The Grim Invasion Continues - Ork Crusade Updates

Hello!

Last time the Orks were out and about doing some krumpin in the Grim Dice Crusade league, Da Vipers got stuck in with limited success, but Boss Redtoof himself was proving to be a very tough cookie! Once again, here's a quick summary of the next three games...

Game four was against the sneaky Aeldari from the Ulthwe craftworld. They brought a selection of infantry units, plus a grav tank and a Wraithlord, led by a Farseer, who was attempting to complete a ritual...

Redtoof got seperated from the rest of the force and once again got stuck in, while most of the Boyz got caught in a crossfire between Guardians and Dire Avengers. The Squighog Boyz were once again able to hunt out the enemy warlord, but it wasn't quick enough to stop the ritual from being completed, earning the Aeldari a close win, with much blood shed on both sides.

Heading to game five it was time to escalate once again to 75 power. In part because I'm already going into 10th ed mode and I didn't really want to think too hard, and in part because I wanted to see 9th out with a bang, I decided to add Nipper the Gargantuan Squiggoth!

So with that decision made, of course I had my next game against an Imperial Guard gunline...

The Guard got turn one and took out both Squiggoths with relative ease. Ouch! Redtoof and his lads did get stuck in with the tanks, krumpin a few of them with the Tankbusta Bombz stratagem, but it was really decided on the first turn roll. Nipper did look splendid during deployment next to his son though!

Game six was a real krump-fest though, as the Vipers were taking on the World Eaters! Lots of choppa marine boyz with some Helbrutes for support. Mission involved taking each other's home objectives and burning them, so there was nothing for it but for both forces to go forward and meet in the middle!

In this game Nipper played a big part, smashing through a Rhino, goring one of the Helbrutes to death, nearly killing the other in melee (but for blood tithe points giving it a 6+ feel no pain) and between shooting and falling over, wiped out a unit of Eightbound! Elsewhere the Orks and World Eaters were trading units, but Redtoof had his sights set on the similarly buffed up Lord on Juggernaut. They went several rounds in a duel, shrugging off blows, before finally Redtoof fell (though in part due to an assist from a couple of Berzerkers, chaos cheating there clearly!) and the game was lost.

So three more games continuing the theme of smashing stuff up but lack of mission success, leaving me sitting at 1-5. Not that winning was ever the goal - though Redtoof has now died three times in this, in spite of how tough he got! Still, a lot of silly fun to round out the edition.

With tenth edition around the corner, I'm not sure if I'll be continuing with the league, so this very well might have been my last games of 9th. With that in mind I have had a lot of fun with this admittedly flawed edition, and at some point I'll do a bit of a retrospective/looking forward post, but suffice to say I am very excited to start playing 10th! In any case, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there!

Tempest of War Battle Report - Death Guard vs Chaos Space Marines

Hello!

I realised that it'd been a little while since the Death Guard had come out to play, the last game was back in March, before Armour of Contempt, Objective Secured terminators and free stuff Plague Marines. So I decided to give them a go in a couple of games. 

The first was a 50 PL Crusade game against Brad's Orks (as seen in the recent Grim Dice Tournament), but sadly I forgot to take photos halfway through so I've only got a snippet of it covered over on Instagram. It was a Recon Patrol mission from the main rulebook, the Death Guard were late to the battle, with no reinforcements arriving in turn one, allowing the Orks to do the full Recon Sweep to win the game, but the DG were busy clearing up Ork units on the last couple of turns to get some form of revenge!

A few days later, and I had a Tempest of War game lined up with Sharpy (who I have pinched a couple of pics from again) and his new Codex Chaos Space Marines. I had previously faced them in a narrative game with AdMech, but now they would have that all important second wound, so it would be more of a fair fight. I decided, why not bring the Death Guard again and have a Chaos-off?

I ran a single battalion, using Mortation's Anvil as usual. Led by a Lord of Contagion, I had blobs of 10 Plague Marines, Possessed and Blightlord Terminators, and then three units of Poxwalkers. They were supported by a Malignant Plaguecaster, a Tallyman and a Foul Blightspawn, and a mixed batch of armour; a Helbrute, a Bloat-drone, a Blight-hauler, a Plagueburst Crawler and a Rhino. This is basically all the Death Guard I own, apart from cultists, five assorted marines and some characters.

