Into the Shadow: Space Wolves vs Chaos Daemons

Sweetwater Egress campaign: Episode 1

Round one. Fight!

"The Black Legion's that way, on the other side of the oasis." Skov pointed towards a collection of broken walls, blackened with smoke and still burning in places, all that remained of the soaring marble buildings built over the holy pools. 

"Anything in the way?" Baedlara asked. 

"See for yourself," Skov said and passed his scope to Baedlara. The Librarian took it with a grunt and pressed it to his eye, scanning the ruins. 

Figures were dancing through the hollow porticos and gaping window arches, darker shadows amongst the smoke and soot. Shapes that flitted and swooped, moving with fish-like grace as they chased smaller schools of shadows in an elaborate dance. Red and yellow eyes glittered like coals in the smoke, a flash of tooth here, a flicker of scale there. 

"Neverborn," Baedlara snarled. Of all the Emperor's foes, he took the least satisfaction in destroying their cold, weird forms. 

"If we divert around them, we lose hours. The land has collapsed around the oasis, there's no safe path," Skov said. 

"Through them, then," Baedlara said, and drew his sword. 

---

Kraken here - I'm playing the Space Wolves in this campaign, and Stylus has given me the signal honour of being launched first into the fray. I've picked a small force of mixed infantry, led by a Phobos Librarian. There's some assault troopers by way of Hellblasters and Reivers, a fast attack dog pack, some heavy support from Eliminators and Aggressors doing their best tank impression. Come get some, Daemons!

Watch Out, Baedlara's Rout

• Baedlara - Rune Priest in Phobos Armour (warlord)
  Force Sword, Bolt Pistol
  The Pelt of Balewolf
• 3 x Aggressor Squad
  Flamestorm Gauntlets, Power Fists
• 3 x Eliminator Squad
  Bolt Pistols, Bolt Sniper Rifles,
• 5 x Hellblaster Squad
  Plasma Pistol, Plasma Incinerators
• 5 x Reiver Squad
  Grapnel Launchers, Reiver Grav-chutes, Combat Knifes, Special Issue Bolt Pistol
• 5 x Fenrisian Wolves
  Teeth and claws

Chaos Daemons

Playing Chaos Daemons, for the first time ever, is jhnlk. Readers of the blog may remember that he has a special grudge against Space Wolves, so expect no mercy for the Vlka.

• Crafty Xiuhte - Fluxmaster (warlord)
  Arcane fireball, Herald combat weapon
• Exalted Flamer
  Fire of Tzeentch, Flamer mouths
• 3 x Nurglings
  Diseased claws and teeth
• 3 x Nurglings
  Diseased claws and teeth
• 10 x Pink Horrors
  Daemonic Icon, Instrument of Chaos, Coruscating pink flames, Pink claws
• 3 x Screamers
  Lamprey bite
• 3 x Screamers
  Lamprey bite

Mission and Deployment

We're keeping it simple for the opening games: a 4x4' board, 500pt armies and three objectives in no-man's land.

Each player will score 1VP for each objective they secure at the end of their turn. We also have bonus point for (remember these?) Linebreaker, First Blood and a mystery D3 VP for Slay the Warlord.

We've also modified the Daemons' faction rule: Shadow of Chaos. It wouldn't work with the number of objectives (or units) we have available, so we'll just randomise it. At the start of each battle round, roll 1 D6:

• 1-2: Shadow of Chaos is in the Daemons' deployment zone
• 3-4: Shadow of Chaos is in the Daemons' deployment zone and no-man's land
• 5-6: Shadow of Chaos covers the whole battlefield

The Space Wolves set up on the left hand side of the map, with Eliminators scouting forward on top of a building, flanked by Rune Priest Baedlara, who is leading the Reivers.

Hellblasters and Aggressors deploy in the centre, with the pack of Fenrisian Wolves hidden behind the bottom building.

