[Iron Gauntlet 2017] Viper Legion (SW) VS Dark Angels

[Legionare]

Pre battle lore

 

Planet Taidr, 2 months prior to the beginning of the bifrost uprising (which i shall explore further in the Fifth challenge). 

Inquisitor Keyset Staga had requested help from the Astartes Preases in his attempt to quel the growing heresy on the imperial forces in Taidr. The Taidr campaign was being fought in the Aura sector against a covenant of rebellious planetary governors. While the other rebelling planets had been silenced with the presence of mere PDF and guard units, the opposition in Taidr was strenghtened by extremely strong enemy psychers who had gotten the interest of Inquisitor Staga. These psychers clearly were strengthened by the warp.

But after a series of severe ambushes, Staga's own men had been cut down to a handful of acolytes, most of which were unable go fight due to being badly wounded. Despite the setbacks he had believed in the Guard's ability to smite the rebellious forces in to oblivion, but the Guard units present on the planet, spearheaded by multiple regiments of the notorious "Biffost Huscarls", seemed to get more incompetent each passing hour. This led to him, after starting to suspect heresy amongst the imperial forces and thus losing the trust in them, asking for help from the Astartes Praeses. From the mighty astartes guarding the Eye, Viper Legion, the ones watching over Aura sector answered his call. 

The forces sent to Taidr consisted from the 3rd great cohort, from which the 6th cohort with elements from the great cohort high command, were the first to arrive. This force, led by strategos Roul Valectus and Librarian Major Ephialte Rubicos met the Inquisitor on the planet’s surface, but were denied the chance to help the imperial forces, as Staga had made a horrifying discovery. According to him he had the proof that the heretics were helped by daemonic forces, summoned to the planet by traitor astartes. These astartes soon proved to be the Dark Angels, once known as the first legion. They denied the accusations of any heresy but refused to share as to why they were on the planet. This to Inquisitor Staga was an clear sign of chaotic influence, but due to lack of any proper evidence and the sheer leverage the descendants of I Legion had, he didn’t have any other choices than to leave the matter be. Still he continued to suspect the Dark Angels and to gather support from the Inquisition to back his accusations.

 

Thus the situation continued to spiral out of control, partially due to the secrecy of the Dark Angels and partially due to Staga's pride and inability to comprehend that he could have misjudged the Dark Angels. Then, mere week after the arrival of the Viper Legion forces, the situation grew so bad that firefights broke out between the Dark Angels and Viper Legion defending Staga. It's unclear who shot first, but both sides were throwing more and more troops in to the fray. What started as a small skirmish soon turned into full scale battle between to two sides to which both sides dedicated huge resources.

 

The game

 

Now that i have pre battle lore out of the way, here are the army lists 2000 points each.

 

Me: Viper Legion (Space Wolves)

 Njal the stormcaller

Rune priest

Iron priest

Wolf priest

Inkvisiittori

 

Ven. dreadnought

5x Wulfen

5x WG terminators

 

Stormwolf

 

2×8 Blood clawia

 

9 grey hunters

 

My friend: Dark Angels 

Azrael

Lieutenant

Terminator Librarian

 

Culexus

Eversor

 

Hellblasters

20x tacticals

Land raider

V. Dreadnought

Inceptorit

 

Dominus

Onager

Ironstrider

 

Before the pictures i'd like to apologize for the lack of proper terrain, as we had to use what we could get our hands on. It should also be noted that many of my units are unpainted, due to a surprise visitor i had during the day before when i was going to at least base coat those. 

 

Setup http://i.imgur.com/5k9IsGU.jpg After this we rolled the dice and my friend got to go first. As for the points, we decided that killing the warlord would be awarded with 2 points and fully killing any unit would give you 1 point. We also had two objectives on the top of those

 

Dark Angels TURN 1

 

My friend moves his units forwards and opens fire to the stormwolf with his onager, with pretty hard results, felling the thing to half wounds in on turn. 

http://i.imgur.com/kp5ycdI.jpg

 

Viper Legion TURN 1

 

The amount of wounds my stormwolf suffered panics me a little as it became pretty clear that it might very well go down in his second turn no matter what i do, so i charge it onwards to have it fire everything at least once. I manage to kill 6 of his tacticals but i miss horrible amount of shots.

http://i.imgur.com/SDa436o.jpg

 

Dark Angels TURN 2

 

My stormwolf is shot down and his land raider cuts down 3 of my wulfen, not much else happens. 

http://i.imgur.com/1XQUjeO.jpg

 

Viper Legion TURN 2

 

