The Battle of Prospero - Invasion

Hi again folks!

A word of warning is in order at the start of this post. It will be a long one. There will be pictures. There will be a massive amount of fluff-crime...

Following up on our prelude game I talked about in the last post here, my friend Thor and I have had a proper go at one-another in the first of 3 phases of the Prospero Campaign from Forgeworld.

In this campaign, I'm playing the Space Wolves' retribution force come to bring the Thousand Sons legion to justice for defying the will of the Emperor of Mankind! 
Those of you familiar with the story, I'm sorry.
Those of you not familiar, the actual story is nothing like ours...

 

As stated before, the campaign rules provided by Forgeworld in the Horus Heresy book: Inferno, divide the attack on Prospero's capital city Tizca in 3 phases, representing the ongoing invasion.

Phase One focusses on the landing of the Space Wolves' forces and their rampaging assault on the district of Old Tizca. Magnus, Primarch and leader of the Thousand Sons has, at this points, ordered his legion to stand down and accept the sanction of the Emperor. Unaware of this, the Spireguard, the human defence force of Tizca tries to hold back the Space Wolves.

 

Phase Two sees both sides throwing themselves at one another in full force, with the Thousand Sons rising up to defend their home despite the orders of their liege, and Constantin Valdor ordering his Custodes and the Sisters of Silence to support the Wolves.

 

Phase Three details the end of Tizca. As the Thousand Sons unleash ever more fearsome arcane force upon the invading army, the veil of realspace rips and tears, and Magnus at last takes the battle to his brother, Leman Russ of the Space Wolves.

 

Each phase is brought to the table with a selection of special rules that are in effect during each battle played in that phase. Each battle played brings an amount of victory points, based on the mission, game mode or deployment type you used. Again, this represents the kind of encounters taking place all over Tizca during that part of the invasion. Furthermore, at the start of each battle, we roll on a table to see what effect the escalating warp-storm has on the battlefield. Evidently, the further up in the campaign, the worse this psychic phenomenon gets.

 

Tizca, the City of Light. Note: there's no Wolves yet, so it's still pretty!

 

 

Thor & me decided on playing a battle a month, and 4 battles per phase. That way, our campaign will be fought out over the course of 2018, leaving us with plenty of time to do some painting and play the occasional game of 40k etc.

 

Preparations out of the way, we drew up 2500 points lists and got going. This might seem like a lot of points, but it can't be overstated how different the Horus Heresy armies work compared to 'regular' 40k. You work with big units, but they can get killed really fast if the dice aren't in your favor! (we'll get to that...)

 

It being the first phase of the campaign, my Space Wolves gained a rule that allowed them to always get the first turn, rather than roll for it, unless the Thousand Sons bring unique (='named') characters, in which case they can roll to Seize the Initiative (on a 6, the bastard can steal my first turn!) Thor was a gent and left Ahriman or Amon at home, so no seizing.

 

We rolled a mission & deployment zone from the Inferno book. Thor got to deploy his army in a rectangular zone on the one end of the table. I got a 18" diameter to deploy in at the other end. Our mission was to go out and murder the opposing warlord and his bodyguard unit.

 





Thousand Sons taking up defensive positions overlooking the Plaza.



 

Both Thor and me bring a few models or units that 'count as' something different. This is mostly because we both have rent to pay and wives, that are already very tolerant of our hobby excesses, we don't want to piss off.

In Thor's case, he uses spare (yes, I know...) dreadnaughts as Castelax-Achea battle-automata. These are unique to the Thousand Sons and are controlled psychically, rather than through a cortex-controller. It also allows Thor to slingshot psychic power through them. Having four of these plucky high Toughness 3+ save, 5+ invulnerable save goons on the table is an indication of how enjoyable my Wolves' stay on Prospero was going to be. Also, yes, that's a block of 10 terminators he's using as a bodyguard unit. They are indeed of the Sekhmet, which means that they are 1) psykers, 2)get a 3+ invulernable save due to their legion's arcane cults and 3) have 2 Wounds each.

 

His Warlord is a legion Praetor who is also a witch (sorry, Librarian). The 2 (at the time of the picture) unpainted dreadnaughts are psychic (duh) Contemptor dreadnaughts. The rest of Thor's forces include 2 units of 10 psychic veterans, and a unit of Ammitara Occult, psychic snipers. All in all, I was looking up against 10 extra dice worth of psychic shennanigans!

I had brought a Land Raider and Spartan tank, filled with my terminator bodyguard and a large unit of Grey Slayers, backed up with a heresy-era Wolf Priest and my Warlord, the named character Hvarl Redblade, respectively. Furthermore, I had brought a Contemptor-Cortus dreadnaugh of my own, and 2 Javelin Land Speeders. The rest of my army, 2 units of 15 Grey Slayers and a plasmagun-wielding support squad were outflanking thanks to a rule granted by Redblade.

