[After Action Report] ... and I Feel Fine | Tenth Edition | Crusade | Incursion XL | Kavadah Dynasty vs. The Sworn

Narrative

Inquisitor Draxus' buggering about beneath the surface of Mer'thyr'od has awakened the dormant Mourning Sun. As the sentient star-eating superweapon fires up, the planet has begun to crack open, leaking delicious dioxazine gas into its atmosphere and beyond.

 

The Necrons, their mission thwarted, are now staging their escape. They'd already be gone, but for using up essential materiel regenerating their Monolith and reanimating casualties. As such, they've moved into harvesting configuration, and are protecting a key area of geological collapse while nanoscarab swarms process the mineral eruptions and relay them to orbiting spacecraft. Captain Kaine, smelling dioxazine in the morning (it's like victory) orders an assault with airborne support...

Scenario: Tortured Worldscape

The competing cosmic energies unleashed by the super-weapons of warring factions have destabilised the very world beneath their feet. The resultant tectonic fury may yet spell mutual destruction for all.

(There are four objectives, and three fissures. As the fissures become active during play, units beginning the battle round within them must pass Leadership tests or suffer mortal wounds. The "home" objectives in the deployment zones are within the central, permanently active fissure.)

Objective: With Risk Comes Victory

Capture your prizes while the heaving earth allows it. 

(Standard progressive scoring: control one, control more than one, control more than opponent, for 5 VP apiece.)

Objective: To Ash and Embers

Match the volcanic ferocity of the battlefield itself.

(Kill count scoring: destroy one or more enemy units, have an enemy unit destroyed by the fissures, for 5 VP apiece)

Terrain

I've tried to give the impression of buildings cracking and splitting as the fissures open and rip them in half. The Necrons have deployed structures to harness the fissures' geochemical output: the "batteries" as I think of them, the little mastabas with glowy interiors. Knowing what's in the armies, I've also left some space for the enormous bases we'll need to position, concentrating terrain around the objectives and the lane along which one might push to one's counterpart's objective.

 

(We did reshuffle some of the buildings when Garbutt arrive, but the basic placements are consistent.)

Army Lists

Kavadah Dynasty (Hypercrypt Legion)

Overlord Kophek the Shrouded, Eye of the Triarch: voidscythe, resurrection orb, Arisen Tyrant
Royal Warden Teznet the Loyal
Technomancer Azhad the Ascended

Hands of Exalted Service: 10 Immortals with gauss blasters
Phalanx of the Cold Dawn: 20 Warriors with gauss flayers

Canoptek Scarab Swarm
Monolith with gauss flux arcs
The Reaper's Reap: 6 Skorpekh Destroyers with 2 plasmacytes
3 Tomb Blades with twin tesla carbines, shadowlooms and shieldvanes
Overseer Obryn: Triarch Stalker with heavy gauss cannon

 

Von says: My Crusade roster was defined by the strictest of all possible metrics, What I Had Painted. It's mostly the very first batch of models that I started the army with, eighteen months ago, plus the Monolith because of course I was going to use the Monolith.

 

I'm happy with the individual units in the army, for the most part. An Overlord with a unit of Immortals is my go-to Battleline unit, the big Warrior brick with the Technomancer is expensive and slow but also a reet sod to kill, and the Tomb Blades' trade of a little mobility for a lot of survival tech has paid off. The lone Stalker has struggled to be of any actual use and the big unit of Skorpekhs were an attempt at concentrating Battle Honours that didn't really pay off.

 

Since that start, balance passes have made my army notably less good (I can only Hyperphase one unit now) while my colleague's has been significantly improved (Oath of Moment is a lot stronger and the Intercessors' firepower has doubled). I'm sure that caffeine-free one-Codex Space Marines were underrepresented on the Grand Tournament circuit, but down our way they were doing perfectly fine: both of us have two wins, two losses and a no score draw under our belts. This one is the decider for our first story arc and I'm not wildly optimistic about my chances.

