This is your brain on Spook.

Game three of our Mini-campaign between steve and myself took place last night, this time we decided to go get ourselves some spook from the old domes down the bottom of the hive. My leader 'The Mouth', Witch 'Rotbringer' and Helot cultist 'Sepsis' were all in Recovery, taking me down to a bare 4 members, so I thought I'd get me some reinforcements first.

The 3rd Protocol gained a fair bit of experience last game, and The Mouth had enough to upgrade something shiny, but being in recovery meant I'd have to wait till next game. I moved straight on to my income and did pretty well, earning enough to purchase a replacement for Bitterboil, as well as a long-las for my accountant 'The Compiler of Miseries' so he can actually take part whilst staying as far from an actual enemy as possible! This still left me with creds in the stash but I sat on them for now. The injured Tetanus was going to be too slow to make use of his combat set-up, so I gave him the unfortunate Bitterboil's shotgun, and shuffled the combat gear to the new cultist, named 'Urban Decay' (we are allowing weapon swaps in our campaign as we don't mind models being changed around)

Steve's Genestealer's had done very well in the post game, earning enough to hire a new Neophyte equipped with a grenade launcher to give the cult a good deal more punch at range AND replacing the mining saw Acolyte he lost in Game one. The heavy stubber wielding Hidlystorm had got the magical 6 EXP and increased his Toughness by 1 point, oof. Finally the aberrant Mhogg-Rhise got enough to purchase an upgrade, but chose to hang on until he could up his Toughness too.

Before the game both cults decided it would be worth calling on their patrons for a bit of help, and whilst the Chaos powers in the Hive declined to give any aid to the paltry techno-cult, the Patriarch back in Hive Secundus rewarded The Brotherhood with a crate containing two shiny hand flamers. Each Acolyte took a flamer as a back up weapon and prepared to move in. A new dome full of Spook had been found nearby, and the chances of the Stealers getting it without a fight were pretty slim.

My available gang-   Sporeslinger, Tetanus, Bilebeetle, The Compiler,  Urban Decay. 

Scenario and Deployment.

The Genestealers deploy wide, taking advantage of their numbers.

Th Chaos cult focused around the low bridge on the right 

We followed the Spook Harvest scenario, and both gangs spread out fairly evenly across their table edges, whilst both The Compiler and the new Acolyte 'Spinsser' used their infiltrate abilities to drop on a spook counter each. 

Turn one. 

 Closely matched so far, the next turn will be crucial. 

As the temporary leader of his grubby mandroids, the Compiler kicked the game off by grabbing initiative and harvesting a spook counter straight of the bat. He took the opportunity for some quality control product testing while he was at it and gained the 'slow time' psychic power, which he was clearly never going to use as time is money, and he isn't about to go throwing it away. Spinsser followed suit by scraping up the Spook he was stood on, but accidentally got a face full of the stuff- luckily his hybrid metabolism shrugged it off. the usual early skirmish shuffling shenanigans took place, with Bilebeetle and Urban running for the next Spook sets and the genestealer's swarming into two groups either side of the raised road to present a solid front against the outnumbered chaos skitarii.

A spectacular amount of 6's saves the day.... 

The turn ended by Sporeslinger attempting to copy his last games snapshot against an acolyte by riddling Spinsser with bullets, miraculously the acolyte's Hazard suit saved every single shot, so he was only pinned, dammit! 

 Turn two. 

Bilebeetle is on the Spook, but way too exposed for my liking.. 

Chaos took the initiative for the second turn, and without solid lines of sight they continued to consolidate their positions, with two Neophyte's including the heavy stubber armed Hidlystrom preparing to pin down the currently hiding Bilebeetle. Glodsmyth was up to his old tricks again and sprinted far up the table, trying to cut off Urban Decay who had reached another Spook stash. The compiler legged it back to safety with his precious load, and Spinsser stayed put behind his pillar until someone dealt with Sporeslinger. Speaking of which, the new grenade launcher armed neophtye Tuhrna stepped up and attempted to drop a frag grenade on the wall Sporeslinger was hiding behind, but ended up sending the shell far into the distance, exploding somewhere in the ruins.

