Battle Report - Tyranids vs Chaos Space Marines

Hello!

Open War deck battle report number two. Tyranids against Chaos again, this time no Knights, but plenty of dreads. The cards decided we would play the Supply Cache objective, where there are 6 markers, at the start of a player's turn roll a dice for each, on a 6 that is the true objective, discard the others. The deployment was two arrow shaped zones on the short edges that meet in the middle of the board - deployment limits units to being 3 inches from enemies, so we could be very, very close for this one. The twist was Eager of the Fight - essentially increasing all move, advance and charge distances. This time John had the lower power level so he got a ruse - all his units that did not move would count as being in cover.

My list was a pair of battalions, both Jormungandr.
HQ: Malanthrope, Hive Tyrant with wings and 4 brainleech devourers, 2x Neurothrope
Troops: 3x3 Ripper Swarms, 30 Termagants, 2x3 Warriors with deathspitters and a venom cannon
Fast Attack: 3 Raveners
Heavy Support: 2x Tyrannofex with Rupture cannon, Mawloc
Lord of War: Scythed Hierodule

John took Emperor's Children, I think it was a battalion, a Vanguard and a Superheavy Auxiliary
HQ: Chaos Lord, Chaos Sorcerer on steed, Chaos Lord on steed
Troops: 2x10 Cultists, 18 Noise Marines
Elites: 3x Noise Marine Dreadnought with Blastmasters and power scourges
Heavy Support: 2x Decimators with Storm Lasers
Lord of War: Spartan

I set up pretty aggressively, with some Rippers and Termagants trailing back to hold the objectives. The Raveners, Hive Tyrant, some Rippers and both the Neurothropes were off the board, using two command points to put the 'thropes in tunnels underground. John had a token unit of cultists up front, standing on an objective, while the rest of his force stayed 'safe' further down the board.

I grabbed first turn, and of course I rolled a 6 on the first objective I rolled for, meaning the game was now a fight over a single objective at the back of my deployment zone, guarded by Ripper swarms hidden behind rocky hills.  

First order of business, the Termagants surrounded the cultists and made them super dead. More firepower from my force was largely ineffectual, but the Scythed Hierodule used the movement boost from the twist to speed up the board and charge all the Noise dreads. 

I was hoping to, using the attack twice stratagem, kill all three, but a bit of a whiff on the first round of attacks meant I only killed two and took a significant chunk of wounds from the fight back. Slightly disappointing, but I had given John something to think about, and would hopefully keep his force far away from the objective.

Noise Marines got out and moved up to clear out some chaff. Noise dread disengaged, allowing almost all of the Emperor's Children to open up on it. In the shooting phase the Hierodule took a battering, but kept standing. A few warriors fell, but the real damage was to come in the fight phase. The Noise Marines charged the Termagants, and I played the Caustic Blood stratagem to do mortal wounds on 6s when they die, which seemed worth it after the marines killed off 20 of them or so.

Elsewhere, the Lord charged the heavily wounded Hierodule, using Veterans of the Long War to wound easier. Using the Flames of Spite warlord trait, the big bug was killed off with mortal wounds (generated on a 5+ from veterans, after rerolling wounds from lightning claws - ouch.)

We now had a big line of Termagants and Noise Marines snaking down the middle of the board, and I was in danger of being pushed back completely into my own deployment zone. But not for long...

My turn 2 and the reserves arrived. Raveners dug up to bring both Neurothropes behind the Spartan, while the Tyrant dropped in next to them and the Mawloc popped up in a nice spot between the walking lord, the sorcerer, the Noise marines and the Spartan. Shooting was again fairly useless (apart from the Tyrant, who overkilled the remaining cultist squad, hiding in some cover on the far right corner), but the psychic powers put a lot of damage on the Spartan.

In melee, I opted to charge one of the Tyrannofexes into the Noise Marines to keep them tied up once they disposed of the Termagants. At this stage I didn't really want to kill them, as they would then be able to fire on several weakened or valuable units. The tactic worked, as marines aren't great at hurting toughness 8 monsters.

Elsewhere the Lord and Sorcerer decided to Heroically Intervene on the Mawloc, presumably to stop him slithering off and charging something more useful. He took a few wounds but in response targeted the Sorcerer, who he had already caused some mortal wounds to, and stuffed him into his big gob. Omnomnom!

