The Darkwind of Scylla (Campaign Blog)

[Focslain]

INCOMING TRANSMISSION

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The Cicatrix Maledictum has split the galaxy in two. Entire systems cut off from Holy Terra or lost forever in the warp. Or so it seems.... Scylla Quintus, a system thought swallowed by the great rift, has come back into view. With the return of this lost system, what mysteries are held and what threats lie in wait? Are you seeking this system to claim newfound glory, seize forgotten arcaeotech or simply to purify this warp tainted system?

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So the local group is doing another crusade campaign with a twist, we’re adding the old planetary empire rules as well. Got a bunch of tiles and everything.

 

With the new codex dropping and those new crusade rules looking right up my alley (again) I’m going to do T’au for this. And while some might remember my battlesuit heavy force, this is going to be a better mix. Also allows me to be that guy considering I have lots of the frak off guns already.

 

For this I’ll be using my old Darkwind Cadre. This was an army based off the T’au in the Dawn of War 2 game. So all the units are built (as closely) to how they are in the game. I did add a few units that weren’t in the game, just cause I liked the look or it added to my theme of spamming stealth suits.

 

My starting 60 PL (2 RP on roster expansion) is the following:

 

Commander in XV8 - CIB, MP, Flamer, shield generator, shield drones x2, Through Boldness, Victory, Puretide chip

 

7 Firewarriors - Pulse rifles
Shas’ui - pulse rifle, markerlight

 

7 Firewarriors - Pulse rifles
Shas’ui - pulse rifle, markerlight

 

7 Firewarriors - Pulse rifles
Shas’ui - pulse rifle, markerlight

 

2 Stealth suits - burst cannon x2, counterfire defense system
Shas’vre - fusion blaster, counterfire defense system

 

2 Stealth suits - burst cannon x2, counterfire defense system
Shas’vre - fusion blaster, counterfire defense system

 

XV95 GhostKeel - burst cannon x2, cyclonic ion raker, shield generator, counterfire defense system, stealth drone x2

 

Hammerhead Gunship - Burst cannon x2, High Capacity Railgun

 

Tidalwall Gunrig - Supremacy Railgun

 

Tidalwall Shieldline

 

I have plenty to add and since I don’t have much in HQs for this army pretty much all my RP is going to roster expansion. I have lots to add including more tanks, pathfinders, a riptide, broadsides and FW flyers.

 

Hopefully this will last longer then the 2-3 months most tend to run in my area. If anything it will be another force to keep records on.

 

We’re supposed to start up in two weeks, the GM is still painting the first two maps. Once done I’ll snap a picture since I’ll be modding the image for territory tracking.

 

Also to tide you over, not sure if I showed these here, but this is a portion of my Darkwind force.

 

[Focslain]

Ok, so the map is basically done, when for the first phase. The GM is planning to add more 'planets' as the campaign rolls along. We are meeting up on the 27th to pick starting territories. Each player will get three tiles, nothing with a building to start.

 

 

I'm hoping to get a high enough roll to go early in the selection process and surround the hive city. Also once I get my hands on the codex next week I'll fill out the crusade system info with the planets for this campaign. So I basically just have to fight one week with the old rules then I switch to the new ones. Not really going to change the list in the OP unless the rumor about firewarriors being minimum 10 is correct which I'll add the remaining two warriors and consider it done since we are using PL for these bouts.

 

Speaking of, we have a bit of a high turn out for now. We'll see how many stay in the fight as time goes on. We are starting with a whomping fifteen players.

 

1 Genesteale Cult
2 Custodes
2 Tyranids
1 Necron
2 Space Marine
2 Tau Empire
1 Chaos Marine
2 Eldar
1 Ork
1 Undecided

 

Honestly I'd be doing admech if it wasn't for the new dex dropping and I have to try out the new crusade rules. My fellow tau player showed off his stating list and is bringing in two hammerheads, coldstar, crisis team, and a five man fire warrior team with a devilfish. Not sure what else his going to be adding later.

Campaign turns will be in two week intervals. So I will do my best to keep you all updated on the battlelines as things develop.

