Hagvarian betrayal day two pt.1- Or how we managed to wrestle defeat from the jaws of victory

So the second day of the Hagvarian betrayal kicked off with us facing of against an empty table. I jokingly asked the TO if that meant we won by Walk-over (eagerly licking my lips looking for any actual win) whereupon he said that he had just talked to the guys we were facing and they were heading in.

So unbeknownst to me and my team-mate we were facing one half of the duo from the Horus heresy podcast- "don't loose your head"  really cool guys. Our opponents were running Iron hands and loyalist Death guard. And were running company of bitter iron and a standard list. Albeit with THREE leviathan dreadnoughts. Neither i nor my opponent had ever faced one, and now we were to throw down with three. I was actually kind of excited

The company of bitter iron is a pretty cool and narrative RoW which is to represent the tactiturn nature of the IRon hands after the bitter defeat at Istvaan V and the death of their Primarch. Whereupon they are driven to the very edge of desperation and more flock to join the "disgraced" part of their army known as the immortals. Basically the player can take immortals as troops (souped up Breachers with FnP and can't sweeping advance, but get to snapshoot you as you flee)

The iron hands player had around four Land raiders.

i've actually got a pretty good picture of both below

So many landraiders 

Apparently none of the leviathans had ever seen a turn three until our game

The DG player had the rest of his units (a unit of deathshroud and grave wardens) on foot, and he ran crysos morturg, a loyalist DG praetor from book 1 and gave three units infiltrate. Which syngergized well with his army.

Now, a NOTE of interest. Apparently, until our game that i will go into soon, all other players had identified the fukken threat of three leviathans and tried to kill them turn one. So usually the DG player got to hang back and watch his IH team mate try to save the game.

The special mission perquisites for this round was that we got kill points at the end of the game, but each turn we ended in our opponents deployment zone we got one point a turn PER scoring unit. Which was powerfull. Having read the rules repeatedly and hearing my opponents discuss outflanking landraiders (no gooby no) i asked if they had read the mission? they said yes, they had, but no outflanking landraiders. whew!

SO we roll off, and Alpha legion and Iron warriors get to set up second.

our opponents fortfiy each flank with land raiders, and prepare to have a strong breakthough with two land raiders in the middle. And place the Leviathans to the right, and a frigging malcador in the middle

Getting some rudimentary cover he places the leviathans behind a rock formation.

So this is the end deployment just before start. Hoping to seize the initiative i intend to Speed all predators their FULL speed ahead, and try to snatch as many early objectives as possible, and standing in ther deployment and making them destroy me.

I also hid all my tanks, but since they were fast and the enemy lacked templetes we were not ALL that afraid of being shot to bits completely.

One of the other players went to the bathroom and said, "cover for me" when he came back he saw this

how sweet it is 

He looked at the DG player and said "you had one fucking job mate"

Still, no harm no foul. then the shooting. ALL THE SHOOTING

FEUER FREI!

Somehow my Rapiers instantly killed a land raider turn one. Then my buddies tanks blew up another, and my last predator managed to rend a last one to death

with three sixes chasing three more sixes.

My predators RUSHED forward, and my buddies tactical seized another objective, so by the end of turn one we were in the lead for about 8-0 or something.

We shot all that we had at all those scary Land raiders, but the death guard were more or less left unmolested, laughing at mortar fire, tank fire and artillery fire.

So on their turn two they moved forward, the leviathans raked my predators, and a tactical squad bith it pretty early.

They then flipped their objective counter, and managed to destroy the fourth landraider.Ouch.

Now, at this point the Ih player apologized for his behaviour and said that he was sorry that he was so salty. I thought he took it on the chin with aplomb and said that nothing of the sort was necessary, and we joked that he was just roleplaying his row

Our turn two and both of my Veterans show up, The sniper with HB in the corner by his remaining terminators and immortals, and the Melta ones around the leviathans. I shoot out a group of terminators, blow up a rhino, manage to hurt a leviathan that gets destroyed later.

My praetor jumps out and assaults a tactical squad of DG

My scorpius shoots at some other tacticals to deny them scoring units.

My veterans enter his deployment zone and snipes out some terminators

But overall we feel pretty good about stuff.

Which changes. And this is a good lesson for me and everyone who underestimates Terminators.

Conventional wisdom states that Terminators that footslogg are a points sink that are more or less better left ignored. The problem was that by single mindedly trying to wipe out the Iron hands, we had the death guard stoically advancing into our gunzone. The VERY THING they are famous for. 

So in their turn two they advance into our end zone, ten strong deathshroud and cut down iron warriors like something wheatlike in front of something scythe like. There is an opportunity missed here by me, but fine. 

Eager to prove the mettle of my praetor Votan i slam into the densely packed lines of deathguard. I win the combat by around 12 wounds and his single hope is a double one. He breaks and flees.

Alongside my landraider the indomitable iron warriors march to victory.

The field of battle at the end of turn two

After another turn of insane shooting and levelling our artillery to shoot over the barrells a lá some napoleonic desperation technique we manage to destroy one leviathan, whittle down the deathshroud and the graveguard, and at the onset of their turn three they wipe out my friends mortars

the Iron warriors take a stand and form a fucking battle line (!) and show their disdain for the death guard by rapid firing bolters into them.

