False Hope Campaign - Apostles of Contagion Vs Orks

Prologue -

On the planet of False Hope a massive siege just took place.

The Marines Errant were holding a vast fortress containing valuable Space Marine Geneseed.  The Iron Warriors led the assault to take down the fortress and capture the Geenseed for their own uses.

The Iron Warriors struck at dawn, destroyed an entire wing of the fortress and stole the valuable material from the Marines Errant, but only just.

While the siege was going on, however, another player was entering the theater.  A massive ork Waaagh had been building and right before the Iron Warriors had their hands on the Geneseed, two massive holes opened up in the earth and thousands of greenskins emerged within the fortress.

With the Marines Errant now surrounded by the forces of Chaos and the Orks, they stood little chance.  Very few loyal Space Marines escaped that day.

The Orks and the forces of Chaos weren't working together.  As the Iron Warriors grabbed the Geneseed and fled, the Orks were hot on their heels ready for another fight.

The Iron Warriors had a strong rear guard and were able to escape with the Geneseed, but the Orks wouldn't simply let them go.  In hot pursuit the Warsmith of the Iron Warriors called upon an ally who owed him to help slow down or possibly stop the Orks altogether.

Necrosius was that ally.  Necrosius' Apostles Of Contagion were joined by a detachment of the Iron Warriors' human traitor guard soldiers to fight the oncoming Ork Horde.

What came next was a bloody brutal fight...


Deployment:

 Orks Deployment

 Chaos Deployment

Whole Battlefield

The game was 2000 points. I took two 'The Purge' Detachments from the Siege Of Vraks forgeworld book.  The Purge Detachment is a Battle-Forged Detachment. It has a compulsory 1 HQ and 2 Elites.
It is available for both Codex Chaos Space Marines and the Traitors and Renegades list in Siege of Vraks.  It also allows your flamers and missile launchers to shoot chemical rounds which gives you shred but also gets hot.  The Detachment also allows 4 heavy support and more Elites and Troops and your barrage weapon templates stay on the board into your opponents turn.  The templates count as dangerous terrain.

The 2 major drawbacks of the Detachment is you do not have objective secured and you do not have access to any fast attack units.

The Campaign mission was fought on the planet False Hope the two squares being B20 and B21.

The first primary detachment:

HQ
Necrosius (Warlord)

Elites
6 Plague Marines in a Rhino

7 Plague Marines in a Rhino

The second detachment:

HQ
Traitor Company Command Squad

Elites
10 Disciples in a Chimera

10 Disciples in a Chimera

5 Disciples with Missile Launchers

5 Disciples with Missile Launchers

Troops
Infantry Command Squad with Krak grenades and a flamer
Infantry Squad with Krak grenades and a flamer
Infantry Squad with Krak grenades and a flamer
Infantry Squad with Krak grenades and a flamer

21 Plague Zombies

21 Plague Zombies

Heavy Support
3 Mortars

3 Mortars

2 Basilisks

Leman Russ


The Mission:
We played the City Fight Mission: Sniper's Alley.  It is from a White Dwarf.  It uses the City Fight Strategem cards which I printed out and taped onto regular playing cards.

The mission called for the two armies to deploy on their short board edges and only have an 18" deployment zone.  We decided to make it a 24" deployment zone instead, which is the standard size.


He deployed first and I siezed the initiative.

I deployed attempting to limit where he could arrive via outflank because he had three twin-linked rokkit buggies outflanking.
I put a lot of guardsmen on my right flank right on the board edge so he couldn't come on and right away frag my 2 Basilisks.


I tried to take advantage of having the first turn by moving up to intercept his battlewagon with a squad of Plague Marines with Meltaguns.

 Zombies and Rhinos Advance

The Zombies also moved forward an the rest of my army stayed put.  My Basilisks and mortars opened up killing some big gun crew and a few orks.

A Devastating Barrage

After my somewhat lackluster first turn, his nobs jump out from his battlewagon led by his warboss and assault a squad of guard, utterly annihilating them.

There used to be 10 guardsmen there.

