GSC Wyrmblade proxy kill team

The last of my kill teams that I'll paint up for a while, here is my Genestealer Cult Wyrmblade proxy Kill Team. 

I do still have a couple of kill teams paint up, the Tyranids and Vet Guard, I won't be painting either anytime soon. My son said he'll paint up the second half of the vets as he did the first 10 and I'm waiting for a bespoke team for the nids before I start painting. So, what have I actually built for the GSC?

As you can see, these are all Chaos Cultists, with only minor modifications to make them more GSC compatible. Most of them are just standard cultists and I'll run them as a proxy team, saying that they are a cult of existing cultists who have been duped by a patriarch into thinking they are worshipping Tzeentch and the changer of ways, when the actual "change" is the Genestealer DNA doing its thing. Now, being a Wyrmblade team, I haven't had to deal with anything other than neophytes or similar sized models, not aberrants, acolytes or hybrids, which was nice. It also means that the team is actually semi-competitive, as opposed to purely narrative. 

Leader and icon bearer

The leader is fairly basic, a standard cultist champion, but for the game he will have to be equipped with a cult knife for 1ep to make up for the rather large blade that he's carrying around with him. If it was a small knife or something, I could have just ignored it but the sword is a bit big to just ignore I think, so the cult knife equipment sorts that out and gives a small buff to combat as well. The icon bearer to his left is technically incomplete, as he doesn't have an icon at the moment, mostly because I don't have a suitable one in my bits box. I've a large chaos icon but I think not would be to much, I need a sort of GSC \ chaos crossed thing that will need to be kit bashed together from bits I don't own!

The gunners

We're actually a gunner down on the roster, as you can take two of each types but I didn't have a model I could use for either the mining laser or seismic cannon. As it stands, there is a Webber, flamer and stubbed. The Webber and flamer are the same model, just with the barrel of one of the flamers chopped down to make the two look different. Apart from this basic change, the models are again, as made.

The neophytes

The main group are just standard cultists, no modifications or changes, just painted as is with their autoguns. Basic, simple and easy. 

Now, for some reason, I don't have any pictures of the two models that I actually did do some conversion work on! The last two models in the team are a sanctus sniper and a sanctus talon. For the sniper, I took a model and added a barrel extension, extra sights to look like optical and electronic arrays, plus some extra bits. For the Talon, I switched out the pistol for an extra sword, a short sword, and replaced the original knife with a longer blade, giving him a short stabbing \ blocking blade and a longer dueling blade. These guys are a real meat of the team, taking up 4 roster slots between the two of them. They are just basic kit bashing, nothing fancy but they do the job.

While this now give me several xenos and chaos kill teams to choose from, I don't know how much play these guys will get, as I'm just not getting the time to play at the moment. Maybe that will change in the future, but I honestly would hold my breath on that fact, so I'll just enjoy modelling and painting for the moment.

 

The game! Guard Vs GSC

So the game itself! As you can see from the photos below, there was a lot of terrain on the tables and there was a real cities of death feel to it, my opponent did really a fabulous job on the table. As I said, we went for the city of death option from the rule book, which with a tank heavy army and a superheavy!

Some views of the table

This was actually pre-deployment, the units have just been dumped down on the table.

The main street

My opponents view of the battlefield.

The guard lined up ready to deploy. 

The GSC ready to hide.

Some deployment photos.

The thin green line, screening the tanks.

The guard deployed. The Valkyrie is actually part of the scenery but it did help to create a cool narative.

GSC post their deployment? Each genestealer represents a 'blip' counter or a unit, only the two sentinels are actually deployed as is.

After the big reveal! Traitor guard and GSC units everywhere!

The Valkyrie. 

The Valkyrie was actually part of the terrain and it's placement was completely random, however, once the deployment zones has been decided it became clear that it would make a cool focal point for the game. Sitting at the centre of the guard lines, a story quickly developed. A downed Valkyrie, carrying vital supplies in danger of being captured by the forces of the four armed Emperor and used against the forces of the imperium. As such a force of astra militarum have been deployed to secure the cargo, unfortunately they may not be the best forces for the job, manoeuvring their heavy vehicles through the narrow streets of the city.

Turn 1

Turn one was pretty quiet. The GSC moved up to get in range of the guard and took some pot shots, doing very little damage to the vehicles, knocking out some of the infantry squads but failing to score first blood.

The tanks remain but the thing green line got a little bit thinner.

In reply the tanks selected their targets and opened up, doing some damage to the enemy, including scoring first blood and setting themselves up nicely for turn 2.

Some holes start to appear in the GSC lines.

Turn 2

After settling in nice, things take a turn for the worse. The psychic might of the brood reaches out and drives the crew of the Hellhammer in to a frenzy and guns blaze in all directions! Yeah, not fun having a unit turned upon yourself, especially when it's a super heavy! It's a bit of a strange rule this, as it states that it can shoot as if the shooting  phase, so all of its guns, or make 1 close combat attack if it's in combat, just 1! Why can it shoot all its guns as per the shooting phase but only make 1 attack and not just attack as if the fight phase? Anyway, the hellhound killed a chunk of my army including my warlord! That's what a Hellhammer cannon to the face will do! Apart from that though not a lot happened.

