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AT THE POLE OF MARCUSIA

Jonathan Lloyd (starstrike@geocities.com)

The time was late afternoon. Fierce battles had been raging across the polar cap of Marcusia 4 all day, and the patience of both sides was wearing thin. Lord Ultramar was leading a crack force of Ultramarines across the enemy lines in order to engage the Tyranid command section in righteous combat. Little did he know that the command section knew he was coming...

The battle consisted of 650 point armies, of the Ultramarines and the Tyranid Swarm. The Ultramarine force consisted of Lord Macarage, a esplitory librarian, one of the finest techmarines, and a tactical squad of Space Marines of the first squadron. The battle group was attacked by a group of hormagants and Tyranid warriors before the main engagement, and the fighting was fierce. Marinus Calgar was wounded extracting a Dreadnought from the thick of the Tyranid forces and the main portion of the force, consisting of the tactical squad, stayed behind to face the menace.

Turn 1: With the delay of my tactical squad by the Tyranid event tables, and the wounding of Calgar, my techmarine flew into a rage. The dreadnought had had its fuel depleted in its previous battle and would have to be moved into position quickly so its righeous firepower could be brought to bear on the Tyranid menace. Calgar bravely held the right flank, denying it to the enemies. Our techmarine followed the dreadnought, intent of slaying as many tyranids as possible. Finally the librarian arrived, ready to stop all evil psychic powers.

As the turn progressed, I knew that the dreadnought was my best hope, so I ordered the mighty war machine to move foward, with the remainder of my troops flanking it. Lo and behold! the mighty walker spotted the commander of the Tyranid army, a gruesome Hive Tyrant. Filled with revulsion, the dreadnought activated its mighty assault cannon in the name of the Emperor. The shots flew wide, as the dreadnought spotted the fiends' bodyguard. Genestealers sat behind gruesome termigants, and a Zoanthrope sat by a evil looking biovore. My dreadnought was not stayed as it activated its storm bolter to cleanse the foul menace, but the bolter shells richocheted off the hive tyrants' chitinous caripace.

Seeing the threat, my Librarian called up the powers of the warp, channeling them around himself in a powerful warp shield. The hive mind fought mightily to prevent this, but the shield formed around him. The Hive Tyrant prepared to unleash a powerful psychic scream, but to the Tyranids' misfortune, a lurking deamon appeared and dragged the hive tyrant shrieking into the warp. The Zoanthrope attempted to even the score, but the warp backlash caused by the demon nearly destroyed its ability to create a warp blast.

The Tyranid swarm started to lose control. The biovore rampaged into the genestealer swarm, but little else was affected then. The termigants stalked foward, and shot their spike rifles at Calgar. The mighty lord of the Ultramarines laughed as the spears bounced harmlessly off of his terminator armor. Then, one of the genestealers leapt into the air and rended the biovore to pieces.

Turn 2: The turn opened as the spore mines in the biovore floated over the battlefield. Several detonated, taking a small portion of the Termagants with them. Then the Space Marines rejoiced as the tactical squad returned and joined the battle.

Seeing vengeance in sight, the dreadnought ventured onto the shattered remains of a building and discovered a small termagant herd. Bellowing in the emperor's name, the dreadnought used the mighty assault cannon on its arm to cleanse the area of several of the foul spawn. The two following storm bolter shots flew wide, most likely due to the recoil caused by the cannons' deadly spray.

Marinus Calgar jumped onto a small boulder and sighted genestealers moving towards the dreadnought's position. Yelling for the Emperors glory, he leveled the gauntlets of Ultramar and opened fire! A genestealer could not withstand the righeous assault and fell face down into the dust. Bellowing in their rage, the genestealer troops rushed Calgar, their anger at him allowing them to break through the loss of the hive mind in the form of the Hive Tyrant. The Zoanthrope lost control, and flew at one of the genestealers - who, not understanding what was happening, tore it to pieces. The surviving termigants barreled into each other, and killed one of their own.

Turn 3: The Dreadnought stalked foward, but ground to a halt as its fuel supplies were exhausted. The techmarine, chanting the emperors litany, attemped to refuel the behemoth, but the lines were too savaged by the earlier attack for him to do so. The dreadnought, weakened by this development, turned on the genestealers attempting to attack from the side. With the howl of a thousand souls screaming for vengeance, the mighty assualt cannon fired on full power, smashing the genestealer brood to pieces. Hundreds of ceramic assault shells tore into the area, and the blood of these foul abominations splattered across the ground.

