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So I'm putting together my army book for Alamo and have begun tweaking the background fluff for the list. The list itself is White Scars (fielded as the successor chapter "Void Eagles") and allied Iron Hands (successor chapter "Righteous and Harmonious Fists") but I like to have coherent reasons for them to be together. Please take a look and tell me if you think the back drop is plausible given the 40K universe or if I missed something major I need to tweak. Thanks.

The Aldenata Crusade

Located on the border of the Segmentums Tempestus and Pacificus, the Aldenata sector is located on the fringes of the Veiled Region. The sector has only recently drawn attention from the Imperium of Man, with the highlords of Terra deciding it would make an ideal staging area for counter attacks into the flank of Hive Fleet Leviathan to strip it of resources and divert its attention away from the galactic center and Holy Terra. The Ordo Xenos in particular sees an opportunity in the Aldenata sector to launch a mobile, raiding focused naval campaign against Leviathan. From Aldenata, Imperial Navy ships would be able to use the Warp to attack the Hive Fleet at its most vulnerable as it transitions between worlds and then use the Warp to safely evade its return stroke, displacing hundreds of miles before the slower hive ships could keep up. Most important to this plan, any tyranid ships destroyed in the cold reaches of space would essentially be lost resources to the hive fleet, easily scattered throughout the void where the biological salvage by the hive fleet would be time consuming and nigh impossible.

In order for these grand ambitions to be realized, however, the Aldenata sector would first have to be conquered and integrated into the Imperium. To accomplish this, the Ordo Xenos arranged for two regiments of Imperial Guard, the 9th Siennos Infantry and the 7th Marquilla Armored Cavalry, and two companies of Space Marines, the 3rd Company of the Void Eagles and the 7th Company of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, to lead the Imperial advance. Brother-Captain Gaius Laelius of the Void Eagles was nominated as the commander of the Imperial forces based on his seniority and his renown as a Xenos fighter.

The base plan for the advance was simple. The Imperial forces would first seize the three major planetoid bodies in the Volusian system, designated as Volusian 1, 2, and 3. Volusian 2 and Volusian 3 would be outfitted by the Imperial Navy as defense stations and Volusian 1 would be outfitted as a major port, complete with in orbit repair and resupply facilities. Initial technical reconnaissance indicated that all three Volusian planetoids were dead worlds and thus easily retrofitted by means of mobile space stations being towed by vessels in the crusade fleet. Once the Volusian system was secured, the crusade would launch attacks against the neighboring Opilio and Regino systems in order to secure them, with an initial operational goal of creating a buffer region for increased security for naval operations based out of Volusian and a long term goal of creating frontier colonial outposts to serve as bases for further exploration and expansion into the Veiled Region.

The crusade had an auspicious opening. The Imperial scout ships were able to slip into the Volusian system unnoticed and confirmed that outside of a small fleet of orc pirates in orbit around Volusian 3, the system was as empty as technical reconnaissance indicated. The Imperial Navy task force achieved complete surprise and within hours, the orc ships were destroyed and small landing parties had confirmed that all three planetoids were indeed dead worlds, with the discovery of a minor research station, long abandoned, on Volusian 1. Mobile space stations and construction ships arrived shortly after and the expansion of the Volusian system into a fully operational naval base began in earnest.

With Volusian secure, the Imperial task force next attacked into the neighboring Regino system. Here, the Imperial forces encountered a Xenos race dubbed the “Scalies” by the soldiers of the Aldenata crusade but officially classified as the “spatium coluber regino” by the Ordo Xenos members accompanying the crusade. The “scalies” have a delicate, graceful appearance and a vaguely humanoid shape, walking on two leg-like appendages but having four arms and a body completely covered in scales. Their heads resemble vipers, to include the forked tongue, and their mastery of space travel and robotics had allowed them to establish complete control of the Regino and Opilio sectors, to include domination over several sub-species to include the descendants of an old human colony. While the “scalies” ships were easily outclassed by the strike cruisers and battleships of the Imperial Navy, their orbital defenses on planets were well designed and an initial attempt to storm the orbital defense stations around Regino IV by the 9th Siennos was repulsed with heavy losses to the landing parties. An eventual combination of naval fire and Astartes boarding parties eventually silenced the defenses and allowed a mass landing on Regino IV.

The fight for the orbital defenses had been a mere prelude to the ground combat. The scalies proved capable of extensive subterranean operations, shielding their forces from the might of the imperial fleet and were extremely competent at waging a guerrilla campaign against Imperial forces. The subjugation of Regino IV required almost two full months and was achieved only by extensive Astartes mobile patrols converging on vulnerable pockets of scalies after they exposed themselves to attack an Imperial Guard outpost.