John was feeling somewhat defeated at this point, but I reminded him about the speed boost twist and the massive movement potential of the Chaos Lord on steed of Slaanesh. The Lord covered approximately half the battlefield in one go, leaving several units behind to deal with my intrusion. The Tyrant fell to shooting, while the Raveners too serious damage. John charged the rest with almost everything, including the Spartan and the Lord on foot. Hilariously the one surviving Ravener managed to kill off the Lord, presumably emulating his big Mawloc brother.

The Lord on Steed fared better, charging forward, killing off a bunch of Termagants, Rippers and Warriors before eventually slaying one of the Tyrannofexes. This was a problem because the objective was currently only guarded by 3 Ripper swarms and the Lord could easily reach them in a turn of movement.

Over the next couple of turns I cleared most of John's back field, killing off the Spartan with psychic powers (first time I'd killed it - I may have prioritised this over securing the objective a bit too much) while the Tyrannofex continued to keep the Noise Marines occupied.

Eventually the Lord made his move, zipping away from melee with my remaining chaff units to get within striking distance of the objective. Note that John had last turn, so I wouldn't be able to respond to his last move. One of the Decimators also managed to move quickly down the board to become relevant. I had to make some desperate charges with Ripper Swarms and the Malanthrope to try and drag him down.

Finally the Lord fell to the hyper-toxic Malanthrope, after killing all the Rippers. John made a bit of a mistake by withdrawing from melee with the Noise Marines in order to get some overwatch, but this allowed me to shoot the Decimator on my last turn, finally getting a good round of fire from on of the gun beasts, reducing it to a single wound.

In John's last turn the Decimator moved up onto the objective and opened fire on the Malanthrope. Thanks to the -1 to hit the floaty gas bag survived. As the last move of the game John debated charging in to try and finish him off, but with no melee weapon and only 2 wounds left on the Decimator (it regenerated one), he decided there would be a good chance the Malanthrope would have killed him and won me the game. In the end the Decimator held back the charge in order to draw the game.

So, second game in a row the Malanthrope has been left holding the critical objective at the end. This time only for a draw, but I'll take it. I think we both made some rather foolish, sleep deprived tactical blunders, so this is probably a fair result. John's Lord is an absolute beast, but in the end he's still a squishy lump of biomass in a tin, and now he's being digested by the Malanthrope. I was pleased with my 'deep strike' Neurothrope tactic to get some tasty Smite targets. I've been playing around with some different alternative uses of the tunnelling stratagem, and I think this one seems like a winner. Neurothropes are such a pain to get rid of plus are very reliable Smiters. One of them had Psychic Scream as well, so I was getting a fairly reliable 3D3 mortal wounds out of them. On top of all that, the Mawloc did his job superbly, and easting the Sorcerer was just a hilarious extra bonus.

Another fun and surprisingly close game with the Open War deck. So far, so good, I suspect we will play a few more games in the near future.

Double Trouble 4 Army List and Preview

Hello!

With Double Trouble 4 fast approaching, it's about time I decided on my list! I believe the deadline for both list submission and buying a ticket (hint hint) is Saturday the 18th at midnight, and I think I've just about come to a decision. Here is what I'm leaning towards:

The Fractured Truth - Alpha Legion Battalion - 875 points
(Everything marked Slaanesh for convenience)

Chaos Lord: power fist; bolt pistol; Warlord Trait: I Am Alpharius
Chaos Lord: Blade of the Hydra (chainsword); bolt pistol

29 Chaos Cultists: autoguns; + 1 Cultist Champion (shotgun)
4 Chaos Space Marines: bolters; meltagun; + 1 Aspiring Champion (bolt pistol; power sword)
4 Chaos Space Marines: bolters; meltagun; + 1 Aspiring Champion (bolt pistol; power axe)
4 Chaos Space Marines: bolters; plasma gun; + 1 Aspiring Champion (combi-plasma)

Chaos Rhino
Chaos Rhino

Heldrake: baleflamer

My thought process was as follows: Orks don't have a codex yet, I did Tyranids last time, I did Ad Mech the time before that, Knights will probably be everywhere. Haven't taken Chaos to an event for a while, so why not? My next thought was 'I've got a two headed Heldrake, that's kind of cool, I should take that. And I do like the Rhinos with the big transfers on them...'

