It's the second game in the Jimulthuan Quadrant Campaign. The Imperium is under assault by Xenos - will Rylstone fall?
Rylstone Reliables
I’ve got the defenders for this game, and I’m packing Tempestus. The match I played earlier this month felt like a good practice round, and with their strats and buffs still fresh in my mind, taking them to defend the grim and deadly planet of Rylstone seemed like the right thing to do.
It’s Bridgehead again - hyper mobile and capable of appalling levels of firepower (up to reroll all hits and wounds with plus one to wound with extra ap if you can stack it right), but no jets this time. Just lots of Scions in lots of trucks, helped by Commissars and a Techpriest.
- Warlord - Colonel Rudolph Rylhauser, Command squad with all the trimmings plus a Bombast Vox relic, leading ten scions with assorted special weapons
- HQ - Commissar Bleeth with a power weapon and Advance Auguries (redeploy three squads), leading another ten Scions with paired plasma and volley guns
- HQ - Commissar Colderbine leading five Scions (flamer/plasma)
- HQ - Techpriest Hunton/A-3
- Battleline - 5 Scions, melta/grenade launcher
- Battleline - 5 Scions, plasma/flamer
- Dedicated Transports - 3 Taurox Primes, one with each main gun, storm bolters and an assortment of secondary guns (either twin-linked volley guns or autocannons)
1000 points exactly and looking pretty sharp, I thought! Until I saw what my opponent was bringing…
Tyrannophoon
Dropping out of the sky is a very nasty looking (and awfully familiar) lot of bugs. Pretty much exactly what I brought against Pootle last time we played, in fact, so I know how vicious they can be!
Two massive Termagant swarms led by a Big Momma, and a Hivehand Tyrannofex backing them up. Rather than the Neurotyrant I brought, though, this one's got a pair of Carnifexes and a Broodlord leading ten Genestealers. I'm instantly terrified of everything in the list - I might not struggle to kill any individual part, but I will have to focus fire. Anything I'm not shooting is going to be perfectly capable of eating great chunks out of my lot, it's almost an entire list of distraction carnifexes in some ways. Yikes!
- Warlord - a Tervigon
- HQ - a Broodlord
- Battleline - 20 Termagaunts with fleshborers
- Battleline - 20 more of them
- Infantry - 10 Genestealers
- Monsters - 2 Carnifexes, each with scything talons and even more scything talons
- Monsters - a Tyrannofex with a fleshborer hive
This is Invasion Fleet, and it's going to take the Lethal Hits vs Vehicles adaptation. Jhnlk, who's piloting them, has added a further level of casual scorn by not even bothering to take a relic. I'm clearly doomed.
Mission and Terrain
Jhnlk is overall commander of the Xenos team, and has sent his fleet to invade the Rylstone system. As such, we're playing Orbital Assault, a mission taken from the new 500 Worlds campaign book.
Mildly complex set up, but a pretty clear-cut (and very thematic) set of goals once we're done.
The attacker picks one unit per Dominance Level of his team on the planet to get Deep Strike, so one unit of Termies and the Genestealers get this. Then three objectives get placed in a square in the middle of the field.
The defender gets to pick one corner of the field per Dominance Level on the planet (I've got 3) as their deployment zone, and their entire army goes out. Finally, one unit from the attacking army goes on each objective to represent them just arriving. Everything else goes in reserve.
The attacker scores 15 points per objective held at the end of their third and fifth turns; the defender can score five points at the end of each turn for each one of hold one, hold two, hold more and hold all. That's interesting - the Defender can score 100 points, the Attacker 90 max, but they start off on the points. Can that initial bridgehead hold on long enough for their support to arrive?
There are two extra twists here - first is that attacking deep strikers can land within 6" of the defenders, but they can't charge on that turn. Unless (and this is a big one) the entire unit is on an objective when it lands, then the safeties are off! That really helps the attacker, especially when it's Genestealers who can drop in short range. I'm going to have to get very close indeed to those objectives to scour the xenos off them.
Twist number two is that we're on Rylstone. It's so grim and dark out here that you take a mortal wound every time you fail a Battleshock test. Good job I'm fighting an army who's resistant to morale, then.
Deployment
All that leaves us like this:
So all my guys are inside tanks and split up a bit, heading in towards a Tyrannofex with 20 gaunts and their mum. I've kept the big command squad in deep strike; the Tyranids have both Carnifexes in reserve and the Genestealers and another unit of Termagants in deep strike.
