Beresinia Campaign Game 1 - Sweep and Clear

The feudal Imperial world of Beresinia is engulfed in war. Rebellious nobles have overthrown the rightful Imperial authorities, and now vie with each other for control of the world. Though the beleaguered Imperium of Man has little manpower to spare, some Imperial forces have arrived to attempt to restore order and reimpose Imperial rule on Beresinia. In one warzone, Count Xuvorov, one of the driving forces and leading conspirators in the rebellion, finds himself engaged with loyalist forces while trying to maintain alliances with other rebellious nobles and even forging relationships with several Xenos forces off-world. One of his army's light infantry regiments, colloquially knows as Kutuzov's Rangers, is currently operating deep behind enemy lines to sow confusion and disorder in the loyalist forces.

Kutuzov's Rangers have been operating in the field so long, sabotaging loyalist installations and ambushing loyalist forces, that they have "gone native". They operate far away from the main body of the Count's forces and have little contact with the rest of the army. Now, Colonel Kutuzov's men have uncovered some critical information about approaching Loyalist reinforcements. The dataslate containing the details of the approaching force must be delivered to Army high command so the best use can be made of this crucial intelligence. Kutuzov has assembled a hand-picked kill team to entrust with this vital mission.

The gung-ho Ensign Jimmy is chosen to lead the team, joined by his equally gung-ho order bellower (comms specialist) Rynsk. Polanski the Pious is chosen for his skills as a scout and brings his flamer. Ivanek is a crack shot (sniper specialist) with his meltagun, and puts his duty to his superiors above all, following every order to the letter. They depart on their mission with three other rangers (tempestus scions) and also five peasant conscripts (infantry squad guardsmen) to sacrifice to distract the enemy as needed.

Little do they know, a heavily armed kill team of Adeptus Astartes of the Salamanders chapter is already on Beresenia assisting the loyalists. The Salamanders have been scouting out the enemy factions, and are now on the trail of Ensign Jimmy's men. In order to get the dataslate of valuable intelligence back to army high command, Jimmy's men will have to fight their way through an active warzone while being hunted by the Adeptus Astartes kill team.

Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team - Renegade Astartes vs Salamanders

I was able to get in a game of the new Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team. I used my very old Chaos Marines, which meant I had very little choice in what to take because I only have one squad painted. I played against a co-works Salamanders Space Marines, with a mix of Primaris and "regular" marines. It was the first game for both of us and neither had managed to read through all the rules, but we wanted to give it a try and learn as we went. We played the basic Cover War mission that is included in the core rules, and skipped rolling on the scouting table. We also left out command points and tactics. Even though they are a big part of the game, for this first game we just wanted to try to get the basic rules down and not slow things down learning the different tactics.

For the Covert War mission, we each place an objective. We then roll for a victory condition. In our case, holding an objective in the enemy deployment zone was worth victory points, but holding your own was not. You hold an objective by having more of your models than enemy models within 2" of it at the end of the 5th battle round. In the event of a tie, the person without the strategic advantage would win a minor victory. I had the strategic advantage (as I won the roll off), so I could choose which side to deploy on.