So with that in mind I started putting the list together. I decided early on that I wasn't going to just focus on killing stuff like normal, and that I would actually try to take objectives and be useful this time. That meant troop choices, which meant a battalion and a nice number of command points. One of those choices would be a blob of cultists, for Forward Operative/Veterans of the Long War/Endless Cacophony/Tide of Traitors fun. After that I felt somewhat lacking in anti-tank so I grabbed a couple of meltaguns in marine squads, and a third squad with plasma/combi plasma to add some versatility. Two Lords filled the HQ slots for relatively cheap, able to provided the reroll 1s bubble in two separate locations. The Warlord will probably go up with the cultists to aid them and be aggressive - if he dies the other one will become the warlord anyway, and he will be hanging with the marines in their Rhinos. With the spare points I sprinkled some melee weapons on the champions, just in case.

I know this is not a very competitive list, but I think it should be fairly fun and has a reasonable amount of stuff in it for 875 points. Remember of course this will only be half an army, and I'm hoping my partners will be capable of doing the real damage while I cause problems with cunning and trickery - and if we lose, well, that's clearly what the Alpha Legion planned all along!

In other news, this time I will not be going alone, as Regular-Opponent-John will be coming along as well. I'm not entirely sure what he's bringing but I suspect I will involve at least 3 pink/purple robots and will be very killy. I would not be entirely surprised if he picked up the Genocidal Maniac award, as it is very much in line with his play style.

I also know Dave Weston of the Confessions of a 40k Addict blog is attending, and is planning on taking quite a scary large robot based list. I'm calling it here now, if John and Dave team up with their expected lists, someone is going to have a really bad day - hopefully not me!

Battle Report - Tyranids vs Chaos Marines and Renegade Knights

Hello!

Back to battle reports, back to Tyranids against John's Chaos. This one is a little bit different, as we used the Open War cards, which were completely new to me. (John had recently been to a tournament at Warhammer World that used them and presumably enjoyed it.) We played at 2000 points, and let the cards decide the mission. Turns out it was short edges for deployment, with a central objective that could be carried off like the Relic. The twist was that our forces were split into three, deploying up to half of the units, then the other portions coming in on turn 2 and 3. Adding up power level we found my list was slightly lower, so I got a ruse card - if my warlord were killed, the rest of my army would get a bonus (I think it was reroll wound rolls of 1). Also to note, the game would automatically end after turn 5.

This game was also the first time John's new table was unveiled. It's all pretty and textured and in 6 sections so you can move bits around. A bit of a pain for rolling dice on so we used a tray, but that does have the bonus of not seeing dice all over the board in the pictures.

Lists:

Tyranids, Hive Fleet Jormungandr, Battalion, Spearhead, Superheavy Auxiliary
HQ: Malanthrope (Warlord Trait: Insidious Threat), Hive Tyrant with claws and the Miasma Cannon, Hive Tyrant with wings, claws and brainleech devourers.
Troops: 20-ish Termagants, 10 Termagants, 10 Termagants
Elites: 3 Venomthropes
Heavy Support: Tyrannofex with acid spray x2, Trygon, Trygon Prime
Lord of War: Scythed Hierodule

Chaos, Emperor's Children Spearhead, Renegade Knights Superheavy Detachment
HQ: Chaos Lord, Sorcerer (Warlord trait and stuff)
Heavy Support: Deredeo Dreadnought with Butcher cannons and missiles x2, Leviathan Dreadnought with Butcher cannons
Lords of War: Renegade Knight Acheron, Renegade Knight 'Gallant', Renegade Armiger 'Warglaive'

I deployed my Tyrannofexes, the walking Tyrant and the bigger gant unit around the Malanthrope. I chose to have the Trygons come in next, along with the little gant units in the tunnels and the Venomthropes who I spent a command point to also put underground. Last would be the flyrant. John popped the three dreads in a deep firing line and the Acheron on the edge of the deployment zone. The characters and Armiger would come in next and the melee knight would turn up on turn 3. John managed to get first turn, and we were off.

The Acheron moved up, then everything opened fire. Thanks to the Malanthrope, the Jormungandr trait and high toughness, the targeted Tyrannofex survived on a couple of wounds remaining.

My turn, and I decided that Acheron must go! The Hierodule broke cover and moved towards it, while the Termagants strung out and the monsters shuffled where appropriate. Bioacid melted some wound off the Knight, but still left the Hierodule with work to do.

The Hierodule took the overwatch from the big flamer like a boss, and charged comfortably into melee. Popping Voracious Appetite, those big Scythes managed to bring the big knight down. This put my force considerably closer to the centre than John's dreads.

