A Night Of Chaos

Once again it was just Caesar and I for the fortnightly Gong Garage Gamers meet, so we abandoned the idea of 96AP HOTT and settled for 72AP instead. However we still went for our original plan of doing Epic 40K HOTT.

I had prepared two armies for the game - Imperial Guard vs Chaos.

Here is the Chaos army; an improbable mix of Slaanesh and Khorne.

(Click on any picture to make it bigger)

The troops were:

1 x God (Chaos Greater  Demon)
4 x Behemoths (Titan, Hell-Strider, Tower Of Skulls and War-Altar of Slaanesh)
1 x Hero (Khorne Champion)
1 x Magician (Slaanesh Champion)
6 x Knights (Chaos Marine Land-Raiders and Juggernauts of Khorne)
8 x Blades (Chaos Marines)
4 x Warband (Daemonettes and Bloodletters)
2 x Riders (Slaanesh Beast-Riders)
2 x Beasts (Chaos Dreadnaughts)


Against them was an Imperial Guard army:

This consisted of:

2 x Paladin (Commissar and a group of Grey Knights)
1 x Hero (Imperial Inquisitor)
2 x Behemoth (Super-Heavy Tanks)
2 x Artillery (Self-Propelled Guns)
4 x Riders (Rough Riders and Bikes)
12 x Hordes (Guard Infantry)
9 x Knights (Tanks and Gorgons)
2 x Warband (Ogryns)
2 x Beasts (Sentinels)

I didn't make a note as to how each of us divided up our commands, but the Imperial Guard had all of their tanks in one, and the Guard infantry in another, whilst Chaos had all of its Behemoths in a single command.

I took the Imperials, and defended. The flanks of the battlefield were covered by a ruined city at one end, and an area of rocks at the other, with a range of low hills down the middle. Here are the armies set up:

The Imperials are on the left and Chaos to the right. That's the God just off-table.

The Imperials had a tricky job ahead of them. I had planned to hold on both flanks, and use the tanks to smash through the Chaos centre. But that was where he had put al his huge war-machines, and in HOTT this meant a battle between my Knights and his Behemoths. And we know how that would turn out ...

Here are the centres of both armies:

Both armies advanced slowly towards each other, partially through caution, but mostly through lack of PIPs. This did allow the Imperials time to shuffle their troops in the centre to avoid their Knight general facing off against a Behemoth, though.

Here is the advance, from the Imperial left, centre and right respectively:

At this point, Caesar, playing Chaos, made a mistake. His CinC was the Magician general in charge of left flank. Oddly enough he was faced off against my CinC, the Imperial Inquisitor on my right flank, protected  from magic by the Grey Knights. And Caesar's mistake was to push his general ahead of the rest of his army. I didn't miss the opportunity - a Paladin in contact, supported by the Hero general as an overlap:

It looked like game-over before it had really started.

Until:

The Grey Knights were beaten by one point, and destroyed! First blood to the forces of Chaos.

By now battle was well and truly joined in the centre, with the Chaos war-machines rolling over the Imperial tanks:

However Caesar made his next mistake; he didn't pull his Magician CinC out of trouble, so I leapt in with my Hero general. Both c-in-c's faced off in an epic duel:

This time the dice favoured the Imperium:

The Chaos army had lost its commander. But all was not lost; this was their first loss, but the Imperium had lost both the Grey Knights and a tank, so had higher losses, Chaos would fight on.

Of course, there was a chance that the CinC's command would become demoralised, but all Caesar had to do was roll more than a '2' for their next PIP roll:

Oh dear. The command  became demoralised, and with no general in charge there weren't enough PIPs to stop most of the troops fleeing. This pushed the Chaos losses over those of the Imperium, and the battle ended in an Imperial victory.

With time left in the evening we set up a 24AP game using the same armies - Slaanesh against the Imperial Guard. This was a tense game, with both sides attacking with their right flank and refusing their left. The Imperium lost most of its tanks to Slaahesh war-machines, but Slaanesh lost its beast-riders and many Chaos Marines to Imperial bikes and sentinels. The endgame consisted of the Slaanesh war-machines trying to destroy enough Imperial troops to force their army's demoralisation before the Imperial bikes and sentinels reached their stronghold. Sadly for the Imperium they managed it.

Obligatory pictures:

The initial setup:

Slaanesh redeploys its Riders from one flank to the other.

The Imperial Riders and Beasts.

The Imperial Riders deal with their opposite numbers. Hordes advance in the centre whilst Slaanesh war-machines move up to the left of the picture.

The Slaanesh Behemoths and Knights are about to destroy the Imperial Knights.

Both sides are now destroying their opponent's left flank, but the Imperium is losing more troops..

A last run to the Slaanesh Stronghold falls short as the rest of the army is defeated.

It's great to think that I've had more use out of my Epic stuff playing HOTT than I ever had using it for Space Marine or Epic 40K.