Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, and all variations thereof; we have a story to tell you.

On the weekend of Feb 27/28th your intrepid narrators took part in a 40k campaign at Warhammer World in Nottingham. The Hunt for The Fallen saw the loyalist Dark Angel Razyl, led his faction in a planetary invasion against the forces of the Fallen Seraphax. The agents of White Shark Gaming Studios chose to side with Razyal, and bring the traitors to justice over the course of two days and five 1650 point games of Warhammer 40,000.

Over the next week the three of us will be bringing you the whole sordid tale round by round.

These are our stories.

Round 1
The first scenario was tactical escalation; a lengthways deployment, generating one tactical objective on the first turn, and an additional one each turn.

Our faction’s secret objective for round one was to have all 6 objective markers under our control at any point during the game.

The Fallen’s secret objective was to hold two objectives markers for the duration of the game, although we didn’t know that until after the game.
Alex

My opponent in game one was Dan a, let’s say, “Tournament Focused Player” bringing two Imperial Knights and a fifty man blob of Imperial Guard led by Cypher and Inquisitor Coteaz to the field.

Our faction’s secret objective was a tricky one for me. My army was almost comically slow and had at most seven scoring units. On top of this there was virtually no way I was ever shifting the enormous quantity of Guardsmen that had set up camp over two of the objectives.

The secret objective was going to have to be abandoned, I was going to have to score as many victory points as I could and win the game on those terms instead.

It did not go well.

Turn one went to Dan, and the carnage started from there. The Knight Lancer opened fire on the unit of Kataphrons on the left flank, leaving one alive; while the Knight Paladin went to work against the Kastelan Robots inflicting a two wounds. His guardsmen were all either out of range or had their line of sight blocked.

My first turn saw the Robots move into cover in the centre of the battlefield, to start a fire fight with the Guardsmen. The as yet untouched unit of Kataphrons on the right opened up on the Paladin and chipped of a hull point, while the remaining Kataphron on the left took a pot shot at the Lancer, and franticly started making out its will. The Thanatar moved up to face off against the Lancer but failed to damage it in the shooting phase.

In Dan’s turn two the Lancer finished off it the last Kataphron and turned to face the Thanatar, the Paladin turned its attention to the second Kataphron unit making short work of them, and the Guardsmen poured everything they had into the Robots killing both and causing the Datasmith to flee. For those keeping track at home, I know have two models on the battlefield, one of whom is running away.

My reserves arrived in turn two, in an attempt to salvage what was left of the battle. The Dominus and the two units of Kataphron Breachers deep struck behind the Paladin and blew it to pieces, in what was my only real success of the game. The Thanatar shot and charged the Lancer and was impaled for its trouble, and the Datasmith rallied in time for his moment of glory.

In Dan’s third turn one of my Breacher units fell to a storm of fire from the Guardsmen and the other unit along with the Dominus met its end at the hands of the Lancer.

In my third and final turn the Datasmith made a beeline for the Lancer. Charging recklessly into the fray, he took off a hull point with his dataspike before being summarily trodden on.

My final tally of victory points was a whopping zero, with no secret objective, and Dan sitting pretty on seven, and his secret objective thoroughly achieved.

This was not what you would call an auspicious start to the weekend.
Stay tuned to hear from the rest of team White Shark how their first game went.

- Alex

My Cult Mechanicus Army. Left to Right: Kataphron Destroyers, Kastelan Robots, Kataphron Destroyers, Thanatar, Culexus Assassin, Kataphron Breachers, Tech-Priest Dominus, Kataphron Breachers.

My opponent's force, gulp.