The Scythed Hierodule had done his job, but now he had to face a fearsome gunline...

Unsurprisingly, with buffs from the newly arrived characters and an assist from the Armiger, coming on from a flank (part of the rules of the twist in play), the Hierodule fell. However he had effectively forced John's force to keep back, and the central objective was now well within my reach. (It's the fallen marine amongst the trees.)

My turn 2, and the diggers arrive. Trygons pop up to form a barrier in front of the objective, screened by Termagants and protected by Venomthropes. On the other flank the Termagants strung out to ensure a Knight could not walk on there, while the Tyrant left the safety of the Malanthrope in order to do the same job behind the Trygons. My slow moving 'castle' moved up slowly, and there was a little bit of token shooting. Time to weather the storm...

John's turn three, and the butcher cannons lit up the Tyranids. The Knight was forced to move on from John's edge, the Armiger moved up but the dread line stayed back and received their buffs. The Venomthropes were first to go, all brought down by a single dread. Next the Prime dropped, while the Termagants around it were killed off with missiles. Some long range fire killed off the injured Tyrannofex for good measure. Finally the Armiger charged the Trygon and the last of it's remaining Termagant screen, killing off the monster before it could strike and leaving the Termagants to flee, now out of Synapse range. That was brutal, but I wasn't out of it just yet.

My turn 3, and the Flyrant arrived near the dread line. The Malanthrope finally reached the objective and the remaining Termagants ran in front to screen. Shooting and Psychic dropped the Armiger down to a single wound, but the infernal machine would not fall! In what might have been the play of the game, the Flying Tyrant got a 12 inch charge on a Deredeo and managed to pile in to tie up the Leviathan as well, John realising too late his error in positioning them so close.

John, now running out of time, focused his remaining firepower on removing the Termagants, reducing them to a single model (who survived with the use of a command reroll!) The Armiger managed to get a long enough charge to get into the Malanthrope by piling in to the gant at a weird angle, but failed to kill it. In return I sadly failed to kill the 1 wound Armiger with the Malanthrope.

Elsewhere the Knight charged the Tyrant, but somehow failed to kill it. I was all ready to lose the Tyrant here but it's 4+ invulnerable saves held out, with a bit of command point help. More importantly the Knight had to stay back rather than moving further up the board.

In my turn 4 I moved the Malanthrope back and tried to shield it with everything. The Flyrant managed to kill the Armiger in the psychic phase, while the one remaining Termagant moved directly in the Knight's path to hopefully force it to take a slightly longer path to the Malanthrope.

John's shooting phase was expectedly brutal. The two Tyrants and the gant were killed, leaving the Knight looking to charge the Tyrannofex and also hit the Malanthrope. We measured it up, and the Knight was just outside of 12 inches of the Malanthrope, and therefore unable to declare it a target of a charge. That one Termagant had just about forced it's movement to deviate enough to keep it at bay! The Knight got a big charge anyway, crushed the Tyrannofex with the fist and attempted to throw it at the Malanthrope, but it wasn't enough damage to kill the warlord.

And with that, my last model remaining floated out of combat with the Knight, carrying the objective with it (apparently you can do this in the Open War version of the Relic). Victory for the Tyranids, just about!

In the end this was a fun game, a bit of a shooting gallery for John but in the end playing to the mission paid off. In hindsight John thought he should have put both his Knights on in turn 1, which I think I agree with, it would have been very tricky to stop him rampaging all over the objective had he done so. The Open War cards were a bit random, but also quite fun, though my ruse went unused - I considered throwing the warlord in to get killed, but in the end I needed an untargetable character too much. I think we will give them another go soon.

Double Trouble 4 thoughts

Hello!

As you may remember, not too long ago I attended an unusual 40K tournament called Double Trouble 3, and that it was a blast. It was a 3 game doubles tournament where each round your partner was randomly selected, giving you 3 different partners and 6 different opponents, all things being well. (Reports from my battles can be found here, here and here.) Well, looks like I'm going to do it all again at Double Trouble 4!

If you haven't already heard or clicked the link above, the format and venue is exactly the same, 875 points per player, 3 games with random partner and opponents, at Element Games. The event will be held on Saturday the 1st of September - so it's getting pretty close! There are however still plenty of tickets available at the time of writing, hint hint. The event will be run by Alex Brown of the From the Fang blog, and if you follow that link, you will probably find out that it is likely to be the last event he runs, so if you think you might like the format and are available to attend, I strongly suggest getting your ticket and going before you lose the chance!