My next turn I move to counter his assault by positioning Necrosius, two squads of Plague Marines, the zombies and another guard squad to block his movement and fire on them.

Necrosius unleashes Wasting Disease on the Warboss.

I also dropped mortars on the Orks, but to no avail.

The Warboss doesn't seem pleased.

He is able to assault a unit of Plague Zombies in his next turn.  

Mmm Ork brainz

Unable to stop the Warboss, he charges into my Plague Marines.  Using their Blight Grenades they slow down the orks and survive a round.

I then reposition my forces to get a better shot on the Nobs squad behind the Meganobs.

His warbuggies hadn't shown up yet, so I still needed to protect my weak right flank, otherwise I would have moved those guardsmen along the table edge.

In my turn again I drop down a nasty barrage into his Killer Kans and destroy several of them.

An ongoing battle with a squad of 10 ork boys and zombies continue as well.

The Warbuggies finally show up and on my left flank instead of my right.  The blow open a Chimera, but do little else.

The Orks Nobz and warboss finally take out the Plague Marines and consolidate back into the ruins.

I fire everything I have at the Nobs and they remain standing.  The only thing left to do is charge in with zombies.

Now that the warbuggies have arrived I can move my guardsmen on my right flank into the fight.

The Zombies killed all of the orks they had been fighting.

One squad of traitor guard charges into a killer kan and plants a Krak grenade on it, taking off a hull point!

.Necrosius moves around the large ruin to attempt to block off the rampaging warboss.  He leaves the Disciple squad to handle the one remaining warbuggy.

Unfortunately it was too little too late.  The Orks had succeeded in capturing more ojbectives than Necrosius' forces and the battle ended with an Ork victory.

Epilogue - 

Necrosius had ceded too much to the Orks this day.  He had let them capture a large portion of the city.  His delaying tactics were a bit on the conservative side but did allow the main Iron Warrior force to escape the Ork advance, for now.

The overwhelming firepower of the basilisks showed a sign of things to come, however.  The big guns of the Iron Warriors were still on False Hope and there were other battles to be fought.  

Until next time...

More 6th Edition Thoughts

Its been a few weeks since I bought the new rule book and I've been pretty consumed by 6th edition.

Between listening to podcasts, reading blogs, reading forums, reading the main rule book, writing up new army lists, contemplating armies, and playing games of 6th ed, I've neglected the blog a bit too much.

Don't worry I plan to continue posting new things on here, its not going away.  And I will finish the Book of the Arbitator game battle report soon I hope.

I've come to a conclusion about 6th edition that is somewhat surprising considering before I had the book in my hands, I thought GW may have actually screwed the pooch on this edition.  I have come to the conclusion that what they have done is pretty amazing.  The rules interact in a very interesting way which is very cohesive and truly are a new version of 40k.

They have turned the game on its head and with one release re-ignited the fan base.  I've heard rumors of game stores being packed with people playing and talking and buying stuff.  There has been plenty of discussion about the tournament scene and the organizers of the big tournaments trying to come up with codified tournament rules (for things like terrain, missions, warlord traits, etc).

Now before I get off track, which I am wont to do, I want to go over my thoughts about 6th edition and where I am going to go with it.

The rulebook is beautiful and worth every penny.  The index is incredibly useful and the rules are for the most part worded well.  I have only found 2 instances of bad GW editing, which is new for them.  I like the new missions with a few exceptions.  I like the changes to force and power weapons.  I like the new psychic powers and warlord traits.  I like hull points and how vehicles work.

The new missions initially seem unbalanced when playing with certain armies like the necron flyer spam lists, but in reality balance themselves out.  Its a strange thing that at first glance some of them seem bad but aren't actually.

I don't like mysterious objectives partly because I forget to use them, or they don't have any measurable impact on the game despite reading the descriptions of what they do and envisioning all sorts of mayhem resulting from them. In the games I've played they've had no impact and its a scramble at the end to grab them like it always has been prior to 6th.

