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Welcome to game 30 of our ongoing campaign.

Continuing the Vale of Shadows engagement, a combined Salamanders and Sons of Gord force are approaching the valley head,
and the likely location of the Chaos base of operations. Their progress has been delayed however by determined
Chaos resistance in the previous battle, giving the renegade forces time to fortify and consolidate.

This game is the third battle of a 4-part operation in the Vale of Shadows.

Previous games in this campaign can be found here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Gordy2000%27s_Battle_Reports
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Duragur the Thrice Blessed dipped his sacrificial dagger in the still-warm entrails of the prisoner and held it aloft.
The run of the blood over the corroded blade revealed to him the skeins of fate and that which would unfold.

“They come” he gurgled to his acolytes. “The servants of the Carrion Throne rush to their doom”

He slid the blade over his wart-ridden tongue and let the blood seep into his mouth.
“They are too late – our great work is nearly complete!”

The Nurgle priest gave a sharp cackle of laughter that quickly descended into a fit of wet hacking.
Still chuckling, he led his followers into the gloomy tunnel entrance as all around the servants of the
Ruinous powers hunkered down into prepared positions and await the arrival of the Imperials.

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Duragur and friends


The Renegade base

The approach from the valley


The Imperial force arrives – Sons of Gord on the left flank


And Salamanders on the right


A spoiling force lurks in the woods in the middle of the valley


The layered defences of the renegade base




Swarms of missiles reach out from heavy weapons positions


Along with massed las and autogun fire


An assault bike is destroyed, but the lead astartes elements quickly eliminate the renegade spoiling force in the centre


The surviving assault bike charges into renegade infantry on the right flank


The Salamanders espy ambushers on the road ahead


Renegade Command coordinates their forces


Barely controlled Ogryn wait to be unleashed


The Salamanders and a Sons Dreadnaught begin to clear the woods


Marine infantry arrives to assist the assault bike




Heavy weapons keep up the fire on the marine vehicles, but to little profit


The bad old days, when marines were 1W, 1A….


Attritional warfare


The right flank comes under fire from concealed lascannon




The Tac squad grinds down the Volscani Grenadiers


Greetings heretic…


The Salamanders push through the choke point


Bikes break through and are immediately engaged by Chaos elites


The Chosen of the Crimson King






Heavy weapons begin to take a toll


Chaos Spawn are unleashed on the left flank


They charge through overwatch fire and into combat


The Sons stand their ground


The Dreadnaught is surprised by ambushing Ogryns


The warmachine is struck down by power drills and huge iron bars


Captain Argo arrives and charges into the fray on the left. The spawn are quickly cut down


Remedial close combat training for this squad for a month!


The Sons re-mount and continue the assault


The Salamander fast assault units make contact with the base defenders


Meanwhile, the Ogryn are cut down by massed bolter fire


In a flash of light and ozone, the terminator elite arrive


The Renegade heavy weapons have little chance


The Sons close the pincer on the left


The Renegade defenders are surrounded


Capt. Punchmaster arrives to deal with the Scarab Occult


Seeing the trap closing, the Ogryn Fanatics escort their charges into an underground bunker and seal the door….



Imperial Victory! (or is it?....)

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These length-wise games are pretty cool. At the start you wonder how you will get all that way in a single game,
but it always seems to work out with a nail-biting finish. Full props to our GM, DC for his scenario planning.

The Chaos forces have now withdrawn into a vast bunker complex. The only way for the Imperials to claim true victory
will be to descend into the darkness and root them out…

Next game – What Lies Beneath
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Thank you for putting these out!

Cool campagin, as always.

Great storytelling and fantastic looking battle, looking forward to the next installment

Looks like great fun, nice photos, thanks for posting. Proper old school, with a GM and everything. Small boards are my least favourite thing about 9th ed so it's great to see someone playing a big one, lengthwise no less. I'll take a look at the previous reports.

And there I was thinking you'd forgotten about us ;-) Brilliant stuff mate, thoroughly enjoyed it, enviable P&M skills as always

Good stuff as always.

Loving the lengthwise board, normally 40k tends to suffer from the legacy problem of being a platoon level skirmish game with too big armies, leading to crowded moshpits in the middle instead of forcing proper maneuver in some form. Having one side come through a withering defence is immediately more evocative and interesting setup, though it too benefits from some thought being put into how the defender needs to do something else than simply sit on their arse and roll dice for the whole game.

Such cool looking armies.

So so good to see a narrative battle report.

Cool armies, cool themes and cool story telling.