At the dawn of the Sixth day broke, signalling the beginning of the sixth and final challenge the contestants heard a laugh. It started as a deep rumbling laugh that could be heard across the land and grew in volume and with such intensity that it shook the very ground they stood on, like the rapturous finale of the furtious mating of the world's living tectonic places. The laugh became harsh and mocking, and then came the voice:
FOOLS! You think I invited you here to reward one of you? You are as imbecilic are you are ugly. I bought you here to watch you slaughter each other again and again for my own personal entertainment – and as a finale and final offering to my patron, Slaanesh, I shall destroy you all and decorate my galleries with your repugnant viscera! MWA-HA-HA-HA-Ha-Ha-Ha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaaaaaaaa....
SCENARIO
The three Warlords of the Death Guard, World Eaters, and Thousand Sons - representing Nurlge, Khorne, and Tzeentch, respectively, face overwhelming odds as the forces of Slaanesh under the Daemon Prince Gorfongdong gather to utterly slaughter them. There is no escape.
The last non-Slaanesh Character standing is the “winner” of the campaign.
FORCES
Slaanesh
Emperor’s Children Battalion Detachment
Lord Felzik - Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour - PR6
Slaanesh Daemon Patrol Detachment
HQ
Total Power Level: 115
Forces of Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeenth
THE GAME
Set up and ready to RUMBLE!
ROUND ONE
To be sporting, I let them have the first go...
The Death Guard on their right flank shambled forward and blasted away with everything they had at the Obliterators... which had very little effect. Lord Slugbottom, who had been in a tedious and utterly pointless conference with the other warlods, was rushing to catch up with his troops. (Initially The Boyz had decided they should have all of their warlords concentrated in the middle, for some reason, and Finnegan got talked into joining, but as the first round started, decided this was stupid and advanced as quick as he could to lead his troops into battle!)
On their left flank the Blood Bolters Chaos Space Mraines and their annoying cultist fanboiz moved forward and blasted away at the cultists across the way. Their bolters and autoguns carrieed away four of the Slaanesh devotees. Their shrieks of delight as they were blown apart disturbed the followers of Khorne who were a little disappointed that their foe would take such pleasure in what they had meant to cause suffering! And where was their leader in all of this? Not with them! He was hiding BEHIND the Helbrute, who, in turn, was hiding behind ALL of the Thousand Sons forces....?
Then the Forces of Daemon Prince Garfongdong went.
the Daemon Prince himself incited three of the World Eaters marines to dance themselves to death with the Pavane of Slaanesh. The Obliterators then blew apart two of the Death Guard's Bubonic Boys with their fleshmetal guns and Noise Marines shattered the brains of two of the Dysentery Dudes with the raucous racket of their sonic weapons. The Slaanesh Cultists returned fire and took out two of their Khorney opposites. The Knight roasted only two of the Rubric Marines - protected, as they were by their absurd 4+ invulnerable save...
Garfongdong and the Seekers fell upon the Tzaangors, slaughtering half their number in the initial impact. The remaining Tzaangors took two of the seekers with them.
ROUND TWO
The DeathGuard continued to exchange fire with the Obliterator and the Noise Marines - SO MUCH BOLTER FIRE - and it did NOTHING to the Obliterators,... then the Dysentry Dudes Meltagun utterly destroyed one of them! The Noise Marines and remaining Obliterator destroyed four or five Death Guard from among the three squads.
ALL of the Thousand Sons Psychic Ablilities either failed or were successfully DENIED! No more 4+ invulnerable save for the Rubric Marines!
The Rubric Marines were not idle, however, They unleashed a horrific volley of fire directly at Daemon Prince Garfongdong which destroyed his current manifestation... but being a creature of the Warp... on his own warp-infused homeworld, he would not be gone long...
(Initially I had wondered how to deal with Daemon Prince Garfongdong... being the absoluteomnipotent despotic ruler of this Daemon World - with the power to revive entire legions of dead marines over and over and over again for this challenge... he needed to be overwhelmingly powerful, himself. Do I simply make him invulnerable to damage...? Let him be destroyed, but let him walk back on at the end of his next Movement phase? And, if he is destroyed in game, have all of his followers are enraged and gain +1A for the remainder of the game? I definitely SHOULD have done this latter one - but didn't mention it at the beginning of the game and to bring it up later seemed like I was just making shit up as I went... alas... There WAS a Master of Possession and I was completely able to just summon him back onto the table later withing the rules of the game - though as the omnipotent leader of this world - and senior to the Master of Possession, it seemed unnecessary to NEED the his subordinate to "summon" him back.... I could have done it THIS TURN... but there was SO MUCH WHINGING about how unfair this all was... I left him off the table for a turn)
The World Eaters Chaos Space marines blew apart half of the Daemonettes. Another two were distracted by the carnage and danced and frolicked among the viscera of their fallen (failed morale).
The few remaining Cultists charged the Khorney Kultists and the Greater Possessed Charged the Chaos Space Marines - along with the three remaining Daemonettes - killing three of the World Eaters and the rest of the Kultists...
The Knight roasted the unit of Rubric Marines.
The Obliterator charged The Exalted Sorcerer, it's vicious slashing and chopping causing the Sorcerer three wounds.