Reinforced by two additional regiments of Imperial Guard, the 20th Daijar Infantry and 77th Balderian Infantry, the Aldenatta crusade forces began to position themselves for an attack against the heavily populated world of Regino VII. It would not be an easy fight, especially as reconnaissance and reports from newly acquired imperial agents in the subjugated human population indicated that the “scalies” were attempting to contract the services of a neighboring orc empire to help fight the Imperial armies. Scout ships had also reported the presence of several Eldar ships, who had appeared in the sector and mysteriously vanished. The crusade had just begun and it already looked like there was a long path ahead to victory.

Your biggest holes are problems with scale and misconceptions about the Tyranids. A regiment in modern parlance is about three to five thousand troops, even going off of that instead of GW's bizarre and inconsistent information on the size of a Guard regiment you're asking us to believe someone set out on a planetary crusade with ten thousand ground troops and two hundred Space Marines, which puts your army at about the size of one side of the Battle of Agincourt. Even trying to conquer just one planet this is ridiculously small. On from that the bigger issue is that the goal of your campaign is to "flank" Hive Fleet Leviathan; Tyranids don't have supply lines and they don't occupy territory, they just keep moving forward and eating or destroying everything in their path, a flank attack would be no different from a frontal assault. Every Tyranid hive fleet that's been beaten so far wasn't seriously challenged or set back until it was defeated in a decisive naval battle, putting a Space Marine Chapter on their flank isn't likely to change that. Thirdly, a slightly more minor issue, Space Marine Chapters tend to be founded to combat long-term threats, the High Lords can deploy existing forces to counter short-term stuff without committing to putting a Space Marine Chapter somewhere it might be not needed in ten years.

I might suggest replacing the unconquered galactic-rim region and the Tyranid hive fleet with a densely Ork-populated cluster, with your Chapter founded to hold a fief just outside Ork country as a first line of defense/rapid response/incursion force set there to keep the Orks pinned down, weaken them, and gather intelligence in preparation for a full-scale crusade, which neatly sidesteps the "how many troops do you take to conquer a planet?" question.

I agree with AnomanderRake, don't pick a fight with the largest fleet in the Tempestus Segmentum.

AnomanderRake wrote:Your biggest holes are problems with scale and misconceptions about the Tyranids. A regiment in modern parlance is about three to five thousand troops, even going off of that instead of GW's bizarre and inconsistent information on the size of a Guard regiment you're asking us to believe someone set out on a planetary crusade with ten thousand ground troops and two hundred Space Marines, which puts your army at about the size of one side of the Battle of Agincourt. Even trying to conquer just one planet this is ridiculously small. On from that the bigger issue is that the goal of your campaign is to "flank" Hive Fleet Leviathan; Tyranids don't have supply lines and they don't occupy territory, they just keep moving forward and eating or destroying everything in their path, a flank attack would be no different from a frontal assault. Every Tyranid hive fleet that's been beaten so far wasn't seriously challenged or set back until it was defeated in a decisive naval battle, putting a Space Marine Chapter on their flank isn't likely to change that. Thirdly, a slightly more minor issue, Space Marine Chapters tend to be founded to combat long-term threats, the High Lords can deploy existing forces to counter short-term stuff without committing to putting a Space Marine Chapter somewhere it might be not needed in ten years.

I might suggest replacing the unconquered galactic-rim region and the Tyranid hive fleet with a densely Ork-populated cluster, with your Chapter founded to hold a fief just outside Ork country as a first line of defense/rapid response/incursion force set there to keep the Orks pinned down, weaken them, and gather intelligence in preparation for a full-scale crusade, which neatly sidesteps the "how many troops do you take to conquer a planet?" question.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll rework it today and tomorrow and see what I can do. I'll also clarify the goal of this force in particular. This campaign's goal is to secure the Aldenata sector to set conditions for a larger strategic goal (naval operations against Leviathan). Not trying to get into direct contact with the Tyranids in particular. I like your suggestions though and I'll adapt them. Probably just use a lesser known xenos race instead of orcs. Time to dig up the 3rd edition rule book.

Tyran wrote:I agree with AnomanderRake, don't pick a fight with the largest fleet in the Tempestus Segmentum.

Noted. I'll rework to make it clearer that its not a direct fight with the Nids. Thanks for the feed back.