With the death of the last pocket of resisting Tyranids, the survivors ran for their lives. Across the polar caps, the Tyranids retreated back to the safety of the crashed dominatrix, and the Ultramarines chanted victory songs to the emperor.

ORK CODEX BATTLE

Jason Patrick Fahy (fahy@ee.ualberta.ca)
This tuesday, the Blood Angel chapter was called upon to purge the unclean taint of orkiness from the table of Warp One Comics and Games. Having been stood up for a game against Eldar on sunday, I had a skinny-buster army all laid out and used it pretty much unchanged...

Commander Tycho
Displacer Field*
Digital Weapons
Bolter
Bionic Leg**

* I normally use C-Field, but I wanted to be blinking out of deathspinner templates
** If I had another 1d3 wound weapon I'd use it, believe me

Chaplain Ezekiel
Bionic Arm*
Combat Drugs

* S6 with a crozius. Mmmmmmm. :)

Techmarine Ariosto
Plasma Rifle
Plasma Pistol

A character with a 24" S7 weapon. Gives me chills.

Librarian Constantine - Level IV
Force Sword

Chief Librarian Galileo - Level IV
Terminator Armor
Force Sword
Storm Shield
Psychic Hood

I expected to be facing a farseer and at least 2 warlocks, and wanted to be able to keep them under wraps, hence 2 psykers. Galileo is the best painting job I've ever done, hence the shameless powertrip wargear.

Terminator Squad Ferragus
Assault Cannon

Lots of sustained fire dice for mowing down skinnies.

Devastator Squad Caliban

The only change to the list. For the Eldar I had Assault Squad Belasco, with jump packs. With the Ork Codex in my future, I expected to face lots of vehicles.

Tactical Squad Cleon
Veteran Sarge in terminator armor
Flamer and Missile Launcher

First time using him and it's not a good idea, but he looked neat

Tactical Squad Damian
Chainsword and Meltagun

Scout Squad Lazarus
Swords
Power Sword
Heavy Bolter
Veteran Sarge

Rhino
with hunter-killer missile
bolters upgraded to storm bolters

Dreadnought Furioso
Multimelta
Heavy Flamer

Land Speeder
Multimelta
Heavy Flamer

Multilaser
with tech slave

The orks had a couple bigbosses, a weirdboy and a warphead, madboyz, stormboyz with jump packs, boarboyz in 'eavy armor led by a nob in mega-armor (0+ save, then a 4+ unmodified...ick), a bunch of blood axes, maybe 15 gretchin, a hopsplat gun towed by a rhino with hunter-killer missiles and a cyclone launcher, a mekboy with a shokk gun and a LOT of snotlings, 1 old and 1 new dreadnought, a war buggy and a wartrak and a smallish mob of bad moons. I figure at least half of his characters were in mega-armor.

He got the +1d3 strategy rating card, giving him SR5 for setup and 8 for first turn, and won both. We both drew Guerilla War and I prayed to the Emperor for deliverance. Like our beloved Primarch, we would die defiant...

ORK TURN 1

Everything sidles forward. Old dreadnought picks off Cleon's missile launcher from 4 feet away. War buggy rushes Squad Damian, followed by the rhino. His Thudd gun (forgot about it 'til now) kills 2 of squad Damian's troops. The malfunction card blows up his shokk gun before he even declares his target. I hate strategy cards.

MARINE TURN 1

The rhino and land speeder zoom forward and unleash huge firepower at the hopsplat rhino...to no avail. Squad Damian moves to put the rhino between them and the Bad Moons' gunz. Squad Ferragus fidgets. Squad Cleon moves nonchalantly toward new dreadnought, so Sgt. Cleon can trash it with his power glove. Tycho and Constantine move up behind the rhino, Ezekiel gets out of the rhino and pulls an injector out of his belt. Squad Caliban and the multilaser go into overwatch to cover Galileo, who runs, then teleports toward the boarboyz and stormboyz. By this time Constantine has Iron Arm on, and Galileo has quickening and psychic shield.