The Chaos Marines were using the Alpha  Legion rules and had a couple of detachments to fit in extra characters. They had a blob of 18 Cultists, a couple of mid sized Legionnaire squads, five Terminators, Havocs with mixed weapons, two Obliterators, a Rhino, a Venom Crawler, a Maulerfiend, and a Heldrake. They were led up by a Sorcerer, a Master of Possessions, a Lord Discordant, a regular Lord with a daemonic hammer, and the warlord, a Dark Apostle. 

The primary mission was classic Take and Hold (five points for controlling one, two and more objectives than your opponent), deployed in Hammer and Anvil (short edges) with the twist of Vox Static - that Rerolls cost two command points instead of one.

Here's the deployment, the Obliterators are off the board, while the Possessed are in my Rhino, and the enemy one is filled with Khorne marked Legionnaires and the hammer Lord. The objective placement featured one deep in each deployment zone, one in the centre ruin, and one on each flank, by the crates and the ooze vat, both a bit closer to the CSM lines than the DG. I had some cheeky Poxwalkers out on my flanks to stop the Obliterators coming in to my deployment zone, and a major thrust down the middle. Melta armed vehicles opposed the daemon engine flank, while the Possessed Rhino was opposite the CSM one.

After the roll off, it was Death Guard turn one:

Not much to shout about in turn one, my army advanced forward for the most part, with a bit of token shooting from the Plagueburst Mortar and a missile launcher. I had drawn a few objectives that looked doable on the next turn, but also Grind Them Down, which would prove difficult after killing zero units! I had moved onto one of the no-man's land objectives though.

Turn one for the Chaos Space Marines also featured Grind Them Down, which they at least got on the board with after the Heldrake and Venomcrawler blasted away some Poxwalkers. The Khorne squad and Lord disembarked from the Rhino to take on my one, but embarrassingly the Havocs failed to soften it up and after the fight phase it was only down to a single wound.

In turn two I picked up some vaguely achievable secondaries, among them No Prisoners (just kill stuff up to a 30 wound tally) and Behind Enemy Lines. With a good charge roll my Possessed out of the Rhino and the Bloat-drone could use the enemy Rhino to slingshot into their deployment zone!

Shooting was decent, killing off the Heldrake and chipping away the Khorne squad by the crates, before the Plague Marines charged in to control the objective (but whiff their attacks against the Lord). The big charge wasn't quite big enough for the Possessed to get fully into the enemy deployment zone, and to add insult both units bounced off the Rhino, leaving it still above half wounds.

Turn two for the Chaos Marines saw them, appropriately, draw Hold the Line and so attempt to clear the Death Guard from their lines. The Maulerfiend also went for the Helbrute, and notably the Obliterators stayed in reserve. The CSM also had Blood and Guts, so were looking to finish off units in the fight phase.

Some shooting damaged the Helbrute and chipped away at the Plague Marines on the objective, but with the Possessed and the Drone locked up with the Rhino options were limited. The Maulerfiend charged the Helbrute, but got caught with a Multimelta in overwatch and lost a bunch of wounds, before being taken out by the 'brute in melee, after being slowed by the Foul Blightspawn's Stenchvats aura. The Terminators and Lord Discordant managed a little better, reducing the Possessed down to a few models, while the Lord with the hammer powered up to mash the Bloat-Drone. I paid to auto explode it, mostly out of spite. This meant the secondaries were still ongoing.

Turn two for me saw the Terminators fully take control of the centre, while the remnants of the right flank units went into the enemy deployment zone to secure the Behind Enemy Lines objective - the Possessed using their long movement to safely disengage from combat, and the Plague Marines charging into the Havocs - the powerfist champion taking a couple down on the way.

Shooting was inconsistent, but the melee from the Terminators was decisive, removing the damaged Venomcrawler with just the flail attacks, completing No Prisoners for me.

Turn three for the CSM, finally the Obliterators came down, and once again they tried to Hold the Line and score Blood and Guts, while also drawing Overwhelming Firepower. One score got marked off for the latter as the Obliterators blasted the Helbrute, while the Havocs, Terminators and Dark Apostle failed to remove all my infantry from their zone. Disgusting and Resilient indeed!

