Elysians VS Viet-Crons

"For our game this week we will crack out the 8th edition 40k rules and return to the unfortunate Imperial planet of Toxo IV.  This time, trouble has emerged in the equatorial jungle sectors, with a number of attacks reported on Binary Petroleum transportation facilities.  Planetary militia forces sent to investigate did not return, and scraps of surveillance footage transmitted from servitors shortly before they were destroyed showed only an ominous visage of a deadly Necron warrior, but of a sort never seen before in the Imperium... Binary Petroleum executives called in some favours with senior Imperial officials in the sector, and the Imperial Guard has now despatched one a regiment of Elysian Drop troops to the area." (Blurb by Greg)

"Our Khommunist Leader, His Rivetness Ho-Shi-Minh of the Hanoi Dynasty, has been suffering from metallikh rheumatism for a few aeons. “Research and Innovation” detachments have been sent to various locations throughout the galaxy to find a cure. A reconnaissance group dispatched to Toxo IV found containers full of a smooth substance called “Imperialum Foetidus ad Puppim” (at least, that’s what the label said), that, according to the group commander, could be used for a full immersion treatment for all Viet-crons suffering the debilitating condition of metallikh rheumatism. Plans were laid to develop the location into a spa with full robotic maintenance services when weak flesh creatures interfered."

During the 2016 Painting Challenge, I painted a Viet-Cong style army of Necrons, with rice-straw hats, sepcifically designed as potential opponents to GregB's Elysian army. For about two years now, GregB and I have been planning to have our armies clash in style in a jungle setting. Dallas was kind enough to host the game and prepared a terrain with palm trees and the appropriate scenery. ByronM joined me in directing the Viet-Crons while DaveV, Dallas and GregB shared command of the Elysians. We used the 8th edition of the rules.

Greg's awesome Elysian army. That's a lot of cool vehicles. Note the amazing jungle terrain prepared by Dallas.

The Viet-Crons, eager to fight the battle against the enemy that inspired their creation.

The Viet-Crons had to defend three objectives. Two groups of Warriors as well as the Flayed Ones were kept in reserve while the rest of the army deployed in the middle band of the table.

[Cue the "Ride of the Valkyries" by Wagner]. All the Elysian transports entered at the same time, trapping the Viet-Crons in the middle. A few support Elysian elements were airdropped and took position in the surrounding cover. Just for this outstanding opening "scene", I had to admit that it was worth painting the Viet-Crons.

The Wraith quickly took care of some snipers hiding behind the palm trees.

The Flayed Ones mowed down a group of heavy stubbers.

With the simultaneous entry of all the flyers, there was action everywhere! Imagine rocket explosions against the Monolith and strafing runs against the impassible Viet-Cron Warriors. Dallas fired 40 shots against a group of Warriors, but a combination of luck/unluck resulted in no losses for the Viet-Crons. Tough little buggers.

 The Destroyers are guarding the approach to the Monolith.

 A view from one of the flyers. Multiple rockets were shot at the Monolith, but thanks to the "Living Metal" special rule, the huge structure was able to self-repair some of the damage.
 

 Menace in the sky and chaos on the ground. Elysian troops are trying to break through.

 Transports are unloading courageous troops into the fray. What could go wrong?

 Viet-Crons are pounded with missiles and harassed with close assaults. I must admit my troops are quite resilient, and it takes a lot to decimate a unit. Then there is the "reanimation protocol" that brings back units from the dead. Very handy and apparently very annoying to the opposing side.

A group of scarabs engaged some weak-flesh Elysians. The little bugs proved their worth more than once.

Heavy combat near the Monolith. The Lychguards would eventually catch up to one of the flyers and crash it down.

A view of the intense battle near the Monolith.

The final shot of the battle, showing lots of de-activated warriors. At this point, the Elysians had too few ground units left to claim more than one of the three objectives.

Imperial News Network (INN)  sent reporters for live coverage of the "Cleansing of the Xenos" mission.

The Elysian commander pointing at a weak spot in the metallic structure, just seconds before a particle whip separated the atoms in his body.

All in all, I had a lot of fun playing this totally crazy battle, with combat and explosions all over the place. The cinematic of this game was on par with any Viet-Nam war movies. Thanks again to all those who participated.

LegioCon 2016: Warhammer 40K Renegades vs. Vostroyans/Elysians

Two weekends ago, I assisted Conscript Greg with his outstanding Warhammer 40K game staged at LegioCon, a local tabletop gaming event that we have attended and hosted games at pretty much since it began. Above, you can see Greg's amazing desert terrain with my Imperial Bastion, LED Skyshield pad, and bunker/wall complex. It did look good!