Force weapons and power weapons stats are now based on how they are modeled.  Some people will be upset at this because they have a guy modeled with a power sword but really want a power axe for example.  I am totally cool with this because it opens up new modelling possibilities for me.  Many gamers like myself who have been playing for 10+ years have plenty of bits floating around which can be used to remodel their figs with the appropriate type of weapon and also welcome the chance to go back and update figs.

The new psychic powers are cool but not over-powering nor do they take over the game by adding a psychic phase, which was a huge failing in my perspective of 2nd edition or Fantasy.  They give my psykers something new to try out.  I like that.

The new warlord traits are neat and add something to the game but have been somewhat underwhelming so far in the games I've played kind of like the mysterious objectives.  I like Reece's suggestion from Frontline Gaming of rolling a d6 and then picking one trait from any of the 3 trait tables that correspond to the number rolled.  This system would still be random but would give you some choice, which is good, IMHO.

Vehicles have become much cooler in how they operate.  Hull points make rhinos tougher earlier in the game because a glance won't impact its usability.  The make vehicles weaker as the game goes on, because only a few glances separate a vehicle from destruction.  Vehicle movement got a huge boost in this edition because a rhino can now move 18" a turn which is awesome for actually getting a unit somewhere quickly.

These are still my initial thoughts since getting the book.  Now I will discuss my plans for 6th ed.

Unfortunately I have to wait until the new Chaos codex comes out before I do any more modeling or painting of anything.  I just can't get motivated until that happens.  Iron Warriors are my largest army and my favorite, so until the new codex arrives (Sept 1st is the rumor) I can't really do anything.

That being said these are my plans for chaos in the coming months:

I plan to play allied guard and Iron Warriors and the reverse.

I plan to either expand my Apostles of Contagion with more plague marines and/or guard.

I have ideas of doing an Exorcist Space Marine army with Grey Knight allies.

I may also do my Skulltakers Khorne Warband at some point depending on the new codex.

So hopefully I have said something of interest in this post.  I have probably just rambled on as I usually do.

Until next time.

6th Edition and My Old Armies

I know, I know, everyone's put in their 2 cents about 6th edition all over the interwebz already but I have a few words to say as well.

I want to start with my first impressions with the caveat that I only know as much as I've read so far on different blogs and forums out there.  I don't have any new rumors to spread unfortunately.

So it appears to me that 6th edition is going to be a boon for garage and/or basement players.  The people who get together with their friends every week or so and play a game or two.  People like me mainly.

Why do I say a boon?  Well this new edition appears to have added in various elements of all the expansions the GW has come out with during 5th including flyers, planet strike, scenarios, special terrain, etc.  This is cool because it provides a framework for games for the more casual and 'narrative' players to play games with.  I could call up my buddy and say, "Hey I wanna play a 2,500 pt game themed around a ruined city with my own terrain pieces using my guard and Iron Warrior armies using this and this specific rules."

The ability to combine armies I already own into one force with predefined rules to allow that makes 6th easier for casual gamers to do something cool.  It also lets you play with those bastions and defense lines you bought without having them just be terrain or playing a planetstrike game.

The biggest problem with 6th edition I feel will be its use in tournaments.  The allies and fortifications rules will become a headache and possible nightmare for organizers.  They have more things to review to make sure the armies are legal and also that the terrain people bring is legal.  The fortifications are ripe for abuse AKA modeling for advantage.

Tournaments can solve this issue by disallowing allies and fortifications and of course coming up with their own scenarios (which they do now anyways).  I feel that this edition more than any other since 2nd will be open to abuse if played to the letter of the rules and tournament organizers should understand this and not just allow any old shenanigans.  Comp was created because of the stupidity of some of the combinations that 2nd edition allowed.

So onto what I like about 6th:

- Allies in casual play
- Fortifications in casual play
- Blast Templates where the circle in the middle means nothing.
- Hull Points
- New Scenarios
- New Objectives
- New scoring units

What I dislike about 6th:

- Mystical forests or whatever the crap it is they are calling them
- Random Charge distances
- Fleet of foot units not being able to charge after they fleet
- Jump pack units hitting with I10 when they assault.
- Character challenges (Just plain stupid!)
- Power Axes? how are they going to address the difference between and axe and a sword?  The Space marines codex gives units power weapons, are they axes or swords?

