Hendrik Booraem VI
01-31-2016, 01:02 PM
Warning - this will not actually include details of a specific battle. It will describe, briefly, a summer Combat Patrol campaign I ran, and in more detail will cover a campaign event that took place on Saturday 30 January 2016.
Warp storms in the Ultima Segmentum had long cut off the Subsector of Llirea. When these storms began to dissipate, factions of the Imperium noticed and reacted surprisingly quickly. A small channel had been opened through the heaving turbulence in the warp, leading directly to the Avalon system. There was no other way into the sub-sector, and so many different armies descended on Avalon Prime to determine the status of the system. As it turned out, the citizens were still faithful (in the majority) to the Emperor, and their technology had not declined noticeably, nor had there been any great outbreak of heresy.
Avalon Prime was a planet with only three major continents. As the various races and factions began to arrive, they scouted the planet cautiously at first, since heavy reinforcements were still weeks or months away. Often there were minor clashes as one faction would encounter another. On the northern continent, in the Ervan sector, Hive Zondervan was the capital city of the planet, and saw little in the way of scouting activity.
[During the summer, I introduced about 10 college students to WH40K. I have small contingents of 6 different armies (generic SM, Tyranids, Orks, Tau, IG, and Space Wolves) and so I made army lists for each, and loaned my models out. Thursday nights we would get together and play Combat Patrol missions on 4x4 tables. After the first week, I developed a campaign map, a system for organizing factions, and an order of play. We probably played six good rounds of the campaign, but were completely unable to finish it in the time we had. Once classes started back up in the fall, we hardly played at all.
However, five of the players who came and checked things out during the summer invested in their own armies. On 30 January of this year, I got together with four of them, plus my own three older sons who also play WH40K, and we had another round of the campaign. Well, sort of. We actually didn't have any impact on the campaign as a whole, we just played four scenarios that I created for the purpose of this campaign event.]
The Tyranids ransacked and consumed everything before them. In both Blackwood Forest to the north of Ervan Sector, and in the Mountains of Madness, in the south of the sector, the Tyranids overcame the best efforts of the Tau and the Orks (respectively) to contain them.
Forces of the Imperium, with so much territory to defend or reclaim, naturally faced a hard uphill struggle, and were only triumphant in half of their battles, but were only soundly defeated when a poorly prepared Space Marine force was wiped out by the Tau in Blackwood Forest. Kalanda Square, on the outskirts of Hive Zondervan, was the site of a narrow defeat of the Imperium, and of a pyrrhic victory over the forces of Chaos by the valiant Hands of the Emperor chapter, who fought with a courageous contingent of Imperial Guardsmen supporting them.
The foul Xenos were mauled repeatedly, by both the forces of the Imperium and the Tyranids. The Xenos managed to retain control of their portal in Blackwood Forest, barely, but their rapidly constructed shield generator in Ashewood Village was taken by the Adeptus Mechanicus, who no doubt will put it to good use.
Chaos and the Orks, meanwhile, were roundly beaten back from their unholy shrine in the Mountains of Madness, and were unable to even take a toehold in the outskirts of Hive Zondervan.
[In a month, I'll have another campaign event. If anyone is interested, I can post the scenario sheets from Ashewood Village, Blackwood Forest, Kalanda Square, and the Mountains of Madness. I will also try to do a better job of tracking who plays and what happens for next month.
To give more detailed info, yesterday we played 1000 point armies, and had the following:
Space Marines (1st company formation + Armored Shield IG allies)
Space Marines (Combined Arms Detachment)
Adeptus Mechanicus + Skitarii
Tau
Tau
Tyranids
Orks
Chaos
I don't have any pictures, either, because I was playing and not taking time to photograph. :( But hopefully I can do better next time!]
[EDIT: uploaded the scenarios that we used for the battles. Evidently the Mountains of Madness file was too large. :( ]
Warp storms in the Ultima Segmentum had long cut off the Subsector of Llirea. When these storms began to dissipate, factions of the Imperium noticed and reacted surprisingly quickly. A small channel had been opened through the heaving turbulence in the warp, leading directly to the Avalon system. There was no other way into the sub-sector, and so many different armies descended on Avalon Prime to determine the status of the system. As it turned out, the citizens were still faithful (in the majority) to the Emperor, and their technology had not declined noticeably, nor had there been any great outbreak of heresy.
Avalon Prime was a planet with only three major continents. As the various races and factions began to arrive, they scouted the planet cautiously at first, since heavy reinforcements were still weeks or months away. Often there were minor clashes as one faction would encounter another. On the northern continent, in the Ervan sector, Hive Zondervan was the capital city of the planet, and saw little in the way of scouting activity.
[During the summer, I introduced about 10 college students to WH40K. I have small contingents of 6 different armies (generic SM, Tyranids, Orks, Tau, IG, and Space Wolves) and so I made army lists for each, and loaned my models out. Thursday nights we would get together and play Combat Patrol missions on 4x4 tables. After the first week, I developed a campaign map, a system for organizing factions, and an order of play. We probably played six good rounds of the campaign, but were completely unable to finish it in the time we had. Once classes started back up in the fall, we hardly played at all.
However, five of the players who came and checked things out during the summer invested in their own armies. On 30 January of this year, I got together with four of them, plus my own three older sons who also play WH40K, and we had another round of the campaign. Well, sort of. We actually didn't have any impact on the campaign as a whole, we just played four scenarios that I created for the purpose of this campaign event.]
The Tyranids ransacked and consumed everything before them. In both Blackwood Forest to the north of Ervan Sector, and in the Mountains of Madness, in the south of the sector, the Tyranids overcame the best efforts of the Tau and the Orks (respectively) to contain them.
Forces of the Imperium, with so much territory to defend or reclaim, naturally faced a hard uphill struggle, and were only triumphant in half of their battles, but were only soundly defeated when a poorly prepared Space Marine force was wiped out by the Tau in Blackwood Forest. Kalanda Square, on the outskirts of Hive Zondervan, was the site of a narrow defeat of the Imperium, and of a pyrrhic victory over the forces of Chaos by the valiant Hands of the Emperor chapter, who fought with a courageous contingent of Imperial Guardsmen supporting them.
The foul Xenos were mauled repeatedly, by both the forces of the Imperium and the Tyranids. The Xenos managed to retain control of their portal in Blackwood Forest, barely, but their rapidly constructed shield generator in Ashewood Village was taken by the Adeptus Mechanicus, who no doubt will put it to good use.
Chaos and the Orks, meanwhile, were roundly beaten back from their unholy shrine in the Mountains of Madness, and were unable to even take a toehold in the outskirts of Hive Zondervan.
[In a month, I'll have another campaign event. If anyone is interested, I can post the scenario sheets from Ashewood Village, Blackwood Forest, Kalanda Square, and the Mountains of Madness. I will also try to do a better job of tracking who plays and what happens for next month.
To give more detailed info, yesterday we played 1000 point armies, and had the following:
Space Marines (1st company formation + Armored Shield IG allies)
Space Marines (Combined Arms Detachment)
Adeptus Mechanicus + Skitarii
Tau
Tau
Tyranids
Orks
Chaos
I don't have any pictures, either, because I was playing and not taking time to photograph. :( But hopefully I can do better next time!]
[EDIT: uploaded the scenarios that we used for the battles. Evidently the Mountains of Madness file was too large. :( ]