Xenos Incompetence

One of Magus Excreedius' spies had told him of the find. The accursed Robbers Militant had found a large cache of valuable artifacts that could be sold easily to help fund the furthering of the cults ambitions. He thought back to his biological father, the lessons taught from an early age. A senior bookkeeper for a minor slime transportation contractor most lessons were regarding frugality. "Semper my offspring, if our glorious cult is to find success we must do so from a solid financial footing". His thoughts were interrupted when Cruddix, a gnarled 1st Generation Hybrids question appeared in his mind.

 "Magus, shall I send Deekon to the market to purchase ammunition? Bethselemin has informed me he and the others are low, after the incident with the mutated bat-hog.". 

Excreedius pulsed his reply "No, we can make do with what we have. If Aothanp hadn't attracted in it the first place, Gorazk would never have panicked!".

" I have barely enough Throne Geld to feed us for the next moon cycle. We must be a bit more discerning with picking our targets. Move out!". 

  

Greetings. My latest Inquisimunda outing was a rematch between my burgeoning Genestealer Cult and The Robbers Militant, Pat's underworld mercenaries. After a bit of a kicking last time out, I had a few thoughts on how to deal with a gang with 8 infiltrators, unfortunately that mainly involves a favorable scenario table roll. The crux of that tactic was to get to choose the scenario, then pick a mission that doesn't allow for special deployment. So Pat rolled up a big fat juicy double 1 and I got to pick the scenario.As I was musing about this the grudge match aspect of this game made it important that I got lots of loverly wounding hits so a game involving lots of toy soldiers killing each other was in order. I picked the Hoard, as it fulfilled a couple of requirements for my game, firstly it was a no special deployment game, and secondly there wash a cash money prize at the end of it for the victor. All in all a successful attack could leave me quids-in.

To recap here are the gangs after the first game:

The Robbers Militant

Gaston, human leader, Hunting rifle
Darius, human heavy: Heavy stubber
Jonas, ratling ganger: hunting rifle,
Lucius, ratling ganger: hunting rifle,

Elden, ratling ganger: hunting rifle,

Marius, ratling ganger: hunting rifle,

Finwood, ratling ganger: hunting rifle,

Armand, ratling ganger: hunting rifle,
Stabber, beastman juve, sword.
Bruiser, beastman juve, sword.
Cordell, ratling juve, autopistol.
Alexi, human juve, autopistol.
I think another juve has since joined the gang, but I will have to confirm that later.

The Venerable Family Of Father Olifarch.

Magus Excreedius ; level 2 Wyrd; Impending Doom, Mind War, Deux Ex Machina, Embolden, autogun. 

Uncle Ick, Purestrain Genestealer.

Cruddix, 1st Generation Hybrid, sword.

Bethselemin, 3rd Generation Hybrid, heavy stubber. 

Gorazk, 4th Generation Hybrid, autogun,  level 1 Wyrd; Deux Ex Machina.

Aothanp, 4th Generation Hybrid, autogun, level 1 Wyrd; Beastmaster.

Antwoord, Brood brother, stub gun.

Deekon, Brood brother, stub gun.
Farg, Brood brother, stub gun.
Qualid, Brood brother, stub gun.
Blug, Brood brother, stub gun.
I also have 5 Throne Geld in my stash that is burning a hole in my pocket, I just can't think of what to spend it on!

The Game

Pat rolled for 5 initial mercs, lolling around the big pile of money, my deployment was three pronged, 2 Hybrids on the left with heavy stubber and autogun with a decent field of fire to the hoard, two Brood Brothers to make a mad dash centrally through the building at the front and my Purestrain, other Hybrid and Brood Brother to take the more scenic route along the walkways. Also a fourth prong in my three pronged attack was Magus Excreedius, Cruddix, the as yet never been in a fight Hybrid and a Brood Brother to collect wounds on their behalf. 

Pat's rather nifty terrain he bought recently.

A Carrion Bat's Eye view of the Hoard! Except they're probably blind so they wouldn't really see much. You get the idea though, right?

Some of The Robbers Militant hanging around their newly discovered riches.

Half of my initial set up. Uncle Ick, Beastmaster Hybrid (sans beasts) and some random Brood Brother will take the aerial route to the Hoard, Magus Excreedius, 1st Generation Hybrid and another random Brood Brother take the ground route. In the centre, two more Brood Brothers will attempt to run up the ramp, into the building and unleash hell on my command.

On the left, my Stubber Hybrid, Deux Ex Machina Hybrid, and 2 wound Brood Brother will provide covering fire and combat support as required.

This is where the Hoard is. There are 5 obnoxious Robbers militant there trying to make nicking their stuff awkward. It seems a tad inconsiderate that after finding 3D6 x 5 worth of Throne Geld, they won't just look the other way as I nab it. Humans, eh?

During my first turn an overwatching Ratling shot poor old random Brood Brother. He was to make an almost Herculean attempt to get into combat.

