I'm playing through the missions in the Pariah Nexus Crusade book, in order of appearance. The fifteenth and final mission is called Final Acquisition.
After some reflection, I've decided that the previous mission was the logical and definitive conclusion to the Pariah Nexus story I was telling in my personal Crusade. This campaign has been a combination of the story in the Pariah Nexus book, and the story in the Pariah Nexus animated series. The Stilling intermingled with necromancy is the main threat, and the work of a Necron faction (specifically Szarekh, last of the Silent Kings.) I don't own a Necron army, so my combatants haven't actually been battling the cause of the threat. Instead, Genestealer Cults and Tyranids are invading a planet within the Nephilim Sector, and the Adeptus Mechanicus are attracted to the Nepihilim Sector by all the Blackstone. My armies are periphery players, but as with anyone, they're also the main characters of their own stories..
For this campaign, the Reawakening mission felt like it was practically designed as the final chapter in name and in the way the actual battle itself played out. I'd been tempted to declare the Tyranids the victor by Round 3, and yet the Adeptus Mechanicus made some really smart strategic decisions that paid off, rolled really well and sometimes even remembered to take advantage of its detachment rules, and won by just 1 OC and 5 VP. The final battle to determine how much necromantic energy got released into the universe felt supremely satisfying.
I can't top that, so this fifteenth mission is the obligatory epilogue. After all, the Blood of the Omnissiah didn't come here to stop a necromantic infusion. They're here for the Noctilith. It's possible that the only reason the Blood of the Omnissiah bothered preventing the necromancy was because it was in the way of them mining Noctilith. This mission is going to determine how much more Blackstone they get away with.
Straight from the book:
After a bloody back and forth amidst the haunted ruins of a dead world, the mighty forces clash for final control of vital noctilith riches. The commander who sweeps away their foes and secures this region will win a great victory for their faction.
Scipio Ω5-Quintus the Technoarcheologist leads his unit of Skitarii Rangers, the Tech-Priest Engineseer 8-Dol leads his unit of Skitarii Vanguard, and the Vindicare Assassin is back.
I'm using the Explorator Maniple detachment again. This detachment allows me to designate, at the start of each Round, one objective as my Acquisition Objective. When one of my units attacks while it or its target is in range of the Acquisition Objective, I can re-roll Wound rolls of 1. Additionally, once a phase, a Tech-Priest within range of my Acquisition Objective can change a Hit, Wound, or Save to 6.
For the Tyranid Cult, I've brought back the Reductus Saboteur and the Tyranid Warriors.
I'm using the Host of Ascension detachment from the Genestealer Cults codex.
I'm using every square inch of my gaming table for this final mission, so the battlefield is bigger than ever. I've littered it with building and temple ruins, and there are 6 objectives on the board: 2 each in the northwest and southeast quadrants, and then 1 in each deployment zone.
The Adeptus Mechanicus chooses the Aggressive strategic footing, and the Tyranid Cult chooses Balanced. According to the chart on page 105, that would normally grant the Adeptus Mechanicus an Advantage, but this mission doesn't define an Advantage. As consolation, I'm skipping the first initiative roll and allowing the Adeptus Mechanicus to choose which army goes first.
The Adeptus Mechanicus activates the Conqueror Imperative, and forces the initiative onto the Tyranid Cult, hoping to draw them out into the open.
Aberrants deep strike to an objective near the Adeptus Mechanicus deployment zone.
Goliath Rockgrinder rolls a 1 to Advance and nearly makes it to the Tyranid Cult deployment objective (but not quite.) Tyranid Warriors and Genestealers trail behind, and lacking any valid target attack the truck. They only manage to deal 1 Wound, though.
Termagants circle around some ruins on their way to one of the 2 eastern objectives.
Reductus Saboteur infiltrates behind enemy lines and throws a grenade at Skitarii Vanguard, killing 3.
On the Adeptus Mechanicus turn, the Vindicare Assassin takes a shot at the Aberrants from where she's perched atop ruins of an old mining building. She kills one.
The Sydonian Dragoon tries to do the same, but fails to hit.