So obviously, with the event approaching, I've got the decide what to take. The recently painted Gorkanaut is making Orks a tempting choice, but I'm not sure about taking a non-codex army. Still an option, and there is an outside chance the Codex will drop in the next 3 weeks (he said unconvincingly). I took the Tyranids last time, I they did pretty well, but for sake of variety I think they will stay at home. This leaves 3 remaining options. Adeptus Mechanicus, Imperial Knights, or Chaos Space Marines.

This is the Ryza force I took to Double Trouble 1, way back in 7th edition. The fact that I have taken them before puts me off a bit, but it was about 2 years ago so it barely counts. I think if I were to take them, the force would look a bit different, probably a battalion with Dominus, Enginseer, 2 cheap units of Skitarii, some shooty robots and as many plasma toting Kataphron Destroyers as I could fit in. It would not be fast or particularly tough, but it would be brutal for exactly one shooting phase per game, when I spent 3 command points on Elimination Volley and Plasma Specialists, assuming they don't all die first. I'm not sold on the idea, but they are orange, which counts for something.

Option 2, the Knights of House Taranis. Not much variation possible in the build for this one - the army would look pretty much like this. I might be able to squeeze in a Crusader, but I've not done the maths on that. Obviously I love these guys, and I think they would do well, both in the games and possibly the painting competition (I think I'd enter the battle damaged Armiger, maybe?) However I suspect I'll see several pretty similar detachments cropping up for DT4, so it might not be a very original choice.

The final choice then is the Alpha Legion warband known as the Fractured Truth. Not my prettiest army, but still quite striking I think. I'm not quite sure what I'd take, but I think in the name of coolness I'd have to fit the two-headed Heldrake in there. It's fair to assume there would also be a sizable unit of Cultists and probably some plasma-toting marines in Rhinos. Throw in a couple of HQs and we're pretty much there. Another option would be to go heavy on dreads with the Helbrutes and/or Contemptors. I'm actually leaning towards this option for the ability to have a bit of variety in the force and take advantage of some actual mobility and play for objectives rather than just killing stuff.

Anyway, I'm undecided. Feel free to shout suggestions to me in the comments. Also, if you can, please consider heading over to Stockport on September the 1st for Double Trouble 4. It'll be really fun!

Wrath and Glory: Blessings Unheralded - 'Review'

Hello!

As you may have read here, I was planning on writing a bit of a report of my session running Blessings Unheralded, the Wrath and Glory introduction adventure. This was both my first go at Wrath and Glory (obviously, at the time of writing the full game isn't even out yet) and also my first go at running a pregenerated adventure module, rather than making up my own content. I'm going to split this into three parts. The first is what I and my players thought of the game itself. Secondly I will 'review' the module itself. Finally there will be a little write up of what happened in the session itself. Obviously this last section will contain spoilers, so if you are going to be playing in the module, don't read that bit!

The Game

The response to the Wrath and Glory system was largely positive. At the start two of the players had declared that they didn't like dice pool systems, and one had never played a pen and paper RPG, so I think we gave the game a fairly tough task to win the group over. I'm pretty sure I got a fair few things wrong, but the players still picked up the core mechanic pretty quickly and felt confident enough to make use of the titular Wrath and Glory resources during play without too much prompting from myself. Most of the group is used to D&D 5E so it felt complicated to begin with but I think we all thought by the end that it was actually quite straight forward.

The group consisted of 4 LARPers, which definitely helped given the narrative focus of the game. Everyone loved the character objectives, and by the end all of them had been achieved. The group also made good use of the ability to spend a Wrath point to make a narrative declaration, which to my mind made running the game more fun and cooperative. We also had an interesting use of the Inquisitorial Acolyte's ability to call in a favour from their Inquisitor and had the Guardsman use their ability to take a bullet for someone. It was nice to see this stuff coming into play rather than just being an optional, often sidelined bonus like the Inspiration mechanic in D&D.

In terms of balance, it did seem like the four characters the players chose were roughly even in terms of their abilities. The mob mechanic made mowing down chaff enemies simple enough for all the characters while the ability of named enemies to use Ruin to soak or perform special abilities makes them feel like a threat. The battles took a while to resolve but I'm pretty sure this would speed up with experience, and was still considerably quicker than the old Dark Heresy calculators at dawn style.

