Unity B4 Heresy Presents: Friends of the Blog event review Cataclysm of Iron I

JohnGG here again with another player perspective round up of the latest event I attended,  Hosted by King Fluff...

Cataclysm of Iron 1

The battle for the Belt of Iron begins…

If any of you have ever attended a King Fluff event, or talked to anyone who has, you’ll know that these are amongst the very best of narrative gaming in the UK (and therefore, the world, and therefore the 30K universe! 😛  So let’s jump straight in with the setting;

The disparate forces of the Warmaster continue their grinding and relentless march towards the Sol system.  The Belt of Iron lies in their path.  Within the belt are located the Mechanicum research stations on the worlds of Arl'yeth and Arachnis.  It is imperative to the defence of Terra that vital research held on these station remains hidden from the Traitor forces.

Five games over two days.  Four games of 2500 points with the third game, last game on Saturday being, a 1000 points doubles game.  Along with the overall narrative of the setting King of Fluff writes individual rules for each gaming table depending on which part of which world the battle is being fought. I shall outline these as I go though each game..  

King of Fluff excelled himself here with the rules giving us the option to add either agents of the Warmaster/Imperium to our armies.  Those of you who have read nemesis will be familiar with Spear, the Black Pariah who is available for traitor armies and for the Loyalist side alongside the more familiar four assassin houses we have the Venenum, masters of poisons and the Vanus, masters of probability and into gathering.  King fluff also included a  character progression pack mechanism which will carry through to all the further catechism of mind events in the future

For this weekend's event I took my usual Chagorian brotherhood list and made a few fluffy changes.  I wanted to run Qin Xa in my list with a level 2 librarian as his Stormseer advisor.  They would need a bodyguard so I chose a three man terminator command squad all riding to the battlefield in a Storm Eagle assault gunship.  My librarian would be taking the Santic Daemonology psychic discipline as there's a couple of good psychic powers in that deck but really I was hoping to roll a 6 and start throwing vortex blasts all over the battlefield!

I added the two new assassins in to my list as I wanted a kit bash challenge.  Those guys will be  transported in a Corvus strike fighter.  I always wanted to buy the Deathwatch Corvus Blackstar model and now I have the perfect excuse.  The Venenum assassin would give me T5 in the unit and also some poison punch both in shooting and in close combat.  The Vanus assassin has a 3++ inv save due to her cyber familiar but the clincher for me was a piece of wargear called a Remote Teleport transponder.  This item of equipment has the ability to remove model from the board placing it in ongoing reserves.  I was hoping to thoroughly disrupt someones battleplans! 

To squeeze in these assassins and their gun cutter transport I had drop one of my lightnings from my usual so I would be rocking only the one for this run out. 

Game 1 - White Scars V. Warp Cults 

The special objective rules for this table was to use the old 40K tactical objective cards.   

Warp cults with 2 Gorgon transports heading by a Cult master and his Ogryn bodyguard. A horrendous amount of troops and a real game of two halves.  My bikes jinked about for two turns,  cutting down as many models as I could but staying out of charge range.  I may have Hit and Run but even T5 bikes can fall foul of a 40 attacks man tarpit unit of cultists!

However as soon as Xa and his bros arrived the battlefield turned into a shade of pink mist as powerglaives began cutting through cultists like a knife through butter.  Xa and his unit must have blended over 40 cultists.   

My Primary Objective for 1VP was to Kill a character in a challenge, or if I could kill 3 or more characters I would get D3 VPs.
 

Needless to say,  Discipline masters fell on Xa’s blade just as easy as the cultists they whipped.  At the end of the game we had both gained our Primary objectives both of which were worth D3 VPs. Typically I rolled 1 and my opponent rolled 3.  I lost the game on the last dice roll of the game, for me personally,  that’s a good indication you’ve had a good close game. And it was lots of fun! 

Game 2 - White Scars V. Solar Auxiliar

Table Special rule: Price of Failure(Infantry) 

Another horde army but this time all mounted in Dracosians with Malcador support.  

As I concentrated killing the enemy warlord with my airborne units and Xa’s unit and kept my only other infantry unit, the Destroyers, at arms length (although they did eventually get caught and demolisher cannon’d) I did manage to break open a Dracosian and kill a couple of units of lasrifle sections. 

After what can only be described as a comical amount of firepower on Turn 5, after 5 turns of shooting I managed to kill off the enemy warlord and his retinue.  I think we worked out that that unit had managed to shrug off over 40+ wounds.

After all, my bikes were slaughtered to a man but I managed to win the game by a single point as I had killed one more infantry unit than my opponent.

Game 3 - Doubles. White Scars + Imperial Fists V. Iron Warriors + World Eaters

Table Special rules: capture and control all outpost buildings.  Three outpost buildings placed in the middle of the battlefield would be fought over by the traitorous and loyalist forces whoever Controls more outposts at the end of the game wins. 

For our third and last game on Saturday I was teamed up with an Imperial Fists player running Stone Gauntlet.  I was running a very cut down army with 2 small outrider units and my destroyers.  We would be facing the combined footslogging hordes of Iron Warriors and World eaters.  

The Iron Warsmith was intent to bring the game to us and no less than two units of Red Butchers lined up ready to make strawberry milkshake out of our troops.   