The CSM were a bit behind on the secondary objectives at this stage, but they were scoring consistently on the Primary thanks to a Legionnaire squad holding the safe objective by the ooze vats all game (and placing a banner there at one point). To that end the Lord Discordant had scuttled round to control the hotly contested crate objective. In a decision that would come back to bite him, Sharpy discarded Overwhelming Firepower at the end of the turn.

Turn four, I picked a couple of favourable secondary objectives that basically involved holding the centre - job done with the Terminators. I also set my sights on taking back those damn crates! As luck would have it shooting reduced the Disco Lord to a single wound, and I was able to get some Poxwalkers to charge in. Overwatch from the Lord's Baleflamer killed six of them, but the remaining four managed to take him down with the Mutant Strain stratagem.

In CSM turn four, the Terminators moved up to claim the crate objective once and for all, wiping the Poxwalkers with ease, and along with the removal of the Plague Marine champion and single Possessed Marine, finally scored Blood and Guts and Hold the Line. The Obliterators removed the other remaining Poxwalker squad as well to ensure the safety of the ooze objective, which would have been Overwhelming Firepower if it had still been in play (though in fairness if it had I might had hidden the Poxwalkers rather than running forward with them.)

Turn five, with the centre objective and my deployment zone one well and truly locked down, my job became trying to shift the Terminators off the crate objective, while everything else stayed still to score No Retreat, No Surrender, that I'd been holding on to for a couple of turns. I killed a couple of terminators with shooting but sadly the Mephitic Blight-hauler wasn't up to the job of finishing them in melee.

Into turn five for the CSM, starting on three objectives already meant the end of turn score was a pretty safe 15 for Primary, maxing it out. The secondaries were unhelpful however, leading the CSM forces to try and force a morale failure on the Blightlord Terminators, and even after the Obliterators got their fists dirty, they were unable to do so.

With that the game ended. The Death Guard were slightly behind on the Primary mission, 40-45, but made up for it on the Secondary mission, 35-25, leading to a close final score of  75-70, and a narrow win for the Death Guard!

Well that was a real banger of a game, nice and close, good back and forth action. We discussed afterwards that it didn't feel like anything totally over or underperformed, everything just kind of did what it was supposed to do, more or less. It felt really cool to both have the extra wound and Armour of Contempt, meaning stuff like the Reaper Chaincannons were bouncing off Plague Marines and the Legionnaires were much more resistant to my Plague Knives. Also once again Tempest of War provided a close, fun game where victory was not determined by the actions of the first turn or two. I'm very much liking it as the default 'matched-play-but-not-tournament-style' game.

Hope you enjoyed reading, thanks for doing so, and stay safe out there.

Crusade Mini Reports - Adeptus Mechanicus vs Salamanders and Night Lords

Hello!

I'm taking part in a Crusade League/Campaign thing at Grim Dice, using my Ryza Adeptus Mechanicus force aka the Helios Explorator Fleet. They were last seen on Crusade before the 'new' AdMech book, and I've been looking forward to having a go at grabbing some Archeotech items, so it seemed like a good excuse to give them another go.

In this campaign everyone starts on 25 power level, increasing by 25 each month with two games at each level, until we reach 100 - 8 games total I think! It had to be a new Crusade so I would be running the Helios Explorator Fleet Second Cohort. We were also using the Plague Purge mission pack, so it'd all be new as far as I was concerned.

Let by Eldane Katronosa, Tech-Priest Manipulus, the initial force consisted of Kataphron Destroyers, ten Skitarii Vanguard, Sicarian Ruststalkers and Pteraxii Sterylizors. Katronosa is kitted out with a Magnarail Lance, Masterwork Bionics and Anzion's Pseudogenetor. I thought it was a nice mix of units with enough melee stuff to take advantage of our 'not Blood Angels' trait.

My first game was against CJ and his Salamanders, playing the scenario Tech-Relic. I can only assume the Salamanders were securing the area from other, non-Imperial forces when the AdMech deployed to claim the spoils. Gib tech! This is a 'search the objectives to find the real one, then carry it around with you' mission - kind of like the old Relic mission from 8th edition but with the relic randomised between four possible objectives.

The Salamanders force consisted of a Captain, some Infiltrators, Bladeguard and Eradicators. Pretty elite and being salamanders they were ignoring the -1 AP the Manipulus would be giving out to the Vanguard. I took the agenda to dig up an objective to grab a tech part, while the Salamanders were looking to wipe my lot off the map.

