Max's Sisters of Battle: War Stories

[Warsmith Aznable]

I had two games today against my friend's Inquisition force. He was running allied Ravenwing and Raukaan units alongside his OM Inquisitor, Henchmen, and GK Paladins. I pulled in my Lamenters allies, my Knight Errant, and my converted Avenger to support my main force of BSS in Rhinos, Exorcist, and melta Dominions in an Immolator.

 

The first game I tabled him in Turn 2. I got a lucky Multimelta snap shot off on his Dread in the first turn and exploded it, knocked out his Razorback with the Exorcist in the first turn, and in the second turn the Avenger dive bombed his position off the drop pod's locator beacon and gatling cannoned all of his henchmen but one, which the Storm Raven picked off with a Lascannon shot.

 

The second game was a Tactical Objectives game. We had to call it short at four full turns because we both had places to get to. I managed to pull off Linebreaker, Slay the Warlord, and First Blood alongside claiming five Tactical Objectives. He was steadily turning the tide against me when we stopped, but by then I had collected more Tactical Objectives and had managed to tie up his NKD by sacrificing the BSS unit that I didn't have my Warlord in, and ran the one I DID have my Warlord in away from the units he had chasing her. I was trying like hell to deny him that Slay the Warlord point, even though it did kind of hurt my feelings to have my BSS running away like their asses were on fire.

 

I wrote a little story to go with the first game, and tomorrow I'll write one to go with the second game:

 

 

+Your Eminence, a small craft has slipped away from the vessel and headed planet-side.+

Slipped away?

+Yes, your Eminence, during your conversation with the Inquisitor. They were attempting to take advantage of the orbital debris with star shining directly into our sensors, but we managed to pick them up early and lock on to their signature before it could blend with the background noise.+

How vexing of him. At least we have Imperial law on our side now.

+Your Eminence?+

Inquisitor White has accepted my argument for jurisdiction and acknowledged the quarantine order. His cronies are sneaking into a free fire zone. They’re bound to be mistaken as hostiles and eliminated before they can identify themselves. Tragic, but these things happen. Transmit to the Canoness their coordinates.

++

Agent Harq didn’t like anything about this mission. They were too far out on the Rim, too far away from the Naval allies Inquisitor White usually relied on, and too far on the wrong side of the Cardinal’s territory. And nothing about this particular system had been inviting. No Astra Militarum presence to co-opt, no Planetary Governor with a PDF to come to their aid, no local Space Marine chapters to petition. They had no contacts of any kind among the civilians, the noble houses, or the local merchants. The Inquisitor usually had one or two xenos contacts willing to trade favors, but every one they had approached refused to come anywhere near the Cardinal’s protected worlds.

The Dreadnought plodding through the ruins on the left flank of his squad did make him feel better, though. The Deathwatch squads grumbled about the length of this tour and it’s lack of a focused mission, but they remained loyal.

“Scanners picking up some kind of movement to the front, Agent Harq”. The Inquisitorial Razorback didn’t hurt, either.

“Alright, everybody, we hole up around this building until we can get a good look across that open area.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.” Arquette, the Psyker whispered as he delicately picked his way through the ruins.

“When do you not?” Harq sighed, digging through his ruck sack for the satellite uplink. Now would be a good time to ping the ship with their location.

++CONTACT: KNIGHT WALKER IN ECCLESIARCHAL LIVERY APPROACHING AT COMBAT SPEED++

“I’ve got two Rhinos and an Exorcist moving abreast of each other in a skirmish formation behind the walker.” The TC of the Razorback voxed, the doubt in his voice verging on open fear. “What do I do?”

“Fething Churchies. They would bring a Knight the first time the Inquisitor lets me bring the Dreadnought.” Agent Harq thought furiously. The Razorback and the Dreadnought made it impossible to break up and fade away with any stealth. He would have to surrender, and the mission would be over. It would be an embarrassment for the Inquisitor, and a black mark on his operational record.

++INCOMING!++

“What!” There was more Agent Harq wanted to say, but the concussion of the Drop Pod as it slammed into the broken street a mere handful of meters from where he crouched in the rubble momentarily robbed him of his senses.