The Daemons are more cagey, as befits Craft Xiuhte. He leads a mob of Pink Horrors in the centre, with the Exalted Flamer on his own on their right.

Both shoals of Screamers hide behind the industrial towers, and the two Nurgling swarms remain in deep strike.

Space Wolves win the roll-off for first turn!

Turn 1 - Space Wolves

They stalked towards the ruins. 

The cloak of ash seemed to grow thicker as they drew nearer, heavy flakes of the stuff hanging in the air like the sediment near the bottom of a dead sea. The tallest ruins threw long arms of darkness out to meet them so that even as they reached the smaller buildings at the edge of the broken spa, the pumping rooms and filtering stations, they were moving through a close twilight in near silence. 

There was nothing on the vox but the measured breathing of his pack. No signs of life on the auspex. 

But nothing living was out there waiting for them. 

The darkness deepens, Baedlara thought, wondering where the words came to him from. Foresight came to his kin in poetry sometimes. Perhaps this was one such moment. 

"Hold," he said. "Sword/Headland." He heard short huffing coughs back on the vox, his brothers' code of assent, as they moved into a tight defensive formation. 

"Contact. Abberant, heading 315, incoming," he heard. Wolf Brother Hod of the Eliminators. 

Baedlara smiled. "Execute," he said.

With some foreboding, the first roll of the game determines that that Shadow of Chaos is... everywhere!

The Eliminators kick off by drawing a bead on the Exalted Flamer, but their shots either go wide or fail against his immaterial form.

The Hellblasters step forward, backed by the Aggressors and Fenrisian Wolves, and open up on the Pink Horrors, knocking down two of them (only to have a couple of Blue Horrors emerge from their scorched carcasses).

The Reivers run up to the side of the tallest building and bide their time, readying their grappling hooks.

No first blood to be had, but a strong foothold on their closest objective for a point.

Space Wolves 1 : 0 Chaos Daemons

Turn 1 - Chaos Daemons

"A lack, a lack," Baedlara heard from Hod. Their shots had missed. Then the darkness to his left suddenly blazed with light, a freakshow of blinding colour mottled with black flakes of ash. Oddly-tinted aftershadows jittered and leapt across his helmet's feed. 

"Life/Ban," Hod said. "Target has marked us, we're..."

As the colours faded, the darkness seemed to rush back even thicker than before, angry that anything dared disturb it. Hod's voice thinned and vanished, the sound somehow lost in the shadow. 

"Contacts, abberant, at 179. Engaging." Cothun, leading the Hellblasters. Blue-white plasma cut out into the shadows, showing the nearby buildings in whip-fast flashes. Showing the cavorting things writhing through the ash towards them, just a brief, disturbing glimpse before they died in bursting globes of fire.  

Or did they? Were those pin-prick lights left as the plasma faded mere embers, or the glittering eyes of gathering warp-predators?

The Screamers race from one piece of cover to another, grabbing an objective as they do so.

With nowhere to hide, the Exalted Flamer bounds forward towards the Eliminators that tried to execute him, and washes down two of them in blue fire.

The Pink Horrors march towards the central alley, grab another objective, and spit flames out at the Hellblaster squad. Despite armour of contempt, three of them succumb to Craft Xiuhte's sorcery (and take down a couple of Blue Horrors before them expire).

So that puts the Daemons ahead for an early lead.

Space Wolves 1 : 2 Chaos Daemons

Turn 2 - Space Wolves

"With me," Baedlara instructed his bodyguard. "Vulture/Path, Sword/Psalm." 

War-kennings, his pack's battle code. Swift phrases to give his hand-picked Reivers all the instruction they needed. The marine nearest to him raised his grapnel and fired, staring out into the darkness for a moment until he knew the claws struck home. Then he vanished upwards into the ashy darkness as though pulled by invisible talons. The rest of the Reivers followed suit. 

Baeldara traced a Valkyrie rune over his breastplate, grimaced as the cold fire of harnessed void energy started to burn in his temples, and moved himself aloft, holding behind his bodyguard. 