The mission called for us to hold as many of the three objective buildings in the centre of the board as possible.  My ally and I worked out we could occupy and hold two and therefore win the game.  We were lined up lengthways on the board and so our foots logging enemy would have time against then as they lumbered across the board. 

Our tactics were simple, the quick Scars on their bikes would sally forth and distract the enemy while the Imperial Fist breachers would occupy and hold the buildings.

That was the plan.  Four turns later and I had been entirely wiped out.  But shockingly against the odds, and by Odds I mean some ridiculously good charge rolls (11+” !! ) from the red butchers and some shockingly poor combat rolls by a certain White Scar Librarian [who single-handedly lost combat against three TAC support Marines with plasma guns even after they had failed to inflict any damage in overwatch.]

On the other side of the board the Iron warriors pressed up the right flank and harried the Imperial fists.  On turn 4 they made contact and the enemy Warsmith made short work of the breachers in front of him.  By turn 5 the Iron Warriors had captured one of the outpost buildings.  Due to the bitter end rule we played turn six and the Red Butchers managed to get in a position to charge another outpost building proceeded to charge it and make rubble out of it with their Chain-fists.  As we no longer had to the majority of the office buildings the loyalist forces lost the day. 

Game 4 - White Scars V. Iron Warriors (RoW: Ironfire)

Table special rules:  This table had additional special rules as the battle would be fought in a subterranean Setting, Night fighting would persist throughout the game, infantry units would gain shrouded if in base contact with an item of scenery and all terrain is treated as difficult terrain for infantry but dangerous terrain to any vehicles.

Facing Iron Warriors again but this time with my full strength.  However I was not confident as I was facing a heavy artillery bombardment from the outset as the iron warriors lined up all their big guns against me.  The Enemy army brought two medusa’s, two quad launchers with shatter shells and a Whirlwind Scorpius plus three units of tactical marines with Rhinos. The Iron Fire Rite of War would mean his artillery barrage would be much more accurate and therefore much more deadly.  And a major threat to my fliers was a unit of 10 iron havoc's all with missile launchers coming with flak missiles as standard these guys would have to be taken out quickly.

As with most of the games over the weekend,  the first two terms consisted of me staying alive as I jinked and manoeuvred for position.  Fortunately also for me was that most of his bigger guns had limited range.   

Turn 2 and the cavalry turned up and my assault on his units began.  Xa and his squad made an immediate impact blowing up a rhino and slaughtering everyone in sight.  Xa then moved towards the Scorpius which he hoped to destroy the next turn.  My lightning took aim at the medusas hoping to take at least one out before having to jink their way off the through a hail of flak missiles, however the medusas were behind a big rock formation he passed all his cover saves.  

My opponent cunningly shielded his artillery from the on-rushing bike assault with a barrier of infantry and rhinos, I'd have to cut my way through the chaff to get at juicier targets however that put me in range and Line of sight of his big guns.  

When the dust had settled there were significantly more Iron Warriors left than White Scars and my opponent had used Iron Fire very effectively to pound my bikes into the dirt.  At the end of the game my librarian suffered from perils killing himself again, and again, Xa was wounded.  With his command squad gone and those havoc's having managed to down all three of my fliers my enemy had won attrition at least three times over.  I was soundly beaten but by good army, controlled by a good general. 

Game 5 - White Scars V. Alpha Legion (RoW: Recon)

Table special rules same as Game four above, the objective of this game would be to catch and control this time there was a Baneblade chassis combat recovery vehicle which needed to be captured.  

This proved to be an interesting game as between my augmented jink cover saves and the Alpha legionaries enhanced cameleoline cover saves we would both be making a lots of cover saves.  I would have the edge in combat though with T5, power-glaives and increased manoeuvrability meaning I cold chose where the action took place.  

Unusually, for once, I had first turn. Especially usually as Alpharius himself was on the board.  I made the most of this and moved as quickly as possible with the enemy forces.  

Alpharius accompanied a large blob squad of 15 marines in the centre of the board and was my only real threat.  The rest of the enemy army consisted of units of five-man recon Marines.  My bikes engaged the recon marines and came out on top, with the exception of my plasma bike squad who I thought would be able to take down three tactical marines on their own however,  after five or so rounds of combat I was still locked in combat.  3 marines had managed to hold up one of my snootiest units.

Xa and his command squad took down a sniper rifle team with Exodus in their ranks and then made for the enemy deployment zone to win me line breaker.  my destroyer Squadron outflanked and took out two units of scouts on their own before being overwhelmed by a third unit of veterans.  My lightning came on and didn't managed to destroy a unit of two land speeders so my assassin with his remote teleportation transponder whisked them off into the ether and when they came returned back in from ongoing reserves the next 10 failed their dangerous terrain test and blew up. 

Winning on the last game is always a good end of an event it certainly makes the car journey home a lot happier. 

This was a great event and King Fluff events are quickly becoming my favourite. 

I'm taking a little respite now from the white scars and concentrating on… Titanicus.

Watch this space for updates to my Adeptus Titanicus journey.

There you are guys another great read I think you'll agree from JohnGG.  We hope you're enjoying the guest posts feel free to comment or ask questions below and don't forget to follow the blog for the most up-to-date news from here at Unity B4 Heresy.

As always.

Only In Death Does Duty End 

- Tylar, JohnGG