I went to scandus 2017- Day 2

so still on day one i had my second game of Zone mortalis ever.

this time the match up was Mechanicum Vs Mechanicum


My opponet was a cool dude who had travelled from the neighboring country of Denmark and who i first encountered  at the hagvarian betrayal.

His list was a cybernetica themed mechanicum list (which means that you get an additional 12" for cybertheurgy and your battle bots get +1 initiative) and he had more of a close combat theme to his army rather than my shooty themed bot list.

Two magos, one group of arlatax (Domitar chassis with electro whips, a 3+ save and generally more geared towards fighting in close quarters) two groups of close combat thralls with fearless, a group of castellax with mauler bolt cannons. so a motley group of units.

The mission scenario was that we had boarded a ship in orbit of the Scandus system and so, as the attacker my job was to assault the knight and destroy it's three shields (AV11 3hP), to do that i had to move towards his knight bay, and destroy, if i managed to do thus it counted as me having coerced the knight to turn his colors and swear fealty to the war-master. However, if i failed to do this before turn 4's end, he would simply open all the void doors, opening the ship to the cold void, and leave the battlefield.

The knight was worth 3VP, we had slay the warlord and killpoints per units. So, off we march!

my opponent places his units in anticipation of dying for the knight 

i get to set-up first, and i place both of my thallaxii into reserves (half my army, remember) the Castellax group up with my magos opposite of the door to the hangar, and my vorax are put behind a wall just ready to enter a long corridor directly into my opponents deployment zone , i'm imagining the magos progamming them to enter a neural pattern intended for totally massacring the enemy. A fire and forget weapon of pure terror.

Unfortunately my danish opponents seizes, so the arlatax Zoom towards my vorax ,intent to kill.  While his castellax wand out to fortify the hangar.

His arlatax comes into range of my Vorax, i fire all weapons to little effect, hitting with seventeen shots, and wounding with six, doing one wound. not my best shooting. He charges in the following turn ,and wipe the immediately. Whelp.

It is a this juncture that one of the TO's walk past and declares that the disorganized state that the boards have been left (After the armies on parade before lunch) are now applicable for ALL tables. to simplify matters, i ask him why that applies to us, and he points out to a venue of direct approach into the hangar that i had missed meaning that i can bring all of my thalaxii into the hangar unless my opponent takes moves to stop me.

My thalaxii crush the heathen mechanicum lingo beneath them and move into the opening to the chamber. 

The arlatax consolidates to me, and just as all the doors open due to foreign djinn skein (a roll on the random event tables) my castellax lumber into the path of the arlatax slavering for more death, they crowd the corridor that would let him take a bead on my thalaxii, and open fire at the arlatax, intent on buying them moments by covering the pathway with the castellaxii's immense bulk.

That was when it happened, on my opponents turn 3 he asked me if i knew the random events table by heart, and i told him that the major game changers were a roll of 2 or a roll of 12.

Whereupon he manages to roll a natural 12. I look at it incredulously, and he asks me what it means. I tell him this means that we roll a d3+1, and then we take turns placing a large blast template with S10AP1, scattering 3D6. He goes first, and places it on my thallaxii looking to rudimentarily guide the lance strikes onto his opponents, sealing his victory. The lance scatters right off the board.

My turn, i place it covering both of his magii, one of the castellax and a group of thralls.

No scatter. In one random event i manage to get two slay the warlord and one killpoint. 

he rolls his second barrage, and kills three thallaxii

the remnants after the blast

 Now, i have to say, that without this random event i would have lost.I rolled poorly with everything up to that point, so randomness had not been a friend thus far, but this must reaaaalllly have stinged my opponents. But he took it on the chin and made a laconic regard on how randomness kind of hurt like a ton of bricks in ZM. His danish colleague came over and said that the TO's had declared that lances couldn't pass THROUGh walls. But that still left both magii dead.

his well painted and converted magii. 

my thalaxii jump in 

With that my Thalaxii jump into the hangar, shoot at the shield, strip one HP and then charge in with meltabombs and i take the knight. 

With one turn of ZM remaining we called it there. And i got a victory. Yay. 

The nature of my victory left me with a bad taste in my mouth, but at this time of the evening i grabbed my victory regardless of it's nature, and just bought my opponent a beer and we shot the breeze for a while. 

