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!