Siege of Vardash III - results

Vardash III, infested by Tyranid forces and destination of a Chaos Lord hellbent on worldwide destruction. Somehow these unlikely races formed an uneasy alliance and were ready to defend the main spaceport they had taken on the planet. High above, a fragile alliance formed between the Imperial forces of Marines and Guard led by an Inquisitor and his Grey Knights, and the Tau and Eldar were preparing to launch an assault to eliminate this joint threat...



Due to a few delaying factors, the game got started a little late, and only ran five turns. I definitely think that another turn would have made a huge difference in the results, but two players had already left and we were close to our agreed on ending time. Overall everyone had a good time and said they wanted to do another one. There's already talk on the forums of making a regular apocalypse day each month. That sounds fabulous to me from a player standpoint, but I doubt I'll be making as big of a production as I tried for this one. While I do have a little disappointment that there wasn't a conclusive result to this game, I did enjoy the hell out of it. I think we all learned alot about combining Planetstrike and Apocalypse, the value of Strategic Redeployment and that walls and buildings are REALLY tough. I took some video, but sadly can't get my camera to communicate with the compy today. There were lots of photos taken too, but not by me, so they'll have to be posted later.

The highlights and results:

Gremlins was a SUPER valuable asset. The attackers infested the Defense Laser with them. It got ONE shot off, which knocked the guns off a razorback and blew up the Tau's sky ray. Unfortunately the sky ray was the command vehicle for their formation giving them free marker lights anywhere on the table. The only other shot it was able to get off was an attempt to intercept the Firestorm. I (house)ruled that it could stop 1d6 firestorms in the same fashion it can stop orbital attacks. Sadly, it missed.

The attackers took Scorched Skies and wound up with 12 Firestorms. Thanks to Void Shield on the Defense Laser and a Shield Generator on the Doomsday Device, the attackers had to aim for softer targets. This actually proved quite successful as there was very little scatter due to some well done dice rolling. The PDF valkyrie (and Xylar's getaway) sat upon a pad and was wrecked by two firestorms, the Shadowsword was pounded by firestorm and lost it's main gun and one of the lascannons and a structure point. All before the game started. The firing was so accurate, only one of the craters I made got used!

The Chaos Sorcerer (and general) Bubonicus started outside the walls with the Warp Bomb in a land raider that had come to rescue him after his crash, but allowed a 4+ obscured save as they raced towards the gate. The marine's librarian and Primary HQ planned a deepstrike right behind it (and assault thanks to planetstrike rules), but despite having a Daomcles rhino on the board, they scattered well off target much to Bubonicous' relief. The Librarian teleported after him the next turn and despite thunderhammering the gate down, the land rader got away.

Thanks to some well paved roads (with no craters ;) ) Bubonicus made it to his Doomsday device and installed the Warp Bomb in good time, and despite failing to activate it on turn 4, it was started up in turn 5. He rolled a 7 resulting in Bursting with Power. The device rained blasts down on the oncoming Vendettas full of Grey Knights, but thanks to them going flat out, they were missed, but just barely!

The Avatar of Khaine was really furious by the time the wall came down. It only took him 3 rounds of beating on it. The wraithlord that arrived with him took as long, deciding to mimic his god. Just before this, a falcon flew over the wall and actually tankshocked the PDF squad standing atop the wall, forcing them to flee! Both were still up there when the walls came down. The guardsmen wound up pinned under the rubble, but the falcon simply floated to the ground. (How do you handle a vehicle atop a building when it's destroyed anyway? We ruled a S4 hit to the rear) The Falcon then scooted over to a landing pad, dropped some fire dragons on it and together they asked a Trygon to lie down, which he did, but only barely. A wave serpent full of guided dire avengers dropped over the wall and bladestormed some doomed genestealers in a building nearly wiping them out. The fire dragons' falcon was in perfect position to land atop a bastion in the next turn, had there been one.

The Tau, due to the sheer numbers of guard, marines and eldar that had shown up wound up deploying nearly 6 feet from the walls. The hammerhead railguns could reach fine, but they had yet to make it to the walls when the game ended. With the loss of the markerlights fromt he Skyray the railguns had to rely on pure skill from the hammerhead gunners and unfortunately missed a few vital shots that would have brought the walls down. A number of shots that did connect rolled poorly for penetration. The stealth suits they deep striked on the flank table did quite well and shot up a lot of PDF troopers as well as some dug in nurgle marines.

The marines dropped a lot of assault troops on the flank table and assaulted the bastion there hoping to crack it open and get at the obliterators hiding atop the walls there. Their Librarian, desprate to stop Bubonicus' land raider, charged into the city after smashing down the gate, but to his dismay, found genestealers and khorne terminators hiding in the ruins just inside the walls. To his credit, he did make it the farthest into the city before game end.

The 2 obliterators in the bastion on the flank table proved to be very, very deadly. They held the bastion until the end, but there was a death cult assassin sneaking up on the blind side of the bastion who could have captured it in the next turn. The Daemon prince jumped the fire dragons, surprising the eldar player who had not seen the model previously. Apparently he had been hiding in one of the dark alleys waiting to jump out and steal their wallets... and souls.

Xylar much to my dismay, hid in the backfield for most of the game, but he is really a cowardly lot. I had put a lot of thought into him as a special character though and wanted to see his psychic powers and Hijack skill in effect though.

So at the end of 5 turns Chaos/Tyranids/Cult had scored 3 VP (1 Bastion, 2 for a Warp Bomb+activated Doomsday device) to the Imperial/Eldar/Tau coalition's 1 VP for having their forward base bastion. The coalition had barely made it inside the walls though, and this would have proved a VERY tough battle had they been given a few more turns. Assuredly this was a victory for the Defenders, but to me, Campaign Mistress that I am, hardly decides the fate of Vardash III.