Then it was time for the knight joust! Everybody present could take a single LoW up to 500 points, and got a card with either loyalist or traitor, which you only showed after you had shot at, or been shot at by another player :D 

Great fun was had and i went home pretty damn late. A good mood and a fine set of players. 

The next day was a big game for me, Vs a really nice Mechanicum player that i met last time as well (good community as i said before), he had a struggle that I've never before known was usual for Mechanicum player, he wanted to have a Mechanicum list that was fun to play, yet not a dick kicking extraordinaire, so he self-imposed limits to make sure that there was some give and pull for both participants. we talked about it a bit and it turned out that he had played games with his mates and some of them turned out to completely trample whatever he faced, so he had taken lengths to make sure that he had a fun crunchy list that adhered to his fluff, yet wouldn't be a pushover either.

I can respect that sort of commitment and he was a really cool guy to face (here as well)

Usually his Mechanicum fights for the glorious liberation that the warmaster will bring to all enslaved citizens of the wider imperium. But this time he was assigned to the loyalists (too few loyalist players) no doubt due to the archaeotech prizes promised to them in exchange for their loyalty.

As far as i can recall he had

Caleb decima
HQ magos dominus

two krios venator tanks
one krios tank
two thanatar with plasma mortars
two fearless thrall herds with FnP
one group of thallax
one group of secutarii with haywire spears
three triarios
one vulturax
one group of myrmidion destructors
One knight porypherion

his right flank centered around the knight porypherion

I rolled for first turn, he used a re-roll dice but still rolled under my 5, so i got to set up first. The missions was for kill points, tanks giving II pts, and IC III pts, with price of failure and slay the warlord in effect


I started by centering my left flank with the Whirlwind scorpius and my infantry to oppose his secutarii and thralls, counting on their trusty bolters to clear out those masses of T3, and hopefully their Multi melta could clear a tank or two

My middle was centered by my knight house (trying to double down to concetrate my firepower and looking like they could actually move through the middle) with my tactical support team in the achille behind them, feel safe behind the knights ion shields.

 my right flank was grounded with my mortars and the praetor in the Landraider phobos. with my recon squad wanting to jump on the building behind my cup. So as to give fire guidance to the quad mortars and my 72" laser destroyers

My opponent mostly aligns his knight to the right flank, and wraps it with secutarii, while keeping his left flank populated with triaros tanks (expressly to use the shock rams against my land raiders) and krios venator anti tank weaponry, his back lines has the myrmidions and some thralls.


So he rolls of to see if he can manage to seize the initiative, he rolls a two, whereupon i breathe a sigh of relief, he discards one of his reroll dice, and rerolls. Natural six.

He then uses one of his one-off skill cards and gives the knight porypherion "it will not die" which stacks "blessed autosimilacra"  these stack, meaning that the knight now gets to roll one dice where it regains a HP on a 6+ and then another dice to regain a HP on 5+. To be fair he completely forgot about this until turn 3 and over the entire match he regained about 1 HP.


So he starts, He advances with all the Triarios, moving towards my Land raiders looking to get a turn two charge with their blasted shocks rams, the thralls move towards my recon marines hoping to bog them down, the thallaxii jump towards objective number two in the middle. His warlord stays in the Macroarid explorer ( a souped up mechanicum landraider) and his krios venators realigned to get a bead on my knight hold. while an ordinary krios shoots as well.

After re positioning his one magos rolls cybertheurgy to let one of the thanatars fire twice, getting it off, the krios venators sound of their archaic weaponry and the thanatars fire off the superconductive yields of their plasma mortars, making a mockery of the knights opposing them. My knight errant and the land raider achilles as well as the knight atropos get's covered with a total of 8 large blast templates. My knight errant gets to bear the brunt of the explosive yields and his shields buckle beneath the maddening mechanicum bombardment his ablative plating buckling and the power core detonating beneath the punishment, the land raider Achilles suffers the same fate and fails all his cover saves, the tactical support team suffers a similar fate and the siege breaker takes a a lighting blast intended for his team.

the last survivors bailing out to flee towards my lines

So my turn one starts with a knight down, a land raider down and my atropos suffering from only having 3 HP left. So i advance with a firm goal of taking out all his armored assets, realizing that i am up a creek and need to minimize the threat to my remaining few tanks.