Of course, it's not perfect. If I have to pick the nits, there are some mechanics that are confusingly or just unimaginatively named. The Wrath dice, for instance, does not generate Wrath, while 'Soak' to turn wounds into shock feels a bit phoned in. There are a few things that are not entirely clear, and several rules are suspiciously missing from this version. Some of the mechanics do feel a bit too gamey - to go back to 'Soak', the option to turn wounds into shock is usually the correct one to take, but not always. It's hard to imagine what this represents in the game world - is the Guardsman taking a split second to decide if they should block the blast from the grenade or just take it on the chin? We also noticed that the players racked up a massive pile of Glory, ending the session with 5 or so still in the bank. I'm not sure if there is supposed to be a limit to how much they can accumulate, but I couldn't find it if there is. Having that much doesn't make the resource feel very special.

All things considered, we liked the system and all of the players said they'd play it again. Most of them agreed it was stronger than the Dark Heresy system and personally I'm pretty set on purchasing the book when it becomes available.

The Module

Though we all had fun with the system, I found the module a little difficult to follow. In my preparation I drew out a flow chart of probably events, but that largely went out of the window. The adventure starts with a nice little combat to show the players the ropes, with enemies hopelessly outclassed. Though it is a bit convenient that things kick off as soon as the players arrive, it does set the scene and immediately got the players' heresy senses tingling.

After the opening there is an investigation section. The players meet a number of NPCs, each with some information to help or hinder them. The named NPCs are quite interesting characters, and in spite of my fears the players picked up on several clues and were able to work out more or less what was going on without me just feeding them hints. This section ran quite well for us but I still feel it was the weakest section as written. We went off script a fair bit and missed some of the content, which is all fine, that's player agency at work. However I did find it quite hard to find relevant information sometimes, because either it wasn't there or it was given as information from specific NPCs that the players might never meet or think to talk to.

The final part features a race against time to stop the bad guy doing an evil thing. The module calls for a cool GM trick to be used here, which immediately put the players under pressure. The final battle is relatively forgiving for the players as written, but it is quite easy for the players to 'win' but get the 'bad ending'. The boss has some interesting abilities, but I did have a problem with his stat block - his Weapon Skill and Ballistic skill did not seem to be listed. As I understand it there is a 'default' stat to use for everything unlisted, but it feels like the ability to shoot and slice the players shouldn't be merely 'default'. I'm not entirely sure I understand how it's supposed to work, but I'm pretty sure I 'cheated' and made the boss a fair bit more skilled than as written, though in the end it provided some dramatic moments so I absolutely do not regret it.

As a little aside - it was noticed that the majority of the pregenerated characters are women. Neither I, nor my players, saw any problem with this. I'm sure there are some for whom this might be an issue, but aside from the Space Marine and the Sister of Battle, the gender identity of the characters is entirely irrelevant to the adventure so if a player really wanted to, they could easily just play the female characters as male or vice-versa. I've also heard a bit of criticism on the internet about the artwork for the game and how it looks a little more cartoony and less grim-dark than normal, and a slight fear that this would be continued in the actual content of the game being more 'sanitised' than the 40K universe is generally portrayed. This adventure definitely features a good chunk of grim darkness, so I think it's pretty safe to say those fears have not been realised.

Overall the adventure was ok. Some good bits, some not so good. As a way to learn the system it worked, but personally I think I will stick to homebrew content in the future.

The Session (SPOILERS!)

Our heroes, Sergeant Gael Harden, Battle Sister Henna Orten, Lady Yyrmalla Aleretta and Commissar Victoria Linn travelled to St Deploratus' Sanitarium on the world of Enoch to retrieve their injured colleague Adept Genevieve Parker. Upon arrival at the medical facility they were immediately set upon by a group of Poxwalkers!

Sister Henna Orten fired her bolter into the mob, praising the Emperor while destroying his enemies. The group made short work of the foe, Gael finishing the last one with a bayonet to the head just as the hospital security forces arrived. Lady Aleretta immediately flashed the badge of the Inquisition and took control, calling upon her Inquisitor to lock down the facility with a cordon of enforcers. (GM note: this already caused things to go 'off script'.) She also checked the security cogitators to find the Adept Parker had been moved to the Exotic Diseases ward.