Agent Harq’s vision corkscrewed, and he felt his eardrums ache with pressure as a wave of heat washed over him. He clutched the sat-link tightly to his chest to protect it, curling into the fetal position against the partially collapsed brick wall.

An explosion just on the other side of that brick wall kicked him off the ground for a second, and the fallen brickwork slammed into his ribs and the side of his head. His chest tightened, knowing that only the Dreadnought could have exploded with that much force. What chapter had launched that Drop Pod?

Bright flashes began booming throughout his squad’s position. Shrapnel and flames scythed through the air, tearing through his armored and unarmored men with equal ease. Looking up Agent Harq caught the bright flash of a silver jet fighter of an unusual but obviously Imperial design. It had dived straight down out of the sky in an insanely risky maneuever, unloading a punishing burst of bolter cannon shells directly into their position before angling low over the open field.

Harq saw his last surviving comrade, sheltered on the second story ledge where he had been setting up field binoculars in a broken out window, turn to charred bone and ash by a lascannon punching through the wall. Beyond the dubious shelter of his corner of the ruined building, Harq saw the high jetting plumes of fire and roiling black smoke of a burning tank. He knew it was the Razorback, which made him completely alone.

“Here is one.”

Agent Harq looked up at the unfamiliar voice, suddenly so close. He was surprised by the bright color of the armour, and the design prominently displayed on the shoulder pads of the two space marines that had moved into what was left of the building. He wanted to identify himself as Imperial and beg for mercy, but he could only weakly question the reality of what he saw before him. “Lamenters?”

The movement was swift and decisive. The thick compensator of the bolter jabbed him hard in the left side of his face jerking his head back and to the side, and he was knocked instantly unconscious.

++

“He had this with him.” The Lamenters sergeant handed the sat-link to the Sister Superior. “He was the only survivor.”

Agent Harq heard the Space Marines and the Battle Sisters milling around him, feeling in his skull the subtle, low frequency hum of their power armour servos and fiber bundles as they shifted. He knew they were close by, but everything sounded very far away as his consciousness made an agonizing return. He was on his knees in the open space between the two squads, dragged out into the field from the rubble. The Sisters of Battle were in front of him, and the Lamenters were behind him.

“Sister Superior, there... there has been a mistake...” Harq felt that his left eye was stuck shut with dried blood. From the knifing pain in his broken orbital bone he groggily guessed the eye might even be entirely gone.

“There certainly has.” The Sister Superior did not look at him. She turned the sat-link over in her hands, examining the device with detached curiosity. Her features were hard set, her mouth a thin line, and her cheeks wore the natural creases of someone who perpetually frowned. Harq believed it to be the most unkind face he had ever seen. “The official report concludes, ‘and there were unfortunately no survivors.’ Or so I’ve been instructed, anyway. Sister Callia?”

Harq heard the unmistakable sound of a bolt pistol sliding from its leather holster. A Sister of Battle broke from the squad, took three casual paces, and leveled the bolt pistol at his face. The woman’s eyes were cold and dark. Her placid gaze unnerved Harq and made him feel like a mere object, or worse, like the heretic they surely believed he was. He panicked.

“I’m the Inquisitor’s right hand man!” He exclaimed. “I... I can tell you things!”

The Battle Sister looked to her Superior, the hint of a question borne on the subtlest of movement in her brow.

The Sister Superior considered silently for a long moment. Harq desperately looked to the Lamenters sergeant. The sergeant’s expression was inscrutable with his helmet on, but from all the time Harq had spent with the Deathwatch he recognized the boredom in the sergeant’s posture. His heart sank and he began to feel the inevitability of the outcome.

“No.”  The Sister Superior answered at last. “But I will hear the confession of your sins and allow you to recite the Litany of the Repentant Condemned. If you so choose, of course.”

“I...” Agent Harq licked his swollen lips and felt the dryness of his mouth. He wavered a moment, then heaved a sorrowful sigh. He suddenly felt light, as if a great burden had flowed out from his lungs with that sigh, and an odd calmness descended over him. He hadn’t realized how tightly wound he had always felt in the Inquisitor’s service. So many secrets, so many lies, so much pain and suffering. It was all over now, and it felt strangely good. “My sins are classified, Sister. I don’t know the Litany of the Repentant Condemned, but I would like to.”