My recon marines jump up on the building effortlessly and gives fire guidance to my mortars and laer rapiers (letting them draw line of sight from them instead) , my atropos strides over the molten slag of my errant and moves towards his lines, it being the sole thing that can reliably fuck up his Porypherion, my rhinos zoom forward, one disgorging it's marines, and the other one going a bit further to align it's multi melta.

my land raider phobos stays still, my praetor six inches and he goes forward six inches and moves towards the triaros aimed straight at the heart of my lines.

the left flank after my praetor ripped a triaros conveyor in two and thralls poured out, like a mechanicum pinata

The praetor sqaud fires two combi meltas at the triarios shaving off a hull point, and then charging it and making short work of it with their chain fists, the atropos shoots his D-laser at the thalaxiis, and manages to overcharge the atropos cannon at the triaros in the back, rolling a six on his charge shot and he creates a vortex that does D-strength damage ( rolling a 1 by the by) ripping a hole in reality that only grazes the tank, but remain fixed in place. Then charging the thalaxiis and punting them of their objective and then sweeping his laser over them as they attempt to flee.

combined shooting from my rhinos manges to almost kill a venator and an ordinary krios tank goes up in flames, while the marines rapid fires their bolters at the hoplite skitarii.

The Scorpius takes aim and fires a maximum of four rockets (1+d3) that snake around the thick front plate and strikes the krios in their flanks, managing to kill a last tank

at the end of my turn one 

Turn two followed, his porypherion shoot missiles and managed to shake my scorpion, rendering it useless, one of my rhinos gets blown up, and the few remainign marines pour into a crossfire of plasma mortars, the marines squad already out gets decimated and killed wholesale by thralls.

His vulturax comes flying in and rips a whole in my land raider phobos, but it survives with a last Hp remaining. My knight atropos bears the brunt of his porypherions shooting (and not until now do i realize that my ionic FLARE shield gives -2s to templates from the front, and -1 S to all shooting from the front) and ultimately it's heavily armored torso gives way to sustained fire, it's unstable reactor blowing out as it hit's the ground, the resulting explosion killing two legionairres.

However, at the end of his turn it turns out that my ZM contemporary has performed some heroic feature forged in the blood of loyalists, so i am to be rewarded for all his hard work.

All right i think, what do i get, a Xiphon? a Fire raptor?

On wings of fire shall his fury descend.

 Put the kids to bed, i'm going to play blue.

MOTHER.FUCKING.THUNDER.HAWK

 Praise those madmen of the twelfth, i may have a chance of turning this!

My beleaugered third turn start with me firing the turbo laser at his knight , hitting and rolling.

a 1 on the destroyer table. (do one HP damage) the entire match i roll two ones and a two, doing four HP to that damn knight. I also fire all my missiles at it, while letting it's heavy bolters whittle down his skitarii and thralls. As it cannot jink it starts hovering and drops out the solar auxiliasquad with a multi laser that came with it.

Meanwhile my opponents lack of despair turns into hungry opportunity, if he can kill the thunderhawk he will get ANOTHER price of failure point, i realize that he is entirely correct, but i move on, with little choice than to kill as much as possible,

My assault squad deepstrikes in, and takes objective 2 thusly ensuring their death in the preceeding turn. My preator moves forward looking to wreck his macroarid explorer, and my recon marines fire slug after slug of their shotguns into his thralls, hoping to clear a path which they do aso i charge and wreck it with my praetor, calleb decima jumps out . My vortex wrecks the Myrmidions triaros and they bail óut.

my tactical support team desperately fires melta guns at his flying damn vulturax, hit it twice over (with snapshots!?) and grounds it just in front of my laser rapiers, my rapiers and quad mortars manages to kill the last triaros and krios tank.

So we go to turn three for my opponent

his thralls dogpile towards the saux squad, and try to charge, the other thrall squad try to swamp my praetor, but takes overwatch and fails to get into CC. his thanatars fire maulers at my flyer and it takes hull damage from the knight as well.


We call it by the end of turn 4 wherein i have killed decima, phosphexed the myrmidons but i have little left to call on, the thunderhawk bites it turn four landing on a sizeable part of the battle field and killing a thanatar.

It ends on a more even note than i thought, meaning that he only wins by three points. Raising my spirits.

Unfortunately, in hindsight, i realized i said "That does WHAT, oh, av 14 AND ap2 shooting? of courseeee it does, g'damn mechanicum" the guy i played was very cool and he assured me i did not come of as a whiny bastard. But i think he was just a swell guy,.

this was also something my opponents said the next match.


This was to be the last ZM of the day, so that everyone could stay and help the TO's clear up. Which i think was a great idea.


