40k Rogue Trader Mission: 'Contact Lost' - Part 2

And so, to the conclusion of this mission. It should be noted that the objectives of this mission were for both sides to claim five hidden pieces of experimental tech and get them and their remaining troops back to their own exit point (dropship for the Imperials, teleport sphere for the aliens). Each side would gain victory points for each piece of tech they got back to their exit point, and lose VPs for each casualty they suffered. Since the numbers on each side were not even, tech devices and casualties were worth differing VPs to each side. But they did all add up so that each side could score and lose an equal amount of VPs.

So, will the Imperials find out what happened at their outpost, or will the aliens succeed in getting away with the experimental Imperial technology? Read on to find out!

 The Imperials begint to fan out and move into the eerily quiet compound...

Meanwhile on the other side, the aliens advance through Gate 2, past the security bunker...

Some aliens advance into the inner courtyard.

While others sneak around the back of the buildings.

The Imperials make use of gaps cut in the perimeter fence to gain entry.

 

The aliens find their first piece of experimental Imperial tech, but continue to advance, rather than get the item back to their teleport sphere.

Aliens continue to make their way further into the compound, and have yet to encounter anyone else.

A survivor!! Unfortunately this terrified scientist was discovered by the aliens, who quickly killed him.

Another survivor!! This technician is much luckier, discovered as he was by Crimson Fist marines!

Contact! The Crimson Fist rescue team emerge from the building only to discover some hideous xenos lurking outside! They immediately open fire without hesitation, gunning down two rather surprised aliens!

Meanwhile, aliens attempt to outflank their opponents behind one of the buildings.

 The aliens take cover behind a parked Rhino, to shelter from the hail of gunfire unleashed by the marines!

A gun-battle quickly erupts in the middle of the compound!

The Imperial right flank forms a gunline to keep the aliens pinned down...

...While Corporal Bakun gets the VIP out the back...!

 The marines on the Imperial left flank, led by Sergeant Thorson, engage the xenos scum in close combat!

With Thorson's marines is Sergeant 'Tapper's Tapley and his men, 'Tappers' bravely charges the aliens, seeking to emulate the marine's heroism, while his men provide supporting fire.

One of Sergeant Tapley's men heads back to the dropship with vital experimental technology ("...Just looks like a box with wires, boss...")

Thorson and his marine continue to beat back the aliens in close combat, where they are unable to use their powerful plasma weapons.

Sergeant Tapley also has much success in dealing with the xenos, killing another and taking the experimental technology it had stolen.

 
 Unfortunately the second alien used its companions demise to get away!

The remaining aliens continue to cluster behind the Rhino, all the while under fire from the marines.

 The marines and army troopers sense the aliens hesitation, and advance!

One of Thorson's marines makes it back to the dropship with another top secret device (Marine: "Looks like a toaster...with blinking lights..." Pilot: "Maybe it is a toaster...?")

 The Imperial army troopers advance fearlessly!

With the aliens on the run, the marines move up.

The remaining three aliens make it back to their teleport sphere with a tech device for their masters to study. After this, the glowing dome of energy shrank and winked out of existence. It is unknown who the mysterious aliens were or where their teleport techology took them. They haven't been seen since.

And that was that! The aliens lost (unsurprisingly) by a large amount, having suffered 10 casualties and only claiming one device. This was mainly down to Stu's overconfidence, advancing on the Imperials when he should have got the tech devices to his teleporter. It wasn't entirely his fault though, I realised after this game, that the aliens were somewhat outgunned (the Imperials having 5 more models, plus special and heavy weapons), so in hindsight, I think the aliens needed more models and perhaps a support weapon of their own. If anyone wishes to run this scenario themselves, I can provide a google document of the entire mission.

Until next time!

40k Rogue Trader Mission: 'Contact Lost' - Part 1

This is the second Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader mission I've ran, and it was by all accounts, fun for all involved. My unwitting test subjects were Stu (of Montyhaul's Models) and TJ, Stu commanded the xenos and TJ took control of the Imperials.

The Mission:

"Contact with Imperial Research Outpost P5-GLB, on the forest moon of Bunndor has been lost for reasons unknown. Forces from two factions have detected their distress signal and have been dispatched to investigate. Each has been instructed to retrieve anything worth studying and report back. It is unknown what went wrong, whether the outpost’s staff are still alive, or if hostile forces are involved. The planet is known to harbour a few dangerous life forms, but the outpost’s defences were thought to be sufficient..."

The mission is a retrieval and extraction operation for both sides. There are five objectives ("experimental tech") and both the Imperials and Aliens need to find them and get them off the table. Then they have to withdraw their forces off the table, all the while sustaining as few casualties as possible. That's the idea anyway...