I get a bonus command point to start the game as I've got Dominance on the planet. The Tyranids get the first turn to make up for it!
Tyranids Turn 1
The Tervigon just dents the Taurox down at the bottom. The Tyrannofex is more tooled for taking out infantry with its fleshborer hive, but it certainly doesn't let that put it off - the missile Taurox takes seven wounds from a variety of toxic spines, which doesn't bode well for next turn!
Tempestus Turn 1
The Techpriest immediately begins frantically pulling teeth out of the missile Taurox's bodywork, running along next to it as it starts bussing my troops towards the middle. That's the plan here. Nobody's really in position to do much now, I need to set myself up for a massive strike next round and hope that whatever small scratches I can inflict now will help later.
All three tanks start to converge on the middle, keeping to what little cover there is. The Tyrannofex basks in the attention I can throw its way, taking a lone wound from a pair of desperate tanks and all their guns. It's less than I could hope for, but probably more than I deserve!
Tyranids Turn 2
Afanc is still keeping still and lazy, racking up CPs for later and barely reacting to my attempts to get them to come get me. At least the Carnifexes rock up from reserve, appearing way down south and hopefully out of position for as long as possible. I'm certainly not going to rile them up by shooting at them!
 |
| Here's Momma! |
Both the big bugs concentrate fire on the damaged Taurox, and I brace for the worst. Taurox Primes can't cough smoke or I totally would (they make up for it a bit by not getting degraded by damage). After repairs, there are six wounds for the Tyranids to chew through, and the dice spike lower than last time. I need to make six saves to live; I make five of them. Reroll time!
Squeaking through, the Taurox lurches onwards, the Techpriest running after it holding a spare tyre.
Tempestus Turn 2
This has to count, because the bugs are going to start scoring next turn.
The command squad drops out by the Termagaunts, three squads pile out towards the big fellas and the Gatling Taurox moves in to support. Bridgehead gives my infantry +1 to wound on a turn when they got out of a transport or struck deep, and by yelling into the vox, the boss gives his own unit and the two smaller units an extra pip of Rapid Fire. The Commissar boosts his ten-man squad with Duty and Honour, so they have extra Ld and OC, although they aren't actually on an objective yet.
Shooting takes a while, there is an awful lot of it.
There's quite a few stacking buffs at work here, some even redundant ones, but Scions on a go turn are basically looking at rerolling 1s to hit, everything to wound if the target is on an objective, and get +1 to wound to boot. Impressively, this means that even after the missile Taurox whiffs its shooting, the two small squads that just got out manage to fry the Tyrannofex all by themselves!
It's so good that it actually hurts me a bit, because the ten-man squad doesn't have a good target after that. They put a bit of fire into the Termagaunts, but they can't really see them well. They also can't charge in and take the objective off the Tyrannofex, because it's far too dead.
The Command Squad has the gaunts dead to rights, though, and having the Colonel with them grants Sustained fire on top of everything else. Nineteen brief Termagaunts later, I'm in a bit of a pickle. If I can make a 10" charge, I'll have the objective, a score and a nice big chunk of the middle secured against deep strike. If I can't make the charge, then there's a big empty space that would just fit a big squad of counter-charging Genestealers rather nicely.
"Charge!" yells the Colonel, and nobody moves a muscle, although they're all thinking about it (I roll a nine). So he yells again and once more, they're all hoping someone else goes first (I re-roll it into a nine).
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| ”After you, old chap.” |
Rylstone, we have a problem.
Tyranids Turn 3
Jhnlk unleashes the Shadow in the Warp at this point. The Command Squad embarrass themselves by failing, as does one of the smaller squads, and I lose a couple of men to background grimness levels. It also stops the Command Squad firing overwatch, which is a worry.
Sure enough, there's suddenly a lot of Genestealers popping in from orbit. I won't keep you in suspense, they make their charge and puree everyone except the Colonel, who manages to lightly mar one of them in return with his knife. He tries to avenge his losses, conscious that alone he's not going to make much difference for long. On My Position is already my favourite strat in this detachment, but it lets me down by only blowing up the wounded 'stealer. The Colonel takes seven times as many wounds, and that's his lot.