So, ZM, the scenario was that we had infiltrated an ostensibly neutral ship, and had to scramble to take ground and escape with the arcaeotech before we were all killed by Rad poisoning (from turn one and onwards we got -1T turn one and -2 T on turn and so forth) and we had kill points as well, if you ended a scoring unit in the opponents deployment you got 2 VP per squad,. and elites were scoring,

Him, playing Alpha legion marines, realized all his stuff would be dead by turn 5, so he would not be able to win unless he
A) tabled my
B) tried to keep in reserves.

Neither of which he seemed enthused about.

The guy i met had played Warhammer since 2'nd edition and had a lot of old goodies, he was the loyalist general and played loyalist AL. He had a cool non- metallic scheme. i have a picutre of it here

love those old landraiders!

his army was

Armilius dynat
tactical support squad with ten  melta guns
two tactical squad with vexilia
two contemptors

i asked "why dynat" it was all he had for a Hq choice at the moment, so that was that. Overall cool looking army and nice dude.

i deployed first putting my vorax to mirror his tactical squad

and my magos to mirror dynat

he had both contemptors in reserve, and i had my thalaxii in reserve

my one way to contribute to the the traitors tally. 

 the objectives were in both of his sides of the deployment area, so i figured i would let my vorax have one last shot at a kill mission, so i sent towards his tactical squad to steal objective four

objective four within shooting distance 

his turn one, he advanced towards objective four, and dyant stood still looking at my magos with sneeering contempt (as one correctly should when playing AL. i approved wholeheartedly)

My vorax advanced, and shot at his tacticals, killing all except four, my magos advanced and used cybertheurgy and shooting twice with one mauler bolt cannon, by foregoing shootin with it next turn (and in the meantime explaining what cybertheurgy was, which is a bit strange if you've never faced it) and fired mauler bolters at his tactical support marines( surprising him yet again with having AP3) killing six marines outright

his turn two his contemptors come walking in, and he makes a clever decision by deciding to have them move into my deployment zone, since they don't have a Toughness value they are unconcerned with the rad poisoning leaking into the air, and i have to shift them or risk losing the match.

His tacticals use fury of the legion on my vorax, and i surprise him with a 3+ and having T7. Losing not a single wound on my Vorax, and my magos gets to eat melta shots but using the patros cybernetica rule i i shift the one wound i take towards my Castellax. afterwards his other tactical squad runs into the path of my magos, keeping Dynat safe for another turn and trying to at least play to his objectives

A brave squad of heroic alpha legionairres nobly, NOBLY i say, sacrifice their lives to save armilius dynat 

Unfortunately for him, in my second turn my thallaxii come in, and the one with Plasma thrusters grab objective one and shift that squad, and the second squad takes objective four while my Vorax assault and slaugter the veteran squad. My magos and his castellax flame into the squad opposing them, and then charge into them, and consolidate into dynats squad.

My vorax are consolidating towards the troops remaining 

The rest of the game consists of me having all of my units moving towards his contemptors, i manage to charge them turn four with melta bombs,their atomantic shielding buckling beneath the repeated maglocked meltabombs taking them apart andwith me doing my first tabling. Meaning that i score six points for my game. And he scoring two for the loyalists.

This was a slightly one-sided matchup, not in the sense that his army was bad somehow, but rather that my army lacked any sort of AV, and due to that his meltabombs, meltaguns and so forth weren't really applicable, but then again having played some other games i realized that my army was pretty good in ZM, which i had no idea about in advance. But we shared a traditonal swedish cracker-choco and laughed a bit.


After that game we started cleaning up, and the last scores were tallied. It turned out the loyalists won, with somewhere less than ten points. so it ran reallyyyy close.

So the loyalists all took a knee afore the sword of scandus and their general raised the sword high and celebrated their victory, anointed in glory wearing the gilded laurels of victory.

That is not a parable or metaphor. There is a LITERAL fucking Sword, and a G'damn set of laurels for the general to wear. Let me repeat that.

LITERAL.FUCKING.SWORD.

That YOUR name can be written on if you win. So if nothing else adheres to your niché of what a good tourney is, look at that sentence, and feel it envelop you in a lust for glory.

So we were done, i'm putting up some cool pictures of armies and the painters names, just go give you an idea of what the painting scene was like (wonderful i have to say, glorious armies and all of them painted to a high level)

so after that we had the Charity raffle, where the main prizes were Three separate knighthouses, a warhound titan (of the non-australian yappy dog titan) and a lot of smaller nice prizes, like limited edition books and forgeworld blisters.