ORK TURN 2

The wartrak blows away the land speeder. The rhino unlimbers the hopsplat (orkily) and heads across the board toward Galileo and squad Caliban. Mekboy tries to fix the shokk gun and fails. New dreadnought cuts Cleon down with laser cannon. The stormboyz charge Galileo. The multilaser kills 2 of them, they break and Galileo kills all except the kaptin. The boarboyz charge squad Caliban. Squad Caliban lets fly, kills 2 of them, they break and hide behind some rocks. (I was laughing and gloating a bit here.) Constantine Scourges the wartrak driver, burning out the kustom field and stunning him.

MARINE TURN 2

Squad Lazarus pops out of hiding and riddles the war buggy with frag grenades and heavy bolter fire. the kustom field fails but the crew are unharmed. Squad Caliban and the multilaser remain on overwatch in case the boarboyz learn the meaning of the word 'honor'. Squad Cleon, with no targets except new dreadnought, stands still and tries to look inoffensive. Squad Ferragus moves a little. Squad Damian moves toward the Bad Moons, but doesn't appear to be in bolter range. Ezekiel shoots 5cc of HyperStim into his jugular vein, then hurls himself at the wartrak and smashes it to roadkill. Furioso tries to purge the hidden boarboyz with his multimelta but hits the mega-armor Nob, who turns up his air conditioning. Galileo charges the rhino, annihilates it, then teleports into hand-to-hand with the Warboss.

ORK TURN 3

New dreadnought shoots ineffectually at squad Lazarus. the war buggy (?) aims its multimelta at squad lazarus and rolls HIT-MISFIRE, blowing up spectacularly. The hopsplat gun fires, and the rocket chain bounces eleven times, hitting Sergeant Ferragus and Sergeant Caliban. Both survive. The bad moons bounce huge amounts of fire off the rhino, then bounce some more off the Iron Armed Constantine. The boarboyz roll snake eyes on their rally test and hurl themselves at squad cleon (the multilaser picks one off on the way by), the madboy Krunches the rhino, junking it, and then he and his madboyz wave-attack Ezekiel. The chaplain puts on an awesome display of armed might, dispatching four madboyz and a couple minderz. The warphead wounds Ezekiel, but now stands alone and completely outclassed, his remaining minderz blinded by Ezekiel's C-Field. In an even more awesome display of homicidal mania, Galileo takes on the warboss, the standard bearer, a bigboss, several skarboyz, and the old dreadnought. He blasts the skarboyz and the bigboss beyond atoms with his crackling sword, and the Orks' blows land ineffectually on his layers of protective stuff. The warphead nullifies the quickening on Galileo, but his triumphant giggle turns into a wail of abject terror as Constantine destroys him with a Vortex.

MARINE TURN 3

Ezekiel's close combat clinic winds down as he purees the two minderz. Squad Cleon defies logic and probability by not losing any marines to the blood-crazed boarboyz. The multilaser and Squad Caliban kill some idle skarboyz, squad Ferragus stands around, squad Damian shoots at the bad moons but fails to kill anybody (two wounding hits, both on the mega-armor Nob.) Galileo defies logic and probability by taking 2 wounds from a power axe, but snuffs the standard bearer and hacks an arm off the dreadnought. There are no more reenforcements within charge range, and the Warboss begins to understand that he is doomed.

* * * End of Game * * *

I think I played pretty bad. There was a large mesa in the middle of the table that blocked most of my tactical firepower, and I never even got started moving around it; my terminators' contribution to the game was making an armor save. The multilaser worked brilliantly at keeping chargers away, just sitting there on overwatch. Hopsplat guns are no big deal, and I can't speak for the shokk gun since it never fired. (I loathe strategy cards.) The final score was 10-4 Blood Angels, and the table looked a lot closer than that. What saved me was Matt forgetting about the mission and using lots of squids to wave attack my power pieces - Ezekiel and Galileo killed probably 10-12 models in hand-to-hand for 3-4 victory points. If he'd kept the stormboyz and boarz under cover he could have romped through squads Damian and Cleon and picked up some big points. I had the chaplain and Galileo tooled up so they could fight farseers, phoenix lords and exarchs, and it turned out they were pretty useful here too.

I love tactical squads and I have 3 painted up already...someday I'll figure out how to deploy all those shooty marines effectively, and then I will rule the world.

-- Lord Commander Dante - now 3-2-1 and undefeated in three.
Divisio Militaris
Legionis Astartes, Chapter IX
Seraphim Sanguinae


Last Updates
22 May 1997Jonathan Lloyd's report
22 July 1996reformatted
16 April 1996reorganized
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