Elsewhere, the damaged Gaunts are getting replaced at a rate of knots by the Tervigon and the Endless Swarm strat. They don't manage much else - they fire at the missile Taurox again, hoping to whittle off the chicken wire it's now held together with, but the Techpriest is working overtime and it limps through on a single wound again. Momma bug drops a couple of Scions in combat, but it's a bit of a whiff overall.
Not looking good - I've lost my best squad. I do an Arial Extraction of the other large Scion team though, ready to re-drop them in next round, so I'm not totally spent. Afanc, however, is now scoring, and it's bad news. They've got all their objectives, so that's 45 points in the bank!
Tempestus Turn 3
Down comes the big squad again, and opens up on the Genestealers with the cannon Taurox supporting. They rip up everything except the Broodlord, and it takes a couple of hits too. Not bad, but not amazing either.
The other squads focus on the undamaged Termagaunts. That's much more their level, and all twenty get perforated in pretty short order, even leaving enough spare shooting to melt half the wounds off the Tervigon.
I'm also on to the points, charging in against the damaged 'gaunts with the big Scion squad. That's going to be a tarpit battle I won't win, but boosted by the Commissar's orders, I can take it off them for a while yet. Fifteen points to me (hold one, hold two, hold more)!
Tyranids Turn 4
The Broodlord jumps in to help the Termagaunts out. Jhnlk is also replenishing them as we go with Endless Swarm, and as I expected, I'm losing the numbers game in this fight slowly but surely. I'm pushed back off the midfield objective and the Carnifexes are now roosting on the southern one. They aren't scoring them this turn, but I'm damned if I can see a clever way of stopping them before the end.
Tempestus Turn 4
What I can see is a stupid way of trying to stop them, so that'll have to do.
The ten-man squad (now a five-man squad) fall back a smidge, letting the cannon Taurox ping off a few termies before driving right into the thick of them. He squishes a couple more, but not before the Broodlord intervenes and rips the windshield out. Try as I might, I don't quite get the objective back, although it's close.
The Techpriest, finally losing his temper with having his repair work continuously undone, charges into the the Tervigon after everything nearby fails to deal with the Rapid Regeneration Jhnlk gives it. He slips another couple of wounds in with his axe and cheerfully fails to die to the return hits, but there's no final result even after I ram the side of the Tervie with the gatling Taurox.
The last full five-man squad and their Commissar go and charge a Carnifex. Yes, that's where we are now, we're charging Carnifexes on purpose. It's so surprised it only kills and eats one of ours, and the Commissar gives it a nice duelling scar to take home. I've stolen the objective, but it's not going to stay stolen long.
Now, you're probably looking at all these tenuous fights and thinking 'Kraken! Why weren't you doing Tank Shock and throwing Grenades?' And you're quite right, I should have been. Alas, I had to spend my last two CPs keeping a one-man Scion team alive on the northern objective - if he'd failed Battleshock, the grimness of Rylstone would have killed him and I'd have lost it. And throughout the game, despite Scions being able to occasionally regenerate CPs, they haven't given back a single one, the selfish sods. Gah.
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| There he is, all 'me me me' on the back line |
More scores, at least - I've got two again, for another fifteen points. That's... well, that hasn't even got me up to level. Sorry, Rylstone System, I may have fumbled this catch.
Turn 5
There's no way I can stop the Tyranids picking up another thirty points, and even less way I can catch up - the final scores are 75-30 to Hive Fleet Afanc and the Xenos fleet!
Locker Room
Great game! The swing point came fairly early, when I couldn't get on any objectives by the end of my second turn. Victim of my own ludicrous shooting, there, although I think I'd also spread out a bit too far with the three tanks. Keeping them together might have given me the firepower I needed to finish off the first Termagaunt squad, then I'd have taken the western objective before the end of the game.
The Scions did much better this time out, though, and I was horrified/impressed by the shooting they can throw down. I didn't even manage to fully buff it, either, there's a strat to give their hotshots an extra pip of AP and S. Maybe that's another miss, it might also have swiped out those last gaunts.
Invasion Fleet impresses again, though! Jhnlk was won over too. There's just something cool about the regenerating swarms, both fielding them and fighting against them.
Campaign-wise, this shifts the Dominance Level in the Rylstone system. The Imperium drops by one, the Xenos go up by one, so they hold the place for now. I'll go and explain to the Commissars shortly, tell my family I loved them.
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