The first knight house went to a guy who was completely new, and just got into the hobby, who bought LITERALLY the last ticket sold XD good on him, a good friend of the general of the loyalists. The second knight house went to someone over the pond.

The third knigt house went to some asshole named kristoffer sat, so i was dissapointed and stood up and clapped my hands laughing a good laugh for him....why is everone looking at me, and then i stopped clapping and yelled "hwhat!?"and i somehow propelled myself to the stage, and received congratulations from the organizers as well as the magnificently cool guy who painted these (jodi chapman of painting chap studios)


This is a beautifull knight house consisting of ALL knights available, painting in the hauntingly beautifull style of house macabius, including my OWN porypherion. Meaning i can field it twice and then explain to everyone how woefully UNDERpowered it is

This entire army is (again reiterating) beautifully done, and my pictures are really not doing it justice here.

they look so beautifull, don' let my shitty pictures fool you 

Which gives me a perfect incitement to sell more of my 40K stuff.

Next, another update on my Night lords project, for some reason i have now made a decision to do 2000 pts before decembers end

here is a small sample

I went to Scandus 2017 - Day 1

Greetings!

so it took some time but here is the (i assume) long as all hell scandus wrap-up for day one.

Now, since i haven't really written anything since the start of my Knight questoris project, maybe a quick follow up is suitable. The aim was to finish two knights for Scandus, since scandus is a pretty big tourney, points wise (3500 pts) it is encouraged that you bring the toys you usually cannot fit into your standard lists, so you will see stuff like Knight questoris lists, titans, thunderhawks, and so fort. Now, for my alpha legion army i would have needed to bring dual detachments with an Armored breakthrough base to actually fit anything worthwhile in, however, as can be gleamed from my hagvarian Chronicles My alpha legion army (the 108'th, the stalwart, the breakers of the wheel) faced some horrifying losses in elite troops and fighting vehicles, Ie, my predators and rhinos, as well as my veterans got wiped out around five times over, and my Praetor, Votan was slain in some truly spectacular ways (instantly killed twice over, gassed and struck with heavy artillery straight over levelled guns), keeping with the narrative of what struck them makes it feel like i can't really play the same army again, i cannot see my alpha legion strikeforce replenishing that amount of vehicles and elite soldiers within such a short time.

So, after talking to some veterans of the previous Scandus event, and going through yee ole pile of resin that needed building. I decided on doing a 3500 pts Besieging force, with a Questoris knight detachment. The idea is that my 108'th are attempting to capture scandus (which the loyalists won last year and have consolidated their hold on) and in line with this, my alpha legion are learning from their battles with the Iron warriors over the Cadox system and have instituted a siege detachment called the black stripes, or the stone burners. With that in mind i complied a list whose purpose was to breach fortifications and take heavily entrenched positions. I also made sure that all my artillery had the telltale "black stripe" whether it was on their vehicles top, or on the helmets of my troops.

The thought was also to ensure that i had a list that was not too soft (and boring to play against) and not too hard (making me boring)

The army was as follows

The entire 3500 pts 

Praetor and command squad in a landraider phobos, a bunch of chainfists and two combi melta

A siege breaker with hammer in a landraider achilles with tactical support squad of 5* meltas and phoshpex and shatter shells for the achilles

two laser rapier destroyers

two quad mortars with phosphex and shatter

one contemptor mortis with havoc launcher and two kheres

one whirlwind scorpius

ten recon marines with a nuncio vox, and ten shotguns as well as combi melta for sergeant

ten assault marines, two extra swords, and a powerfist and hand flamer on the sergeant

two times ten tacticals in rhinos with MM

Knight questoris HQ choice in an atropos with a +1bs +1 WS and a 3++ shield

Knight questoris troop choice in knight errant with magnamelta, d-chainsword and an aicarus autocannon (autocannon with skyfire interceptor and two twin linked shots)


Now the way a knight questoris armylist works in 30k is that you need the following

1-3 Hq
1-5 troops

and you can take between 0-3 of HS and FA.