The aberrant 'drops in' on Urban Decay. (the last shot the pict-skull grabbed before failing)

Mhogg-Rhiss crawled under the bridge and dropped to the floor right next to Urban Decay, pinning himself but preparing to bring the pain when he recovered. The Familiar and Bilebeetle both reached the remaining Spook stashes and now had to weather a turn harvesting it under potential enemy fire.

Turn three

The Chaos cult regained the initiative this turn, and Bilebeetle started by harvesting the Spook next to him, this left him in visible to a lot of enemies unfortunately and a barrage of heavy stubber fire flesh wounded him and even more importantly knocked him off the ledge and out of cover, allowing Caamrhone to finish the job with his boltgun, taking Bilebeetle out of action and giving him a head injury to boot. Sporeslinger tried to support the beleaguered Urban decay by hitting Glodsmyth in the back, but his aim was way off. Glodsmyth didn't need to be warned twice, and blazed into Urban Decay, pinning him and denying him the spook (this turn at least). The Compiler encouraged Tetanus to drop the grenade launcher before it could do any more damage, but Tetanus completely ignored him and blasted a solid shot into Glodsmyth instead, pinning him in cover and blasting him back. Turnha did not miss twice in a row, and the grenade seriously injured Sporeslinger, who hilariously rolled down the stairs one at a time after being hit to lie in a heap on the ground. Urban decay rose to his feet and desperately emptied his pistol into the abberant beside him and somehow managed to wound the beast, though this did not stop it lurching to its feet ready for next turn. Snorting Spook is not for those of a delicate constitution, and whilst the familiar easily scraped the substance up, the dose he got for his trouble caused him to go a bit wild, sprinting into the open. The Compiler moved up to see if he could recover the day, but as soon as he crested the wall he could see the jig was probably up..

Turn four. 

Chaos inevitably failed their bottle check, but this wasn't over yet.. To turn the game in the Chaos favour the Compiler just needed to

1. Not have anyone fail any cool checks.
2. Win initiative. 
3. Take the familiar out of action or seriously injure it with one shot from his long-las. 
4. Activate Tetanus with him, and have Tetanus at least pin the Aberrant, in hard cover, at long range.
5. Have Urban decay harvest the spook,and survive a round of shooting. 
6. Bottle next turn to take the win. 

Seemed a bit implausible, but to hell with it, he'd give it a go. The chaos cult elected not to voluntarily bottle despite the odds against them.

Every surviving Chaos cultist then proceeded to spectacularly fail their cool checks and leg it anyway like the spineless wind-up pieces of rusty junk they are.  The only upside to this was Sporeslinger avoided a serious injury and at least they had one Spook spore to the Genestealers 2, so it wasn't a total whitewash.  

Again dammit!  next time you weirdly limbed monstrosities! 

Archeotech vaults and grudges to settle.

As our formal big everyone gets involved campaign is taking a while to get started, Steve and Myself decided to carry on our vendetta in a two player mini-campaign until it does. Here is the second battle, finding the respective cults deep in the oldest parts of the hive, searching for archeotech when they spy the familiar shadows of their foe in the distance.

We are playing the Archeotech Hoard mission from Gang war 3, and the only house rule we are using at this point is D3 XP for taking part in a game rather than just 1.

The terrain is Terraclips sets we quickly built on the day, , as all my actual terrain is stuck at the club!

The Third Protocol

Left to right, Sepsis, Rotbringer, Bilebeetle, the Mouth of Rust and Bile, The Compiler of Miseries and Sporeslinger. 

After our first game (which you can find here) I took one straight out casualty when Bitterboil got lanced by a rocksaw, and 2 other cultists got stuck in recovery, leaving me with a much smaller warband. I didn't get enough experience last game to increase anybody, but I did earn enough to spend in the trading post. The compiler went along with the cheque book and bought himself Mesh armour with an armoured undersuit (he knows he going to have to take part in the next game, so he's prepping) and some frag grenades for the Mouth, plus a bit left over to hopefully replace Bitterboil after the next game. My Yaktribe roster is here and is nice and up to date:- 

I managed to pull off a ritual before the game too, calling on Grandfather Nurgle to get my back, though I didn't dedicate it to anyone in particular, as I'd rather not lose another model just yet! 

