Crusade Campaign: The Dusk Raiders

[Jye Nicolson]

Any time you're short of RP you just need to learn to love TTS

[The Other Dave]

I've got pretty much everything in the list painted up now, so here's a picture dump!


The leadership: Foul Blightspawn Festasmus the Reeking, Chaos Lord Suppurax, Lord of Contagion Gurloch Thrax, and Malignant Plaguecaster Pastus the Impure.



The three plague marine squads, led by champions Bubox, Gangrous, and Thulgus respectively.

The daemon engines, G'zoethl and Ulth'shog.

And hordes of Poxwalkers.

[The Other Dave]

Not a great day out for the Dusk Raiders yesterday! 4 games, tabled in 3 of them. But I got some cool loot and level-ups, and had fun, so it's a win overall. (Also added some Deathshroud to the roster, so that's my next purchase I guess! )

Game 1 was against Jus' Ultramarines, and he used their not-flashy but very-reliable "rapid fire at everything all the time" shenanigans to great effect. Disgustingly Resilient, whether old or new, doesn't stand up well to the good old strategy of throwing lots and lots of dice at it, and that's what the Ultras can bring to bear. Before getting gunned down by Hellblasters (who once again I killed like 3 or 4 but they ended up with 4 models thanks to an Apothecary), though, Gurloch Thrax did kill the Ultramarines warlord, which earned him his second chaos boon, the not-particularly-useful-when-you-attack-at-strength-8 +1 to wound when you charge or intervene one.

Games 2 and 3 were semi-mirror matches against Jye's new Death Guard and Nurgle Daemons, I forget the order we went in but neither game went well. Against the Demons, Thrax tried to charge a Great Unclean One, whiffed mightily and was slaughtered. (But he did get enough experience to level up and push his luck for his 3rd boon, the this-time-extremely-useful +3 move one.) The other game was against Death Guard, and I don't remember much aside from actually getting kind of close on objectives despite being tabled. In both games, though, the Least Valuable Player was definitely the Blight-Hauler, who must have had nurglings gumming up its works and abjectly failed to do anything useful. First-time-out curse, one hopes, but it makes me really glad I never bothered to field one when their BS was only 4+!

Game 4 was a team game, me and Jye's daemons against Matt's Orks and tallgeese's World Eaters. Big mobs of orks don't like it when you get an empowered Plague Wind off against them... My new Foul Blightspawn also earned his keep, shutting down a charging unit of Warp Talons with induced projectile vomiting, allowing the plague marines they'd engaged to cut them down. (And on two different occasions, the regular plague marines stole my new power armor Lord's kill, wiping out units instead of just softening them up before he even got a chance to fight.) When regular CSM get the +1 wound boost they'll be a completely different can of worms, no doubt.

[The Other Dave]

Fragments from the journal of Pastus the Impure

So, the Death Guard have made their way to the theater of war. Fools. Usurpers. Toadies to our thrice-cursed gene father, blindly accepting as he sold our souls that were not his to sell in a moment of pure weakness.

But still, they are sold, and we are bound for eternity to the Plague Lord, how he blesses us.

Recently he has blessed us with [scratched out] nurglings driving our daemon engines to distraction. We got them out of the workings, but how the engines screamed... The daemon engines are not trivial to create and maintain with our resources, stretched as thin as they are by Thrax's reliance on so-called "tactics" that boil down to "try to bury his plaguereaper in whichever enemy looks the most important". Mind you, there's no denying that he's good at it, and Nurgle favors him with gifts for his troubles, but he often returns to the Glaive with little enough to show beyond personal glory and armor pitted with plasma fire.

The presence of the genefather's faithful in the sector has made the rituals easier, at least, and while we few remaining true sons of the 14th may be sometimes ambivalent about the pact that was forced upon us, there is no denying that when the Plague Lord's minions join us in battle, it is glorious.

All the same, I have instructed Suppurax to double-check the blight-hauler's track workings and targeting systems for infestations before we deploy next. Again.