For your Hq choice you can either take a seneschal (veteran leader of the knight house) that gives you +1 BS +1WS and you get a 3++ instead of the standard 4++. Or an ordinary knight pilot

the troop is either a standard knight profile, or a newly honoured knight (-1 WS&BS and 5++)

all your knight pilots gets the "knight honour" rank, which means that you can take pilots who specialize in CC, who specialize in shooting and so forth. As you can see from my strange formulation, yes, you chose the knight pilots, and then you clad them in whatever armor you want. Differing pilots complement different armors, but there are very few "bad" choices to be had here. It gives you a lot of different ways of putting up an army, and let's you create a nice influence and flavor for your own army, for a more indepth look on how to design your knight army look no further than the age of darkness podcast the did an episode recently on the subject 


Now, beyond having a standard army list, it was also a requirement to bring a 1250 Pts zone mortalis list. Having personally never played ZM before i had no idea on what to bring, or how to build an army list, so, on a whim, i created a mechanicum army list, it fitted my theme of the Alpha legion pushing their subordinated Mechanicum forces into doing the dirty work and cleansing spaceships, abandoned bases and dangerous areas, and forcing their knight allies into subservience.

So the ZM list had few models (easier to remember everything) where each unit could do a bit of everything

unfortunately i have no good army images, so i have an inaction pic here 

HQ: one magos with an axe, melta bomb, a rad cleanser (fleshbane flamer) machinator array (pumping him up to S5 and T5)
Troops:
six thallax, melta bombs, two phased plasma phusils
six thallax, melta bombs, two photon thrusters
two castellax with mauler bolters, and two flamers each and frag grenades

FA: three vorax with two rotor cannons each, a lightning gun each, and poisoned rotor gun ammo.


Since my castellax and Vorax fall back into programmed behaviour (shoot and charge closest that they can hurt) the idea was to keep the magos (that lets them act as nomal) with whoever would be better suited to clear out the enemy. But preferaby i would just let loose the vorax to roam freely throughout the zones.



The tournament itself was set up as such, you played two games of ZM for every big engagement, winning a ZM and fullfilling that particular table's terms meant that you could "earn" another player an advantage. An example is this, i played ZM on table 3, i manage to rout my enemy and hold the bridge while defending the cortex, this means that i have won that tables resource, which was a warhound titan, playing on ZM table #3 i find Big table #3 and give the traitor (since i was playing traitor) the titan, which comes in from ongoing reserve.

Each ZM match was two hours, and the big ones clocked out at four hours, so in theory, if you win twice, and fullfill the terms of that table, you can earn your side TWO resources, but to be fair, it balanced better than i write, as an example, on ZM table #5 you could win a xiphon, and his next match (#6) you could get a fire raptor, and everything was lain out clearly in the players pack. Traitors always went UP a table number, and loyalists down. Each table was Beautifully laid out, with it's own ZM design (lain out, in the PP, so if someone fugged up the table, you can put it back) and all missions and turned games had it's own hazards and rewards. each player got two "assets" which was like the 2'nd edition resource cards (something varying from free combi-weapon, or turn a penetrating hit to a glance) and you also got five dice at the start of they day, that you could use ONCE during the tourney, and reroll any dice roll (yours or the enemies) and you ALSO had secret objectives per game (similar to maelstrom) and you could score these, and if you got them you got a "world" point. What is that you say? lemme' explain

Master board 

When you win a big game, you have six points, a draw is three for both, and loss is no point, a secret objective is one point, win or loose. And a Zm game is worth three points.

When you scored, you went to the podium at the entrance of the room, and wrote your points up, so you could always see the progress of the match.

world of scandus 

If you won a "big game" you got to take a sector, the sectors would give X points at the end of the game, but if you covered a previously taken sector, you denied your opponents point. Also, some asset cards could take these as stated there.

Complicated? Not really, reading it like this it sure as hell looks complicated, but while playing it was pretty self explanatory.



So, day one!


My first game was on a big table, against the same UM player i met at Hagvarian, i remember a LOT of AT, a vindicator laser squadron, a sicaran venator,two quad mortars, three terminator squads, two of his assault groups two suzerain squads, a spartan an anvilus dreadclaw, and a fellblade. NOTHING in his army had a +2, except for his quad mortars.

So, basically several +2 squads, and apothecaries everywhere.

