Mutant Snake Eyes

Dicing with Death – The Cleansing of Krassis IV

Originally designated 27-5, Krassis IV was the fifth planet that Corax’s 27th Expeditionary Fleet brought into compliance. Krassis IV was an old colony of humans, but was currently under the grip of a large ork empire led by ‘Gitstomp da Great’. He was using the humans as slaves to build greater weapons for his boys.

Upon arrival at the planet, Corax immediately dispatched units to the key population centres with the goal of liberating as many of the humans as they could. Chaplain Deythuri led the II Battalion, VII Chapter to the capital of the planet, landing an initial force of elite troops with the body of the battalion held in reserve in storm eagles.

Before them was amassed a sea of green. Hundreds of boys backed up by mechanical monstrosities built in mockery of venerable and ancient dreadnoughts. This mass of Greenskins was a formidable sight and came on in large groups, hollering and firing their pistols into the air.

The groups of civilians in the area were the key targets for the Raven Guard, and they charged forward to meet the Greenskins in order to protect them. Initial gunfire from the Raven Guard was ineffective against the horde of boys, and venerable contemptor Kynaeus even lost an arm to the rocket fire of a tank-hunting mob riding in a collection of scrap metal that looked like some form of truck.

The Raven Guard were more than up to the task though, and Chaplain Deythuri burst forward with the Dark Furies, counter-charging the bellowing mobs of boyz. Their ravens talons struck with bloody effect, and whole squads disappeared under their shredding claws. It was at this point that a gigantic ork stepped out from his battlewagon, accompanied by a unit of huge, scarred nobz. They charged Deythuri, butchering his squad and leaving Deythuri broken on the ground in his wake, not before they had killed a number of the nobz though.

Corax realised that this ork must be Gitstomp, the leader of the Greenskins on this planet, and immediately teleported down from his capital ship, Shadow of the Emperor, to face this evil and cut the head off the snake. Gitstomp could not match the fury of a primarch and Corax shredded Gitstomp, ending his live in a staggering series of blows with his talons.

More marines arrived to secure the battlefield and help protect the humans. Not even the arrival of a strike wing of ork fliers could stop the Raven Guard from cleansing this city. With the Warlord dead, the ork resistance collapsed, and Krassis IV was finally free of the ork masters. The Raven Guard spent 2 weeks clearing out the orks from the hidden corners of the world, ensuring that the Greenskins would never again threaten this planet.

In preparation for the Great Crusade event we are playing at, we thought it was a good idea to get a couple of games in to see how orks did against legions. We played War of Lies, and having so many troops was pretty useful for the orks as it meant they had better ground cover than the Raven Guard. However, the firepower that legions can put out is just devastating, and they chew through orks like they’re nothing. Walkers also suffer with low initiative; contemptors strike before deff dreads and are well equipped to punch them to death! The final result was 14-10 to the Raven Guard. It was a really fun game, and nice to try something different in Heresy. I’ve learned some lessons though, and reckon I’ll get a few more bits for my orks to try a different style of list. Watch this space…

Terrified Mobs Objectives

We’ve been taking part in the global Heresy event that’s been going on fighting over the Golloch Cluster. September’s event was called The Culling of Sterith Prime and involved the Loyalists trying to rescue civilians trapped on this world, and the Traitors trying to round up and sacrifice them. We decided to convert up some objective markers to represent bands of terrified civilians, who ran in random directions unless controlled by a faction.

This is the first model we put together. Trying to find bits to represent civilians was initially quite tricky as most Imperial models look too military to be rag tag mobs of displaced civilians. The genestlealer cults kits came in handy, as they wear mining suits so represent regular workers, and then the Skitarii kits provided a few bionics. They could be the servants of nobles or low level mechanincum adepts.Finally we had quite a few Empire bits left over from our Warhammer Fantasy armies and these proved invaluable for bear heads, arms and other bits, as well as flagellant bodies looking the part too.

For the last of the objectives I wanted to have a noble running as part of the mob. I thought it would be a nice touch to show how far the mighty have fallen; that everyone from the highest to the lowest have been affected by the civil war. I thought the female vampire lord model looked suitably baroque enough.

They were painted in a bit of a hurry to get them ready in time for our first game of the month. But we were pretty happy with the result and they looked great on the tabletop.

They were great fun and added an level of unpredictability to our games. It also added to the narrative, fighting over civilians, rather than just die or tokens. Here’s a few pictures we took of them in games:

Horus Heresy Doubles List

I thought as a first post I would show off the list that we took to a doubles event over Summer. The goal with this army was to choose a theme that fitted the fighting style of our two legions and would look awesome on the battlefield.

We had gone through a couple of different variations of this army in tester games. Initially we had a second Raven Guard storm eagle, but this didn’t work very well and was relatively easy to shut down by forcing the fliers to jink. Eventually we settled on the army you see above which contained:

Raven Guard:

Korvide Deythuri – Legion Chaplain.

Brother Arthies – Apothecary.

Tactical Squad Nassori – 15 marines.

Tactical Squad Taedus – 15 marines.

Brother Kyaneus – Contemptor-Cortus.

Brother Yiraka – Contemptor-Cortus.

Pythian – Storm Eagle.

Velox- 10 Dark Furies.

Emperor’s Children:

Gnaeus Corbulo – Delegatus on Jetbike.

Equites Scutarii – 3 jetbikes.

Equites Clibanarii – 4 jetbikes.

Apergion & Skotonei – javelin land speeders.

Equites Mauri – 3 land speeders.

Equites Lanciarii – 2 land speeders.

Balistarius – Fire Raptor gunship.

Equites Sagittarii – 5 sky slayers with plasma cannons.

I ran the Sky Hunter Phalanx right of war because you don’t see it very often and yet it fits the Emperor’s Children way of fighting perfectly. It took some getting used to playing and I learnt that holding some units in reserve definitely helped. Gaining outflank thanks to the rite of war was awesome, I would move my jetbike heavy support squad off the first turn only for it to arrive in the enemy’s flank turn 2 and open up in the side of our opponent. In one game they managed to destroy both a Sicaran Arcus and a regular Sicaran thanks to this tactic!

We struggled against an Iron Warriors/Sons of Horus team that had a lot of artillery and intercepting Iron Havocs but had a surprising win against a Space Wolves/Death Guard pairing all in land raiders. The land speeders with multi-melta and graviton guns proved deadly at opening up the land raiders only to have the Raven Guard mop up the infantry and hold the objectives.

We played 4 games with this army over the course of the tournament, winning 2 and losing 2. As the army was a bit of a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer we were really happy with this result, and is probably a good representation of the army strength. We were also delighted to be voted most sporting team on the day! Overall it was a fantastic event and we are really looking forward to the Great Crusade Weekend in December!