
There were some real heroes in this game - I've rarely seen Spawn perform better. They're an oft-maligned unit but, on their day, they can be terrifying. A good show from the Raptors too, as well as a particularly brave Cultist.
Violent Bryahn let the side down, getting a bit too enthusiastic to kill everyone at once. But Gormenghastly proved a tough cookie to shift, and their fight, though brief, was epic.
It might have been a different story if the Rhino had held up for a turn, or the long charges from the Black Legion hadn't connected. But in the end, it was an absolute slaughter, worthy of The Cabal.
Next up: while this has been going on, what has Tzeentch been doing?
Great fun that was! Despite a thumping loss on VPs, it felt like a victory to tear Bryahn down in close combat - that was all I *really* wanted! Thanks to Chris for being a fun opponent, to Kraken for another stonking bit of narrative and, as ever, Stylus for organising this whole campaign.
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