Upon arriving at the ward, the group found the patients suffering from a mysterious disease, Abacys Syndrome, causing them to lay unresponsive while constantly chanting random numbers. Adept Parker had also contracted the disease. The group spoke with the medicae workers, as well as Tech Priest Philanon, to find out information about the disease; the first patient was an Astropath, around 20 patients have already died, and there is no obvious pattern to those infected. They quickly became suspicious of the head of department, Willem Konig, who was not yet at the hospital. (Given that the place was in lockdown it would be difficult for him to come back to work and get interrogated.) Aleretta suspected there was a pattern to the random numbers, and convinced the tech priest to help compile and crunch the numbers.


The group took a visit to the morgue where they would allegedly find the quarantined bodies of the deceased. While investigating bodies outside the quarantine zone Sergeant Harden managed to suffer a complication and lose a finger to the bonesaw of a mindless servitor. They found the quarantined bodies mysteriously missing. Aleretta noticed a security camera (using a Wrath point to make a narrative declaration) and hacked into the system, finding footage of the Poxwalkers walking out of the morgue, unnoticed by the servitors. Pushing further into the system (by shifting 6s) she found that the security forces did not have access to the footage, it was locked to heads of department, such as Konig.

After returning to the ward, the group consulted with the tech priest. Together they worked out that the numbers could be translated into Lingua-Technis. It corresponded to a high level security code - the kind that might be used by the nearby food processing and distribution plant. Suddenly all the chanting patients fell silent. The group rushed to the corridor, to find a number of patients getting up and walking to the entrance, including Adept Parker. The now mindless patients are gunned down, the group saving Parker with Gael Harden's field medical experience. (A couple of shifted sixes kept her alive and sedated, for now.)

Outside, unknown to the group, Konig had arrived and, finding an Inquisitorial cordon, he decided to move on his plan, heading to the food distribution facility. The clock was ticking. (Literally - at this point I put a 30 minute timer on the table as suggested in the module for the start of act 3.) The group quickly left the hospital on Konig's trail. Entering the facility, Harden used the auspex to quickly locate the foe, and battle was joined.

The sight of heavily corrupted Poxwalkers gripped the group with fear, but they fought on regardless, Commissar Linn barking threats of execution to any who faltered. Sister Henna blasted an explosive barrel to kill a number of the chaos creatures (narrative declaration at work.) Konig fired on Aleretta, but Harden took the bullet. Aleretta leaped over a fallen beam (another declaration) to reach Konig, but took a brutal blow from his filthy chainsword. Sister Henna moved in and distracted Konig, allowing Aleretta and Gael to rain blows down upon him and finally kill Konig with a bayonet in the gut, before he could infect the water supply.

With the day won, the group returned to the hospital, finding all the Abacys patients dead, including Adept Parker, who died clutching her silver Aquila.

Preparing Blessings Unheralded - Wrath and Glory Intro Adventure

Hello!

I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that I like a bit of 40K. I also play a lot of D&D. So when I heard about a new 40K based RPG with a focus on narrative and streamlined mechanics, I got all excited. I have played several previous 40K RPGs from Fantasy Flight Games, mostly Dark Heresy, and to be fair, had a lot of fun with them, but I always found the mechanics somewhat obtuse. When D&D 5E came into my life I pretty much abandoned the FFG games.

Wrath and Glory (by Ulisses), is something that looks much more to my liking. Having followed bits and pieces over the internet, including the rather spiffing comic features on the Warhammer Community, I find myself liking almost all of the design decisions made for this. I'm pretty much ready to love this game already, however RPG books are expensive and I've not gone full irrational fanboy just yet. What I really need is to try the game for a session or two first...

Enter Blessings Unheralded. An intro adventure that was until recently available to download for free. (It's now available for around 4 dollars from DriveThruRPG - other RPG PDF sites are available). I've managed to arrange to GM the adventure on Monday for a group including my wife and her LARPer buddies (NERDS!). So I've been spending a fair amount of time reading through the rules and the module and making notes, printing character sheets etc.

Most of the basics of the game rules seem to be in here, which seem quite nicely designed. Nice, simple, flexible core mechanics and enough complexity in options that I'm sure it'll cover most of the ideas the players have for creative ways to kill stuff. I personally am very interested in the character creation/tier system that seems exceptionally wide in scope, but none of that is in here yet so I'll have to trust that it will be good. The characters that are in here are rather well fleshed out though, with multiple special abilities and gear and a nice lump of background, including a really cool mechanic for objectives. Essentially the players roll a D6 at the start of the session, and consult the objective table for their specific character. The objectives are all narrative, for example Commissar Victoria Linn (who will be played by the wife - read into that what you will) has an objective that calls for her to threaten to execute someone for cowardice. Achieving the objective will grant an in game resource called Wrath that can be used for rerolls and other bonuses. It's a similar but more defined system to the Inspiration in D&D 5E.