What I think the game will be like:

- Shooting will become more powerful.
- Hand to hand will be avoided by most of the best players and most armies with a couple of exceptions.
- Flamers will make a comeback because of overwatch and shooting at the unit that is assaulting.
- Tanks will be more powerful in the early game and get less powerful as the game goes on (but will survive most of the game).
- Flyers will have a huge impact and most people will want them in their army one way or another.

Predictions:

- Forgeworld will become more relevant and become legal at tournaments
- GW will release more digital codexes and rules
- More terrain will be released.
- GW will bring back veteran gamers who may have left the game during 5th.
- I will enjoy 6th edition.


Wow that was longer than I thought it would be.  I can't wait to look back at this post in 6 months and see where I was right or wrong.

On to what my plans are for 6th:

- Bust out the Iron Warriors again and give them new Guard allies.
- Expand my Apostles of Contagion army by making it a mix of Chaos Marine and Guard codexes.
- Make a brand new Space Marine Army with Inquisitorial Allies.
- Hold my breath for the new Chaos Codex.


I still plan on putting up the rest of the Into The Dark Scenario's battle report, hopefully later today.  I also will soon be coming out with army lists for the above allies ideas.

So until next time may your bolters never tire......

Zone Mortalis Game 2 Battle Report

The second game of Zone Mortalis was upped to 1,500 points.  We played on a 6' x 4' table and spread out the terrain some more.

The mission was the Encounter Mission.  We chose to play with objectives AKA Capture Ground.  Since this was a 6' x 4' table we used their recommendation of using 7 objectives.  The center objective was worth 3 points.

The Optional Rules we used were Reactionary Fire and Enemy Unknown.

The Reactionary Fire rule I have already discussed in a previous post.  But I will go over some points about that rule again here after having thought about it more.  One of the problems with the rule is that it is an Initiative test.  Now don't get me wrong, I think its a good idea to include more characteristic based tests, but for certain armies Initiative just isn't any good.  The Initiative test is fantastic if it is always space marines on space marines, but if you have guard or orks or tau, they will never get to use Reactionary fire because their I is so low.

I think a possible fix to this rule is to use Leadership.  Add to this test the ability of all friendly squads who are within LOS of the unit doing the assaulting and within 6" of the unit that is being assaulted to also take a Leadership test to add their fire, then the rule works better.  I would also add that cover from the other units who add their fire to the unit being assaulted should be granted to the assaulting unit if necessary.

Reactionary Fire as I modified above I think will balance the game away from assault armies taking over this variant of 40k.  It will give shooty armies more of a chance.

The other rule we used in this game was Enemy Unknown.  This rule states that each unit must be deployed as a counter where only the owning player knows what unit is assigned to what counter.  A counter is revealed when an enemy counter comes in LOS of an enemy counter.  If a counter goes back out of LOS of an enemy then it goes back into counter form.  I made paper counters with number on their reverse sides and we played the game with them.

The force organization adjustments for this game made it a bit difficult for me to make a 1,500 point force from my Apostles of Contagion army.  I normally take 3 Rhinos and 2 Chimeras and 3 units of Plague Marines.  I couldn't do that for this game.  I had to take extra units like Enforcers and Psykers.

One of the strengths of the Vrak's Renegades lists are their advisors.  They are an interesting way to customize an army.  The Enforcers can be very powerful as can the Psykers.

Also in this mission we decided to use Strategems from the boarding actions rules from the Badab War Forgeworld books.  Using those rules we each had 3 points to spend on strategems.  I used my three points to give me three 6-man squads of guardsmen with shotguns.  My Marines Errant opponent used his three points to allow one of his units in reserve to enter off of my table edge.

