I'm playing through the missions in the Pariah Nexus Crusade book, in order of appearance. The tenth mission is called Tortured worldscape, and it is as dangerous as it sounds!
In this mission, the ground is opening beneath the feet of the armies. There are 3 fissures splitting the battlefield into pieces:
Any unit within the bounds of a fissure when it opens must take a Leadership test, and suffers d3 Mortal Wounds on failure.
Care to guess where the 3 objectives for this mission are located? (They're in the fissures.) Worst of all, you get additional Victory Points for controlling an objective within bounds of a fissure, but your enemy gets additional Victory Points for any of your units destroyed by an opening fissure.
What a fun mission design. It's almost like playing on Genesis in Star Trek III. Who's got time to kill each other with the ground swallowing squads of soldiers whole??
The Blood of the Omnissiah regiment, led by Technoarcheologist Scipio Ω5-Quintus, has intercepted heretical intel betraying the ultimate goal of the Tyranid Cult. The Genestealer Cultists, even as they are literally devoured by creatures they believe to be their gods, have learnt to harness ancient technology to strengthen a terrible creature they have discovered deep beneath the planet surface. The technology is powered by Blackstone, and the Cultists don't care how much Noctilith they burn through in their quest to revivify the dormant evil they have accidentally unearthed during their mining.
What the creature is, exactly, is unknown but for the Adeptus Mechanicus it's enough to know that it is a xenos threat with an unquenchable hunger for precious Blackstone.
It's up to Scipio Ω5-Quintus's brave regiment to reach the epicentre of corruption in time to stop this corrupted use of Noctilith. They are still 6 sectors away, and the first step takes them into a tortured landscape where the very ground itself crackles with competing cosmic energies.
As usual, the Blood of the Omnissiah regiment is lead by Scipio Ω5-Quintus the Technoarcheologist. He's leading a unit of Skitarii Rangers. Accompanying him is the regiment's Tech-Priest Engineseer and his unit of Skitarii Vanguard. These are all pretty fast units these days, thanks to hard-earned upgrades, but to add a little speed to the army I'm bringing back the Sydonian Dragoon.
I'm trying out the Explorator Maniple detachment from the codex. This detachment allows me to designate, at the start of each Round, one objective as my Acquisition Objective. When one of my units attacks while it or its target is in range of my Acquisition Objective, I can re-roll Wound rolls of 1. And once per phase, a Tech-Priest within range of my Acquisition Objective can change a Hit, Wound, or Save to 6.
The Tyranid Cult is going heavy on Tyranids this time around. I considered bringing back the Goliath Rockgrinder to balance out the Sydonian Dragoon, but I think I'll wait to see how the lictors handle it.
Having just purchased the Tyranid codex, I'm trying out the Invasion Fleet detachment. This grants one unit each Round Sustained Hits 1, and Precision on a Critical Hit targeting a character model. It also grants some free re-rolls.
Maybe even more importantly for this mission, though, this detachment extends the Synapse range to 9". Units with Synapse are neurally linked back to the hive mind, which allows them to use 3d6 instead of 2d6 when making a Leadership roll, and of course it's a Leadership roll that determines whether a unit is harmed by a fissure in this mission!
Pariah Nexus uses a subsystem for deciding which player is Attacker and which is Defender on page 105. For this mission, the Adeptus Mechanicus chooses Balanced, and the Tyranids choose Defender. This means the Adeptus Mechanicus is considered the Attacker and has the Advantage.
The mission's Advantage grants the Adeptus Mechanicus Feel No Pain 4+ against a fissure during one round of its choosing. I guess it'll help, but it still involves a dice roll, so I'm not sure how exciting an Advantage that is.
The Tyranid Cult rolls high for initiative.
Dark energies tear the ground open! Fissure 1 is active. Of course, fissure 1 contains 2 objectives, one in each deployment zone. The other 2 objectives are located east and west of fissure 1 (in fissure 2 and 3, as it happens.)
The Adeptus Mechanicus activates the Protector Imperative, worsening enemy AP by 1 and gaining the Heavy keyword.
The Lictor Advances and claims the objective in fissure 3.
Death's Shadow (the Neurolictor) Advances away from its deployment zone objective to the centre of the battlefield to serve as a Synapse node for the Neurogant unit. The Skitarii Rangers fail their Leadership roll and are Battle-shocked in the presence of Death's Shadow. Additionally, they suffer -1 to Hit rolls this round.