ROUND THREE
RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!
The Warpsmith and Helbrute ran to the far corner of the board... like the lily-livered servants of... KHORNE(!?) that they were!?
The Thousand Sons Sorcerer and the Venomcrawler continued their epic duel - and were joined by the remaining Tzaangors.
The Venomcrawler butchered them all!
Still more shooting between the Death Guard and the remaining Obliterator with ALL of the Noise marines and the Psychic might of Xoilaz Gafar! Teh Plauge Marines disgustingly resiliance kept them going...
Then Lord Slugbottom showed up and said "Enough of this" and CHARGED - along with the remaining Bobonix Boyz and finished off the Obliterator!
The forces of DAemon Prince GArfongdong looking for someone to KILL! Where did that World EAter "Warlord" get off to?
Oh, there he is!
Hiding.
In the corner.
The Renegade Knight Acheron completely melted the Helbrute into a mess of slag and ash with the intense heat of it's flame cannon.
The Slaaneshi Cultists, made of sterner stuff than this so-called leader of the forces of Khorne, charged! I'd wanted the Venomcrawler and Knight to charge in as well... but after the Cultists charged there wasn't ROOM for the Venomcrawler to get in that tiny corner in which the warpsmith had burrowed... The Knight failed it's charge roll...
At this point we kind of called it... The Boyz dad arrived (a bit early) and needed to get going... The writing was on the wall, though... in the first half of the Fourth Round the Warpsmith would have simply killed the Slaanesh Cultists he was fighting and then been melted by the flame cannon (and if that didn't work, the Knight woud have charged in and stomped it into paste). Finnegan figured Lord Slugbotton would not have survived that first Fight Phase of the round in their own turn (as he was utterly surrounded by a sward of Noise Marines and a Nasty sorceress with a force sword ... and was already reduced to ONE wound...), and so the WArpsmith would survive longer and "win" the scenario.
END GAME
Well... it's over...
I have to admit, this game ended up feeling a little anti-climactic. I felt, narratively, this scenario would work; The deceitful Daemon Prince lures them there and then suddenly turns on them and they're facing a classic last stand scenario - you're going to die, but how long can you last and how many of them can you take with you... But instead I felt like I was getting this vibe from the Boyz that they thought I was just being "mean" or something... And, ultimately, the winner ended up being the cherry-picker that hid in the corner.
Looking back what I SHOULD have done is, instead of saying simply that the last character standing was the winner, had a point system - points for each turn you survived, sure, but ALSO points for each enemy unit taken out, points for simply doing damage to the knight, or Daemon Prince Garfongdong, or even points for taking out either of the OTHER warlords - to instigate a little in-fighting, which also would have fit the narrative. So someone who struck out hard and fast on the first turns and took a LOT of guys down before he fell (like Ian did!) would do better than someone who simply evaded their fate as long as they could (like Oliver did - which, to me, seems a little "out of character" for a servant of KHORNE!?).
It also probably would have worked better if I'd simply had a HORDE of Daemonettes and some Seekers and Fiends (and maybe Marines and cultists and such) for them to wade through, but ultimately be carried off by the sheer weight of numbers... but I didn't HAVE those... so I threw in the Knight to guarantee their destruction and it felt a little... I don't know..? out of place...? Heavy-handed....? And so, I had to listen to a constant refrain of "If you didn't have the knight, we could have WON this..." Which, to me, made it clear they didn't "GET" the scenario... like, AT ALL... and a bit of that was on me and a force composition that didn't really fit the narrative as well as it could have... Even finishing Syll'Esske and the Infernal Enrapturess and a few of the Fiends that I have, in time, would have been better than the knight - and probably almost as deadly...
I was also playing with too many totally new things that I'd not had a chance to put on the table (all the Daemons and Knights, as well as the Greater POssessed and Master of Possession, and this was only the second time I'd used the Obliterators...) and was constantly going back and forth between three different books - chaos Knights, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines.
Ah well... lessons learned...
maybe...
The funnest part, for me, about this entire campaign, was actually the little narratives that Finnegan had come up with for his various squads. He was ALWAYS having these little conversations between teh squad members and issuing orders from Lord Slugbottom in these horrid little voices (They even had slightly different voices - Slugbottom sounded just like Ignatius Grulgor from the Horus Heresy audiobooks - and made me wonder if he'd been listening to them without my knowing... he hadn't, it just came out like that, naturally!?). The leader of the Bubonix Boyz were utterly adored and worshipped by his squaddies and the hung on his every work - a little like Brian and his followers in Life of Brian. There was a little romance going on between two of the Plague Marines in the Leprosy Lads when one of the last surviving two in the first game declared his love for his brother marine before they, too, were killed... One of the Dysentry Dudes started agitating and trying to form a union and negotiate some collective rights after hearing Lord Slugbottom refer to them as "fodder" in the first game - again, there might have been a hint of inspiration from Denis of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune in Monty Python and the Holy Grail... And there was a lot of talk about the management exploiting the workers and such... it was all hilariously good fun. That's what I'll always remember about this campaign.
I've said this forever - the best wargamers are role-players, first and foremost - even though they may not think of themselves as such. The funnest and most interesting people to play miniature wargames with are the ones that play the ROLE not the RULES.
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