The Genestealer cultists (still no pics, he's working on it, but you can find his gang and the actual names he has on his roster rather than the ones I made up here) also got a fair bit of cash last game, so they bought their leader a shiny boltgun, he had enough XP to increase something, and after a while decided to up his leaders BS to 2+, a terrifying prospect with a boltgun. (hilariously he's utterly inept with it this game, but as a long term investment it's going to hurt someone pretty bad.)

You will also notice some other changes where eqipment has been swapped, or sold between games. And after this you'll also notice  the genestealer adept losing infiltrate as he doesn't actually get a starting skill and we made a mistake in the first two games... (my roster says I have overseer, but that was a mistake I knew about, I just can't erase the damn thing!)

Deployment

Chaos Deployment- pay attention to the compiler, as he is not moving from that spot. 

Genestealer deployment- yes we now know his leader can't start with infiltrate... 

Overall board view- terraclips ahoy! 

Both the Adept and the Acolyte infiltrated near the automata in the centre of the table, whilst both bands spread out across their table edges- the Compiler declined to infiltrate as there were few places better to hide than the tall ruin right in his deployment zone. he is literally only here due to random gang selection. 

Turn 1

Sporeslingers sniper shot. 

Winning the initiative (for a change!) the Mouth of Rust and Bile led his small fireteam of corrupt Skitarii up the stairs in front of him, he tried a speculative shot at Jorhnson on the bridge ahead but missed wildly. Sporeslinger more than made up for this though by shooting Johrnson from the foot of the stairs, a clean hitting straight between his filthy Xenos eyes taking him out of the skirmish straight off the bat. It can only go down hill from here. (Johrnson awoke after the battle ended and went on quite the adventure getting back to the cult’s turf, surviving against the odds). With no-one in a position to return fire the Stealer’s went for the objective, and the Adept moved to the ancient automata, just about finding the on switch with his limited knowledge of machinery (doesn't matter how smart his stats say he is, he almost fluffed it every time- not a machine head). Whilst he was mucking around in the mechanisms his familiar scampered up through the ruins eager to reach it’s master, and the remaining fighters from both teams advanced (Rotbringer once again summoned the levitation power to aid her advance, whereas the Compiler used the take cover action to hide exactly where he started). 

Caamrhone gets the automata going. 

Finally the Automata itself activated, it’s rusted joints screeching as it powered up and began moving toward the bulkhead door. Old and crotchety the machine may be, but it’s welding beam was certainly in working order as it turned and blasted Sepsis clean off the stairs and into recovery in a single shot. (the other Skitarii just shrugged and carried on in a remarkable display of not giving a crap) One casualty each and the Chaos worshippers were playing catch up on the objective. 

Turn 2

Grenades are big and clever. 

Already both Cults were checking to see if it was time to run, but both stuck around for the time being. The Stealer’s won initiative, and elected to activate Caamrhone, who had been left in the open after the Automata moved. He jogged to the automata and again narrowly succeeded in manipulating it’s arcane controls (seriously, the guy is an idiot) whilst his familiar finally caught up with him.   Their reunion was to be short-lived however, as The Mouth moved within range and threw one of his newly purchased Frag grenades into the Adept, the Automata and the familiar. The adept was knocked from his feet and wounded by the blast, and the automata shrugged the tiny explosion off. The familiar was not so lucky however, as it was knocked clear from the bridge (catfall don't matter if you're already dead!) and down to the ground beneath, taken out of the game by both the blast and the fall (no worries, he'll get a new one, they're like guinea pigs...). 

Next turn is going to get sticky, one way or another. 

The remaining Stealer’s gave up on shooting and pressed home their objective advantage by moving forward as quickly as possible, as did Bilebeetle and the flying Rotbringer. Seeing the Chaos champions closing up Caamrhone decided to get on with the mission rather than melting stuff (as amusing as that was), and commanded the automata to head toward the door as fast as it could, which was admittedly not that fast. The compiler was still happily hidden where he deployed, and was not about to change that status any time soon. 