The Neurogants move along with it, poised to Charge into the Skitarii Rangers. The Neurogants fail their Charge roll, but Death's Shadow succeeds and manages to kill 1 Skitarii Ranger and to deal 1 Precision Wound to Scipio Ω5-Quintus. Even with a penalty for being Battle-shocked by the Neurolictor, the Skitarii Rangers and the Technoarcheologist deal 4 Wounds in the melee. They actually threatened to deal 6 Wounds, forcing Death's Shadow to eat a Command Point for a desperate re-roll (which is annoying, because the Tyranids were saving up Command Points for a 2 CP Stratagem!)
The humble Ripper Swarm claims the deployment zone objective, and the Termagants move forward and claim the objective in fissure 2. The Termagants fire into the Skitarii Vanguard unit and their fleshboarers are repelled by not 1, not 2, but 3 successful Invulnerable Saves. They still manage to kill one Vanguard, but with 7 Hits and 4 Wounds it could have been a lot worse.
That's 3 out of 4 objectives claimed by Tyranids, and frankly the fourth is under threat.
On the Adeptus Mechanicus turn, the Skitarii Vanguard move to the east objective and takes control of it away from the Termagants. They open fire into the Neurogants, killing 6.
The Sydonian Dragoon moves and Charges the Lictor and seizes control of the west objective, lancing the Tyranid and dealing 2 Wounds.
The Skitarii Rangers are in a bad position. They're standing on [literally] shaky ground, whilst under attack by a Neurolictor. Skitarii Rangers have a special rule that allows them to leave an objective but retain control of it. To me, that means they "tag" the objective with their OC value, so even though the objective looks abandoned, it's still controlled by the Rangers with, in this case, OC 19. Therefore I believe the Skitarii Rangers could make a Desperate Escape but still maintain control of the objective.
The other way to "read" this situation would be that when they walk away from an objective, they "switch" its inherent binary toggle of 0 to 1. When an enemy of any OC value is within range of the objective, control flips to the enemy. And besides that, in this case they're not just stepping away on a break, they're making a Desperate Escape. Can they really maintain control of the objective under those circumstances? Well, nothing else works that way in 40k so I think my original reading is defensible: For the cost of a Desperate Escape, they can fall back but retain objective control.
To get out of the fissure zone, the Skitarii Rangers make a Desperate Escape, and amazingly fail again. They lose 3 Rangers, but get out of the zone of fissure 1, moving westward to the safety of fissure 3 (that doesn't activate until Round 5, and that's ages away.)
Lucky for everyone, I got the Open Fissure rule wrong and failed to take Leadership tests to avoid damage at the start of the Round. I thought that test happened at the end of the Round, and planned everything around that mistake. That's what happens when games have too many rules! Anyway, I played it wrong for Round 1, so that was a free success for both armies. From now on, I'll do the test at the start of each round.
Even though the Blood of the Omnissiah managed to take control of 3 objectives, the score is pretty close so far.
No new fissure opens this Round, but fissure 1 is still open so the Ripper Swarm, the Neurolictor, and the Neurogants must take Leadership tests to avoid d3 Mortal Wounds. I planned for this, so I'm not worried. Thanks to the active Synapse, both the Neurolictor and her little Neurogant babies roll Leadership with 3d6 instead of 2d6, and unsurprisingly succeed. The Ripper Swarm is too far away to benefit from Synapse, but rolls a 9 for a Leadership 8+, taking no Wounds. That's a bonus, because in my mind the Ripper Swarm was a single-use ploy to grab the objective for the first Round only.
The Adeptus Mechanicus rolls high for initiative and enacts the Conqueror Imperative for +1 AP and the Assault keyword. And boy do they make the most of it. The Skitarii Ranger and Scipio Ω5-Quintus slaughter what's left of Death's Shadow. The Skitarii Vanguard kill 4 Termagants, and hold their ground even though it's starting to quake. The Sydonian Dragoon deals 2 Wounds to the Lictor, but takes as much back.
On the Tyranid turn, the Tyranids gain a Command Point (I swear there's a plan for a cool Stratagem here, if we could just get 2 CP.) There's no point in moving around at this point, so the Termagants fire into the Skitarii Vanguard and score 1 kill.
The Lictor and Sydonian Dragoon continue to slap each other, with the same results but for different reasons. The Lictor fails to Hit, while the Sydonian Dragoon hits but the Lictor Saves. No Wounds on either side of the melee.
The state of the battlefield hasn't changed much, but because the Adeptus Mechanicus has strong OC the delta between the scores does start to grow.
Fissure 2 breaks open! 3 Skitarii Vanguard and 3 Termagants fall into gaping cracks in the ground, never to be seen again.
The Tyranids roll high, so they have initiative. The Neurogants Charge into the Skitarii Rangers, and kills 1 soldier and sustain no losses. The Termagants fire into the Skitarii Vanguards and remove 1 soldier.