Meanwhile, in the centre of the table two random Brood Brothers run up, intending to enter the big building in the centre. However, another skeevy Ratling shot and wounded brood Brother A, Brood Brother B shat himself and ran back down the ramp, into cover. Luckily for me however, the firing aimed at my trio on the right pinged off the walls without harming any more of my precious Hybrids.

In this pic we see Uncle Ick legging it across the walkway like a hideous four armed batman intent on sticking it to some villains, but unfortunately in this game Uncle Ick is the villain and all he really wants to do is stick his ovipositor into a total stranger. 

Same turn different angle. A pinned Brood Brother on the ground floor and a Hybrid ready to put hot lead into the leader of The Robbers Militant. He hits him, but fails to wound, luckily the fall from about 3" is enough to leave him man down. No wounding exp for him though, (the floor got quite a few wounding hits this game).

At this point in the game my crack rooftop Hybrid fire support team find out they had about 4 bullets between them. My 3rd generation decides its time to sit down and play no further part in the battle, his single hit failed to wound the opposing heavy, so he leans back against the wall and smokes a few Stealer cigarettes. His mate then hits the same heavy, gives him a flesh wound for his trouble, runs out of bullets and wonders where it all went wrong.

With awful inevitability, a third Hybrid (the one with the power to control animals) shoots and actually causes a wounding hit, running out of ammo in the process. This now leaves my gang with a total of one working autogun facing a gang of hunting rifle armed gits. This is the sort of thing that gives me a terrible stabbing pain in my luck gland. I should have quit at the first opportunity but the Holy Grail of a tower full of weedy Ratlings and double exp for wounding hits drove me on. Just as long as the reinforcements don't arrive for another turn or two and it'll be fine........

With more awful inevitability the greedy, money grabbing robbers militant reinforcements arrived on their second attempt. The game was going tits up and no mistake.

Here's an artsy angle that really doesn't add much to the narrative.

At this point Uncle Ick is getting rather close to his prey, the Brood Brother as you can see is crawling slowly across the walkway, whilst a fitter Brood Brother makes his way towards the Hoard. Down on the ground another Brood Brother takes up bullet catching duty for Excreedius to work his magic in a safe manner.

Meanwhile on the left my Deux Ex Machina Hybrid happily Deux Ex Machinas his way up the walkway. At some the the wounded Brood Brother passed out and the broken Brood Brother stayed broken. The only thing keeping me in the game was the redonkulous amount of missed shots coming over from the other side of the table. It was almost as if my opponent was deliberately wasting ammo knowing full well I had hardly any.

Coward!

Uncle Ick can now smell the trembling little ratling bodies. Unfortunately they move their 3 inches wisely taking them out of charge range for another turn! Grrrrrrr!!!!

This is probably the money shot of the game. Two Ratlings huddle together whilst another cowers on the floor below whilst my Purestrain lopes towards them looking for a happy ending.

As I said just out of charge range.

The much slower Brood Brothers take up the rear hoping to assist Uncle Ick with the clearing-up-of-dead-bodies-and-bringing-the-live-ones-back-for-impregnation duties. During this time Pat'S ammoless heavy had legged it to the far table edge and his leader made a miraculous recovery to add insult to injury.

Finally Uncle Ick gets up close and personal with a ratling, using him like a chew toy then follows up to the next hapless abhuman.

Meanwhile down on the floor, Excreedius goes down, my 1st Genreation Hybrid makes an appearance after taking the long way round to the centre and the cowardly Brood Brother finally comes round to get shot (this turn or the next).

In this picture myDeux Ex Machina Hybrid gets attack by a Warp Entity due to carelessly sticking his thoughts in places he shouldn't. 

My ammo-less Hybrid watches helplessly as two Beastmen mug a Brood Brother. I decided to cut my losses here and voluntarily bottle out. Pat had even shot into combat and taken out his own Ratling fighting Uncle Ick, denying him 10 exp! This is just the sort of thing that makes you question whether dice rolling is the great equalizer everyone says it is. So now on with the post game sequence.......

So as the Robbers Militant made off with the goodies I had to count the cost. I had about 5 guys down and thankfully the two worst results were shellshock (again) and partially deafened. A couple of hatreds from the grudge match didn't do any harm and my warband made another 30 Throne Geld for the kitty. The gap between my gang and Pats grows wider as he made 100 TG and got a free juve for the gang. I got a couple of nice BS advances and Uncle Ick gained infiltration, so he can get a lot closer to the enemy during games. From a tactical point of view I don't think I did that much wrong, just didn't bring enough munitions. Maybe next game I get to choose it will be the heist.

Thanks for reading.


Magus Excreedius was not happy. The attack wasn't a success and worse, unprofitable. The path to global domination needs to be fiscally buoyant and at this rate the tiny settlement of Poxed Elbow seems out of reach. Perhaps some sort of fundraising was in order, a sponsored walk or something like that. Whatever I do decide, it must be soon.