No fear here

But the fact of the matter is that they are scoring two points per turn (deathshroud and graveguard have indomitable advance) and they have gorgons in a corner that are moving into our zone. So the points are evening out. Then, screaming into battlespace their kraken penetrator zooms in, fires missiles and wipes out another tank. 

On our turn three My avenger joins the fray

In the pipe, five-by-five, target aquired

Knowing full well it will be shot down by the ace fighter that is an avenger i shoot at the death shroud, managing a paltry six wounds, and kill two of the two wound terminators


We also manage to blow up their malcador, so i get the genius idea of charging his grave guard. And promptly lose thee men to charging into a biohazard wall of flame, only to emerge into a battle i lose.


We play two more turns and it comes down to the wire.

We tally up the points and it turns out that since my veteran broke, we lose by one points.

Had they not fled we would have won by one points.

So SHIT-HOT intense game, and great fun 

How to plan a 30k Horus Heresy campaign - the Cadox conflagration-

So there hasn't been a lot of activity at the blog for a while, from which one might infer that not a lot has been happening in regards to 30k as of lately. One might, but one would be inferring incorrectly. It's just that as usual, when posed with the choice of playing 30k, painting and building 30k or blogging about 30k, they tend to go pretty much in that order. 

But still, so what have i been doing as of lately? Well, quite a bit. 

• i have committed to the Age of darkness podcast's yearly challenge, my commitment is to do a mechanicum detachment for my alpha legion, approximately 1500 pts 
• I've signed up for my first two tournaments. One doubles team tournament, and for scandus prime. I am ridiculously tagged for both of these. And it feels good to have a tangible goal to go towards with my hobby. 
• I've joined a Game club (SLG gaming in Stockholm-sweden) where i get in some good games of 30k Horus heresy with some good people 
• and on that note, i have started a slow-grow narrative campaign for horus heresy 

So i figured that i would dedicate this post as to how to set up a simple Narrative campaign 

”And so it was that the warmaster's perfidy reached the distant system of Cadox, a far-flung system in the galactic reaches claimed by a garrison force of the Iron warriors. While the allegiance of the Iron warriors stationed in the Cadox system remains unclear, what is clear is that approach of the Twentieth legion came unexpected, and unwanted.

The hails of the Deep space orbitals went largely unanswered, but for the curt, immediate response codes necessary for further entry into Cadox proper. Remaining records of what has later been called the “cadox conflagration” seems to contain largely inconsistent records of the strength of the force deployed, while it seems probably that the subterfuge of the Alpha legion might account for this inconsistency, there is still no known explanation for the relatively dense amount of heavy vehicles deployed, no for the seemingly deviant troops of mechanicum fighting side by side of the Twentieth legion.

The Cadox system was an early conquest of the IV’th legion, and was now an important staging world for the iron fourth. However, the lack of general hails from the main body of grand crusade meant that at the moment of the Cadox conflagration, a large amount of troops, materials and tactically vital equipment remained at the ready. While by no means an easy conquest, as it was jealously guarded by the diligent attentions that the IV’th were known to bring to their given tasks, it’s relatively isolated location might go some way to explain why the Alpha legion chose Cadox as their main target.

The first blow of treachery came to the World of Cadox V, an important forge world and an arming ground for the “97” army of the IV’th and it was at the Catal spaceport that the first blow was struck for the battle of the Cadox system.

Provided that you are not keen on writing EVERYTHING from the ground up,i would heartily recommend that you use the Conquest system from Book 4 (conquest) of the horus heresy campaign, it has the basic structure needed for generating warzones, missions, character progression and what is needed to advance the games. It even has a breakdown on how many players are the maximum amount for the set number of missions. 

Now for this campaign there is a very simple narrative Alpha legion (my legion) is attacking a staging ground of the chief opponent (the iron warriors), while other legions are dragged into the cacophany of war in accordance to their own needs. 

For example we have one player who is an Emperors children player who has a Cults and militia detachment for slaanesh. Which i translated that the nobility of the Cadox system had a long suppressed pleasure cult issue. 

We also have a space wolf player that has expressed interest in joining, which will be folded into the narrative by having the rout being attracted to the emergency signals of the loyal Iron warriors, and arriving in force, suspiscious of all participants. 

Now, as the game master (sort of) i'd reccommend that you do the following 

- generate a simple hex-map with all warzones 

- put clear lines of what armies should scale and how, for example 

"instance 1/week 1/1500 pts"

"instance 2/week 4/1700 pts"

"instance 3/week 8 / 2000 pts"

- generate a simple narrative to accommodate most (if not all players) 

And also ask that your participants do the following 

- Generate three named characters, ask for a few lines of backstory, make them feel invested in these characters

- give feedback for each session and keep their themed armies suitable 

- bring clearly printed lists and keep a check on what their own character progressions do. 

Now, beyond having the conquest system in our games, i have chosen to have three "Core" areas

The residential area (centered around capturing the planetary governor, and attempting to legitimize/ keep the supremacy of the planet) 

The military district (military bases, armories and caches of supplies) 

now, for this part of the campaign i generated a simple D20 list, and when you hold an appropriate objective you get to roll on the D20. And carry that item over to the rest of the campaign 

The XX'th seize a vital asset of materiell

The last step of the campaign will be in the mechanicum controlled areas, where after the winner will be decided and the fate of the planet decided. 

Pretty uncomplicated and easy enough to follow.