The Shadow of Chaos is still everywhere, which is bad news for the units who have to take Battleshock tests. The lone Eliminator fails his test and suffers D3 wounds as a consequence - so that wipes the unit and awards 1VP to the Daemons for First Blood.

The Reivers use their grappling hooks to scale the building (as shown - look at them go!) and lob a grenade at the Exalted Flamer, whose charmed life continues and only takes one wound.

The Hellblasters and Aggressors all open up on the Pink Horror unit, but the invulnerable saves (and numerous splitting) save them, leave the unit more than half intact.

The only charge is the Reivers, who jump on the Exalted Flamer and lay into him with a flurry of combat blades that chop up even his inhuman form.

That's a dangerous unit removed, and they steal another objective as a bonus, bringing them level in points.

Space Wolves 3 : 3 Chaos Daemons

Turn 2 - Chaos Daemons

For a brief moment, they perched atop the pitted dome of a filtration tank, a huddle of armoured grey shadows hunkering in the night. 

Just a moment, long enough to sight their prey and pounce.

It billowed along in the ash drifts, a fluttering, fluting thing impossible to properly discern. A vortex of ash? A tangle of dead weed, whirling along on invisible currents? 

To Baedlara, attuned to the currents of the ether, there was something net-like about it, something trapped in a hastily-improvised vessel of realspace matter that was never meant to contain such power. It was a knot made of fire and hate, a negative light somehow darker than the darkness around it.  Even the ash burned as it collided with it. 

His bodyguard descended on it, knives out, a barrage of grenades rippling through its shifting centre in blistered bubbles of a more honest fire. Baedlara sang out a chant, felt the darkness around him shift and turn to gold as he channelled a storm of light into the creature. 

Knots, he could cut. 

With some Tzeentchian cunning, the Screamers begin by employing the Corrupt Realspace stratagem, which essentially makes the objective they control sticky. That's going to be a tough one for the Space Wolves to retake.

Both units then race off that objective to threaten the central mass of Space Wolves, backed up by Crafty Xiuhte and his Pink Horrors, as well as both units of Nurglings dropping in out of Warpspace. Turn 2 is shaping up for a showdown!

After some sporadic fire, the whole daemon army crashes in (with the exception of one Nurgling swarm, who were preoccupied with picking their collective noses).

One Screamer is lost to Aggressor overwatch, and another falls to Aggressor fists. In return the Screamers rip apart one of the gravis marines, and Crafty Xuihte accounts for another. 

The fight between the Hellblasters and Nurglings is more of a ticklefest, and only one Nurgling is stepped on.

There are enough daemons to swamp the back objective, so that puts them two points ahead (and fully committed).

Space Wolves 3 : 5 Chaos Daemons

Turn 3 - Space Wolves

"Steiran reports. Odin's/Gate, Deep/Track," Baedlara heard. More war kennings - the Aggressor sergeant was telling him the main line was under heavy assault. Other vox reports barked in the back of his consciousness, reporting wounds or fatalities, but his battle training brought only the most vital to his attention. 

"Moon/Shudder," he told his bodyguard, and they retreated in silent unison, reeling themselves back the way they'd come on their grapnel lines. 

Their boots hadn't even touched the ground, but they left the tattered remnants of their target dispersing slowly on the torpid currents of the darkness. 

Inexplicably, the tides of the warp recede this turn, and Shadow of Chaos only affects the Daemons' deployment zone. Which is a handy, because half the Space Wolves army are still taking battleshock tests.

The Reivers abandon their objective to scale the building once again and race to the rescue of their brothers, pausing only to drop a few grenades on the unengaged Nurglings.

Unfortunately, their charge falls short, and only the Fenrisian Wolves are able to join the fray. The poor beasts are unable to inflict any damage, but their presence does prevent the larger unit of Screamers from consolidating into the last Aggressor, who takes the opportunity to tear down the final Screamer from the other unit.