 

The following will be two things at once:

• a turn by turn accounting of what happened on the table
• a shameful tale of poor dicerolls and fluffcrime

 

As we sound off the start of Turn One, my Wolves pull up their tanks at the outskirts of the Plaza only to find a host of Thousand Sons waiting in defensive positions at the other end of the square. Lascannons and a salvo of missiles light up the battlefield, but fail to do more than scratch some paint of the Thousand Son battle-automata. Advancing up the flank, the vengefull automata (the Mechanicum really needs to look into that yo!) unleash a volley of fire themselves, leaving 2 heaps of rent and smoking metal where my Javelin Speeders used to be. Across the square, a large host of terminators, awash in arcane power thunder forward.

 

With 30 power-armoured predators apparently nowhere near the plaza, my Turn Two sees my 6 plasmagunners arrive from outflank. Adding their firepower to the barrage of lascannons unloading on the advancing Sekhmet, 2 Wolves find their gun exploding in their hands while most of their shots proves woefully ineffective on the psychically shielded enemy. Only 3 Sekhmet are taken out! With barely a passing thought, the Thousand Sons throw up a storm of plasma, utterly destroying my support squad while moving up again.

 



My plasma is too hot to handle, it would seem...
 





At last drawn to the noise of the dying, my 2 squads of 15 Grey Slayers appear on the enemy flanks to start off Turn Three. My hopes are somewhat lifted with the arrival of these highly versatile troops. Able to run or fire bolters and still charge is very powerful, and they can bring a whole lot of power weapons to deal with all sorts of opponents. There is a catch, however, in that I still have to roll dice to make them work...

Even with a re-roll, I manage to have both units appear at opposing ends of the table, unable to combine their killing power on the Sekhmet before charging in with my now disembarked Space Wolf terminators. I manage to shoot a few of the Ammitara, and take down another 2 Sekhmet, but then fail the charge, leaving my terminators into something of a tight spot.

 

Never one to squander a good opportunity for blast-weapon goodness, Thor aims his unit of plasma cannons at the termies and unleashed the power of a small sun. Needless to say, he scores the points for killing my bodyguard unit. One unit of Castelaxi, in the meantime, manages to barrel into my Contemptor-dreadnaught rendering it to metal scrap.

 

Looks impressive, but dies to Sweeping Advances just the same as everyone!







Turn Four sees the long-awaited end of the Sekhmet as Hvarl and his cronies charge out of the Spartan guns blazing (allthough the high-yield lascannons on said Spartan really did most of the work there!). Over 40 Wolves charge into the fray, emboldened by their jarl and the Fenrisian priest at his side. Overzealous, one of the Grey Slayer Huscarls engaged the Thousand Son praetor in a duel, but is effortlessly cut down, causing one of my squads to falter and turn tail, only to be gunned down by the vicious automata and plasmacannons of the enemy.

Unleashing all sorts of psychic power, (rolling for Perils of the Warp and actually getting buffed in the process!) Thor's Praetors becomes a blurr of warp-enhanced death, cleaving through my Grey Slayers and running down my unit of 20 and my Warlord when they fail morale and try to run away.

At this point, I confess that I cursed. Loud. Repeatedly.

 

Taking a short break to catch some fresh air (and make some more coffee), we looked back on the game so far. I've made a few mistakes along the way, but mostly, it's dice being dicks today. My shooting is appalling (even for assault-oriented Space Wolves), with few hits scored and fewer still getting through Thor's saving throws. My terminators failed a charge they really should have made and losing morale really hurt my Grey Slayers. Accepting a challenge from a psychically supercharged Praetor (with Warp Speed and a 'Perils' buff, I was looking at 8 Strength 4 AP2 attacks with Fleshbane, thus wounding on 2's) with my Wolf Priest was a stupid idea. My save wasn't good enough to withstand that sort of killing power, accepting the challenge meant I couldn't bring my numbers to bear and, most importantly, I lost the character that made my unit Fearless. Losing the combat and failing that morale check cost me 15 wolves and the warlord.

 

We did, however, decide to play the rest of the game, as there was still opportunity to kill the Thousand Son warlord and mitigate my losses. Utterly pissed by the death of their lord, my Land Raider's gun crew uttered a mighty Fenrisian curse and unleashed laser-hell on the enemy, taking him out, while my Spartan survived a round of Castelax-induced pummeling somehow. Our missions called for variable game lenght, so at the end of this Fifth Turn, I roll the die to see if we go on, and, obviously, roll too low. Our game ends with Thor taking the victory, having scored 1 more point, but most importantly, kicking my 'invading' Space Wolves in the chin so hard they're back on the boat to Fenris.

 

Next month, we'll have a go at some Horus Heresy-era cityfighting. I'm anxious to find out if my Space Wolves will manage to make some headway into Tizca! I'll keep you guys posted for sure.

 

Next post, I'll get into a bit of painting and hobby projects.

See you!

 

Matt