Game 3 of the campaign represents a rescue mission. It is located in the same area as Game 2 as this is where Phil’s psyker was last seen (his Warlord rolled fine on the injury chart, so we assumed he got away in Game 2). The Genestealers still had forces in the general area, but at the start of the battle they only had sentries patrolling the area.
This was a 50 Pwr game, with the sentries (who were Acolytes) not counting towards the Genestealer Cults force. The blue numbers represent possible locations for the lost Imperium psyker; the first time a model from the Imperium ended within 3″ of one they rolled a dice: on a 6 the model to be rescued was there. This continued until it could only be at one location. In this game luck wasn’t on Phil’s side. He successfully scouted three of the locations, but didn’t manage to rescue the lost comrade. Once the sentries detected his rescue force, during my turn 2, the Genestealers were quick to react. Most of my reinforcements came on immediately and I sprung a small ambush on Phil’s forces working their way down the left hand side. It took out a squad of Scouts and harried the Captain, Librarian and Apothecary. The shooting from the Neophytes, who deployed at the bottom-left was surprisingly accurate, taking down the Landspeeder and plinking wounds off the Librarian as he closed. The Acolytes fared less well on the bottom-right, but the arrival of a Heavy Flamer-armed Chimera carrying Genestealers and a Magus shored up that flank and then moved towards the centre. In the end it was a reasonably comfortable win for the Genestealers, but it was a tough task for the marines to try to cross the full width of the battle field to search the possible locations, at least four of which were deep in my part of the board.
Until next time,
Owen