So we rolled, and he positioned first, his deployment went as follows

his left flank

his right flank nicely anchrored by the strenghth D superheavy 

Deploying second i tried to split my Landraiders and knights while still keeping clear lines of fire, my Tacticals and recon squad had nuncio vozes so i deployed my scorpius passively and my quads behind cover 

my right flank 

my left flank, not featured is the atropos furtgher left and my recon squad taking a high position in some bombed out ruins 

I had hoped to folkd the left flank in as my rhinos were outflanking, while saturating his zone with phospex to create dangerous terrain, the knight on my right flank needed to take out at least one on the Laser vindicators as they threatened my entire armored front. So i rolled to seize

Natural 6


The mission is that each quarter is worth two uncontested VP's at the end of the game, while the middle is worth four. so a scramble for the supplies in the middle starts.

my land raiders move up the middle, the knight errant to the right and the atropos to the left.

A full round of shooting sees a hull point here and there, and phosphex kills a quad mortar, but his troops out in the open are unshifted, while his tanks have a 3+ cover save from the knights large blasts.


His turn one sees the quad mortar on the achilles get shot to all hell, the knight errant eats a full turn of shooting and dies without making more than one (of six ) 4++ saves, and my atropos takes two full hits. Meanwhile he shaves hull points of the phobos as well. His praetor and buddies run out of his spartan but and charges the phobos killing it, while an anvilus comes screaming in and start hovering ominously ,filled with suszerains .

The ultrmarines advance towards the Alpha legion while trying to take the objective 

And so begins my turn two, i manage to succeed with my tacticals , coming in on his now empty left flank.

the Terminators have bailed backwards from the phobos, my atropos advances into his zone, intent on firing his vortex gun and the D.gun. My achilles backs up with my siege breaker, wanting to deny the kill points and seeing the clusterfuck developing in the middle, instead i shoot two TL multimeltas at his anvilus. And blow it up.

the Suzerains bail from the hovering anvilus

My troops seizing ground, making a valiant attempt to seize a quarter and silence his quad mortars 

my tacticals tries to clear his guns and actually make a decent go of it, the MM on my rhinos kills a sicaran venator, and my recon squad guides down fire on his terminators, and then shoot 20 shotguns shots, killing two of them.

My knight atropos "dream eater" advances on a surviving terminator 

The knight atropos imperiously moves up the left hand side with his four remaining wounds. I mange to make some middling wounds on the tank destroyers, and destroy one of his two UM special assault troops.

my praetor shoots everything he has, and then charges ( to deny the suzerain at least extra attack per person) but i feel the pain of I4 AP2 axes, and gets cut down like a dog, my praetor challenges his sergeant, and manages to kill another two suzerain and win the combat by one. but he holds, at least i get my secret objective for challenges.

the duel in question

And on to his turn two.

He does not manage to kill the atropos, but he shifts his fellblade more to the middle. His terminators consolidate towards the middle proper. While destroying my scorpius.

His assasult marines fans out to cover the remainder of his terminators and Praetor in the middle now furiously reaching for handholds and going to take the objective in the middle.

The duel contines and my terminators are all cut down.

My turn three, the assault marines arrive, and do a flower in front of the achilles with behind them and the troops in front of them, the sergeant takes the front, as i cannot see them surviving this turn, I shoot their bolts pistols and flame into his assault marines, meanwhile my shake contemptor staggers towards the middle and snap fires his kheres assault cannons cutting down two assault marines with rending. My tacticals support squad jumps out the achilles and moves towards the terminators.


Now, realizing that i needed to swing wild to turn this, i use my quad mortars to fire phosphex into his middle unit of terminators, suzerains and assault marines, dangerously close to my assault marines, but i'd have to scatter pretty awfully to die.....which, you,faithfull reader, realizes is EXACTLY what happens. The assault marines clears out his marines, and goes down into phosphex covered oblivion. My atropos tries to charge the spartan, but fails, i reroll, and fail again.

His turn three, the knight dies, the achilles dies, the remaining support squad dies.

we call it there, with about 45 min left, we tally the game up, and he wins with about 16-9, but since he can only get 6 points max, and i took at least one secret objective, it could be worse.

turn three ends

The fellblade imperiously takes a seat of honour and takes potshots

So, what did i learn? Well ,for one, i need to spread my land raiders, and the knights should go together, the raiders could not physically fit on the board. And the knights succumbed to bad rolls, and i should not "gamble" with phosphex



So, on to my first game of ZM ever. Unbeknownst to me we had to split our forces into two equal parts, and then have one half on the board, and the other one in reserve.

Also, every turn after the first, we rolled on a "boarding action" result, it had varied results, i seem to remember the following

2- one dead unit of the roller is brought back
3-5 nothing
6-7 everything is difficult and dangerous terrain
12 was a lance strike you took turns to place.