 

In any case, I need a plan! I'm thinking bully up one side of the board with the Monolith, use my thus-far-indestructible Warriors to roll up the centre, and rely on Hypercrypt's ability to adapt and respond. The Skorpekhs will be lurking in Strategic Reserve, as a nasty little surprise to come out of the Monolith portal and charge straight into combat. Since we've decided to abandon the Crusade rules and I don't have my Translocation Master System any more, this is probably the best way to ensure they actually get into a fight.

The Sworn (Firestorm Assault Force)

Captain Talassar Kaine (Tacticus armour: heavy bolt pistol, relic shield, master-crafted power sword, Adamantine Mantle)
Librarian Cathartes Aura
Lieutenant Mithrac Bors (Phobos armour)

Assault Intercessor Squad Cadriel (plasma pistol, power weapon)
Intercessor Squad Orias (1 power weapon, 2 Astartes grenade launchers)

Eradicator Squad (multi-melta)
Infiltrator Squad (helix gauntlet, Infiltrator comms array)
Invictor Tactical Warsuit Favoured Son (Fragstorm grenade launcher, heavy bolter, twin ironhail autocannon, twin ironhail heavy stubber)
Stormraven Gunship Angelsword (2 Hurricane bolters, 2 Stormstrike missile launchers, twin assault cannon, twin multi-melta)
Stormtalon Gunship Foehammer (Twin assault cannon, Typhoon missile launcher)

 

Garbutt says: After some back and forth on the subject of list building, it was agreed that I should fill my list with the units I would have the most fun with... and I promptly burned nearly six hundred points on just three models, which bought me out in a cold sweat.  I am not used to list building like this.  Buuut I love my Invictor and wanted to use both my flyers now that Stormraven is mostly finished.  Also, if Von can use their Monolith, I can take my Big Thing too.  (And that Stormraven is now HUGE.  I had to bring a whole second model case with me just for it.)  

I added in the Infiltrators so the Invictor had something that could trigger its ability and because I've realised my initial antipathy to Infiltrators was ill founded - they're really good - and finally rounded out the list with the usual suspects from my characters and Battleline units.  (I only own two Battleline units, and had the points to take both, so that was easy.)

I hit a complete mental roadblock when it came to what detachment to use... I was determined to get away from Gladius, but the many options available was leaving me paralysed with indecision.  My learned colleague came to my rescue and Firestorm Assault Force was settled on.

Plan?  As usual, I didn't really have a plan.  I tend to formulate those when I see the board and my opponents deployment.  But what I did have was a philosophy that I tried to stick to throughout the game.  The two core concepts of this were Flow and Momentum.

Flow:  I am a nightmare for spending far, FAR too long over analysing the board and every possible combination of possible unit moves...and it's immensely frustrating to play against when the game grinds to a halt every time I have to make a decision.  So Flow -  Any decision is better than no decision.  Make decisions fast, keep the game moving.

Momentum:  This is as close as I got to a pregame plan - Firestorm Assault Force looks like it'll reward aggression and closing the distance, so Momentum:  keep my forces mobile, stay on the attack and dictate the pace of the battle - force Von to react to me.

Let's see how well I can translate those ideas into reality on the tabletop... 

sIx hOUrS l8er...

Garbutt says:  WELL THAT WORKED.

I would love to claim my Tactical Genius was the sole source of my victory, but part way through turn one my usual luck with the dice completely reversed itself and I started rolling stunningly well, whilst the dice gods took a big steaming dump all over anything that Von attempted.  I think my colleague possibly needs to sacrifice another chicken on the alter of Random Chance.

But even with that, my idea about Momentum worked well - come turn 2 Von was forced to cut their losses and completely abandon the right flank of the board to me in an attempt to salvage something from the hammering I had dished out, leaving behind only sacrificial units to try and buy time for the rest the Necrons to regroup and regenerate. But Momentum - I wasn't going to give the 'Crons the time they needed.  They fell back, the Stormraven pursued and dumped Kaine and a full squad of Assault Intercessors right on top of them, and that was the end of that.   

