Shadow War: Horus Heresy campaign weekend

Hey all!

As many of you following the blog may be aware, a few of us Bunnies were up at Warhammer World this weekend for the Shadow War campaign weekend.

We all had a fantastic time and I personally can not recommend these events enough. The events team are awesome and there is a fantastic community of players (some regulars who attend the other Horus Heresy events at Warhammer World and some new faces I haven't seen before) who have a great attitude towards the hobby in all of its aspects and are there to have a good time with everybody else.

I'll focus on my experience of the weekend in a bit but first some news: The Horus Heresy Weekender 2017 has been announced and it will be on 4/5th February and tickets will go on sale on Monday 7th November on the Forge World website - tickets sell fast so don't miss out and hopefully we will see you there!

So, my weekend at the campaign weekend. This was the first campaign weekend I've ever been to - I've been to a couple Throne of Skulls tournaments and the Horus Heresy doubles tournament earlier this year - so I was expecting the format to be a little bit different and it was but certainly not in a bad way!

Using the Shadow War campaign rules from Book 6, the missions were different from the missions presented in the 40k rulebook - no tactical objectives but rather a lot more scenario based (e.g. the defender has to escape from the attacking force before they are trapped and eliminated) with different deployment maps to suit them. I'd certainly give the campaign in the book a go if you haven't already, the scenarios are really fun to play.

The results of the first 4 games determined what bonuses your army had in the final game such as granting a unit "Ignores Cover" or allowing you to fire one "One Use" weapon twice.

I faced a wide range of opponents over the weekend:

• Reaver Titan + Solar Auxilia (Imperial victory)
  Quite an exciting game, I suspected it would come down to whomever got first turn and while I got first turn and won, it was by the narrowest of margins. This was very fun as I finally got to try out my Legion Falchion against a titan and it did not fail to impress! The titan was eliminated by turn 3 but the Solar Auxilia tore through my terminators and if I lost a couple more terminators I would not have been able to contest the central objective.
• Word Bearers (Imperial victory)
  This was a very bloody game and I was almost tabled! Ending the game with a single land raider limping with 1 hull point remaining was very tight and by all rights should have been destroyed by a melta-bomb but the dice gods were smiling on me for a change! Also, I completely forgot to take pictures which was a shame as it was a lovely army!

• Death Guard (Imperial defeat)
  This game was brutal for me. It was a rather conclusive loss, my opponent played his army really well and was an absolute gent all the way through so I didn't mind it at all. It was a tactical blunder by me as I left my Vindicator Squadron isolated and unsupported when I deployed and then lost the initiative so I lost them first turn. To add insult to injury, m reserves did not start arriving until turn 3 and arrived piece meal so as soon as they arrived, they were dealt with. As I said before, I did enjoy it but it was still painful.

• Warlord Titan + a small militia contingent (Imperial defeat)
  Due to an admin error, I got drawn against the same Word Bearers army so I challenged the Warlord titan player! I did surprisingly well given the circumstances - I had the initiative stolen from me and the Warlord destroyed my Falchion before I could use it which was the right choice as if I managed to get a penetrating hit on his Warlord that would have knocked out most of his firepower immediately. The reason why I say it went surprisingly well is the fact that I managed to reliably knock out his void shields each turn apart from the last one and got him down to 19 hull points without any D weapons - I'm chuffed with that! Tabled but the final kill was by a squad of cultists snap-firing at my last terminator who was trying to take them down with him ;)

• Iron Warriors (Imperial victory)
  A straight up grudge match - I challenged the player before the campaign weekend even started, we've played each other a few times now and it is always a bloody game so we were both up for it again! I won this time - he normally beats me - but I did feel a bit bad because my Falchion went on an absolute rampage blowing up a Spartan, 2 Dominus Artillary Tanks and 2 Medusas all the while harassing the remaining Land Raiders - while my terminators foot-slogged after their transports were blown up and tore apart the rest of the enemy - a single Iron Warrior tactical marine lived to tell the tale.

We fought hard but unfortunately, despite the forces of the Imperiums best efforts, the Traitor faction won the day 22-20 (so it was very close!).

Yet again, I had a great time! I would like to thank everyone who I played over the weekend for such a fantastic experience and I would also like to thank the events team over at Warhammer World for putting on such an excellent event, putting on the quiz night on the Saturday evening as that was a also a great laugh and just made the weekend that much more awesome by being some of the coolest people I know!

Did any of you guys go to the event too? How did you find it?

Until next time guys!

Hector Cephas