I've only just noticed that some of my Servitors were supposed to be rolling 3 Attacks, and I'm pretty sure I've always only rolled 1 Attack for the ones with heavy stubbers. No wonder they've been useless in combat. This time I roll the correct number of dice, and the lowly Servitors kill the Reductus Saboteur. They were careful not to advance, knowing by now that the Reductus Saboteur usually plants mines around himself for protection.
The Skitarii Vanguard claim the deployment objective. This is a vital objective to protect, because the enemy gets 10 VP for capturing it.
The Skitarii Rangers rush out into the battlefield towards one of the east objectives. If I had to guess, they'll make it to that objective just around the same time the Termagants do, so that'll be fun.
Had the Goliath Rockgrinder made it to the Tyranid Cult deployment, they'd get extra points for controlling more objectives than their enemy. As it stands, both armies control just 1 objective each, so basically there's nothing to score this round.
The Tyranid Cult rolls high for initiative. The Adeptus Mechanicus activates the Conqueror Imperative.
The Goliath Rockgrinder rolls a 5 to Advance and drives past the deployment objective to support the Aberrants. It gets within range of the Sydonian Dragoon to take a shot at it with a mining laser and deals 5 wounds. One more hit like that and there won't be a Sydonian Dragoon any more.
The Termagants turn the corner around the ruins but roll poorly to Advance (and waste a Command Point for an equally poor re-roll), so they're unable to reach their objective.
The Genestealers lack a better target, so they run after the Goliath Rockgrinder and take a few swipes at it, dealing another Wound.
The Tyranid Warriors claim their deployment objective.
On the Adeptus Mechanicus turn, the Skitarii Rangers roll 5 to Advance. Along with Battle Traits that increase both their Movement and Advance, they easily close the distance to the nearest eastern objective. Of course they also have the Objective Scouted ability, so they'll be able to move on to the next eastern objective next turn and still control this one. They fire everything they've got into the oncoming Termagant horde and kill 4 Tyranids.
The Sydonian Dragoon claims the farthest western objective. It'll likely be blown to bits on the next Tyranid Cult turn, but for now it's pushing the objective count ahead of the enemy, which means bonus VP.
The Vindicare Assassin continues to do what she does best and kills another Aberrant. She's doing so well in this game that I almost wonder whether I playing her as wrong as I was playing the Servitors!
Big shake-up in the scoring this Round,with the Adeptus Mechanicus controlling 3 objectives to the Tyranid Cult's 2. But can it last?
Tyranid Cult wins initiative. The Adeptus Mechanicus activates the Conqueror Imperative.
The Goliath Rockgrinder moves ever closer to the Mechanicus deployment objective, but it's still got about a Round's distance to go. It chooses not to Advance so it has time to shoot its mining laser at the Sydonian Dragoon. It only gets 1 Attack roll this time (the mining laser has a variable d3 Attack value) and, after spending a Command Point to re-roll, it hits and deals 2 Wounds. The Sydonian Dragoon is dead, its objective is left unclaimed, and it doesn't even have the good manners to explode to deal blast damage.
The Termagants move forward and claim their western objective, and fires fleshborers into the Skitarii Rangers who are themselves moving toward the same objective. The Skitarii Rangers have an improved Invulnerable Save as of the last mission, so they only lose 1 Skitarii.
The Genestealers move in the general direction of the objective left vacant by the Sydonian Dragoon, but only make it up to the Aberrant's objective. Having no better target to attack, they attack the Aberrants and deal 2 Wounds.
On the Adeptus Mechanicus turn, the Skitarii Rangers return fire at the Termagants and then Charge in to claim the objective and, inevitably, close quarters combat. They clear the battlefield of Termagants, although Scipio Ω5-Quintus tries out his fancy new Neural Jammer and accidentally fries one Skitarii's brain in the process. Archeotech, am I right?
The Vindicare Assassin kills another Aberrant.
The Servitors move forward in an ill-advised attempt to deal damage to the Goliath Rockgrinder. At a 6+ to hit, their Attacks are useless. I should have moved them to the deployment objective and let the Skitarii Vanguards do the precision work.