[samerandomhero]

campaigns are awesome, I remember many a warhammer fantasy campaign. never got to do a 40k or horus heresy one yet. I hope your good stays strong and the campaign is awesome for you. :)

[Galron]

I wish my store would do a map based crusade instead of simple escalation leagues. I need to find out how to update the old 4th edition Vogen City Fight Campaign to 9th. Best campaign GW ever came up with.

[Focslain]

Sorry for the comm silence, between work and the campaign in general I’ve been really busy. Here’s a minor summary of what has been going on so far.

 

We are on turn 3 of the campaign

 

Of the starting 15 players we have 16 currently in the campaign
Everyone has been getting in at least two games a turn.
Of the now 96 tiles over 4 planets, only 11 remained unclaimed, all buildings are occupied. As are two smaller planets fully claimed.

 

Darkwind war front:
After 15 battles, I’ve won 11, my only two defeats have been pre-new codex and both against GSC and recently two complete draws, otherwise it’s been either down to the wire or I shot the enemy off the board in 2 turns.
I’ve been growing my Order of Battle so that I can take most of my collection, currently it’s at 160 PL, last calc was I needed 240 to field the whole collection.

 

Operation ‘Starkiller’ seems to be going well. I had to make a Farsight enclave detachment to deal with the necron player since he fields a C’Tan. A coldstar with the novasurge plasma rifle, Master of the killing blow and a pair of missile pods works well to drop the stargod in a round of shooting. I also got to use the weapon enhancement on both pods, so they are D3 now, so he has a 15D capacity, almost enough to take out Grazghkull, luckily no-one in our group has him.

 

I’m gaining on Messina with a foothold on Prime. I’m going to try to get in games with anyone on Messina each turn. Getting the others to agree to a homebase take is going to take some doing, til then I’ll just work on the other territories. A GSC player got the Hive city before me so has turned into my primary target much to their dismay.

 

Plan is to take Messina and the up-coming asteroid belt. After that I’ll expand on Prime, the question is how long will this last as steam is losing fast. At least from my end, it is getting hard to get a game in. From what I can see my counterpart is having issues scheduling games as well. With the exception of one player, I’m building war-front armies, forces that are not as hard hitting as my starter and themed to a commander. Thinking on it, with the stormsurge being in an aux detachment, I can still take it as bork’an with the Farsight group. Just need to add in that second crisis squad and riptide, then get to working on the third crisis team. Also working on a mostly stealth suit list. Just need to paint up three suits for my veteran small unit.

 

With the codex drop I switched from Tau Sept to Bork’an for my main force.

Generally most of my army has one or two battle honours, the most going to the Crusade Warlord: Shas’O Fireblood, who is effectively a Legendary character.

 

Bork’an Sept Commander in Enforcer Suit: CIB, Missile pod x2, Flamer, Shield Drone x2
Codex Relic: Ongar Gauntlet
Warlord Trait: Precision of the Hunter
Prototype System: TNP Flamer
Crusade Honours: MC Weapon (CIB), Artificer Armour, artisan bionics, Conversion Field, Blackstone amulet, Heroic Constitution

 

She had a free relic and two honour trait slots when the codex dropped. As per a house rule by the GM that if you got a new dex you got to rebuild any character/units but keep the upgrade slots earned, I tweaked her by dropping her shield generator and adding a missile pod. With how tanky she is I quick leveled her with the Savior agenda and she is very killy with 17 units to her name. Now she is up there with a Space marine dreadnought, costly though at 10PL and 10 Crusade value. I only use her against the GSC player as she was tasked with taking the Hive and Messina and he owns the hive currently.

 

I’ve added a few more commanders that will be facing off against different opponents, with Fireblood either leading against the GSC player till I kick him off the planet or against anyone else that takes tiles on Messina.

 

Things are calming at work now, so I’ll have more details on the turns and the maps uploaded later in the week including the next turn (turns are every other Thursday). Also the System Assimilation system for crusade is stupid fun for me. More on that later.

[Focslain]

Ok, doing this a turn(ish) at a time. I’m hoping to get some actual battle reports in as things are slowing down finally.

