After Action Report: Perish in the Pit

 The ruins still gleam in the falselight cast by the engines of the gods, the spacecraft blasting the worldlet's atmosphere with artificial light. It gleams on the ancient temples built above the death-water-from-below, shadows obscuring the ancient, pre-Imperial glyphs and ritualised warnings. Pale-armoured warriors cluster in the dead temple, their plate clicking with the sacred signs that the death-water-from-below always whispers around their gods' wargear. The semi-man hisses a ritual of thanks, his bristling fur colouring with the proximity to the old, old water. The gods war, and death comes. His will be a place of honour once again.

the battlefield. some Death Guard are deployed

Another skirmish last Sunday, a 1000-point game of Horus Heresy against my old friend Camille, last seen in Vicchièneche, one of the chief cities of Saint-Saëns, where their Sisters of Battle were slaughtered by (but defeated!) by the Death Guard. This fight was ten thousand years earlier, with their Adeptus Custodes against my (less mutated) Death Guard.

Death Guard

Siege-Breaker, power axe, combi-flamer, phosphex bombs.
Contemptor with assault cannon, fist, twin-linked bolter
14 Tactical Marines with attached Apothecary
14 Tactical Marines with attached Apothecary
7 Marines with missile launchers

Adeptus Custodes

Helena
Several Squads of Guard
Contemptor with Spear Thingy

We set up the terrain, sort of accidentally creating a ruined temple with several crumbling fortifications and the War creeping in on the grounds. We were joking around that the temple seemed to have once been a nuclear reactor, and the lake and river had formed from the pool - so that's the setting now. Some pre-Dark Age nuclear site that had fallen into ruin and become a place of worship and that civilisation had itself collapsed, and then Compliance and now civil war. 

It's fun making maps and then accidentally creating layers and layers of history to a place.

look at this huge battlefield we don't use (spoiler)

We rolled the weirdest (and for my list, worst) deployment, Ambush. A circle in the centre of the board, with the 'attacker' coming in from the edges. Camille beat me in every pre-game roll, damn their eyes, and so got to come in hard and fast.

another short of this nice field

Helena and her Guard

Camille's Custodes are pretty nice to look at, painted in the standard gold, reds, and blue accents. I also like that they are Woke and have a Female Leader. Fuck you, nazis.

I did at least get to deploy in cover.

faces of bystanders blurred because of poor photography, not out of respect for privacy

really, they're all 'dreads' because i dread fighting them

Helena and her pals

THE GAME

I forgot to note the turns in my notes, and I can hear Arthur waking up, so please excuse the rather simplistic rendition of the game. It occurred very quickly anyway, so this post is mostly to allow some photos.

Camille moved their posthumans in around the edges toward me quite rapidly. The nature of the deployment zones, combined with ample cover and their small squad sizes, meant that I did very little with my counterfire.

The dread comes in.

This incredible 11" charge didn't bloody help.

On the way in, the Custodes shooting took out a Tactical and a missile launcher marine; that squad returned fire at the Dreadnought but it passed all its saves. Maybe I should give in and get a lascannon squad, but I really would prefer not...

Our combat knives did nothing. 

fun photography though

The Custodes, even with the disordered charge, annihilated the Tactical squad, who broke and fell to the sweeping advance. I admittedly did forget about my rad grenades in this combat, but I assure you that it would have made no difference.

Helena wades into the sacred pool, geigh-her readings ticking steadily upwards. The blood of Mortarion stains her boots.

The Siege Breaker (I need to name him) throws a phosphex bomb, but it splatters the ruins on the far side of the Guard unit, semi-sentient fire crawling towards the rad lake.

Sergeant Gloss unleashed the fury of the legion against Helena and her squad. They manage to smash two of the Emperor's children (note case!) into the cracked flagstones and polluted waters. The missile launchers pour krak missiles into the squad, to no effect - although the Guard counter-fire kills three Death Guard and causes them to flee down a level of the old Atomic Temple.

It is the Kheres Assault Cannon of the revered Ancient who incapacitates the last Custodes Guardsman and wounds Helena, a storm of fire shredding the concrete shores of the nucleake as he steps in against the Captain.

+ + + DIE + + +

Spinning in the air, her agility belying the weight of her customised armour, Helena slashes into the dreadnaught with her long, gleaming spear. She does five wounds before the mighty veteran can strike, but surely his years of experience will tell, and this honoured Guard captain dies here, at the edge of the war.

Not so much. I don't even hit her.

hop down a level, lads

may we come in and offer a copy of the Watchtower (that joke would work better with Deathwatch)

The Custodes come in to kill my remaining Tactical Squad, the dread killing two with its laser gun while we do a wound to the Custodes Guard squad. I don't have high hopes for the combat itself.

fight fight fight

I'm right to despair. While the marines do wound a Guardsman (I think killing one!), the Custodes' squad leader decapitates my sergeant in a challenge and their brothers kill eight other Marines; we break and are immediately Sweeping Advanced to death.

phosphex bombs!

Helena does, of course, immediately tear the heart out of my Contemptor's near-dead warrior. The game is effectively over, of course, though I do try to see if I would kill anything in the next turn. I fail to even scratch Helena with phosphex bombs and krak missiles. Camille and I agree that there is nothing left to do but pack up and shake hands again.

CONCLUSIONS

I didn't exactly cover myself in glory in this skirmish, but that deployment zone is rough. I think my list selection, while hampered by 1000 points and what I have painted was okay. If I could have kept Camille at arms-length for a turn or three and hammered them with missiles and Legion bolters, I might have been able to do a little better. But essentially immediate charges makes the whole thing over very fast indeed.

I don't want to make a lascannon squad. It's boring. However, the shift in Heresy 2.0 to Dreads having stats means that the Sunder ability from the Siege Master is moot. So at these tiny-points games without tanks, I don't have counters to Dreads other than my own.

Maybe if I build some more of those at least...

Qed-Mjw slid to his stifles next to the now-still water. The gilded gods had cleaned their wounded, and dead, and spent weapons, and left; the pale were recovered by grim-faced figures, haloed outside of light. The ruins of the war still encroached on the Place, but the scurrying servants of the Eagles-Devouring-the-Sun had finally left the crumbling temple grounds. The lights of the god engines had thinned. Finally, he could perform the rituals that the War-in-Heaven kept delaying.

He whispered the heptagonal prayers, washing his ears and lapping his whiskers. His fur shifted into iridescence in this, the place of honour, where his people had warded away the vulnerable for spin after spin after spin of the stars, until their names were all forgotten and only the rituals remained.

Haec epistula est admonitio de periculo.

Hadhih alrisalat tahdhir min alkhatari.

Eto soobshcheniye yavlyayetsya preduprezhdeniyem ob opasnosti.

Doo shił yáhoot'ééł niháji'ígíí t'áá'íiyisí.

This message is a warning about danger.