Chaos Stemmed
A Chaos Storm Battalion was detected unexpectedly attempting to seize the ruins of Dappra 7 threatening to outflank Imperial supply lines in the sector. Our tactical assessment of the situation requires that the Imperial forces hold back chaos encroachment from the area of the Panatian Systems where we are secretly building up forces for an offensive that will secure the awakening of Baratis Nine.
Despite this we had few resources in the area and could only deploy a limited force including elements of Brigade 9835 of the Vendazian Elite regiment. Overlord Talakrian managed to persuade local orc forces that the chaos attack would provide them with the sport that they required and he alerted the Imperial local command who were able to divert a force of space wolves to interdict against the incursion.
The allies together barely matched the chaos attackers, Cryptek Cambaradis commanding a force only 990 strong to meet an enemy strength estimated at 3000 With him he had just a minimal squad of immortals, some acanthrites, three heavy destroyers and the Doom Scythes NNV Tenacious and NNV Fortitude. He also hoped for support from a tomb stalker buried under the ruins somewhere several years before, but communications were proving intermittent and it was not clear if it would be possible to make contact with it to bring it into the attack.
Cambaradis held our objective on the left with his squad and our heavy destroyers set up on the right, their heavy cannon covering the objective near the enemy’s deployment area. The Imperial forces concentrated in the centre, occupying a ruined building with support vehicles in the rear. The orcs occupied the left ahead of our immortals.
Chaos hordes spread across a wide front with heavy vehicles on both flanks and a walker in the centre. They occupied several buildings on our left and sensors indicated that they had both fliers and terminators amidst a significant reserve force.
The action opened with our forces moving to the right across the field with both of our allies moving troops across and opening fire. Our heavy destroyers began damaging the heavy transport advancing towards the objective on our right and the enemy warlord and his troops quickly disembarked from it.
Our barrage weapons on the left began to do damage against the enemy left and the enemy scored some early hits on an imperial transport. The enemy HQ assaulted the marines on the right as we continued to erode the armour of the leviathan and although one heavy destroyer was knocked out by it, it reanimated immediately.
The Tenacious flew onto the field and cut a swathe through advancing marines on the enemy left with its death ray and tesla destructor. Behind the same enemy unit our acanthrites deep struck and fired on the enemy walker with disappointing results. The two enemy marine units using ruined buildings as cover had been severely depleted by our allies but the enemy warlord was a tougher proposition in the struggle with our marines on the right.
Both sides took losses in the assault and an orc unit moved to assist even as enemy psychic powers were brought into play to hammer the marines. But the orcs had a psychic surprise of their own, and the enemy Warlord Khan was transformed into a squig, promptly re christened Warlord Khant. It retreated immediately.
An enemy flier now appeared and opened a fusillade of missiles on the Tenacious which was wrecked and fell from the skies crashing onto a damaged imperial transport where it fortunately caused no damage. Our acanthrites were subjected to heavy attack by enemy marines but resisted well, destroying the enemy defiler with their melta weapons at close range causing it to explode.
Chaos marine vehicles on the left were destroyed by our allies and outflanking orcs on the right were causing havoc and resisting enemy fire very effectively. A further assault on the left locked marine v chaos marine in combat and chaos terminators deep striking on the left were too late to make an impact.
The Fortitude appeared on the right and killed the fleeing Squig Warlord with its death ray and the Wolves HQ unit moved up to support the same flank where the orcs and marines finally broke their chaotic opponents and poured forward to attack the now badly damaged but still operational enemy transport. It was finished off with a melta bomb attack clearing the objective.
The enemy line was broken with our surviving acanthrite and orc kommandos in enemy territory; their warlord was slain and a chaos transport’s destruction early on had given us first blood. A tank shock attempt by a disabled imperial transport on the enemy terminators failed, but it was a rare chaos success.
Several chaos units had failed to arrive when the action broke off, likewise our tomb stalker. They had lost at least four units with severe damage to at least four more. We had lost the Tenacious and taken nearly 90% damage to our acanthrites. Our rallying force including the non appearing tomb stalker amounted to 725, losses of about 30%. Our immortals never fired a shot holding onto our objective which was never threatened.
Our allies losses were equally light in a decisive result for the unlikely and temporary combination, but no doubt our guns will be turned against each other soon enough once we are confident that chaos has been repelled.
6.10.12
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