[The Other Dave]

Notes from Pastus the Impure's private journal

We met the forces of the Fickle Lord on the battlefield for the first time today - their sorcerers' skill nearly matched my own, but in the end even their empty shells of dust felt the loving touch of rust and rot. We met their shock assault on our position unmoving, and while their initial attack left many incapacitated, and their ensorcelled bolter shells and gouts of flame tested even our Grandfather-blessed bodies and armor, Thulgus and his Plague Marines, supported as always by Festasmus the Reeking, did much damage and dispatched many. Gurloch, as is his wont, clove a bloody (or dusty, as the case may be) path through the enemy leadership, and while we could not be said to have won an overwhelming victory, neither were we truly bested. Hopefully we can meet the agents of the Hated One again soon...

[A Tip of the Spear mission from the Plague Purge mission pack against Tallgeese's Thousand Sons, fought to an actual factual draw - he had the edge in damage output (and -2AP on basically everything is rough) but I had the edge in durability, and I was really able to just melee my way through most of his force with the combination of the melee plague marine squad + Foul Blightspawn debuff combo train, and the Lord of Contagion just doing his thing. Also Pastus got taken out, he's just too proud to admit it. ]

The less said about the meeting with the followers of the Corpse Emperor, the better. There is little to be done in the face of 10-meter-long high-explosive missiles handled by vengeful (if mortal) crew...

[A Grind mission from the same mission pack, my 50PL to 25PL each of Matt's guard and Jus' Black Templars - a combo that I think we've seen a lot is pretty hard to beat. Transhuman Physiology turned out to be particularly irksome to me, completely canceling as it does one of my core mechanics in the Toughness debuff. Needless to say, I lost very badly on points, even if a teleporting squad of Deathshroud and the Lord of Contagion blendered through Matt's lines with aplomb, and the Bloat Drone that didn't get Manticore'd turn one did a typically great job grinding down jus' Bladeguard - until they just backed out of combat and let the Manticore do its thing.]

[Also, I rolled up Writhing Tendrils as a battle honor for the melee plague marines. Me, at the time: "Hmm, 'the unit ignores any and all hit-roll modifiers in melee'. Not many enemy units give those out, seems pretty situational." Me, on the drive home: "Hang on, power fists, plague cleavers, and maces of contagion all do give modifiers to their wielders' to-hit rolls..." ]

[The Other Dave]

No fiction this month, but it was fun to get the filthy boyz on the table again this month! (Even if I, true to form, lost both games I played. )

I still struggle with movement and blocking my own movement with rhinos and such, but I'm getting the hang of it. Lessons learned this month:

Blightlords are very very durable, but dumping a lot of CPs on them to buff up their bolter shots may be sending good money after bad, killing-potential-wise. Their lack of anything more punchy than a power axe is a bit disheartening, and I think they really want to be up against infantry rather than (as they ended up) a pair of Redemptors - but then nothing really wants to be up against a pair of Redemptors. A second box may be in the cards eventually, and getting my Tallyman painted up to buff them will also help.

The Blight-Hauler finally did the work, and in both battles actually managed to hit with the multimelta to put a few wounds on big targets but just as importantly simply refused to die for a very long time (the stratagem to reduce number of shots against it by one is just *chef's kiss*), and drew a lot of shooting and then tied up some very dangerous things in combat while chipping away at them with its adorable little mandibles. The fleshmower Bloat Drone did less well - it's very scary (probably disproportionately) so tends to be a high-priority target and so doesn't last long. I think I may like the one with twin plague flamers better just as a mobile harassing unit.

My plague lord on foot continues to be somewhat lackluster, although as I tend to compare him to the lord of contagion who's just an absolute monster he may be ice-skating uphill, as Blade likes to say. Still, I stuck a deadly pathogen on him after this game to raise his sword up to S7 AP-4 with exploding hits on 6's, which should help him out in future.

I also got enough RPs to add a plagueburst crawler to my roster, so everyone will have "me rolling 1's on number of shots for the mortar" to look forward to in the future!