Return of the THeX: Twenty Four miles to Salvation Part II

This is kind of sad but I really don't feel like writing the second part and I pretty sure by the tepid responces to the last one that you guys don't really feel like reading it so I will save both of us some time and just give a synopsis of the plot (written back in may), then talk about the death world rules in play, and finally the pictures.




Plot:

The vanguard to the Tyranid invasion force had entered orbit.  The local genestealer cult is all riled up and the tyranid spores have begun to descend to the planet’s surface.  The xenophobic traitor guard, resigned to shed their mortal coil, are determined to save their immortal souls and have sought rapture from the fickle gods of chaos. They believe the THeX to be infected and any escape could doom dozens or hundreds of worlds to further tyranid invasion.  As they perform their dark rituals the attempt to stop the THeX from espcaing.  Lt. Ulricht and her company, what’s left of it, are tyring to grab and power up the homing beacons for a last minute rescue and to purge the chaos filth that stand before them. 

The THeX battle through suffocating spore clouds, caustic acid sprays, genestealer cultists, tyranid- human abominations, curtains of lasfire, and showers of shrapnel.  Ultimately, the THeX gain control of both the power supply and the homing beacon and purge the chaos worshipping cultists and deny them their accursed escape. 

Lt. Ulricht, hobbled by her severe leg wound, takes a command oriented style in the battle.  She lives and is promoted to Captain. She is given command over Echo company.  The incompetent Lt. Cragg died a horrible death in the opening minutes of the battle as his command squad had their souls torn from their bodies amidst a swirl of vile eldritch energies brought by dark rituals.  Lt. Marcum spewed filthy language as he kicked ass.  Sgt. Gannon died the pedestrian death of a grunt in the imperial guard during the last battle; glory is for the officers.

The way I see the officer training for this expeditionary corps was that the rank and file would be analyzed then assigned a ranking where those toward the top would be put in with the command squads to learn from an existing officer and then after a while they would move on to be sergeants and lead a squad and then eventually get their commission. I had an idea but never really fleshed it out where I would introduce in this report to follow a group from a command squad on their journey to become officers and beyond. 

Thoughts on the Actual game:

I had picked up the April 2012 white dwarf because hobbytown was giving back issues away free with $25 purchase of GW stuff.  In it they gave rules to cover death worlds, which now is a bit redundant because of the 6^th edition rulebook, but nonetheless it seemed pretty interesting so we decided to play. The rules were a bit overpowered and in several cases in really hurt both of us.  In fact I would say that the rules really favored space marines or any other high toughness low save group because the strength of most of the effects was between 1 and 3 and usually punished people for being in cover. 

Overall in our game I would probably say the special rules hurt Jonny more because he lost all but one of his psyker squad to “the swarm” a rule that says: “all psykers on the battle field” suffer an ass kicking from a multiple shot low AP hit.  Double ouch because the psykers were positioned perfectly where they could see a good part of my army but were hunkered down in thick cover.  From the other effects I lost 9-12 of my 60 some models but what really got me was that I rolled on 2 of the first 3 turns the one where I took wounds if I moved.  I tried moving the first time and in my first 2 squads I lost a combined 5 guys and just said forget it.

After his psykers were gone, my dice got hot, and I did exceptionally well.  And that was all she wrote.  I need to stop drinking during the game as I tend not to take pictures for rounds 3-5. 

Enjoy