We came up with a scenario for my Chaos Renegades and his Elysian/Vostroyan Imperial Guard loosely based on the Siege of Vraks from Forgeworld's "Imperial Armour" book series. Here is the blurb:

As an Imperial Colony is overwhelmed by a revolt, the consular guard make a final stand to protect the Imperial governor at his estate.  And they hope Elysian drop troops will arrive in time to save them? 

Longer version:

The game is set in 813 M.41, early in the 17-year siege of Vraks, an Imperial armoury world that's essentially a weapons locker and staging area for the Imperial Guard.

The Apostate Cardinal Xaphan marshalled hordes of fanatical Renegade followers on Vraks, including uncounted regiments of the Imperial Guard stationed there. Our game will depict part of the battle for the Citadel on Vraks, with loyal Guardsmen defending to the last, hoping against hope for rescue from an airmobile elite Guard unit operating in the area. Those troops have a different objective, however: rescuing the Imperial Commander-Governor of Vraks and ensuring that the arming codes for the virus bombs remaining in the armoury don't fall into Renegade hands. 

Conscripts Dave and Greg survey the bleak terrain of Vraks. The Renegade legions of Cardinal Xaphan are seen at bottom; they include a troop of Leman Russ tanks, a Medusa self-propelled howitzer, a squad of Ogryns, a large mob of workers, a penal squad, a troop of Renegade cavalry (!), and a platoon of Renegade guardsmen with a command squad in a Chimera. Their objective, the Imperial commander with the virus bomb codes, is in the Bastion at centre, defended by a couple squads of Vostroyan honour guard.

The Renegades were lined up and raring to go...

As the Death Riders surged forward, a squad of Elysian heavy bolters deep-struck into position to light them up. And they did...

 

...but while the HBs decimated the cavalry, four or five of their number survived to charge in, and their explosive-tipped hunting lances made short work of the Elysians, wiping them out to a man.

Unfortunately, after they swept over the Elysians, the surviving troopers faced this demoralizing prospect... yes, they all died :-(

Meanwhile, in the centre of the table, the Renegade guardsmen swept forward past the Skyshield defended by a Vostroyan squad.

On the left, the Vostroyan defenders of the Bastion, filled with holy fervour, leapt over the barricades and charged the penal squad! A clever move, as this bought time for the Imperial commander to flee towards the Elysians approaching from their table edge.

The donnybrook between the Vostroyans and the Renegades continued for most of the remainder of the game. But meanwhile, the Imperial commander was getting away...!

Elysian command squad awaiting the commander for extraction... they met a sticky end courtesy of a Renegade Leman Russ' Punisher autocannon.

Elysian flyers crowded the skies as they arrived from reserve, spewing death, destruction, and Elysian drop troops. You can just make out the lone surviving Ogryn Bone 'Ead on the nearside of the Bastion, just past the defence line. He will figure largely into the story later...

The Medusa in action. Jeff, a young fellow who joined us in the game, showed appropriate Renegade spirit as he insisted on dropping large templates alarmingly close to our own models...

This mostly went OK, until a Breacher shell landed on the Renegade command squad that had just deployed from its Chimera transport. The result was predictable, most of the squad died, leaving just the detachment commander and standard bearer alive, and pretty upset ;-)

A target-rich environment, to be sure. Unfortunately I'd left the Blight Drones at home and the Renegades had no anti-aircraft capability. This sounds worse than it was, though, because the mission really required boots on the ground and the flyers were just chrome.

Elysian drop-troops deploy from a Valk, ready to grab the commander.

But what's this! On the last turn the Ogryn Bone 'Ead emerged from the backfield and made a dash for the target... he needed to roll 11 or 12 to make the grab. The first die came up a six! Then the second... a three :-( So close!

So the game ended in a draw...? Yeah, that's it. The Renegades failed to capture the virus bomb codes, though, and we presume that the Imperial commander was the subject of a battlefield execution by the Elysians. Life is cheap in the 41st Millennium and as they say, no matter what happens, "you will not be missed"...

Thanks to LegioCon for inviting us to bring out our game, to Conscript Greg for putting it on, Conscript Dave for his copious 40K rules knowledge and infectious sportsman spirit, and to Gabriel and Jeff for playing it with us, we hope you had a good time.