The forces are as follows:

Imperials: 

Brief – Imperial Retrieval Team
"You have been dispatched to Research Outpost P5-GLB to investigate why contact has been lost, whether any experimental technology can be salvaged, check for possible survivors and if possible, discover who (or what) was responsible. You have been provided with a detailed list of items to be recovered, but it is unknown where anything was stored, so you’ll have to search all the buildings. Report back with as many of the experimental devices as you can find, and if possible, clues as to what happened to the base and its staff.
Finally, look after your team and protect your dropship. It’s your only way off the moon!"

Imperial Army – Necromundan 41st Regiment

• 8 Troopers with Lasguns, Knives and Flak Armour (6+ save)

• 1 Trooper with Plasma Gun, Knife and Flak Armour (6+ save)

• Sergeant Tapley (Human Champion) with Chainsword, Laspistol and Mesh Armour (5+ save)

Space Marines – Crimson Fists Chapter

• 6 Marines with Bolters, Bolt Pistols, Knives and Power Armour (4+ save)

• 1 Marine with Flamer, Bolt Pistol, Knife and Power Armour (4+ save)

• 1 Marine with Heavy Bolter, Bolt Pistol, Knife and Power Armour (4+ save)

• Sergeant Thorson (Marine Sergeant) with Chainsword, Plasma Pistol, Knife and Power Armour (4+ save)

Aliens:

Brief – Aliens
"Now that the intolerable noises made by those hairy interlopers have been silenced, the conclave has decided to send your cohort back to their camp to see what they were up to. The conclave has provided a list of their primitive devices that they want you to bring back for analysis, but be careful. If they’ve sent more of their kind to investigate, you may run into some resistance. Don’t get your warriors killed needlessly, and don’t allow any other life forms near your teleport sphere, or they could de-stabilise it, trapping you here."

12 Aliens with Bio-plasma Casters and Repulsor Fields (4+ unmodifiable save).

1 Alien Leader with Nano-Scythe and Bio-plasma Caster (built into the scythe).

I should mention what the alien equipment is, as it is created especially for this scenario:

Alien Weapons:

Repulsor Fields are a type of energy field armour. They grant the user a 4+ save against wounds caused by shooting attacks. However, the user receives no save against close combat attacks (including attacks with pistols) or effects from psionic powers. This save is never reduced by saving throw modifiers, so the user always gets a 4+ chance to save against shooting attacks.

Location
The Imperial research outpost consists of a fenced compound surrounding several small buildings, unusable or burned out vehicles, stacks of fuel drums/crates, plus a watchtower. The rest of the terrain consists of hilly woodland.

Moving with Objectives
Models can pick up objective markers simply by moving over them (so you can move 2”, pick up a marker and move your remaining 2”, all in the same turn). Models may also run while carrying markers, but cannot shoot. If a model is engaged in close combat while carrying a marker, it automatically drops it (place it in base contact with the former carrier). Whoever is still alive after the combat can then pick up the marker. Once a model carries a marker into the transport or sphere, they cannot return to the battlefield.

Deployment
The Imperial transport lands in the south-eastern table corner. The Imperial player may deploy his troops within 5” of the boarding ramp.
The alien teleport sphere is located in the north-western table corner. The alien player may deploy his troops within 5” of it.

Win Conditions
The side with the most VPs at the end of the game is the winner (regardless of whether one side is wiped out). Equal VPs obviously results in a draw.

Game Length
The game lasts until one player gets all of his remaining troops (and their prizes) to his transport/teleport sphere (or one side is wiped out). Or until you run out of time.

 The Imperial Research Outpost:

The Aliens emerge onto the battlefield from their teleport sphere:

The Imperial forces disembark from their dropship and form a perimeter:

Next time...'Contact Lost' - Part 2!

Name Change

I've implemented a quick name change to my blog, it's now "The Impossible Fortress". Still Tzeentchian in nature, but better reflects the concept I had of a 'place' (the fortress) rather than a 'thing' (the servant) to store my accumulated knowledge and musings, so that others may find them.

I hope the name and domain name change has updated on whoever follows or visits here! Otherwise I'll have to start finding followers all over again!

Coming soon; more Rhino updates!
Plus; Necromunda terrain!

Slaves to Darkness Beastman units

With all the OldHammer and Realms of Chaos stuff going on at the moment, I've been flicking through my copy of Slaves to Darkness, when I spotted this:

There's something about those units of nearly identical beastmen that I really love. Somehow they've made a unit of uniform models look ace. They're all painted slightly differently, and if you look closely, there's a few head swaps. Plus the banner bearers are simply conversions of the basic model.

