Adeptus Titanicus – Battle for Uulda IV – Part 2

I gave you a brief overview on the first evening of the Battle for Uulda Part IV campaign weekend, so let us continue to the "main event" - the gaming on day two.

This year we put a bit more effort into the narrative, adding fan fiction to the conflict. We added the Uulda subsector in the Segmentum Pacificus, and Patrick / AuxiliaryMirelurk prepared an introduction on the lore as well.

What has happened so far

The world of Uulda IV lies in the Galactic West in Segmentum Pacificus, near Thuringar, along one of the stable warp routes connecting the western fringes to the Segmentum Solar. This route is known as the Uulda Gap and enables fast and safe travel via Stygies to Terra itself.

The ruling House Crasst of Uulda had long since sworn allegiance to the warmaster in secret and when the traitor's forces appeared above the planet, Uulda surrendered without a shot being fired. Shortly before the imminent invasion of Beta Garmon, hundreds of titans and super-heavy regiments of the traitors gathered on Uulda IV and prepared to strike the defenders of the Segmentum Solar in the back once the attack on Beta-Garmon had begun.

A handful of loyal Titan maniples were hastily assembled by Rogal Dorn himself and sent to Uulda as a rapid response force. Their mission was to cause as much damage as possible to the assembling hosts and delay them as long as possible. During the course of the attack, the loyalist forces came across disturbing evidence that the troop build-up on Uulda was not an ordinary deployment for the invasion of Segmentum Solar.

They found entire cities depopulated and massive excavations around Hive Crasst that made no military sense. Captured intelligence finally explained the traitors' activities: on Uulda IV existed a forgotten warp portal, which was to be activated by sacrificing the population en masse in order to open a way for the Titan legions into the Webway and to decide the battle in the Webway in favour of Horus and conquer Terra from within.

A heroic suicide attack by the loyal legions was able to prevent the activation of the warp portal at the last moment. The massive damage to the warp portal turned the entire northern hemisphere into a nuclear and warp-contaminated wasteland and undid Horus' plans.

But even after the initial plan of the traitors had failed, the Uulda sub-sector lost none of its overall strategic importance and traitors and loyalists sent more and more reinforcements to finally decide the battle in their favour. In the course of this, the battle for the factory world of Ferghalst broke out, where the Dark Mechanicus were producing Warmaster Titans for Horus’ armies. Here, too, the loyalists managed to inflict a painful blow on the traitors by capturing several of the super-heavy titans in a commando raid.

Subsequently, there were several massive but ultimately inconclusive battles for the ruins of the now almost completely devastated sub-sector. More and more Space Marine companies and divisions of the Solar Auxilia intervened in the fighting, but without either side gaining a decisive advantage.

Meanwhile, Horus‘ patience is exhausted; the troops in the sub-sector are urgently needed in the coming battle for Terra and further delay is unacceptable. The commanders of the traitor legions have received a single order: ’Breakthrough. Failure is not an option.'

Even on quiet and stable warp routes in the best of times, no navigator would attempt a long warp jump without triangulating between the astronomicum and local beacons. But these are anything but quiet times... To move their forces out of the Uulda sub-sector, the traitors need to be able to use at least two local warp beacons. After the fall of Crasst Hive, the only remaining beacons are those on Uulda Minoris and the orbital rings of the dwarf planet Mylon, also known as the Uulda Orbitals.

Both positions are in the hands of loyalist forces, who have disabled the beacons to prevent any passage through the Uulda Gap. The traitor high command is now marshalling all troops to capture these facilities and finally break out to Stygies.

As the battle breaks out with renewed violence on Uulda Minoris and on the orbital platforms above Mylon, a message reaches the loyal defenders. Surveillance stations near the devastated Uulda IV also observe massive troop movements there and several Titan landers in orbit over the southern hemisphere. Whatever the traitors' plan is, their return to the cursed planet can only mean disaster...

Within the Uulda subsector multiple titan legions would face eachother, Horus ordered Legio Suturvora (Dennes / The Prophet of Fire), Legio Charybdis (Patrick / AuxiliaryMirelurk) and Legio Audax (Marius / Herr.Poom) to break through the defenses of the loyalist forces, assembled by the Praetorian himself, Legio Astorum (Felix / Hive_Citizen), Legio Atarus (Chris / LordLeonatos) and Legio Astraman (myself / Chaosbunker) followed his call.

To add a bit more flavour to our games, which would be between 1.500 and 1.750 points, we used the Matched Game Play scenarios and objectives, but added some of the planetary effects from the The Battle for Beta Garmon supplement (now included in the Campaign Compendium), depending on which planet you fought.

The first battle was 1.500 points, and we fought Strengthened Flanks on Uulda Prime, which would use the rules from Beta-Garmon III, but not all of them just one, and split them on a D6 with 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6. We rolled Poisonous Fog which would happen to cause some effect during that game, but in a fitting way. Dennes / The Prophet of Fire would command his Legio Suturvora against my Legio Astraman, and due to the bigger point limit, I would have the chance to bring the Cerastus Lancer of House Moritain to the battle for the first time.