I got turn one, Pteraxii in the sky and servitors hiding behind a ruin, the Vanguard and Ruststalkers moved up on the flanks. As luck would have it, the Vanguard found the Tech Relic straight away! Bingo!

I was also able to make a first turn charge with the Ruststalkers into the Infiltrators in the opposite ruin, since they were forward deployed. This means the Bladeguard were able to use a stratagem to heroically intervene 2d6 inches and pile into me. I spent a bunch of CP to buff the 'stalkers, split attacks, and butchered the Bladeguard with some good mortal wound output - as seen here all of their heads and arms were chopped off! The Infiltrators did survive though and hit back hard to remove a couple of the Sicarians.

The Eradicators popped out of cover the get an angle into my Kataphrons - without much trouble the Servitors were removed before they could fire. We left objective 4 in play temporarily since it was the one my Tech-Priest wanted to examine.

The Sterylizors dropped in turn two to deal with the Eradicators, supported by the warlord Katronosa. However ignoring their -1 AP and being Gravis armoured meant the flamers were ineffective. The charge did go off though, and the Captain intervened. Katronosa struck at their opposite number, and with some very poor armour saves, reduced him to a single wound, only to get struck down in return.

Elsewhere the Infiltrators and Ruststalkers were reduced to just their squad leaders, leading to an entertaining duel that was eventually won by the Ruststalker Princeps.

With the Captain wounded the Vanguard formed up into a firing squad to gun him down, leaving the Eradicators the only Salamanders standing. No realistic way back for CJ, so a win for the forces of Ryza. No one levelled up or suffered a battle scar, but as a winning bonus I got a free weapon upgrade - I rolled on the table for Eldane Katronosa's Magnarail Lance, getting an Autoloader - meaning a six to hit would become two hits.

The second game was against Phil and his Night Lords, featuring a squad of melee armed Chaos Marines, a beefed up Lord and a Land Raider! The mission was Survivors of the Fallout - featuring four objectives scored at the end of the battle round and a big central radioactive bubble that meant units within had +1 to be wounded. The Night Lords opted for the Kingslayer agenda, while the AdMech were looking to aquire archeotech from the remains of that Land Raider - obviously being held by the forces of Chaos was a huge insult to it's machine spirit and it would be best to put it out of it's misery.

The Ryza forces spread out early to cover as many objectives as possible, not getting any shots in on the hidded traitor Astartes. In response the Land Raider trundled forward to get some shots - blasting two of the Kataphrons in the fallout zone. The Lord also emerged to threaten my left flank, but he failed a middling charge.

The Land Raider however made it's charge and crushed one of the Ruststalkers through the ruin! They were able to chip a bit of damage off it in return but not much, fishing for mortal wounds. However they still held the objective - the AdMech forces were taking control of the field.

The Chaos Lord found himself a bit out of position after his failed charge and got gunned down in short order. This left his squad to charge through the ruins from a slightly safer position to try and avenge him.

And they made it in! But some really poor rolls let them down - a sea of ones and twos to wound meant only a couple of the Vanguard dropped.

And the counter attack was swift - Katronosa piling in to combine with the Alpha's taser goad to finish the Chaos Marines off.

This left just the Land Raider, which killed it's way through the Ruststalkers, the last Kataphron and eventually the Sterylizors who had been sent to claim it's archeotech. On turn five it finally fell to the Vanguard's Arc Rifle, a comprehensive win to the Adeptus Mechanicus but too late to recover the Archeotech.

After that my forces picked up a load of experience points - the Vanguard were the only unit to reach Blooded (earning Killcode Gear Switches for +1 strength) but several others are poised to level up soon. The Sicarians obviously are held to high standards as they suffered a battle scar for being killed by a Land Raider; Mark of Shame. This means they are unable to benefit from Auras until it's removed, but it's unlikely they would anyway so they can just live with the shame for the time being.

Finally, after reaching five requisition points again, I opted to spend three to generate an Archeotech component - in this case an Acidic Conductor - hopefully I'll get the chance to pick up some more to combine with it and have some cool unique wargear!

Hopefully you've enjoyed reading, I certainly enjoyed getting the AdMech out onto the table in a smaller, less competitive and confusing game. The admin phase was pretty light! Thanks for checking it out, stay safe.