The only other causality in this mass-melee, is one of the Hellblasters, who got an infestation of Nurglings down one leg of his armour and had to excuse himself.

Also taking an unexpected departure are the unengaged Nurglings, who use the Realm of Chaos stratagem to sneak back into the Warp, before any more grenades get thrown at them.

Space Wolves 4 : 5 Chaos Daemons

Turn 3 - Chaos Daemons

The darkness fought against them as they strained to reach their kin. Ropes of blackness seemed to pull at their backs, clots of ink clutched at their feet. 

"Fire/Sick," Steiran shouted into the vox. Hard pressed. 

Baedlara could see him now, the huge weight of his Gravis armour spinning round and throwing up plumes of sickly grey fume. Purple and turquoise beings flickered in and out of view around him, gems that appeared and then vanished in the kaleidoscope of shadow. 

The rest of his squad was gone. Alone, the old sergeant fought on against the gathering night as it tried to pull him in. For a second, fire burned bright around him, sending the blackness fleeing. Steiran reached into it, his power fists grabbing the finned sides of a leathery back. He heaved the creature out of the shadow like a fisherman landing a ray, smashing it down over his knee before punching it in the centre of its circular mouth. Conical teeth sprayed out crackling and bursting as the energy field fired.

Then he was lost to sight again, swept away in a churning tide of shadowy horrors. 

The Daemons are fully committed to the fray, with the exception of the Nurgling swarm who pop back out of the Warp for a cheeky linebreaker.

The combat itself doesn't shed much blood - just a Fenrisian Wolf and a wounded Screamer slain. The Daemons aren't great shakes in combat, but they do bring a number of hit penalties that are messing up the Space Wolves' renowned prowess, so they are successfully making the combat a slog, and scooping up a couple more VP doing so.

Space Wolves 4 : 7 Chaos Daemons

Turn 4 - Space Wolves

Helpers/Fail, Comforts/Flee, Baedlara heard. No war kenning, that. Who whispered it into his mind?

The shadows still pulled at them, the heavy draw of an undertow that sucked at your legs, threatened to haul them away into the ash and darkness. Wine-black waves that would drown out not just breath but being. 

Baedlara knew the sea. 

He'd grown up on the frozen rim of the oldest, darkest ocean Fenris could offer. He'd pulled himself out of colder, deeper tides than this. He howled, and the current turned. 

At the head of his Reiver pack, surfing on a wave of cold fire, he crashed into the thickest part of the maelstrom that threatened his pack, and his rune-song scattered the foe before him. 

The Shadow of Chaos creeps back over no-man's land. Which is bad news if you're a Hellblaster Pack Leader who just failed his Battleshock and takes enough mortal wounds to remove him.

Now alone, the Aggressor pack leader falls back from combat, using the Relentless Assault stratagem to shoot back and flame away one of the Screamers.

Also falling back from combat is the last surviving Fenrisian Wolf, who makes directly for the Daemons' deployment zone. It won't be able to claim the sticky objective (with an OC of 0), but it's fast enough to grab a linebreaker point.

But Crafty Xiuhte is not so easily outmanoeuvred. The Pink Horrors declare overwatch on the fleeing pooch and, with his Fluxmaster ability to turn any hit into a 6, Xiuhte is able to guarantee a hit and immolates the poor wolf. Such wanton cruetly from the campaign's uncontested villain - and the Drukhari haven't even showed up yet. 

Vengeance comes swiftly as the Reivers swing from above and mow down the Pink Horrors in a hail of grenades and bolt rounds. Crafty Xiuhte is personally run through by Rune Priest Baedlara's force sword, although not enough to banish him entirely, so a Reiver steps forward to shank him back into the ether.

The Space Wolves reclaim the objective, and bag a mystery D3 VP (to be determined at the end of the game) for Slay the Warlord.