The New 40K - Elysians vs. Nurgle Marines Battle Report

Scary huh? And me with no anti-aircraft...

Last Thursday night I decided it was time to try out the new 40K rules - the seventh edition that just landed about three weeks ago. I'd bought the rules on the release weekend and of course have been reading the forums to get a sense of their reception. It seemed like the biggest changes were in the new "Psychic Phase" and with the new "Tactical Objectives" that spice up the game somewhat. So I got ahold of Conscript Greg to solicit a game. He brought his fully airborne Elysian army to face off against my Nurgle Chaos Space Marines.

You saw Greg's six (!) flyers in the first picture - here's the guys that ride in them.

And here's what I brought - three squads of seven Plague Marines each in a Rhino, a Blight Drone, Sorceror, Chaos Lord in Terminator armour, six Terminators, and...

...a Land Raider :-)  1500 points.

We randomly generated a mission and got the one where you lay out six objectives, and VPs are determined solely by accomplishing the Tactical Objectives. Fortunately I'd bought a set of the spiffy Tactical Objective cards so we didn't need to faff around with rolling dice. Thank God for that because we each started with six Tactical Objectives...

We took turns placing the objectives. I took care not to repeat my typical mistake of putting objectives close to or in my own deployment zone. I intend to be moving towards the enemy during the game, so putting objectives in my own zone is counter-productive. I'd either have to leave a unit behind to hold it, or move something back to get it at the end of the game. Either way I'd get screwed, because the enemy will overwhelm my single holding unit, or I'll be abandoning other objectives to retake that one! Better to place them not where you are starting out, but where you intend to end up...

I was scared witless of all those flyers and me without any AAA. Undeterred, however, I got the first turn and stroked off for the objective markers. I held some crappy cards (kill the enemy psyker, destroy an enemy fortification) that were impossible to achieve (he had no psyker or fort), but some good ones too - take three objectives for d3 VPs, and take Objective 1. Fortunately the new rules provide that any unit (in a normal force-comp army anyway) is scoring, so I could roll the Land Raider, Rhinos and Drone up to objectives and control them. Very handy, and I did so. Greg had deployed a squad and some heavy weapons in the Skyshield landing pad and shot at me in his turn.

In turn two I redeployed a bit and grabbed another objective. They were "Mysterious" and the roll was lucky, it got the controlling unit the "Skyfire" AA ability. I also almost wiped out the squad on the pad for another VP but that would have to wait until my turn 3, getting me a VP for First Blood. But on the bottom of turn 2 "Hell was unleashed" and six flyers appeared...

It could've been worse for sure. Two Rhinos got knocked out and their occupants Pinned (it just occurred to me now that their Fearless rule might have rendered the Plague Marines immune from Pinning, I'll need to check that). Lots of shots from the Punisher cannons but not a ton of damage. I managed to knock down a random flyer and it turned out well for me - it was about the only one with a gun that could hurt the Land Raider.

Meanwhile the infamous "Bile Cyclist of Nurgle" worked his way around to the Elysian command squad and puked up all over the lot. This gained me a VP from a card ("slay an enemy character") plus two more: one each for Linebreaker and Slay the Warlord.

Long faces on the Imperial side got longer when the Sorceror succeeded in summoning 10 Plaguebearers who landed close to the Elysian missile launchers...

The Elysian flyers circled overhead but lacked any real punch to deal with the tough Nurgle dudes. We decided to call the game at the bottom of turn 4.

The Nurgle lads ended up with 8 VPs to the Elysians' 2. A pretty tough outing for Greg as his boys are overmatched against MEQs - let alone the T5-Feel-No-Pain Nurgle crew. He's contemplating more anti-armour stuff and that would be a good idea. Me, I would recommend reducing the Elysian component to a detachment, and adding a detachment of leg Guardsmen supported by armour. I've faced that combo before and it is brutal.

I enjoyed seventh edition, but that's not surprising because I liked sixth and this edition is not much different. The one thing I worry about a bit is how the changes in the Psychic rules will affect armies like Eldar that field buffed out psykers already... it seems like seventh has pumped up psykers even more, and it remains to be seen how this may affect game balance.  

We're Terminators, We Don't Do "Objectives".

Last night Greg brought over his amazingly painted Elysian Drop Troop army for a game of 40K against my Black Templars. (Further amortization of the Stalingrad terrain was an added bonus). The random scenario we dialled up involved placing four objectives on the table (the ammo canisters visible deployed in a rough square around the middle of the table: in woods at centre left; directly north of this location in a ruined building; straight east of that on a sidewalk; and due south of that on the southern lip of the crater). The player who controlled the most objectives at the end of the game wins.