I've decided I want a unit like that!
(Ultimately I want an ARMY like in that picture!)
But with the price of original metal beastmen, forget it. Plus there's no way I could source enough of the same model even if I had infinite ebay money....

The solution is obvious, make plastic copies of the one original model I do have! Purists will probably be recoiling in horror at the suggestion, but there's really no other way. And as with all the things I duplicate, they never go beyond my possession. That's a line I don't cross.

Anywho, having silicone moulded the original beastmen, the results were surprisingly good.

The flash doesn't help, but the detail is pretty good. There's the occasional airbubble, but they came out a lot better than I was expecting (especially the weapons). Now it's just a case of duping up about ten of each to start with, and painting them in a similar fashion to the ones in the book!

Rhino #2

I've been working on many different projects recently, most notably terrain and miniatures for our current Necromunda campaign (more on that later). But I've made significant progress on my second Rhino transport (the one I picked up at Hammerhead in february).

After soaking in Dettol for a few weeks (the paint was VERY thick) and having a thorough scrubbing, it looked a bit like this:

Not pretty.

Anyway, I'd decided it was going to be an Imperial Army vehicle. I figured that army transports wouldn't be nearly so well maintained as space marine ones, and since this was so battered and beat up anyway, it fitted that description.

The first thing I had to do was replace the exhaust nozzles, which had all broken off long ago:

So I made four new nozzles from plastruct 2mm round rod:

Then drilled and pinned them to the exhausts:

Then I looked at the back, and remembered that the previous owner had put the rear hatch on upside down (sigh...):

So I filed the vision slit off and replaced it with some vent type thing I had lying around:

Finally, being an army vehicle, I added loads of these stowage thingies to it:

So now it looks like this:

Notice it also has an aerial (that curved bit of wire).

Now all I have to do is decide on a camoflage scheme for it!...

Space Orks!

Well, not quite. But close.

I've wanted some Space Orks for my Rogue Trader missions, but buying the original RT metal models is prohibitively expensive. I thus decided to search for an alternative, the answer was found with a sale at Wayland games. They were shifting a load of old stock, which including a selection of Mantic boxes. Now Mantic stuff is cheap anyway (20 models for £20, not bad!), but when I saw a Marauder Grunts Platoon box for just over a tenner, I thought I'd give it a punt. If it didn't work out, I wouldn't have lost much.

While the models are quite limited in the sculpts and their poses, but they're just multipart enough to be convertable. However, they are much smaller than the current GW Orks (which have become parodies of themselves really), and their proportions (and teeth) are much more plausible.

 

The box contains 20 models, but I've only managed to complete four so far. Mostly as an experiment, so see if converting them would actually work at all. Eventually I want to have ten with bolt pistols and hand weapons, and ten with bolters/special weapons.

There's a lot more detail on the models than I expected, which is why it took me so long to get around to painting them!

With space marine boltgun and orky plasma gun.

With bolt pistols and hand weapons.

Those pistols are the ones the Marauders come with, but since the Rogue Trader definition (and appearance) of weapons is very loose, I figured there's no reason why they can't just use them as is. Lemme know what you think, do these work as RT Space Orks?

Aliens!

I've finally completed the alien force for my upcoming Rogue Trader scenario! There's 12 aliens and one alien leader. I've deliberately not named their species because I don't want them to be any kind of identifiable race (like orks or eldar). The reason for this is to emphasise the way you can use Rogue Trader as a 'generic sci-fi' game; humans vs aliens! Although obviously the human side comprises space marines and imperial army.

This generic sci-fi feel is something I'd hoping to incorporate into other future scenarios. I can't really explain why I'd rather do things this way, but it's something to do with creative freedom I suppose. I like the idea of events being set within the Warhammer 40,000 Imperium that everyone is familiar with, but I want to move away from the 'GrimDarkness' and the 'Endless War'.

Anyway, the aliens!!
The models are actually 'Palansi' from the Cobalt-1 diceless miniatures game. I never played Cobalt-1, but it is by all accounts, rubbish. However, the models are actually quite good, especially these Palansi aliens. I had three blisters of them from some ten years ago, but they're still available from Black Hat Miniatures for a very reasonable £7 for a blister of three.

Aliens!

Closeup

The alien leader

I've created a custom stat profile and weapon profile for them, so they're completely different to anything in the rulebook. They're quite difficult to damage with shooting (the reason will remain a mystery for now!) but up close, they're almost useless!. The aliens are armed with Bio-plasma casters and the leader has a Power Scythe! Ooooh!