As anyone who has played 40k for any period of time knows that the ability to "outflank" an enemy is incredibly useful, and I was a bit nervous when he told me that was the strategem he picked.  I good thing about it was that there were 7 objective with the most important one in the middle being worth three points.  All I had to do was grab the central one with my Plague Marines and tie up his out flanker with several squads and delay them.

Anyways, on to the battle report.

So here is a picture of the table set-up:

And here are two more pictures of the set-up, the crates are objectives:

Our secret forces begin to move across the table disguised as pieces of circular paper....

At this point in the battle his dreadnought rounds a corner and a HUGE squad of Vanguard Vets arrives from reserve off of my table edge and prepares to assault a squad of traitor guard.

The Traitor Guard squad gets a bit nervous as the Vanguards approach.

The combat is joined and it is revealed that there happens to be a huge squad of zombies just waiting to be charged.

Meanwhile on the other side of the battlefield, a rather large squad of zombies surrounds a crate and the Marines Errant decide it time to take that crate........easier said than done.

The other traitor guard squad decides its a good idea to get a birds eye view of the battle.  Unfortunately for them so does the Marines Errant Chapter Master.  Precious to this combat though, the Rogue Psyker in the squad attempted to cast Quagmire on the Chapter Master, its a cool spell that makes a unit in line of sight within 24" of the caster move in difficult terrain its next movement phase, but the rogue Psyker promptly rolls double sixes on his psychic test and he becomes possessed by a daemon, hence the Plague Bearer.  That was pretty awesome since in all the time I had played the army that was the first time it has happened!

At this point in the battle, both of us had had several beers and I had forgotten to take some key pictures, but a pretty cool thing has happened right before the below picture was taken.  The large Plague Marine squad in the top of the picture had successfully used Reactionary Fire on a 5 man squad of Honor Guard that came through the door and tried to charge them.  They opened up with two melta guns and a plasma pistol and a bunch of rapid-firing bolters and killed three of the Honor Guard forcing them to fail a leadership test and run away!

Now Necrosius decides to climb up the ladder and take take on the Chapter Master.  Necrosius however is not up to the task and dies in hand to hand combat, cursing the fact that he doesn't have an invulnerable save.

And with that the battle is over.  I ended up winning the game because I controlled the center objective and I think two other objectives.  The Marines Errant had only two other objectives at that point.

Another fantastic Zone Mortalis game.  I have to say that I think with a few tweaks here and there, that Forgeworld has a real winner here.

Thanks for reading, until next time....

Teaser for the weekend Part 1

This weekend I will be finishing the last two scenarios for Book of The Arbitrator and also playing a game with my Apostles of Contagion.

Here is a teaser of the mission(s).



Also I found a blog that i will be following and you should too.

Fawcett Avenue Conscripts

Stay tuned for another update either tomorrow or Friday..

The Apostles Pictures

I finished the army a couple of weeks ago and took some pics, enjoy!



Here is a squad leader of one of the guard squads:



Here is a shot of a Plague Marine Squad:



Here is one of my Rogue Sorcerors of Nurgle:



Here is another Sorceror:



Here is a shot of Necrosius, the Hand of Nurgle:



Here is another shot of Necrosius:



Here is the Mortar Squad:



Here is the Guard Command Squad:




Well my camera is ok but I don't have a good set up to take pics yet. Its something I will work on for the future.

Three games with the Apostles of Contagion

So this past Saturday I was able to play three games with my 2,000 point Apostles of Contagion army.

Its not yet painted but the models are all built.

The army list was as follows: (I dont have th list with me so I am not sure of the points of some of the units)

HQ:

Necrosius

Company Command Squad - Vox Caster, Chaos Banner

Mortar Squad with Chemical Shells

2 Rogue Psykers of Nurgle with 2 rolls on the Psychic power table each

Elites:

6 Plague Marines with 2 melta guns
1 Champion with powerfist
in Rhino with extra Armor

6 Plague Marines with 2 melta guns
1 Champion with powerfist
in Rhino with extra Armor

5 Plague Marines with 2 melta guns
1 Champion with powerfist and plasma pistol
in Rhino with extra Armor and combi-flamer

