Minicampaign: the Death of Varantis

Last weekend my friend Ron and I started a 40k mini campaign I dubbed 'The Death of Varantis', about a necron incursion on a distant imperial world, garrisoned by a small Valhallan contingent. It's mainly meant as a try-out for a bigger campaign we want to play later this year.

The campaign was to last three battles, each influencing the next:

1. Combat Patrol
Two small forces clash over the remains of a suddenly silent imperial listening station in the northern regions of Varantis. the winner of this patrol gets to choose the scenario for the final battle, and pick any objectives in his own deployment zone instead of randomly determining them. The loser is gets to send a kill-team in the next mission. VP are awarded for table quarters (3VP each). All units that survive this mission will gain the prefered enemy special rule int he final battle.

Outpost 4-19

My small combat patrol arrived at the outpost just before dawn, finding it eerily quiet. in the forest green will 'O Wisps seemed to dance arround, only to emerge out of the darkness and reveal themselves to be hulking metal monsters, carying weapons that could skin a man in seconds and obliterate whole armoured vehicles...
Which is exactly what happened....

The Necrons advance under cover of darkness

I deployed a small platoon with some roughriders and a hydra flakgun as support. Ron had two small groups of warriors, a handfull of immortals and an annihilation barge, which lived up to it's name and annihilated my army, save for a lone vox-operator  and some brave lads under command of Commisar Voss.

mental note: don't bring a Skyfire gun to an infantry fight...

Ron's army was very firepower heavy and having the first turn managed to either supress most of my unit's or kill them outright, and a few failed leadership tests saw my chances of victory evaporate.

'Brave' vox operator Balyushin

So I selected my valorous kill-team , trying to include as many of the survivors from the previous mission, representing the few surviving stragglers and vehicle crew under command of Commissar Voss, trying to destroy a necron communications node. If I succeed I get to force three of Ron's Necron units into reserve in the final battle. All I needed to do was avoid getting bogged down in the permafrost swamps of Varantis....

Commissar Voss and his 'dirty dozen (ten actually)'

My luck had left me however and the first time my boys tried to take down a squad of necron brute's they got stuck combat for close to five rounds, meanwhile giving Ron a chance to acrue Klaxon counters and get his other brutes into position.

The not so killy kill-team at work, trying to take down some necron brutes

 
Allthough commissar Voss managed to get to the objective through sheer tanacity, he failed to make his gettaway, being gunned down by the alarmed guards and leaving the necron Cryptek in command of the Node.

The necron Cryptek on his node...

Now all that lasts is the final battle for Varantis, to be fought in the ruins of the capitol. Hopefully I'll be able to fight Ron to a standstill, even with the odds against me. I think I need to paint some Glory Boys, because there is little else that can get trhough those AV13 Barges of Doom....