After After the Storm

This time last week, (well on Monday anyway) myself and the good Admiral Drax put down 2500pts of old Imperial Guard a side for a send off battle! Admiral Drax penned a scenario, to which we each prepared our forces, you can find those here and here.

Now this is going to be a pretty massive picture dump in fact, in a similar fashion to the Admirals report which you find on his blog in Part 1 and Part 2 I'll try an give you a gist of what was going on with captions - my battle reporting talents are somewhat lacking!

The Battlefield awaits!

A total of 12'x4'

Quite a lot of cover, though the two largest buildings were impassable.

The massed Cadians

The massed Praetorians - albeit spread out to look a bit more imposing! The Mission station is behind them!

The Praetorian Scout contingent deploy

But not unnoticed - Cadian Veterans lead by Harker on the right flank.

Concealed by the darkness the Praetorians advance, taking pot shots as they go.

And are reinforced by the first random infantry contingent while exchanging fire in the darkness with the Veterans.

However the Cadians own reinforcements are not far behind.

As the darkness finally lifts the Praetorians press on, the casualties slowly mounting up on both sides, but then...

'More Cadians Sir! Hundreds of em!'

The infantry battle is on.

The Praetorians press on slowly in the centre, the greater weight of anti-personnel fire is starting to show.

Though on the flanks things look better. The Cadian Veterans are finally driven off, and destroyed in the open.

While the timely arrival of the Armoured Cavalry counters the infantry enfilade on the left flank. Notice Caine, otherwise known as Marbo, behind the ruin filled with Cadian heavy weapons teams. Clearly there was a quick thinking Guardsman amongst them, for Marbo's demo charge was quickly thrown back to him before exploding!

However, the Cadians own reinforcements do not delay. On the left, the Praetorians are stalled by the arrival of a Helhound and the Annilator. Though they prove more then up to the job of dealing with the Cadian armour, precious time is wasted and they are denied the chance to push forward and intervene in the center.

While on the right, the Praetorian reserves fail utterly, the Chimera destroyed, while the Veterans failing to damage the Exterminator are scythed down by its return fire. The Demolisher though unharmed fails to halt the faster armoured arrayed against it and is left isolated.

The Praetorians in the center prepare to make one last push.

However, the Cadians meet their charge in the closing moments cut down the final Infantry Squads. Though also badly bloodied, there is no doubt as to who is left in control of the objectives. I suspect the Lord Commissar will not be impressed by this failure...

Thank you to Admiral Drax who as always was a model opponent! The scenario was an interesting one which did indeed work, though a few tweaks might help make it that little bit more interesting. With the size of the board a greater number of Cavalry reinforcements would lend well, as is there was a good chance that things would turn up somewhere fairy useless, which is fine - but I think we both just wanted a proper slog fest, I think an extra 500pts might have helped there knocking it up to 3000pts per side. I think also the opportunity to sometimes pick would have been interesting, with a 1-5 being random areas as already in the scenario, but 6 being chosen by the player - though equally interesting might be to have a 1 being chosen by the opponent perhaps?!