The Sister Superior finally turned to look at him. Their eyes met and Harq decided that she did not have an unkind face after all. She smiled serenely, the beatific visage of the Emperor’s own saint of compassion and empathy. It was the most beautiful thing that Agent Harq had ever witnessed in the whole ugly, dirty galaxy. For a brief moment he thought he might love her, then felt ashamed and unworthy.

“It is not long.” The Sister Superior said. “Repeat after me...”

++

Well I don’t know what to tell you, Inquisitor. It is a tragedy, to be sure, but there are procedures for this sort of thing and if only your men had followed them we would not be having this conversation.

No, Inquisitor, I would not recommend that at all.

Really, Inquisitor, I must insist that you do not.

I would like to go on record as having personally advised you of the danger, Inquisitor.

Very well, Inquisitor, I will inform them to expect you.

I should very much like to continue this conversation when you return, Inquisitor, yes.

+Trouble, your Eminence?+

He’s forcing my hand, Sancha.  Send confirmation to the Canonness: alpha protocol is in effect. No exceptions. Invite the Bishop to meet with me at his earliest convenience. This whole fiasco is his fault and I would hear directly from His Excellency the confirmation that it was all worth it. So help me, merciful Emperor, I will have his head on a stick if this ordeal develops any more complications. An Inquisitor! What a miserable collection of trouble makers they are...

 

[Warsmith Aznable]

Absolute mayhem today.

Our Dark Heresy role-playing group staged a counter-invasion into the Eye of Terror to cause problems for the 13th Black Crusade. We've spent forever negotiating alliances, gathering forces, and seizing macguffins... and today we finally moved to the table top and played the counter-invasion as a big Planet Strike game.

The target was a daemon-world held by the Emperor's Children and their Slaaneshi daemon allies.

Each character was to bring a 2,000 point list from among the allies we had available based on the RPG sessions. The defenders got an equal amount of Slaaneshi themed CSM and Daemons. 10,000 points a side is what it more or less worked out to, though initially we got shorted due to bad math, which was made up by a Warhound being placed into our reserves, so that was nice.

Initially we were to have four 6x4 tables for the game. "Sundays the store is empty because of the NFL" we were told, but we walked in and there were two separate board game tournaments and two other Apocalypse games happening, so we had to squeeze a 20,000 point game onto two tables and cram everyone into a crowded back corner.

My character is a former Black Templars Tactical Marine who through a convoluted series of events ended up as an Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor. When coming up with an 2,000 point army to kick down the doors of Space Hell I figured it was a perfect fit for him to grab a demi-company of Sisters of Battle.

My usual Sisters play style uses tanks with Blood Angel allies. Today I ditched that for the idea of "more Sisters with more bolters."

I had 3 BSS squads, 2 of them with "Dominica pattern" drop pods (swiped from the SW codex)

2 x 5 Heavy Bolter Retributor squads

2 x 5 Hand Flamer Seraphim squads

1 x 5 Storm Bolter Dominions in a Valkyrie

1 x 7 Repentia squad in a drop pod

Sisters Biggles and Her Flying Machine (converted Avenger Strike Fighter)

1 Vindicare Assassin (An SoB converted to carry a sniper rifle from the SM Scouts kit)

And my Inquisitor's Storm Raven with x5 Crusaders, x5 DCA, and a Priest

Converting stats from the RPG is easy since it's a percentile system based on the table top game. He has a WS of 76 in the RPG, which became a WS 7 for the table top, and so on.

We played a scenario from Planetfall where everything in the Attacker side gains the deepstrike rule, and things that already had the DS rule gained the ability to assault from DS the turn they came in.

We used improvised daemon-world rules. Before our first movement phase we dropped 4 bastion sized "real-space generators" that negated the daemon world effects in the space between them (these were prime targets for the enemy.) There was a toxic river that destroyed any model that so much as dipped a toe into it. There were two giant clouds of "warp gas" that had a 10" round felt templates that drifted around using scatter dice and did random things to whatever was in their area of effect.