(Image stolen from here)

The biggest issue for me will be running the adventure itself. I've never actually run a pregenerated adventure before, I've always made up my own stuff (with various degrees of success) so this is a little intimidating. I've read through it a couple of time and drawn myself a handy flow chart to get through it, so I'm doing my homework. I even found and listened to a recorded play through on Youtube - run by someone called ELH Mk 1 (who mostly seems to play Star Trek Adventures). Obviously if you are planning on playing the module, spoilers are found here!

My initial thoughts on the adventure is that it is quite well put together, with a nice investigative segment and some appropriately scaled fights, but does require a certain amount of 'bad stuff kicks off just as the PCs happen to turn up' which to me breaks the immersion a little - though perhaps it will be less noticeable to the players. As a pregen for a one shot it is naturally a bit railroady and most of the investigation just 'happens' when the players go to the right places, but I figure this will not be an issue if the players are proactive with their decisions, and if they are not then it's nice that they won't just be sitting around twiddling thumbs until things happen. I'm also happy to go off the rails if the players come up with some crazy ideas - which, let's face it, they probably will.

So I'm looking forward to Monday night. At this stage I'm nearly sold on the game, so I guess marketing works? I'll be back to post my 'review' of how the session goes sometime next week. Stay tuned!

The Fiery Fowlers’ First Foray onto the Field

Hello!

Just came back from a fun week visiting friends and family in sun-soaked south Devon. During this time I managed to fit in a game of Blood Bowl at a lovely new games shop that has popped up since I last visited - Taylored Games in Kingsbridge. On the off chance that anyone reading this is in the area but hasn't already been in the shop, I thoroughly recommend it. Staff and customers were very friendly and welcoming (to humans and dogs) and they have a good range of nerd stuff.

So back to the Blood Bowl. The Fiery Fowlers (Sponsored by Nan Doe's Spicy Chicken) took to the field for a 'friendly' against an as yet unnamed Dark Elf team, coached by George. Given their current unbranded grey kit and their palid grey skin, I shall refer to them as the Injection Molded Marauders. 

Apologies in advance for the extra poor camera work on this one. The goblin snapper had shaky hands.

The Injection Molded Marauders received first and set up very aggressively, moving quickly up the flank. Flawless passing and pick ups got the ball moving quickly across the field.

I think these two brave 'flings got the Fowler's first removal - KO-ing an elf trying to move up the other side.

However this couldn't be replicated on the ball carrier, who managed to break free of the Halflings nibbling at his knees to run in the first Touchdown.

Upon receiving the ball the Fiery Fowlers tried to get the ball protected and moving up the field, but they were soon overwhelmed by the elf Marauders who quickly relocated almost entirely into the Halfling side of the pitch. Without the room to amble slowly up the field, the Fowlers got the ball carrier up to one of the mighty Treemen and flung him deep down towards the end zone. Sadly he landed on his head, which quickly led to another Dark Elf Touchdown.  

At the end of the first half the Fowlers had another go, and so nearly made it. I failed the Go For It roll into the end zone for the thrown Halfling having already used my reroll to dodge the ball carrier away from some elves. I then remembered the Halflings have dodge so I could have used that and saved the reroll. Oops.

For the second half the goblin got distracted by the Halfling Chef and only took the one usable photo. The Fowlers finally got points on the board with a third thrown Halfling. This was followed up later in the half with a fourth and a second touchdown for the Fowlers, though the IMM scored another as well. I remembered the Dodge skill and made good use of it to move the 'flings around the place and out of the grasps of those naughty elves. George had his elves get all up in my little Halfling faces, causing several injuries, though one of the Trees punched back hard, grinding one of the Line-elves into the dirt.

In the last turns of the game the Elves broke into the Fowler half with the ball once more. A spirited defense put the runner under pressure and knocked the ball off the pitch, but the bounce was sadly not enough for the 'flings to recover and score, allowing the Dark Elves to pick up, blitz through the defenders and score again. The Final Score: 4-2 to the Injection Molded Marauders in both Touchdowns and Casualties. Handshakes all round, beer out of the chiller, chicken off the grill. A defeat, but a fighting one and all things considered not a bad start for the Fiery Fowlers!