The loss of my wulfen and the fact that i lack proper counter to his vehicles force me to end any offensive action before it has even started. I do however manage to take the objective i'm hiding upon and get points from there. I also push my Venerable Dreadnought forwards to distract his vehicles from my oh so vulnerable infantry.

http://i.imgur.com/uwbiwSL.jpg

 

Dark Angels TURN 3

 

He deep strikes his interceptors, two assassins and a terminator librarians behind my lines, the assassins seem especially threatening. 

http://i.imgur.com/rD6iOFt.jpg

 

Viper Legion TURN 3

 

I manage to hack and shoot apart the intercessors with my blood claws and grey hunters, but his Culexus Assassin makes casting psychic powers nearly impossible to me taking away my most effective ways of hurting him (at least so it seemed). I also deepstriked the terminators of my own behind his deepstrikers to help me kill the assassins

http://i.imgur.com/kRySOmH.jpg

 

Dark Angels TURN 4

 

His whole army advances, tacticals and landraider killing the blood claws on the point. 

http://i.imgur.com/e6eaUPE.jpg

 

Viper Legion TURN 4

 

Sadly forgot to take picture here, but my Dreadnought continued in melee with the landraider, slowly taking away its wounds. My Wolf priest managed to get to the point on my end of the table, scoring one important point to me. I also finished the last of his deep strikers.

 

Dark Angels TURN 5

 

Again forgot the picture here, but i blame the intensivity of the game. His landraider had 3 wound left when it retreated from the melee towards my troops due to it being the only way not blocked by his troops.  Then he threw practicly everything he had to my dreadnought and the Iron Priest supporting it, killing them both and the Wolf Priest on the point. He also charged his Onager to a WGPL of mine, but failed to kill it so that melee can be seen in the next picture. 

After this turn the game was 7-8 him leading.

 

Viper Legion TURN 5

 

http://i.imgur.com/fHOAZDr.jpg

 

Thanks to my smites taking the landraider down, the game ends in 9-9 draw after the 5 turns we agreed to play came to a close. I was losing by one point after his turn so killing the landraider and getting the remaining rune priest up to the objective gave me the points i needed to tie the game (since both of us got 1 point from objectives in the last turn)

 

Post game lore

 

As always viper legion had split it's main force of fire teams into ones specialized in melee and those specialized in ranged combat. This was to utilize the versatile training the Vipers recieved, and the plan was to tie enemy units into close combat with the units specializing in it and to shoot the others down with ranged units. However the Dark Angels proved to be more prepared to a battle between to two forces, causing terrible losses to Viper Legion, even shooting down the only transport they had and fully anhillating full fire teams. Despite this,and thanks to unyeilding courage and determination shown by the likes of Sergeant Augustine (who survived the battle despite being charged by an Onager in its closing moments) and Pronoiar Varus (count as wolf priest who managed to keep my characters alive), Viper Legion was able to fight the Angels to a halt even though it costed the life of Techmarine Basil and nearly resulted in the death of Venerable Justian Valectus.

 

The battle lasted for hours, but was ended when other captain Isaac Vulpes of the Viper Legion arrived to the system and managed to parlay truce between the two chapters. After the fighting stopped both sides rushed to save their wounded and then, to Staga's dismay, departed their seperate ways. The Angels soon left Taidr behind and disappeared from the whole system, while the Viper Legion along with Inquisitor Staga were ambushed by the Bifrost Huscarl regiments on the planet, causing severe losses to the already depleted 6th cohort. Only with the timely arrival of the 5th cohort (the other half of the 3rd great cohort) the Vipers managed to strike against the traitors. It took the loyalists more than a year of sacrifices and blood to first kill every last traitor Huscarl and then to finish of the remaining rebellious forces.

 

To Inquisitor Staga it was a way of purifying his name, tarnished by shame and doubt by others after the Dark Angel mishap, that become known to the inquisition and the Viper Legion as the "Taidr Incident". With purification of his name as his goal, Staga showed before unseen fury in the cleansing of Taidr, fury that felled the sword on thousands of heretic and traitors.

 

After the pacification of Taidr was finished the 3rd great cohort would follow Staga to the planet of Bifrost, the home of the Bifrost Huscarls. There they worked in unison with the inquisition to hunt down and destroy any possible heretical elements there. With the Bifrost Huscarls being the prime regiments around whose the defense of Aura sector was build on, it was essential to eliminate any chance of them betraying the imperium.

They arrived too late however, since at the moment their ships arrived at the orbit of Bifrost they were fired upon. Countless units of the Huscarls either in training or stationed to their home world were openly turning against the imperium, setting the whole planet on fire. Despite this the Viper Legion deployed to the planet in their limited numbers, while Inquisitor Staga did everything he could to stop the traitors from summoning demons to their help.