My first battle report for the page, this was a spur of the moment scenario that we came up with when we had myself and three relatively new players giving the game a go. So it was a capture the flag style of game, with my newly based Blackstone taking centre stage. Set up and objective: There was four fleets (Imp 2x, Chaos and Space Marines) in total with around 1000 points each. The teams would be Chaos/Imps vs Imps/SM. The fleets would start on either side of the board with the Blackstone located in the middle. At the end of each turn the activated Blackstone would randomly move and then fire at the nearest ship regardless of what that was. A scatter dice and 3D6 was used to simulate this and we took it in turns to roll this dice. Victory Conditions: A capital ship must dock with the Blackstone for a whole turn. If successful then the Blackstone’s secrets are secured for that fleet. Cardinal Darnic paced aboard the Battleship ‘Devine Whim’. ‘I must have it! I will not allow those Navy fools and their pet Space Marines to capture the Blackstone here in this system!’ It had taken years for him to obtain a fleet without Battlefleet Turbidious getting wind of his actions. He had bargained and bartered, sold out allies and enemies alike all in the vain hope of obtaining the mighty fortress that was hidden away in this system. A so-called Blackstone Fortress of all things, or so the scripture said, hidden away under Imperial noses the entire time. However, someone had sold him out to the Navy high command and now the flotilla of ships he commanded now was in a face off with the Battlefleet and of all the luck the Astral Lions Space Marine chapter. He clutched his Imperial Eagle and thanked his good races that he had made the pact after all. His fleet would not have been able to take on the full Imperial fleet without the aid. It might have damned his soul to make a pact with the Lady Araberina, but without her force and her charisma in also bringing more ships in system he wouldn’t be able to claim the Fortress for himself. So far the Cardinal has refused all communications with the Imperials and soon would make haste to the prize. He was only waiting for Lady Araberina to give the signal. The women was a snake but knew her fleet strengths more than he did. Regardless it was going to be a difficult battle to come to secure the station and to compound the issue it seems the station was no longer dormant and was freely moving of its own accord. Turn 1: The joint Chaos/Imp fleet went first after winning the roll but with both fleets not being in any real gun range neither did very much. Both fleets in their movement phases moved their maximum and traded ordnance fire, with both fleeting sending out a few waves of torpedoes and bombers. The Cardinals fleet forgot to fire their nova cannon though, opps. The Imps/SM didn’t but no damage was caused. The Blackstone scattered and moved towards the Imp/SM lines and then fired its main guns at the poor fighters and bombers of the Imperial ships, vaporising them. They were the nearest ships after all. Lady Araberina laughed as she witnessed the Fortress sail further from the Cardinals grasp. The fool had thought to control the immense power of that ancient space station for himself and had even gone so far as to damn his soul in pursuit of his lofty ambitions. While she liked the man’s ambition he was grossly under qualified to meet her patron god’s requirements. She would however play along for now but she was under strict orders to destroy that station by any means required. It was just wonderful that the Imperials would destroy each other before they realised her aims. Turn 2: Again both fleets used their maximum movement to surge towards the objective. None of the previous rounds of ordnance hit home however. The Imperial fleet scored the first blood though, with a nova cannon shot blowing a sword class escort to bits. This time saw the Blackstone move back towards the Chaos fleet and promptly annihilate the Despoilers wave of bombers and fighters. Without realising we had stopped the main guns from aiming at our mainline ships, it was by total accident rather than tactical brilliance of the four admirals parts for it to be shooting at our poor ordinance rather than the ships. Darnic was still pacing, he fleet had launched their full detachment of fighters as a screen but their nova cannon had failed miserably to fire. He cursed as it was clear the enemy would make it the Blackstone before him. Turn 3: The Chaos/Imp again moved the maximum this turn in an attempt to get to the Blackstone first. However, it was clear though that the two moves of the Fortress towards the Imps line had greatly helped. So it was down to the now in range Chaos fleet to attempt to hinder the nearest ships to the Blackstone before they could dock. The Chaos ships did now have some of their long range lances and weapons batteries in range though and so set about trying to cripple and destroy portions of the opposing fleet. A combined broadside from two Murder class cruisers obliterated the Gothic class cruiser that had attempted to sneak around the flank and then Lady Araberina’s Despoiler Battleship managed to destroy a squadron of cobras. Some well-placed lance shots from her capital ship helped cripple a strike cruiser gunning for the docking station but couldn’t prevent it getting there in the Imps/SM movement phase. Meanwhile in the Imps/SM phase they surged towards the Blackstone and managed to get two Strike cruisers and a Dominator class into dock with the Fortress. Additionally the Astral Lions Battlebarge and final strike cruiser pushed on ahead to engage the Cardinals fleet. They managed to wipe out two escort squadrons but this was seen as a suitable sacrifice to screen the remainder of the fleet from the Cardinal. ‘My Lord Admiral, we have word from ship captain Arthus that they have successfully docked with the space station Sir, reports coming in from the Astral Lions fleet is that two of their cruisers have also docked.’ ‘Good, noted helmsman’ Admiral Bane was tense aboard ‘Emperors Vengeance’ but the fact that the Astral Lions had docked also would allow a more expedient success of their mission. Only the ship captains knew of the reason behind this mission, the Cardinals intentions were a mere side-note, the Blackstone Fortress had to be destroyed, it couldn’t be allowed to move freely, like the other ones. Turn 4:
The sacrifice of the escorts in the Cardinals fleet allowed the mainline cruisers into range and resulted in the entire of the starboard broadsides from the fleet to blow the lone strike cruiser and firestorm escort squadron of the Astral Lions chapter away, the Battlebarge was largely ignored throughout the game in reality. In the end though it was now impossible for the Chaos/Imp fleet to destroy the three ships docked with the Blackstone Fortress. The combined Chaos/Imp fleet decided that all the firepower had to go towards destroying the Blackstone itself and hopefully blowing up the cruisers around it. Thus at least securing a minor draw as it was. So that’s what the fleet did and in the end it was a lone shot from single remaining cobra that took off the final hit of the Blackstone. It then went nuclear and sent out 16x lance shots in all directions. The two Strike cruisers, one Murder and one Gothic cruiser were all caught in the blast and utterly destroyed. In a funny turn of events one of the Strike cruisers also went nova and sent out a further 6x lances shots, hulking the Chaos Styx cruiser as well. In the aftermath the Emperor Battleship had locked on and proceeded to punish the remaining Murder class, turning it into a blazing hulk. All in all a fun game and we found the unique scenario was good. Darnic slumped to the ground next to the command dais and he began to sob, everything was gone, he was damned. He gave the order to go to warp and the remainder of the Cardinals fleet fled to the Empyreum. Victory/Defeat: In the end while no fleet could hold onto the Blackstone for a whole turn the Imp/SM did the most damage, with over 800 points of the Chaos/Imp fleet destroyed to the 600 points receive in turn. So we chalk this up as a victory for the Imperium!
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AboutThis blog is a record of an ongoing, interactive narrative-based games set in Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 universe. The Turbidious Sector is a sector of the Ultima Segmentum region of the Milky Way galaxy that I came up with for my models/stories to be based. Archives
June 2018
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