In the beginning…..

 

Turn 0

 

Territory Phase
So due to poor rolling I was in the lower half of the selection group. A GCS took the hive city I was aiming for so I took the Manfactorum next to the city and a few tiles on his flank. For the most part everyone took a building as their homebase. I’m the blue Tau symbol. Also on Messina is a new harlequin player and the GM as Necrons.

 

 

Turn 1
Started off poorly, lost a combat patrol the first day to the GSC player that is controlling Hive Triton. He is doing a mostly Jackel force with regen and all the defensive buffs. So did not have the firepower to deal with two full squads of regening bikes. I got the better of him later in a incursion level mission of Relic. Had the shots to drop a bike squad and the commander was tanking the patriarch like a champ. Got an easy win versus one of the Custodes players, we did a Behind Enemy lines mission and just passed each other in the night. His dread survived taking three railgun rounds (bad damage rolls) and I won due to him wanting to give his units XP.

Later I faced the other GSC player and he wiped most of my force with assaulting hybrids and abominations. Another hard loss.

 

Then the codex arrived… Switched from T’au to Bork’an and re-armed my commander (house rule is that if you army got a new codex you could swap gear/traits/etc since we are getting possibly four new ‘dex during this)

 

The Death Guard player was the first up, after a wiff of the railgun’s first shot it nearly one-shotted his Crawler, finishing it with a seeker missile from my skyray. Taking Mont’Ka as my philosophy since he was an assaulty force I got the extra AP and my firewarriors just ate his terminators. The commander was re-armed and between going melee build and three defensive crusade relics she murdered most of his commanders. The ghostkeel wrecked his backline and for kicks the last shot was into his warlord with the railgun, splatted him too good.
Next up was the Harlequin player, was Narrowing the Search mission and had a bit of firepower that was stunned due to his negative distance aura and him making his invs. Fight ended up bloody with me losing most of my infantry, but I managed to fry his warlord and a trope with the commander and with all three of my vehicles near the center I was gaining VP every turn. The Flare launcher on the ghostkeel was working overtime deflecting fusion blasts. It held the center for most of the game before dropping to a biker assault. Wasn’t a major victory but won on a decent VP spread.

 

Territory Phase

The Harlequin player got to roll before me and took the newly revealed Hive city on the fourth planet. I took one of the GSC in the hive’s border tiles, then grabbed a Bastion before swinging south to take a tile from the Harlequin player. Tried for the power station on Messinia but failed. The GSC player then took one of my tiles west of my homebase and got the power station. Of other note the second GSC player had switched to Durikari and netted all the unclaimed spaceports.

 

[Focslain]

Here are the next two turns.

 

Turn 2 

 

So the GSC tried to do a high PL the Gather Intel mission, but the game was a bit bigger than the GSC player figured for the time we had. We got through only three turns, game was 80PL so I had just about everything including my stormsurge. He squeezed into the far corner to avoid most of my fire. I had infiltrated a squad of stealth suits to the second objective to complete my Cut supply lines objective. Which they did with covering fire of two railgun rounds and a blast from the stormsurge’s blastcannon which wiped out a squad of purestrain heading for the suits. He held back his reserves for a turn so I dropped my commander behind his line and took it out his few characters. His patriarch rushed my stealth suit and wiped them out of course. He then sprung his ‘trap’ bringing in the gunslinger sniper to take out my ethereal and prepped an assault with two full biker units into my flank. My commander was jumped by three small squads of hybrids and knocked to a single wound, amazingly the gunslinger failed to kill the ethereal. He called it due to time (store was closing, we started late). Since I killed a few of his characters and was primed to put two railguns into his patriarch we called it a minor victory for the Tau.

