Sertoria Comitus, Chapter 1 Game 1: Death Korps of Krieg Armoured spearhead is ambushed

Reconquest of Sertoria Comitus campaign: Game 1

Prelude: https://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2017/11/sertoria-comitius-40k-campaign.html


The Death Korps of Krieg from the 317st Grand Armeé had made planet fall and secured area of control, met up with planetary overlords and the local defence forces and reinforced important locations for future operations.
It was now time to move out.

Here follows the Armoured Spearhead under the command of Tank Commander .198 Janusch Blitzen that was pushing westwards through the Jormungand Depression in force. The Spearhead had been tasked to push in force to expand the initial area of control, destroying any enemy encountered.


To his help he had been given an armoured task force with additional anti tank weaponry in the form of three Nashorn pattern Basilisks lead by Master of Ordinance officer Wigher Schiller, a Hydra AA and a small unit of Grenadiers in a Centaur for securing terrain ahead of the formation.  

 The task force had made good ground but had yet to encounter any enemy contact.
Closing in on a area ahead with different terrain features the spearhead heightened their senses and the Grenadiers were ordered forward.

This was the place the xenos had chosen to spring their ambush...

The Grenadiers scouts ahead and makes contact but dont have time to raise the alarm before the enemy opens fire.

The combined fire of the Fireprism take out a Leman Russ before I am even able to react.

Leman Russes moves up slowly making the most of their impressive gunfire.
Tank Commander Janusch Blitzens plan is to make good use of the tank guns in an attempt to inflict enough damage on these flimsy looking skimming tanks so they cannot hit us back and open up a free window that allows me to move at the double unhindered.

 

Enemy fast skimmers had tried to totally outflank me but I swung my tank hunter around...
But the fast skimmers was proving hard to take out.
 

My Leman Russes faired better and took out an enemy skimmer tank.

 Enemy commander looks rather happy about the current state of the ambush.

Xenos skimmer tanks moves at an incredible speed, taking up fire position amongst the bushes and unleashes its large cannon...

Enemy fast skimmers moves amongst my vehicles with guns blazing...

Payback time... The Punisher with its anti infantry cannon blasting away at the enemy tanks with double amount of dices for moving half speed....

The Grenadiers runs forward with their meltaguns at the ready but fails to hit these xeno gravtanks, it must be some kind of cloaking technology thats clouds their sights.

The Grenadiers and their Centaur are unfortinutly short lived and are cut down in a hail of shurikens...

 One of the enemy lighter skimmers are taken out but these proven to be rather resilient.

The Atlas moves up making field repairs with enemy bullets flying around....
 

The combined fire of my Leman Russes and Basilisks are starting to inflict heavy damage on enemy gravtanks... But its not enought to take them out and clear a path for me to advance on.

The Hydra is chasing after the fast skimmers but cannot take them all out.

The Leman Russes has taken a lot of beating and are in really bad shape. The crew of the Atlas are working as fast as they can patching up damages and reinforcing weaknesses in the armour but thats not nearly enough. Things starts to look grim indeed...

The Basilisks moves up, I needed something to make a pressure on the enemy but the Leman Russes was in no shape to do this...
 

One enemy skimmer tank is taken out.

But it cost me another Leman Russ...

In the end the Xenos ambush had stopped the Spearhead formation in its tracks and the troops under
Tank Commander Janusch Blitzen had taken a beating.
But all is not lost, Janusch had lost most of his Leman Russes but he still had Wigher Schiller with all of his Basilisks intact, an Hydra, an Atlas and his own tank was operational, in bad shape but still operational.
Could he just link up with other troops in the vicinity he would still have a force to reckon with.


The Xenos had not made an perfect ambush and the kill numbers had totalled up on their side. It had been far more costly then the Aeldar farseers had anticipated. 
They were not strong enough to take all of the humans out with the force at hand, and reinforcements were needed to be able to finish of such an job.

