Game 5, final Big battle: Horus Heresy - Escalation Campaing, Lacum Itineribus

Game 5, Final Big battle: Horus Heresy - Escalation Campaing, Lacum Itineribus

This is the 5th and final for our 500pts Escalation campaign day game.

Some of the players had to drop out because of worldly reasons but we were still some players left for another game.

My Alpha Legion would again be playing on the Loyalist side and the Night Lords player added another 500pts to his army, this meant that he would be able to include a Land Raider...
Not all of this was painted as our goal for this day was to have 500pts painted army and he would suffer from the "preferred enemy: unpainted" that all the painted miniatures got.
A rule that I had forgotten to use earlier in the day.

We knew that a traitor Preator with terminator bodyguards was hosted inside the big Landraider.
No volunteers to face them were initially found.
We could really not leave objective "5" free for the taking so a really risky plan with my tactical squad would face them and trying to hold them as the Raven Guards flanking me tried to disable the Landraider.

Iron Hand Breachers and Dorodeo Dreadnought was set up defensively and a Space Wolves Dreadnought was set up as a counter charge unit, to strike were the opportunities opened.

My terminator squad had infiltrated close to objective "3"

The Landraider stormed forward and the front door opened and the Night Lords Preator charged my tacticals with his terminator bodyguards. As was expected for troops of the Alpha Legion I managed to take down two terminators with reaction fire... Ok, granted... that might have been a little better then I could even wish for...

With no time to spill, the Raven Guards now tries to catch the Landraider as their sergeant had an meltabomb.

A large unit of Word Bearers and their commander tried to deepstrike just besides my tacticals but the scatter dice meant they would be deployed on top of my tacticals and after a roll on a 1 they were all counted as casualties...
Neat... My elite troopers had defeated all of the Word Bearers infantry by just being deployed at the right place at the right time.
As we all know, I had sabotaged his deepstrike before the battle with infiltrators and the moment they tried to deploy the Word Bearers were all dead... That must have been the only reason... That or some rather bad dice rolls but I choose to believe in the sabotage option...

After something like 3 or 4 miraculous rounds of combat and still not defeated by those monsters my gallant troops were helped by a Dreadnought.

Space Wolves charges the Emperors Children. My initial push with my terminators had resulted in much casualties, that darn Word Bearer Dreadnought with plasma cannon had found a liking to shoot at them by now...

With the help of the Space Wolves Dreadnought my Tacticals had defeated the Night Lord commander.
The Landraider was starting to back up as the Raven Guards tried to damage it and Night Lords got reinforcements in the form of deepstriking jump pack infantry.

The Night Lord Landraider managed to shoot of the gun arm of the Dreadnought but it was still alive.

As the Dreadnought chased after the Landraider for payback my tacticals extracted the objective "5"

My Terminators carrying objective "3" back to our lines were chased by Night Lord jump infantry and the Emperors Children commander and his bodyguards.

I told the Space Wolves to form a line in front of my stalling the enemy long enough for my troops to extract the objective. They were unfortunately to slow to react and the Night Lords and the Emperors Children.

The Emperors Children commander challenged my sergeant but this was a opponent my sergeant could not match and my Terminators were all destroyed.

By now the unit that I had extracted the objective were ready for another round and managed to outflank the enemy coming in from the side of the table or the rear from this combat.
The Night Lords were not locked in combat any more and I was able to rapid fire them from the rear. Joining my firefight the Iron Hand Breachers opened up with their bolters on the Night Lords. They took some casualties but were still standing.

In the traitor turn the Night Lords charged the Iron Hands and the Emperors Children commander charged my outflanking tacticals to hinder me from snatching the objective when the traitors were locked in combat. That was a fatal decision for the Emperors children as I managed to wound the commander with reaction fire and somehow eventually win the close combat against him also.
This meant that as the Night Lords and the Iron Hands were slaughtering their troops against each other, my tacticals could advance and secure the objective and start extracting it.


As you might have noticed, my commander managed to evade the camera this game and you might wonder what he did... Acting really really sneaky is the answer...

Initially he was deployed in the vicinity of the Iron Hands Breachers and their commander to add that extra punch with his thunder hammer as we were weary of where the Night Lords would deploy their deepstriking troops. When my terminators started to turn backwards with one of the objectives, the Iron Hands started to move up to greet the enemy following me.
My commander initially followed this tactics but later diverted and climbed and captured the centre objective. As the enemy were occupied with the larger units he was left alone as he moved backwards with the objective.

 

 

 

When the dust settled my Alpha Legion had secured and extracted all three of the objectives. A great victory for the loyalist.
The question to be asked is if the loyalist got the benefit of the objectives in the aftermath in this campaign...

And in the last battle (http://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2017/04/game-4-big-battle-horus-heresy.html) loyalist Alpha Legion were seen destroying all units of the traitor Alpha Legions, their Headhunters, the special weapon team and their commander. Were they really killed or were it all a scheme to make it look like it? Where they in reality just covering up their tracks or any witnesses?

And the disastrous deepstriking of the Word Bearers in this game, were they sabotaged or were it just the standard dangers of deepstriking that befell them?

So many questions that are open for consideration and so much that is uncertain, as is to be expected by the Alpha Legion...


All in all the Alpha Legion had made an almost perfect performance in this campaign day as is expected... ("martial hubris" an all that...) In the big battles they had extracted 3 out of 3 objective in this game and 2 out of 3 in the previous, they have the cultist preacher in their custody as well as the other suspects, they have killed most of the informers and collected all their data and finally almost all secret informations about the governing lords of the Hive city is in the Alpha Legion hands.

It will be really interesting to see what this performance will have on the campaign as a whole.
And as I played as loyalist the last two games, will this strengthen the overall factor for the loyalist, will this cancel out the overall better performance of Traitor forces in the campaign day for a more status qou which might make future Alpha Legion operations far easier to keep hidden?

As seems to be the case with Alpha Legion, the more you dig the more you find... Questions seems to lead to nothing but more questions.


A big thanks for all involved in this campaign and a special thanks to Daniel Stennert for his work and pushing of this as its gaming master.