Troops:

Renegade Armoredfist Squad 1
Missile launcher, grenade launcher, vox caster
Champion with bolt pistol and meltabombs
in Chimera with multilaser, extra armor, and heavy flamer

Renegade Armoredfist Squad
Missile launcher, grenade launcher, vox caster
Champion with bolt pistol and meltabombs
in Chimera with autocannon, extra armor, and heavy bolter

21 Plague Zombies

21 Plague Zombies

21 Plague Zombies

Fast Attack:

Sentinel with autocannon

Heavy Support:

Basilisk Artillery Strike


NOTES on list:

The Rogue Psykers attach to the Armored Fist Squads and Necrosius rides with the 6 man plague marines squad.

The list is from the Siege of Vraks book 3 from Forgeworld.





The first game was against the Eldar.

It was 3 objectives, quarters deployment. I won the roll off for deploy first/ go first but of course he rolled a 6 for seize the initiative.

Luckily he had a poor first turn of shooting. He killed some zombies and stunned a rhino.

I moved two rhinos, a chimera and a squad of zombies forward into the quarter to my left. The central squad of zombies moved forward along with a rhino towards the quarter on my right. The rear squad of zombies moved up to take the objective in my deployment zone.

My plan in this game was to hold the objective in my deployment zone and move most of my army up to contest the other 2 objectives. The plague marines and the zombies along with one armored fist squads would distract/stall his army while trying to contest/hold the other two objectives. I would hold my own objective and see how it played out.

As the game played out he eventually broke through my forces and contested my objective on turn 4. I counter punched and killed a weakened wraithlord and a weakened squad of striking scorpions to push him off my objective.

My left flank pushed out and in the bottom of turn 5 one plague zombie held the objective in that left quadrant. We rolled to see if the game was over and to my luck it was.

I won 2 objectives to one.

It was a good game for me because i was beginning to see the strengths and weaknesses of my army. I was able to see just how good zombies and plague marines are in hand to hand combat.

Having fearless units with feel no pain is very nice.

I won the game, but it was by the skin of my teeth, one more turn and I would have been blown off the objective and lost.


The second and third games were against space marines. Mainly a foot slogging list with some dreadnoughts and and predator.

The first of the two games was a six objective game with a quarters deployment again.
This table was extremely heavy on terrain. Basically it came to down to the fact that I was able to take three objectives fairly easily because they were not easily seen by the marine player.

I shot him off of one objective by hitting him repeatedly with chemical mortars and the artillery strike. The other two objectives i didn't even try to contest.

I won the game three to two.


The last game was quarters again but only three objectives. It was more wide open and the marines showed their superiority in long range fire.

In the end we tied, we each had one objective and we tied the third.



Thoughts on the army:

The list I wrote up is fairly decent. It wouldn't win me any tournaments even if it was tourney legal. But I like it none the less.

The Chemical mortars are probably the best unit in the army. Ther ability to simply ikill whatever they touch short of terminators is impressive. They are probably underpriced.

The Artillery strike is so incredibly inaccurate that a unit standing on the marker for where it hits will probably be safe.

The Plague Marines are awesomely tough. I really like them. I hae never had a real chance to play with them before and I like them alot.

The Zombies are nice because of the number of them I have. 63 plague zombies can be quite the thorn in the side.

I still need to evaluate whether i like the 2 armored fist squads the way they are and the command squad. I may need to change them up adding different weapons and such.

As far as new units, I have a hellhound and up to three leman russes as well as another sentinel I could use. Just need to figure out how to fit them in.

Thats it for now.

The Apostles of Contagion

So I made the plunge. For almost ten years now I've played Iron Warriors but now I'm gonna do something completely different. I'm building a Nurgle themed army. It will be based on the army list in the Siege of Vraks book III from Forgeworld as well as the Chaos Marine Codex.

My first goal is a traitor guard army with a heavy plague marine contingent.

I've already written an army list and have begun assembling the models.

I don't have any pictures yet, but they will be soon up here.

Necrosius will of course make an appearance as well.