Hellhammer cannon to the face!

In reply I gunned down a chunk more of the army, keeping a good gap between me and the GSC units or so I thought anyway.

Turn 3

I had been kind of concentrating on the closer units in addition to those that I thought would be most dangerous, which is why I ignored the likes of the mortars, as they can't do much to leman Russ battle tanks. However, the whole genestealer advancing and charging thing crept up on me again, despite already knowing they could.

Genestealers knocking on the door.

Genestealers knocking on heaven's door

I played a couple (I think?) Of stratagems when my opponent tried to charge in 4 units to my Hellhammer. In total he charges a GSC unit, a blood brothers guard unit, a patriarch and a brood of genestealers. Unfortunately, the GSC and Guard units were bother destroyed, the guard unit actually failed there charge. The patriarch tries next and was wiped from the board, despite throwing a number of hits across to the genestealers next to it. The remaining genestealers were then dispatched with easy, after also failing there charge, with snake eyes, twice. 6 heavy Bolters, 2 lascannons, an autocannon, a Demolisher cannon, a Hellhammer cannon and of course the little lasgun out the back really can put out a hell of a lot of firepower, even on overwatch.

The clean up begins.

After the failed charges destroyed a chunk of the forward units and also killed off the warlord, the guard went about killing off the rest of the GSC units, finishing off a couple of sentinels and some of the more depleted infantry units, although the shooting was less than satisfactory this turn, with the Hellhammer failing to do as much damage as it should have.

By this point it was getting late, nearing midnight at a rapid rate so we decided to call it there. As the game stood, I had 2 objectives and contested a third, while my opponent controlled just 1. This meant that the scores were 8 (2 objectives, first blood, slay the warlord) to 5 (1 objective, slay the warlord, line breaker) in favour of the guard. However, we reasoned it out over the next two turns and it would have probably ended up a lot closer, something like 8 to 11 or 11 all, depending upon if my opponent could claim the final objective up on the top floor of one of the ruins. In fact, it may even have ended 14 to 8 or even 17 to 5 in favour of the GSC but only if my shooting had been terrible and he had a lot of luck with his shooting and advance rolls.

As it was we decided that it would likely have been 11 to 8 in favour of the cult, however, I would claim the moral victory for killing the patriarch and holding the Valkyrie crash site, even if I didn't hold enough actual objectives to win. It's a shame we didn't get to finish the game as it was shaping up to be a close finish but any later and the wife probably would have killed me!

An impromptu game of kill team

This was an impromptu game of kill team that I played a few weeks back. A mate of mine was picking up his father from a party in town and had a few hours to kill, so he dropped by for a quick game of kill team. The teams were my guard horde list, featuring 16 guardsmen, including 4 with special weapons and a Sgt to lead them, facing off against a slightly less horde GSC team, including 2 aberrants and a number of neophytes.

I was worried by the aberrants and even more so after the free movement (cult ambush?), a number of them got before the first turn. I can't remember if we did the scout phase or not now but I have the feeling that we might have either gone for the same counter or cancelled each other out, meaning that the phase was pretty much useless for both of us.

Mid turn one and the GSC are almost upon us already! 

A close up of the above shot. You can see one of the aberrants on top of the building directly in front of my little castle. My opponent had chosen not to charge this turn as he was a long way out, about 10 inches I think, so closed the gap ready for next turn. 

Coming in on the flank, the leader and his 2 bodyguards. 

Turn 2 and the aberrant in the centre is no more, melted by the super charged plasma goodness of my gunner. With Comms +1, and orders, the weapon reduced the model to molten slag, although I probably wouldn't have super charged the weapon if I'd have know about the special rule that drops the damage by 1. Same result, less chance of cooking myself. 

This was in to turn 3 and I was starting to dominate now. My extra numbers were starting to tell and I was pushing models up. I forgot to say, we were playing the mission where you have to get models off the board and even though I had not manage it yet, I had 3 in good positions to go for it and I had successfully stopped his first wave from trying. The three models under the bridge in the top centre of the board are actually mine, making a break for the back lines. My main threat at this point as I have eliminated both aberrants, are the three models hiding behind the lower crate, you can just see the base of one sticking out.

End of turn 3 and we called it here. In the picture above, the models lying down were shaken and so weren't a threat to me and so I concentrated on the other models, the ones behind the crate and the ones hiding under the bridge on the right, eliminating all of them. we then skipped forward to the moral phase and this resulted in the GSC team breaking and at this point there was no way back for them, with all there models either removed or shaken again. I on the other hand still had the majority of my team alive and kicking, with 13 of the 16 still on the board, although many had flesh wounds on them. 

I don't think that this was quite the overwhelming victory it looks like but eliminating the aberrants early in the game helped a lot, taking out his most valuable models and the ones that could have done some serious damage had they got in to combat. Another really enjoyable game of kill team and another success for the Guard. So far the guard are proving them selves a lot better at this game than the death watch and as you'll see from the next post, this continues, in a fashion anyway.