Tank Commander Janusch Blitzen was last seen being towed away in safety for field repairs...

Sertoria Comitius - 40k Campaign

Planet of Sertoria Comitius

Far out from the standard transportation and trade routes a until now hidden system is found.

A star system with five planets, an asteroid belt and several small planetoids at its outermost edge.

The Imperium had here found a perfect planet, green and full of jungles and vegetation. A Garden of Eve if you will. The initial intel sweeps from the Magos Biologis of the Mechanicus shown no intelligent native species.
With no enemy activity in the system of any kind, an order of colonization and industrialization is issued.
This virgin planet was named Sertoria Comitus.

 

Deeper in the denser part of the jungle ancient temples and strange totems were found, to the colonist unknown designs or origin. These most be of a long lost civilization of some kind.

 

Hundred and twenty standard years after the first step of human colonization, the planet was attacked.

An all-out attack on the planet is initiated and the Planetary Defense Forces are pushed back and much of the development and urbanizations are bombarded and destroyed.
The xenos are described as extremely fast and sleek, and utterly brutal and shows no regards for the human inhabitants of the planet, rather the opposite with almost hatred

The alarms reaches the Imperium and prepare movements of troops to help out with the defense and a counterattack.

Death Korps of Krieg forces from the 317th Grand Armeé are amongst the forces responding and are deployed and prepared for war. 

 

The conflict would be known as the "The Reconquest campaign of the Sertoria Comitius" in the eyes of the Imperial scribes.

Crusades, Lion Ramant multiplayer AAR

The saturday befor this, we had a great four player game of Lion Rampant.
I brought along some of my collection and mustered four warbands.
For the westerns we had a contingent of French and German crusaders, for the saracens we got the Ayyubid Egyptians and Turks.
We used random activation with a deck of card, when each players symbol was drawn that player got the chance to activate their forces.
The scenario we played was "Defending the indefensible", the Crusaders would defend the oasis with the all important water source.
The scenario states that the defender can start with 10points at the objective, with double forces we doubled that amount of points.

 I would take the field as the French commander.

 The Saracen forces gathers for an all out attack.

 

The defenders of the waterhole.

The Crusader knights lay moves in to protect their comrades.

The Ayyubid forces moves through the the village

The defenders stay put and wish their knights could hurry up...

Turkic horsemen moves forward in dashing speed.

After a slow start both the French and the German commanders decides to move forward.

The Saracen were really pummeling our troops with arrows and our troops were taking cassualties and are pushed back. We really neaded our knights to support now.

Our brave troops are ordered to move up in position again to not the Saracen near the water.

Our knights are finaly getteing near to support. And the Saracen are forced to split its attension to the relief of our infantry.

The French knights charges into the enemy commander. I wanted to make a show of force. To make a reall dent to the enemy Ayyubids. If I could take out the commander the morale of the Egyprians would be hurt.
Even with some cassualties on my own the enemy was taking more damage and are fleeing for the might of the French...

The brave German Commander charges straight into the Saracen lines.

Unfortinutly a lucky hit fell the German commander. But even with the loss of their commander the German are victorius and the Turkic cavalry are pushed back.

But now the Germans are surrraunded on all side by archers on horseback, not the best of positions.

Meanwile the Ayyubids tries to attack the hard pressed guards of the waterhole. But they are not able to push in force and are attacking piecemeal.

The French knights are now pushing up on the Ayyubid flank...

The French knights are pushing hard. And many small units are ridden down.

The French knights continues to charge the infidels... Deus Vult...

And the Saracen are slaughtered.

The last unit of German knights finishes of the Saracen infantry and the westernes infantry holding the watersource are relieved. The enemy were now so battered that they could not muster enought force to push for the water.
It was a victory for the Crusaders, the plan to capture our troops at the waterhole had failed.

Big thanks to Johan, Sofia and Daniel for a great and exciting game.