Now, i will make no bones about there being a lot of rules to remember. But i did my best, i faced off against a guy from a club in southern Sweden, and they seemed a bit more competitive than what i had faced before. They definetly followed the rules, and my opponent was reaaalllyy good at the rules. So he played to win.

He deployed, a white scars force.  as below, one veteran squad with 10* combiplasma, a tactical barebones, a contemptor, and a praetor on jetbike with a fiveman command squad. and a librarian with the veterans

my initial reaction was just laughing, not to be cruel, but what the hell are they doing in ZM? 

Now, trust it to scars to bring their frigging bikes everywhere, i would understand if he was defending, but he was the attacker? I dunno, maybe his spaceship was so close they just flew over in the heat of the moment and got lost in the bowels of my ship?

The mission was that the attacker was racing to the bridge, and tried to take control of the ship, basically, any troop or unit that ended in base to base with the command console got to make a Ld test (with a modifier depending on turn) and if the attacker took it they got 3 VP at the end of the game, if it was unclaimed the defender got +3 VP, otherwise all units were 1 killpoint, and being in the opponents endzone of deployment was 2 vp at the end of the game.


I deployed my castellax with my magos, and kept one squad of photon thrusters on the board (hoping that my blind would save me) the Thallaxii also gives -2 cover saves, which affects his jink (whichs is +3 due to WS legiones astartes traits) So i took two sides and made a mad dash to the control console in the middle. 

in this game the defender started,so i just ran, and thrust moved into the room,i needed to take ground and quickly

on his turn he shot up the doors in his path, and ZOOMED into the command throne, ending in base to base....shit. By doing a conga line around the wall. Something that jetbikes are also famous for doing.  i guess?

well, turns out that even LD 10 has a difficult managing a +5 modifier. So the console was unclaimed.

My turn two, we roll for boarding action, and all doors open on a 5+ my opponent opens ALL doors. Fugg.....

well, let's go!

My magos bursts through the door. And my thallaxi moves so that i can shoot the photon thrusters, he jinks but the -2 means that i can  kill at least two marines so his conga line into the hub is broken

 my second squad of thallaxi arrive and claim my secret objective

goes in and hugs the wall to deter further sojourns into my bloody bridge

My vorax arrive and wipe out his tactical squad 

meanwhile, on his turn two he rolls that all terrain is difficult and dangerous, which his white scars ignore.

 the ten man vet team melts my vorax, and his contemptor goes up to a wall and hugs it. I profess some confusion, but the guy next to me informs me that yes, you can take objectives even though you cannot see them, even if there is a wall there. It seems that they have discussed this in the last match...rather vigorously. So he takes a secret objective

he then gives his praetor forewarning and they charge me, the magos and the castellax together shoot out 4D3 of flamer hits, so one guy goes down on the way in, i then manage tank hits, and i kill all but one jetbike and the praetor has one wound.

Shaky cam in full effect

My opponent makes a clever Hit&run into the objective again, and rolls JUST above his LD.

My turn, we roll for effect, and everybody has radphage and radgrenades this turn to show the detrimentar effects of radionation leaking into the ship.

The Magos and his castellax takes positoons to cover the objective and let's rip, five flamers, and with cybertheurgy i shoot nine S6 AP3 pinning hits. His praetor is then blinded by photon thrusters and the alchecmical secrets of their lightning guns takes down his praetor.

My loyal thallaxii cohort obediently follows their magos unto death if needed

Meanwhile he rolls for his turn and all the remaining doors flap effortlessly to close to isolate the hars vacuum of space. His contemptor rushes up to the door. only to fail his charge

his remaining veterans and librarian move forward.

on my turn i melt the contemptor with plasma guns and photon thrusters, and the final veteran squad is destroyed by AP3 fire.

victory grasped by the final dying breaths of the loyalists

Now, if it seem like i'm a bit salty, i was a bit, the guy i played was pretty nice and he offered to show me all the rules. But it sort of buzzkilled my immerssion with the conga lining, invisible objective grabbing and jetbikes in space. 

But hey, that's on me, i usually play fluffy narrative games, and not everone does, and this was an event. So i had fun. and scored five points for the traitors cause, and i got to carry a warhound titan down to the belueagured night lords player. 

so that was my first two games at scandus. I'll follow up with the remaining ones.