Turn 3

Not the face! The Mouth goes down for the count. 

Neither cult bottled it turn 3, and the Stealer’s kept the initiative.  Glodsmyth noticed The Mouth’s lack of cover and engulfed him with Autogun rounds, shredding the cultist demagogue and leaving him seriously injured on the ground. Rotbringer attempted to reciprocate by summoning warpfire to blast the already wounded Adept, but the shadow in the warp must have been blocking her connection to papa Nurgle as she couldn’t gain the power, (alternatively Rotbringer knew she hadn't actually taken that power as a skill yet so couldn't actually manifest it, keeping me from cheating..) settling instead for pinning the adept with a poorly executed autopistol shot. In return he stood and made a giant hole in a nearby pillar with a Boltgun shot that may go down in history as a spectacular miss.  

This mission was literally the worst one we could pick- cultists are not bright. 

On the east flank both Hidlystrom and Mhogg-Rhise moved to the automata, attempting to get it right up to the door for next turn. Despite the fact that neither of the two were particularly bright, by some miracle Hidlystrom actually managed to power the machine up, (he's been fiddling with stuff again apparently) and it was soon striding towards the objective. Bilebeetle climbed to the top of  the building near the objective, with the aim of getting into the vault as soon as the enemy opened it. At the rear the Compiler was sitting calculating the current value of his Catallus Corporation shares, despite Sporeslinger encouraging him to get involved as he ran up the stairs firing an inaccurate volley toward Hidlystrom.  No sooner had Sporeslinger got within sight of his demagogue however, than the Nurgle leader passed out, unconscious and out of play (for the next game at least, Nurgles blessing kept all my injuries down to just recoveries thankfully).) 

Turn 4

And there goes Rotbringer.. not her finest hour. 

Whilst both cults were still holding their nerve it was getting touch and go for team Nurgle. They managed to snatch the initiative though (it's becoming a habit!) and Rotbringer once again tried to summon forth witchfire to burn the enemy leader, but the warp was still evading her and she ended up spraying autopistol rounds into the stonework instead. (Still keeping me honest by accident there.) Glodsmyth was determined to get his mutant of the match medal, and stepping to the corner casually hosed Rotbringer down with another burst of precision autogun fire, stripping both wounds and seriously injuring the rogue psyker. Caamrhone failed spectacularly to do anything useful with his shiny Boltgun. Again. (New toy syndrome is well and truly screwing him this game.) 

If Sporeslinger can make this shot, I have a chance... 

Mhogg-Rhise ran toward the isolated Bilebeetle, but was thwarted when Bilebeetle leapt the gap and landed right beside the automaton! This move caught Hidlystorm off guard too, and he could only wound the bloated Disciple with a burst of heavy stubber fire. Trying to stay in the game Sporeslinger took aim at Hidlystrom’s back, but despite acing a sniper shot that hit multiple times he failed to penetrate the neophytes tough hide. Rotbringer decided she wanted to be part of the bleeding out squad and succumbed to her injuries too. not looking great for me at this stage.  

Turn 5

they think its all over? well it is actually. Damn Xenos. 

At this point The Compiler stuck his head round the wall and using mathematical wizardry decided the odds were not in Nurgle's favour today, and promptly called a retreat. The chaos forces bottled leaving the Xenos horrors the vault, though the automata could only hold the door open for a limited time before it came crashing down, forever sealing what the Stealer’s left behind in it’s adamantium depths. (we made an arbitrator ruling that as two of the Genestealer cult’s model could have moved into the vault this turn, we would count them as being in the vault for victory conditions- otherwise I would have caused a draw by bottling, which is not the spirit of the game) The game was pretty close, but turn 4 was a conclusive one for the Genestealers as they turned in another victory over their rusty nemesis. 

We've got game three coming up, and we've both got enough credits to replace a casualty or two- I will get a win against these alien scumbags one day!