Space Wolves 5+D3 : 7 Chaos Daemons

Turn 4 - Chaos Daemons

Baedlara saw the creature at the darkness's heart. A quick flash of it, all warpfire malice and rose-tinted flesh, just as he thrust his blade into its roiling heart. Did it scream or laugh? He wasn't sure, didn't care. It was gone. 

The darkness ebbed with it, leaving bubbling jetsam behind it, blobs of jelly that gibbered and cackled even as his fellows trampled them. He could feel their stink rather than smell it, but it was insufferable either way. 

He kicked through the dross, looking for survivors. 

Still in the lead, and with what remains of their forces committed, the Daemons just have to hang in there (and keep scoring off their sticky objective). One more Screamer falls, but the sheer annoyance factor of the Nurglings is slowing down the Space Wolves.

Space Wolves 5+D3 : 8 Chaos Daemons

Turn 5 - Space Wolves

Steiran was still on his feet, Baedlara was glad to see, although he had one of the warp-things fastened over his back and shoulder. He watched as the Aggressor peeled the thing off his armour, fighting its muscular thrashings every inch of the way until he could fold it back across its own spine. It made a loud cartilaginous pop, then suddenly dissolved into a foamy spray of sea-green bubbles that broke and vanished. 

Freed from its weight, the old wolf staggered and nearly fell - his armour was cracked and pitted, missing an arm plate, Baedlara noted - but quickly righted himself and began cleansing the nearby ash with gouts of fire. 

With one turn left, the Space Wolves need some desperate measures to seize the game. In a Hail Mary (Hail Lagertha?) move, the Aggressor Pack Leader stomps into long range of the distant Nurglings, hoping to flame away the linebreaking buggers. Only a handful of the critters are popped, however, and the long charge falls short.

The Reivers' blades, which must by now be gooey with daemonic ichor, finally bring down the last Screamer and get to work stomping the Nurglings.

The Space Wolves' score ends on a maximum of 9 (if Kraken rolls well) and some quick maths reveals...

Space Wolves 6+D3 : 8 Chaos Daemons

Turn 5 - Chaos Daemons

"Mound/Breaker," Baedlara called. Finish the enemy. 

Too few answered. Rather than a throaty chorus of wolfish coughs, only a handful. They'd held the line, but it had cost them.

... Victory is firmly in daemonic clutches. They have been almost banished from the battlefield - the Reivers wipe out the remaining Nurglings as if to prove the point - but the combination of the sticky objective and the linebreaking Nurglings bring their VP score beyond the point where it can be caught.

And to add insult to injury, Kraken rolls a 1 for Slay the Warlord. The battle is over.

Space Wolves 7 : 10 Chaos Daemons

Victory to the Chaos Daemons!

It wasn't just the wounded. A few of the pack were gone altogether, dragged away into the darkness into who knew what abyss, but most were just hurt. A few hours and Baedlara knew they'd be up and fighting again. 

No, the main cost was his own reserve of energy. Turning that warptide had cost him. He wasn't sure he could do it again soon, and there was still a bottomless well of it between them and the Black Legion. 

Fighting the shivers that sometimes came on him after such hard use, he reluctantly gave the order to gather the wounded and retreat. 

"Snake/Grief, Horn/Tears. We'll find another way, Brothers. Back!"

Locker Room

Howl! So close - those Daemons really did a number on me. Not so much the shooting or the fighting, I reckon I came off okay through that. But I got out-manouvered by shifty Nurglings! 

Having those grubby little shits gumming up my combat really cost me. Plenty of lost hits that preserved Daemons that might have fallen sooner. Between that and the failed charge from the Reivers mid-game, and my total inability to reclaim the sticky objective, and that was game over. Helms off to a worthy opponent!

Great start to the campaign: very close, very narrative and some real twists and turns. I think the Shadow of Chaos modification worked out okay, and it was nice to see such a close run at 500pts. Here's hoping the rest of the battles (we're aiming for one a week) continue as strong!