Friday 5 June 2015

Hell Comes to Frog Town - A 'purist' Rogue Trader battle report.

Hell Comes to Frog Town – A Tales From the Maelstrom battle report.

First off, apologies, this ones  been too long in the making but unfortunately ‘real life’ issues got in the way of gaming but I am sorry that you’re reading this about two months after we played.

The scenario was simple,  Inquisitor Garamond Black had acquired information that the semi-mythical xenos ‘Slann’ had captured a heretical  ‘Sensai Knight’, and more importantly a Sensai Knight  in possession of  scrolls purporting to the origins of the universe…  scrolls that he believed rightly should belong to the Imperium and not some damn wetskins or heretics!

I played the Inquisitor with an entourage of 15 ‘Fire Angels’ Space Marines (split into five man squads) while Andy took a force or around 12 or so Slann including some powerful psykers.
For a laugh we also decided to play the game using nothing but the original Rogue Trader rulebook in all its unwieldy  glory, while we usually prefer a GM for RT games were both ‘narrative motivated’ enough that should an ‘ambiguity’ occur (RT, full of ambiguities, surely some mistake?) we’d both elect for the most entertaining result.

In essence this battle was to be a straight up ‘meeting engagement’ , while Andy and I both feel this is exactly the sort of thing Rogue Trader falls over on we thought that we’d see if we could make a ‘stand up battle’ work with the ruleset as is.

The game began with the marines heavy weapon squad taking up position on a roof top while the two bolter squads marched down either flank.  Having learned from previous mistakes Andy wisely kept his Slann hidden, those exposed were quickly dispatched by las cannon and missile launcher fire so a ‘shooting match’ was a bad idea.



The marines advanced.  On the left flank the squad received some devastating needle gun fire which caused them to break and panic (remember RT marines were only toughness 3 with a  4+ save and none of that ‘know no fear’ mularky) , even had they held they had nothing to shoot at as the Slann remained hidden.

On the right flank the marine commander and his squad navigated the rooftop catwalks and advanced towards the Slann lines only to suffer a similar fate.   The slippery Slann were just giving the Imperium nothing to shoot at.    The inquisitor quickly rallied them and used his psychic powers to lead a charge forwards, heavy casualties were taken but in the end contact was made with the amphibian aliens.

A brutal melee ensued, one that looked like the marines might win with their superior armour and close combat weapons but alas as the Fire Angels ‘purged’ the unclean with bolter and flame the Inquisitor fell to a blow from the Slann warchief.

With their leader routed and lacking the resolve that 2nd edition would give them the marines fell back leaving the secrets of the Slann ‘cities of gold’ firmly in webbed hands.

























15 comments:

  1. Thats a great looking game. You can almost taste the RT vibe, athough the quality of the tabletop and miniatures is more consistent than the standard at the time.

    Using pure RT, with reserve moves and the turgid close combat must have been rough. I cant even remember how the old vehicles rules worked, other than Turning Radius Ratio :D

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    1. Oddly enough Andy and I were saying in last nights game that the standard we paint to would be 'eavy metal' in 1987 whereas these days we're 'gaming standard'. Paintings moved on a long way. I don't think it helps the memory though that the first battle reports really started to be done in WD in the 90s when the 'primary colours' phase took hold. I always feel our pics look more like the staged battle scenes you'd get photo's of in the rulebooks in the 80s.

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    2. With regards to the rules. Close combat actually isnt that bad with small numbers on each side althought its practically pointless using more than one weapon unless you're a ninja as you're at -1 to hit with the first one and -2 with the off hand! Reserve rules were a pain as we kept forgetting that phase. The 2nd edition move to 'walk and fire' or 'run' in one phase was a big improvement IMO.

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    3. The images of your games definitely look like the shots in the Rogue Trader book itself to me, not really 2nd ed visually at all. Those RT images have lots of charm, but there is a naivety to them and certain crude elements - an easily recognisable toothpaste tube lid or plumbing fitting or goofy camo pattern etc - tend to appear. Your games and images share the RT atmosphere but are tighter and more refined I think, like a loving remake of and old movie. That sort of atmosphere is something that I aim for with my hobby stuff too.

      Great work one way or another :)

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    4. Very nice of you to say so mate, that's certainly one of the things we aim for :-)

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  2. Great report - really enjoyable!

    And very good pics: I;ve just realised I gotta try taking pics from greater angle so there's no distracting area around table visible.

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    1. A while ago at Andys house he used to have this really 70s wallpaper in the dining room of a beach sunset panorama (it looked better than it sounds) and that always meant that 50 per cent of pics had this amazing blood red sky and burning sun background :)

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  3. YAAAAY! I love your ongoing Slann story. Keep the battle reports coming as you can. I really enjoy them.

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  4. Love the Fire Angels! You did a great job on them =)

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  5. Thanks Ace, i'd been struggling for a long time deciding which chapter to paint my marines. As the early c100 marines are so totally different in style and I had about 30 of them i decided to do them as 'fire angels' as in white they had a 'classic sci fi' look and to me summed up the 'crusading knight' side of marines. My later marines (the classic mk6 desgin) im still struggling with. Part of me wants to do 'mantis warrriors' so that i've got two paint scheme options to prevent them getting too 'samey' but im torn between that and doing 'Luna Wolves' for heresy but doing 50 or 60 figures in 'clean' grey white is daunting.

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  6. A really wonderful game. Your marines are really beautiful. The white came out amazing.

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    1. Foundry paint system. The 'white' is actually 'boneyard (light)' with a wash of GW 'devlin mud' then carefully repainted up to boneyard light again to leave the brown recesses and some 'shaded' areas. Takes bloody ages but its pretty standard so i just put on an audio book and did them in batches of ten. The red is Foundry 'British Red Coat' with a devlin mud wash and weapons are black highlighted with Foundry 'slate grey (shade)'. I wanted an old school sci fi 'white space armour' but i wanted it to look different from my white Planetary Police Force models (they use a very 'clean' white) so made the best out of the dusty look boneyard and devlin mud give you :)

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  7. Rogue Trader was a fun rule set. I had many great games with it just before 2nd ed was released. Your story behind the mission is fantastic! They make the games more memorable. This is my first time visiting your site and I can tell already i'm going to be reading many more of your posts.

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  8. Great looking and sounding game , thanks for sharing it.. The marines look solid.. and characterful.. and the terrain is just fantastic.. inspiring stuff

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