Dalin Worlds Liberation pt.1

    My gaming time has gone from every Wednesday like clockwork to random games caught whenever I can get out of work at a sensible time but that doesn't mean I can't get games in. My normal game for the last year or so has been Bolt Action with a few other rulesets thrown in for a bit of variety. In the weird gap between pre-ordering the second edition and actually getting it, however, playing more of the first edition has just felt wrong? So my current regular opponent (Dan) and me, got chatting about what else we wanted to do and somehow stumbled upon doing a 40k campaign.

      One of my life goals (I promise the rest of my list is much more impressive and profound than this one) is to collect a whole space marine company, every single man of the 107 men. It's something I have wanted to do ever since I first got into the hobby and I finally decided to start this year, before I got distracted and the project was sidelined and it took a certain conversation about a campaign gave it a kick start again.

 We decided to play a couple of really small games to start with just to get our head around the rules, both of us being at least 2 editions behind the times. Dan used his Blood Angels as they were his only 40k army that was somewhere obvious enough to grab in short notice, while I played my home brew chapter - the Aurora Knights.*

*More about these another day

The Campaign Begins

     The Dalin worlds are made up of Dalin Prime and it's moon, Dalin Secundas, both are peaceful civilised worlds that have never given the Imperium any problems, but in recent years the annual tithe hasn't been paid and the Inquisition isn't taking this well. *Enter stage left - The Aurora Knights*

One of the things we decided to do with this campaign was to make it a mix of Battlefleet Gothic and 'normal' 40k, both would affect the other. 

The first game saw my Battlebarge being ambushed and having to flee until my reserves came on. I got my Battlebarge off the board but at a seriously high cost. First game in and my chapter had lost 2 Strike Cruisers, one had gone supernova and the other was a hulk drifting in the void, while my Battlebarge barely limped away.

We decided that the floating hulk would be a really valuable prize to any fleet ,so we played a game to simulate Dalin's troops boarding it to secure it, so it could be towed back to their shipyards. I went into this game really confident, Space Marines taking on small groups of Imperial Guard? Easy. 

At this point, I should mention that I've never seen Storm Troopers on the table before and it really showed. Storm Troopers are hard! I mean really hard! Their guns ignore power armour and their armour save works against bolters. This match up went really badly for me. It was all over by turn 4. Dan's troops had secured themselves a Strike Cruiser.

The objective was a computer terminal (the cream pillars in the photo below) but as he wiped my last squad off the board by the end of his 4th turn this was a moot point.

     The initial engagements of the campaign have not treated my chapter well, 2 of my chapter's 5 capital ships have been lost and 2 whole battle companies lost. A massive loss for any chapter, but really good fluff for a gamer to play with.

Thanks for reading