 

Next battle was a planned one versus a newer player. Narrowing the search so if I won I’d get the free weapon enhancement.  I only asked him to set the power level, which he went for 80PL and wanted to try out the repulsor exterminator. I let him borrow mine so he could figure out a loadout. I was going to use my farsight detachment cause the commander needed the bonus. The bork’an detachment the ghostkeel, two hammerheads for XP and all my firewarriors and ethereal. What he brought made me grimace. He had a five man squad of intercessors, a redemptor dread, chaplain, captain, three man Inceptor squad, five man helblaster squad and a Gladiator Reaper. To his credit, the repulsor lasted two turns and hurt a hammerhead. The Reaper almost wiped out a firewarrior squad if they weren’t in dense terrain with stone on. Needless to say that he didn’t last long. By turn three only his captain was alive and just barely. So my new coldstar got his upgraded missile pods.

 

My next game was against the tyranid player at a 85 PL game that saw me take the stormsurge to get a better feel for it. The game ended in two turns as he took such a beating in shooting it was pretty much over. Highlights for the stormsurge were nuking a large zeonathrope unit with a bork’d driver cannon and 15 man genestealer unit with the cluster rockets. I had the farsight detachment in as well and the coldstar dropped half the warrior unit himself.

 

My first game against the necron player was a close one. The coldstar did it’s job in dropping the c’tan with a focused barrage. I had dropped the stormsurge for a riptide since this was a 80PL game instead. My bork’an riptide held a unit of warriors in the center of the field for three turns slowly crushing/blasting the 20 man unit to almost nothing. His preatorians ran a muck in my back field but with the farsight suits holding objectives and killing units it was close victory in my favor.

 

Territory Phase
I closed the gap in my lines and took some tiles on the main planet. One of the custodes players made good ground as did the other tau player, the GSC player expanded his borders.

 

 

Turn 3

Did large game, well for the campaign, against the custodes player. It was another semi-quick game as he took a lot of hard hits in the first two turns. He got first turn but there wasn;t much for him to hit with the board how it was.. Highlights were, the CFD defected a solid lascannon hit then just destroy the offending landraider with the cannon and some destroyer missiles and a bork’d skyray nearly wiping the jet bike unit. Lost the skyray to a deep striking dread, but it didn’t last long peppered at close range from half my army.

 

Faced the newest addition to the campaign, a thousand sons player. A good test for my warlord’s newly acquired blackstone amulet. This was another quick one with the mission being Behind Enemy Lines, so we had to close. It was a 50Pl game with him taking a few rubric marines, a deamon prince and lots of the beastman unit. He put a lot of fire into my skyray that I had in cover, so he didn’t manage to bracket it even with the multiple smites, granted my main line was protected as Fireblood was the only real smite target for that flank. The stealth suits and ghostkeel wiped out the rubric marines on that flank with Fireblood and the fire warriors nearly wiping out the beastmen. The skyray made a nuainse of itself against his flank of terminators and marine unit. Fireblood bork’d her CIB and blasted the daemon prince, only to finish the job with an ongar uppercut. She also made some good fried chicken as I had his sorcerer in the open. He managed to drop the tank, but with his other flank just gone he called it.

 

My rivalry with the GSC player continued as I got the same mission against him, we did it at 60PL so I dropped in a hammerhead in the same list I used prior and called it done. It was a bloody affair. I managed to get my ethereal off the board, but the field was down to my main commander, fireblood, a nearly dead unit of jackels and a cultist unit. Once again she was a beast, took a charge from a full squad of purestrain, losing only a shield drone and then wiping them out over the course of a turn. She also took out all three goliaths pretty much on her own.

 

It was a draw until the GM asked if we counted the painted score, which I tended not to, GM used it to break the tie, in my favor as my opponent had several unpainted models.

 

My last game of the turn was against the necron player, ended in a draw. I was a bit too aggressive and not positioning right as while I did wipe out a full 20 man warrior unit with two fire warrior squads and a devilfish as well as dropping half his army in the first turn, his counter assault hit harder then I thought. He got both my HQ’s in the open and dropped them. I managed to do the same over the course of the next two turns, including his c;tan even without starkiller. It took my crisis team and a fire warrior squad with it.