The Lictor continues its fight against the Sydonian Dragoon, dealing 2 Wounds against it but also sustaining 2 Wounds in return. That's enough to kill it, leaving just a handful of Neurogants and Termagants on the board (oh and, miraculously, the Ripper Swarm.)
It doesn't seem like this battle needs another 2 Rounds. If the Tyranids were trying to keep the Blood of the Omnissiah from crossing the plains leading toward the fields of Blackstone beyond, they have resoundingly failed.
I enjoyed this mission a lot, both because it's excellent mission design and also because it's making me feel so chuffed with my Adeptus Mechanicus army. On the one hand, I obviously over-estimate the Tyranids. (Then again, my expectations have been set by Warhammer media. Tyranids are terrifying in the Warhammer+ shows and in the 10th edition promo ad and in the video games.) On the other hand, I suspect that the Crusade leveling system is actually working. My Adeptus Mechanicus has never felt so powerful (it's amazing what a +1 Strength does for them.) I'm enjoying being able to enjoy my army.
And the mission design is great. When I first read it, I thought it was almost too wild. I couldn't imagine how there'd be time for fighting between jumping out of the way of sinkholes. But in the end, the trick of placing Victory Points in the path of almost guaranteed death is a great way to compel an army to take very fun risks.
Frankly, as a player the risks felt really good, too. I can afford removing 3 models from the battlefield for the right to say I was brave enough to send troops into a volcanic fissure.
One ruleset I chose to ignore during at the start of this Crusade was the Agenda system. I'm already tracking Battle Traits, XP, Strategic Footings, Blackstone, Requisition Points in addition to everything you normally have to track for a battle. Choosing an Agenda seemed like something that was safe to leave off.
However, there are rules for buying Blackstone upgrades, and I just couldn't figure out how I'd ever afford them at the rate of Blackstone collection I was seeing so far. Heck, there's even a rule for trading Blackstone in for more XP, so apparently there's an expectation that some players might end up with too much Blackstone. I don't think I'd care one way or the other, except that the campaign is kind of built around how much Blackstone there is. There's so much Blackstone that it's tearing the planet apart beneath the feet of the armies fighting over it.
Surprise! The agendas in Pariah Nexus grant you Blackstone, so my armies should have been collecting Blackstone for every battle. (Technically, there's a small chance an army finds no Blackstone during a game, but I think even with the worst luck an army would gain at least 1 Blackstone fragment each game.)
Point is, it's time to retcon.
After 10 missions, assume that each army had an agenda. The Critical Resources agenda awards an army anywhere from 1 to 3 Blackstone fragments (and XP, but I feel OK ignoring that as penance for ignoring rules) for controlling a specific objective at the end of the battle. The armies during this Crusade have been very good at securing objectives. If I imagine that the objectives they secured were in fact the Chosen Objectives, then for each mission at least 1 Blackstone fragment has been earned, and sometimes probably 2 or 3 fragments.
Sounds like a 10d3 roll to me:
The Adeptus Mechanicus gains 1 Requisition Point, and each unit gains 1 XP for taking part in the crusade. There's a special 5 XP bonus in this mission for one unit of my choice, which I grant to the Skitarii Rangers for killing the Neurolictor.
I'm giving the Scipio the Marked for Greatness award for leading the Skitarii Rangers to greatness. This earns Scipio the Battle-hardened ranking, so he gets a Battle Trait. He rolls a 3 on the Tech-priest Battle Traits available in the codex and gains Holy Acquisitor. At the end of each battle, he rolls a d6 and gains an archeotech part on a 6. That's sorely needed!
Also because they won, the army gets its normal roll for archeotech. They need a 5+ to find archeotech and they roll a 3. Good to see things returning to normal for them. Scipio rolls for his Holy Acquisitor ability, and actually rolls a 6. I always said that bringing a Technoarcheologist along was sensible.
In total, here's where the army is:
The Tyranids get 1 Requisition Point and 1 XP for partaking in a battle.
Here's the Crusade Forces that have seen action so far, whether they were in this battle or not: foobar
Both Lictors were destroyed. Both succed in their Out of Action rolls, so there are no penalties aside from a general sense of inadequacy.
I may add either further Lictors to my army, or play some or all Lictors as Tyranid Warriors (which is actually what the models are) and a Winged Tyranid Prime (also the actual identity of the model.) And it's also clear to me now that I don't own a Tyranid force that can stand up to the Blood of the Omnissiah. I'll bring back the Genestealer Cultists for the next mission, Interdimensional clash.