With the loss of the Sydonian Dragoon, battlefield control is again equal.
That's all the Tyranid Cult can do this round. The Skitarii Rangers have been sneaky enough to have avoided being targeted by the Tyranid Warriors, and everybody else is busy sitting on objectives.
Tyranids win initiative again. The Adeptus Mechanicus activates the Conqueror Imperative.
The Goliath Rockgrinder careens around the ruins and smashes into the Servitors, killing 3. It's gotten really close to the enemy deployment objective but, unfortunately for them, scoring for deployment objectives in this mission isn't tallied until the end of the Command Phase. Even if the Rockgrinder captures the Mechanicus objective in Round 5, there won't be another Command Phase after that.
The Genestealers capture the Sydonian Dragoon's objective.
On the Adeptus Mechanicus turn, the Vindicare Assassin rolls a 1 to hit the Aberrants. I guess she's not perfect, after all.
The Skitarii Rangers hurry to the Tyranid Cult deployment objective, just past the old mining building that the Termagants had circled around. They fire a fearsome volley at the Tyranids and kill one of them. There are still 2 on the objective, so the Skitarii boldly Charge into close-quarters combat. That's not exactly their strength, and it shows. They fail to get a Wound through, and in fact lose 2 of their own. However, there are still 5 remaning (plus Scipio Ω5-Quintus) for a total of 11 OC to the 4 OC total for the Tyranid Warriors. The Skitarii have captured the enemy's deployment zone. It doesn't get scored until next round, so hopefully they can hold the line.
For this Round, the Skitarii hold 3 objectives thanks to the Objective Scouted ability. The Tyranid Cult hold 2 objectives.
The Adeptus Mechanicus wins initiative and that essentially brings the game to an end. At the end of its Command Phase, the Blood of the Omnissiah earns 10 VP for controlling the enemy's deployment zone, bringing the score to 65 to 30 VP. The best the Tyranid Cult could manage is a draw, and then only in the impossible scenario in which they ended Round 5 controlling literally every obective on the board.
The Blood of the Omnissiah has captured the enemy deployment zone, and the mining ruins there contains exactly what they'd suspected: A secret vault full of Blackstone fragments. Their mission was a success, and better still they helped protect the Nephilim Sector from the soul-draining effects of the Stilling.
This one was a pretty typical mission design, with the little offset bonus for deployment objectives to make it interesting. I enjoyed the game partly, I think, because I knew it was the final game of the campaign, but I think it also stands on its own. It's not terribly exciting mission design, but you need some "normal" missions from time to time. Because I structured the story in such a way that this mission became an epilogue, the normal-ness of the mission feels right. I just need to know how much Blackstone my forces get.
The Blood of the Omnissiah roll 2 on a d3, so they earn their current Blackstone stash times 2, resulting in a total win of 99 Blackstone fragments, which is a bigger number than what they had before. It's all meaningless, of course, because this is the end of the campaign and there's not actually that much to in the Crusade rules to spend Blackstone on!
But for the story, it's perfect. They could have failed at the epilogue and had to run for their lives, and I wouldn't have minded. They came for Blackstone and ended up thwarting an evil plan to raise the dead and to turn the living into undead. It's half a dozen of one, and 6 of the other.
Over the course of this campaign, I've definitely felt the effects of Battle Traits on my Crusade Force. I can't imagine playing some of these challenges without the upgrades my army has earned for its experience. The fact that I've played the past few missions with Aberrants on the battlefield, and in both cases my army was able to remove most or all of them, shows just how powerful Battle Traits can be.
It also shows how narrow their focus can be. My Skitarii gained lots of benefits to movement, and some help with Armour Penetration, and even a +1 Strength, but those Ballistics Skills of 4+ is rough. I guess it would be dangerous to hand out improvements to BS, but that doesn't mean I didn't want it anyway.
Now that I've played every mission in the campaign, I can properly finish my review of the book. Read my Pariah Nexus missions review for my final impressions of the crusade.