 

Territory Phase
I secured the southern part of Messina, the GSC player took the other hive city from the Harlequin player. A slow gain, but a gain. Also a few other territories traded hands as the Prime planet filled up. The thousand sons player took on a Raider role, so he doesn’t have territories, but can erase a player's claim to one if he beats them. This has not happened yet as his still new. As a bonus, beating him nets you +1RP on top of what you normally get. Some players are RP starved, our ork player specifically as he tends to fail his out of action rolls and spends his points on recuperating.

 

[Focslain]

Expanding the Empire - Current overview

 

So the Expanding the Empire system was what cemented me into playing Tau for this campaign. The fact of assimilating planets for bonus RP and free stuff in general made this a win-win in my mind as I can expand my crusade force quicker and get more of my collection in faster. Below is how the expansion is going so far.

 

System 1 (Trait: Prideful - Can’t use Show of Force)
Shrine (core)
Mining x2
Political Center x2
Fleet Installation

 

So this system went pretty much wholesale military takeover. This unfortunately razed most of the system. Dropped the mines first for the RP but only got 3 form both due to poor rolling. Last two were a political centers to flip the Shrine world and tap it with a few diplomacy points I got. The set up for the core was +1RP for a Diplomatic takeover so decided to give that a try for the whole system, good thing I did.

 

System 2 (Trait: Warlike - +1 Military to all planets)
Fleet Installation (Core)
Civilian World
Trade Hub
Political World x2
Agri World

 

So none of these worlds natively give RP, so the supply lines boost was a good thing. Also with the warlike trait this boosted all their military stats. So I planned to go on a full diplomatic takeover run. I got lucky in that some of the quick games I did the Protect the Leadership agenda. This netted me the full 3 Diplomacy points each, plus I did Secret Meeting a few times as well. This time I picked carefully and the dominos fell pretty quickly. First was the Agri world, which dropped the Civilian World and Fleet Installation down by 1 (2 and 4 respectively), Then the Civilian world turned next and dropped the Military of the Fleet Installation.  Next was a little tricky as I had to hit the trade hub hard, that flipped one political center (6 to 3) which I dropped and halved the other which then I halved the Fleet Installation down to 2 Diplomacy.  Allowing for a quick take over, though the final Secret meeting agenda cost me a victory in the campaign (gentleman’s agreement). The supply line bonus for the Fleet Installation was -1 Military on all planets in the next system.

 

System 3 (Trait: Ideological - +1 Diplomacy to all planets)
Trade Hub (core)
Trade hub
Mining x2
Research World

 

This is the system I’m currently working on. The -1 to military made this system ripe for conquest like the first system. Even with the bonus to the system Diplomacy that Ideological grants them. Plan is as follows:

Step 1: Take one of the mining worlds, dropping the military of the other and the research world
Step 2: Take out the research world for some easy RP
Step 3: Take out the second mining world, lower the military of both Trade Hubs <- Current step
Step 4: Take out one trade hub and flip the Core trade hub
Step 5: Tap the Core trade hub for 2D3 Diplomacy and D3 Military for the next system.

 

The wild thing is that this all will cost me only 8 Military and 2 Diplomacy to complete and I can earn that with a few lucky rolls over the course of 2 games. Fully completing the Hit Their Supply Line agenda in each battle and getting the free Diplo point for the Herald of the T’au’va battle trait, which both my Ethereals have.  Otherwise I could add a third Supply Line agenda and spend an RP to swap 2 Military for 2 Diplomacy via Show of Force. I did a small game at the start of this system versus a Guard player, mission was Supply Cache which I won soundly. That netted me 4 Military and 2 RP for the mission which after the assimilation of the Mining (+3 RP) and the Research World (+4 RP) I had 9 RP to burn quickly. Just increased the supply limit six times and now my current Order of Battle limit is 200PL, and I still don’t have all my units in yet.

 

I also have two free warlord trait and a Rearm/resupply requisition at current.  

 

Honestly I didn’t name the systems since I was running through them so quickly. The backstory is that a few wiry water cast members are using the Scylla campaign as propaganda to bring the systems into line. The Razed effect of the military is the fact that they scared them too much to maintain support.

 

Next Week I’ll try and get an overview of my basic force and what I use against who in this campaign.