As for the objectives, Legio Suturvora would have to fulfill Retrieval, and my Legio Astraman got the objective to Hold the Line, which shouldn't be the worst task for my Fortis Maniple.

The Lancers were incredibly effective, the squad of three approached the Warhounds quickly and managed to destroy one warhound, draw a lot of attention to them. Especially with the poisonous fog removing some of the long attacks from the game (not the biggest problem for me, as most of my titans were armed with Gatlings, that would not have the range either way).

They even managed to put pressure on the second one, leaving it badly wounded for the other titans needing to just cause a single wound with strength 8 - and well the triple 1s on the picture show you that that didn't work out in the first. A single roll of a two would have been all that was needed.

Legio Astraman was able to deny Suturvora their objective, while suffering the loss of a Reaver and two Knights, adding an important victory to the loyalist, keeping the traitor forces from their break through.

A second battle on Uulda Prime, but on a different area of the planet, was fought between Legio Astorum (Felix / Hive_Citizen) and Legio Charybdis (Patrick / AuxiliaryMirelurk), with a close victory for the loyalists as well. Unfortunately I don't have any further pictures of that game, as it was over before ours.

The middle table, Uulda Minoris, had a very long battle between Legio Audax (Marius / Herr.Poom) and Legio Atarus (Chris / LordLeonatos), that went on for the duration of almost two of the other games. A lot of missed attacks or not wounding your enemy prolonged the match.

The Warhounds of the Ember Wolves rely a lot on the Ursus Claw, that not only has a short range but also a low strength of just 3, which gets a Legio specific bonus to 4 when used with Legio Audax. The idea of this weapon used on Warhounds is to swarm the enemy, shot the claw and (hoping to) bring the enemy titan to fall, causing heavy damage once you do so.

In the end it was a victory for Legio Audax, summing up to a close 2:1 for the loyalists.

My second game of that day, was another fight of my Legio Astraman against Patrick / AuxiliaryMirelurk's Legio Charybdis. We had Fortified Positions on Mylon, also known as the Uulda Orbitals. The low gravity was considered using the according rules from the fights on Theta-Garmon V. Which was more an issue for the agile Corsair maniple, than for my troops. And he had to Salt the Earth, while I had Retrieval this time, and both of us had A Matter of Honour as secondary objective, funny coincedence as it was a re-match for friday night.

The Cerastus Lancers once more were quite effective and due to the Ion shields blocked a lot of damage. And while I was able to take out two of three reavers (just not with the titans that would give me the A Matter of Honour bonus VPs), and once more focused on the legs and silenced one, causing to block the way towards my mission objective, a single warhound was able to slip my flank and fulfill the Salt the Earth objective.

While I tried to push the silenced Reaver out of the way with my Warlord titan, he took damage to his head, and the traitor Reaver tumbled not from him away, but in a rather dramatic way into the engaged loyalist Reaver and traitor Warhound, causing minor damage, but not enough to keep him from reaching the objective and scoring for the traitors, moving the current results to a 2:2 draw.

Now the final decision over the fourth Battle for Uulda was between Dennes / The Prophet of Fire's Legio Suturvora and Felix / Hive_Citizen's Legio Astorum, fought again on Uulda Prime.

In this last battle, the loyalist were able to defeat the traitors, creating a close tactical win and hindering the traitor forces to reach Stygies.

The main force of the traitors began the attack with a massive deployment of titans on Uulda Minoris. The wide plains of the Agriworld offered enough space for the huge war machines and fierce battles quickly broke out in all regions of the planet. Despite the incredible force of the attack, the defenders managed to stabilise the front through repeated counterattacks, and the conflict turned into a brutal war of attrition that neither side could win.

On and above Mylon, the low gravity and the resulting smaller number of deployable titans made the fighting much more mobile. The fighting here was mainly between Legio Charbydis and Legio Astraman. The traitors suffered massive losses, but were ultimately able to outmanoeuvre Legio Astraman and force it to retreat, thus capturing the orbital platforms.

On the contaminated and cursed surface of Uulda IV, some of the fiercest fighting of the entire offensive took place. Due to poor visibility and corrosive winds, even minor damage could have fatal consequences for the titans, resulting in horrendous losses of god machines and crews. The warlords of the Legio Astorum in particular excelled here, persistently defying the adverse conditions and inflicting defeat after defeat on the traitors. Whatever their plans may have been, they were decisively thwarted by this.

Now the further fate of the sub-sector depends on the outcome of the battle for Uulda Minoris...

Once again, a very entertaining event. Unfortunately quite difficult to arrange as we have to align the schedule of multiple wargaming dads and that is a challenge of its own. While most of the guys will have a Horus Heresy event around spring, some are planning something very niché - a Kill Team campaign set in the Badab War.