We also had these sealed envelopes. At the beginning of every turn each side drew an envelope. You could open your envelope or destroy the opponent's. There were random effects in the envelopes, some good, some bad.

The two tables were pushed together in a T shape. The Slaaneshi scum castled up at the far end of the long table with a Firestorm Redoubt, two of the big gun emplacement buildings, and that large fortification with the vortex missiles. He manned the fortifications, but was going second so everything else he put into reserves. We had the long end of the top of the T to fly on what wasn't deep striking.

The whole experience was too chaotic to give a play-by-play here. I couldn't if I wanted to. There were Eldar, Necrons, Sisters, Grey Knights, Legion of the Damned, a handful of Vindicare and Culexus assassins, three different Inquisitors with retinues, a couple of random Orks from one of our stranger adventures, and the Warhound titan. There was a total of 10 drop pods sitting on the table by the end of our turn 3, along with six or seven different flyers and two Monoliths. This was just our forces...

The thing I'm really pleased about is how well my girls did. The Repentia were the exception, being gunned down well before they could do anything useful. But my Sisters saturated our clutch of all-important objectives inside the "real space generators", and used bolter and flame to anchor the defense of our beachhead. I've never had the pleasure of flame-templating so many T3 bodies not wearing armour before, and the Daemonettes were dropping at an unbelievable rate. One squad of BSS even survived the impact of large group of 'nettes initial assault, managing to take down two heralds. My Retributors bagged a Daemon Prince, a squad of 'nettes, and a squad of Seekers. My Seraphim dropped fiery death on a squad of Daemonettes and then cleaned up with pistols. And my precious Avenger wounded and grounded a daemon prince (who was subsequently shot up by allies) then corkscrewed her way through everything in the world trying to shoot through her AV10 side and rear armour, then snap shotted a couple of CSM on bikes without ever losing a HP.

It was nice to have my Sisters burninate so many daemons in general, but especially nice after one of my allies commented that Sisters were "just a bad army" during our pre-game set up.

We called the game halfway through turn 3. We had arrived at noon and played eight straight hours by then. We judged (with maths and common sense) that the daemonettes would have slaughtered the remaining Sisters they were still engaged in assault with and been able to claim two of the eight total objectives, with the rest of his army hopelessly bogged down too far away to help. We held four or five other objectives between my Sisters, a Culexus, and a squad of Necrons. We also took First Blood and Linebreaker.

So all said and done our operation was a success, for whatever that means to our RPG. We were in pretty good position to carry the game had it continued. His daemons were fairly well depleted, his fortifications were all wrecked or exploded, and his CSM were bloodied and mostly bunched up along one of his table edges. Our Warhound had nothing within a few feet that could threaten it, and we still had some Eldar sitting in reserves, along with assault squads still riding in transports.

[*Furyou Miko]

Always nice to prove a naysayer wrong. Sounds like you had a lot of fun!

 

... and a very interesting GM.

[srpelicano]

That sounds like an absolute blast and a good showing by the sisters. Certainly an interesting Dark Heresy game you've got going there, and the image of battle nun Orks will now forever be ingrained in my brain.

[Warsmith Aznable]

It was a lot of fun, and our Dark Heresy campaigns are definitely interesting. Our GM works very hard to put depth into every scenario and to make sure that everybody is engaged. The older Rogue Trader funny fluff gets mixed in with the newer grimdark, and rule of cool is always the order of the day. It's definitely never a boring XP grind, and we get to operate at levels where what we do impacts the greater fate of the galaxy.

 

The Planet Strike game was fun, but there were times I was very frustrated. I am not particularly comfortable being physically close to people or around lots of people at once. We had seven people playing around two tables that were pushed into a corner with a narrow space just big enough to stand in around it. I would be trying to work out shooting with the opfor player when another player would take his attention away to resolve an assault on a different part of the table. I would find my units knocked over or moved, stacks of paper and books piled on the battlefield, people picking up and using my tape measure and templates when I was in the middle of doing the same, or even trying to do stuff with one of my squads because they were done with their own army.

 

It was still more fun than it wasn't, but it's not something I would do on a regular basis.