Dropping the Monolith into my back line had the potential to turn things around - it took one of my objectives away from me and just needed one good to wipe out my Eradicators before dropping a big squad of Skorpekhs onto my Intercessors come the next turn.  If that had worked out, my control of the middle of the board would have just disappeared and things could have been very different... but luckily for me, one Eradicator simply refused to die - shrugging off everything the Monolith threw at him before blowing a drop pod sized hole through the Doom Brick with his multi melta.  That guy definitely earned himself a cookie.  Combined fire from the Intercessors, Stormtalon and Librarian were enough to finish the job and the Monolith was reduced to smoking rubble. 

With the Necrons right flank just gone,  their backline in tatters, the Monolith destroyed and the Skorpekhs having never even arrived, there was simply no point continuing and we called it.

But it was a fun game.  Von is well aware that I have long feared the Monolith and I've completely failed to even scratch it during its previous outings - getting to finally kill the damn thing was incredibly cathartic and I loved every moment of it.  Von was an incredibly good sport about the whole thing, egging me on as I shot their only chance of salvaging something to pieces and even cheering when it died.

I had a great time, and if Von had even half as much fun as I did, then the day was a success.

Von says: Let's put it like this. At the end of round two, with my Monolith in smouldering bits, my Skorpekhs still not on the table, and no Marine units completely removed from play despite me wringing every last gunshot I could out of my army, I think my final words were "I hate these rules, but God, I love this game." I was both hootin' and hollerin' for that one-turn Monolith kill and I don't even mind that that was game.

It would be easy to blame the dice. To an extent, I do blame the dice. Leaving one Infiltrator alive and one Eradicator alive despite my entire army focusing those two squads? And that one Eradicator turning around and nailing a perfect twelve-damage shot into my Monolith's worky bits? That's extraordinarily jammy. But also, the reason that one Infiltrator was alive? Because my colleague (correctly) spent and recycled Command Points on Smokescreen two turns running. The -1 to hit from that reduced my Warrior brick to Orkoid levels of "accuracy" and stopped me picking up the kill points I'd need to stay in the game.

We also have to investigate why I was attacking the Infiltrators to begin with. At the close of play I was fairly sure I'd lost this one in deployment and I now have a clearer sense of how. The Monolith should have been on the other side of the central fissure, simple as, and the Stalker with it. My Tomb Blades could have been over at the other end fondling divots for points and I wouldn't have missed them. As it is, my single largest threat was bullying the emptiest third of the table and only had one target available to begin with.

 

I think, in the grand scheme of things, the redeployment nonsense of Hypercrypt has made me... not complacent, but indifferent to how I set up at the start? I keep thinking "I can just teleport stuff around" and while that's technically true, it's a reactive use of finite resources to correct mistakes instead of Getting Shit Done. But I'm also not letting Garbutt use the good dice again. He can bring his own and stop getting Marine cooties on mine. 

Narrative

So, where does that leave the war in Sector Maledicta?

 

From the Necrons' perspective, it's not gone well. One imagines poor loyal Teznet phasing out with one last command from his nomarch: get out of here. The mission has failed, the mortals have activated the Mourning Sun and resisted all attempts to get in and turn it off. Enough materiel has been extracted for the orbiting Black Star to trigger its inertialess drive and drift, clearing orbit while the Space Marines deal with the consequences of their actions down below.

 

For their part, the Astartes intend to descend. It's now been clarified that they can avert planetkill and contain the Mourning Sun if they get a shift on and deliver the "key" to Draxus, replacing the head of Phaerekh Tekeshi in its proper place.

 

It also leaves us, or at least me, with an opportunity to tighten things up a bit: work on some names, and some locations, and generally cement the rather loosey-goosey plastic history I've been working with so far. Averse as I am to "canon" and "lore" I generally prefer a more impressionistic Viriconium-style approach to background, but elements of it are... lacking.

 

The idea is that each of our regular gameplay locations constitutes a planet in the sector - Garbutt's place across the border is St. Wulfruna's Haven, my local gaming club is Mer'thy'rod, the GW branch halfway between (where we're not really going to play again, but past which either of us has to travel to reach the other) is Eign's Gate and... I never actually found a way to disguise the name of the small town I live in. There is an ambiguity in the conceit that vexes me. It's something I want to fix before we return to hostilities.