Deployment was funky as well: table halves with up to two Troops and one HQ on table, the rest coming either from Reserve or directly on-board on Turn 2.

Since the Guard are organized as "platoons" that meant a lot of stuff on table for Greg; for me, not so much. Just the two Rhinos, each with a full complement of Templars and one also containing the Emperor's Champion. These I tried to deploy behind a bit of cover.

My plan was to leave the "sidewalk" objective and try to take the others. My whole army moves fast (Rhinos, Land Raider with Terminator Squad, Landspeeder with multi-melta, Assault squad and Chaplain with jump pack) so I didn't fuss with Reserves, just brought everything on in Turn 2. I counted on Greg's almost pathological hatred of the "Reserves" rule to cause him to do the same.

Just out of shot to the south-west, the first Rhino has been immobilized and the Templars have scurried into the woods containing the objective. They were quickly vaporized by the Punisher cannons on the Vulture gunship.

The Assault squad jumped into action and tried not to be too disturbed by the chunks of oolitic kidney, Larriman's Glands and tri-bladders scattered around the woods :-( Over to their right, the other Templar squad hops into the crater after destroying the Valk with a melta-shot.

The valiant Landspeeder crew zoom their vehicle up to a Valk for a multi-melta shot. Missed as usual, the next turn the Speeder crashes in flames.

Not going so great for the BTs at this point... if we could only get into close combat...

Here comes the Land Raider full of Terminator goodness...

Greg's platoon command watches as the sniper squad and Company command in the ruined building get trampled by my Assault squad. The Land Raider had immobilized the Vendetta but its Punisher cannons were still in operation... so the Assault Squad ganged up on it with a power fist, meltabombs and krak grenades... and the best result was "Immobilized". At least we rolled 5 "3"s and got rid of the weapons.

Off to the left the Terminators have disembarked onto the objective in the woods. The guys in this picture have just been shot up and fled from the crater (failed their "I'm an insane Black Templar who runs forward instead of Falling Back" test).

These guys got shot up some more and then ran forward into one of the Elysian squads near the objective, killed that squad, then got shot to pieces as usual :-(

Meanwhile, on the other flank, the Assault Squad was holding one objective and the Terminator Squad another. Despite some appalling dice rolling and getting shot to bits by Guard, it looked like a win was on the cards for my boys... that's when a horrible realization began to dawn on me.

I imagine the Comm-Net transmission went something like this:

Chaplain Cadfael: Black One Actual to Terminator Squad, come in.
Terminator Sergeant: You have Sergeant Augustus here, over.
CC: Augustus, are you on Objective Alpha? Hold that objective, over.
TS: That's a negative, Black One. No can do.
CC: Say again, Augustus, I think we've got some interference on the net. Over.
TS: Repeat, no can do. Negative. Can't hold the objective. We're going to go shoot at some Guardsmen in a building now, over.
CC: Augustus. I have a fething shart-show situation going on here. I'm with the Assault Squad, we're on an objective, the battle is almost over and I've been told that we can't hold it because we're not "Troops", whatever that means. So we have to jump away and try to kill the rest of the Guard army. So I need you to sit on that fething objective and hold it. Am I making myself clear? Acknowledge!
TS: Umm, yeah. It kinda turns out we're not Troops either. Sorry.

So with that disappointing realization (on Turn 6 no less) I had to move the Assault Squad over to near the sidewalk objective and try to contest that for the draw. The Assault Squad did great, cleaning out a squad of Elysians while losing one of their own. Then they parked on the objective and waited for Brian to roll the die to see if there would be another turn (only on a roll of 4+)... and he rolled a 6. Crap. So, pictured above is the last stand of Chaplain Cadfael. He finally fell to the lascannons of a Valkyrie... had three wounds left, took three from the Valk, saved one with the Rosarius, but "Instant Death", like Instant Karma, is a killer. The Terminators threw a last gasp rattle of gunfire at the remaining Elysian squad, hoping to frighten them off the objective for a draw, but it was not to be as only one wound was caused, not enough to force even a Morale check.

So that ended the game! Pretty exciting, had ups and downs, good fun with nice terrain and good-looking armies. And beer! Thanks Greg for bringing the boys out. And yes, you do need another Vulture with Punisher cannons. [rolleyes]