WOLF’S WRATH: A Battle Narrative, Part One: The Set-Up

I say a “battle narrative” because I wouldn’t necessarily call it a “battle report”.  This was a friendly game more about learning the rules and having fun than playing to win.  In fact, we played a game with three objectives and pretty much ignored those objectives!  Actually, by Turn 5 I’m sure we would have gotten back to the objectives but the game only made it part way through Turn 3 when the store closed up and kicked us out, so it was an incomplete game anyway. 

My opponent was still learning the game (I believe this was his 4^th time playing) and it was only my second game in about eight months, and longer than that since I’ve used my Chaos guys, so it was a learning experience more than a competition.  It was also the first time he and I had played together and the first hour or so was as much a BS session as a game set-up.

But I digress.  So the back story on my Chaos warband is this: Following the assault on Prospero by the Space Wolves 10,000 years ago, Thoth, daemon prince of Tzeentch, visited the ruined planet and recruited the battle’s broken survivors.  So ten millenia later, his warband Prospero’s Corpse, lead by veterans of that epic battle and joined by daemons and renegades the galaxy over, now roams known and unknown space to carry out Tzeentch’s will.  The core of the warband is made up of traitorous Space Wolves and Thousand Sons.  For this battle, I’m calling it WOLF’S WRATH, an attack force of modern Space Wolves has caught up with a pack from Prospero’s Corpse intent on killing the tainted sons of Russ, thus restoring any tarnished honor of the Space Wolves chapter.

This was a 1750 point game, deploying from opposite long-sides.  All three objectives were outside the deployment zones, making them all risky in the taking. 

Roughly speaking, the Wolves brought: two 10-man units of grey hunters, one led by Njal; a 15-man unit of blood claws led by a wolf priest; 5 sniper scouts; 10 fenrisian wolves (which looked really cool speeding around the board on the hunt); and a drop pod housing 5 wolf guard in termie armor, including Arjac Rockfist. (I think that was it.)

Chaos was fielding: Thoth, daemon prince bearing the mark of Tzeentch and two spells; renegade wolf lord Thorbolg Wolfsbane (I use Huron Blackheart stats with a customized model) leading 7 khorne berzerkers (chaotic space wolves) in a rhino; 8 thousand sons plus sorcerer in rhino; a greater daemon; chaos dreadnought; 7 lesser daemons; 5 chosen; 2 spawn (mutant wolves using chaos warhound models); 2 obliterators; and a defiler.

(a yet to be painted Thorbolg)

Again, we only got through 2.5 turns so the game was incomplete, though there was a surprising amount of carnage for such a short time.  By that end no one held any objectives, though Chaos seemed to be spilling more blood than the Wolves and predictions from both sides figured Chaos was likely to win in the end, though it really could have gone either way.

NOTE: In writing this I will bounce around time a bit and not fully explore all facets of what happened (thus a narrative not an actual game report).  Please forgive any discrepancies or misrememberings.