Hello,
I was wondering if anyone knew where such a scan of the relevant Inquisitor issue could be found (I believe issue 2?)? There's one hit from Google leading to a scan on Scribd but it's pretty low resolution. I've tried looking on Internet Archive and other places but have had no luck.
Any leads would be appreciated! Thanks!
Led by Epistolary Taddius, a small deployment of Fire Hawks landed on Briond III to eliminate the remaining marines of the [REDACTED] chapter, who had rejected the Emperor's light and fallen renegade.
Upon touching down on the surface, the librarian believed he was tracking the psychic presence of the renegade leader. And while that may have been true for a few days, his concern grew when they found the partially devoured remains of the fallen marines, but still felt a strong manipulator of the warp nearby.
The sensing was mutual - as the entity seemed to be now approaching their position. Taddius and his brethren repositioned to some abandoned fortifications bearing the Imperial Aquila… what forgotten conflict occurred on this forsaken moon?
The beasts emerged from the brush, their bright and flashy chitin blending in seamlessly with the surroundings. “What creature is so craven to its core that it evolves the ability to hide itself so well?” the Epistolary sneered. Brother Galagus, the Techmarine, retorted with humbling wisdom, “Commander, those cowardly beasts made easy work of those that slew many of our best… our numbers are few; we should strike fiercely, but cautiously.”
Both sides assumed formation, and the battle commenced…
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From atop a bunker, the devastator squad drew a bead on a squad of gaunts, and a carnifex. Two shots at max power - suffer not the xenos to live! The first vapourized a handful of gaunts, the second dissipated across an electric field surrounding the carnifex. Showing them what real plasma looks like, the carnifex squeezed its adrenal sacks, sprinted up, and liquefied the entire devastator squad with a single shot of its bioplasmic cannon.
The assault squad sought to overtake the bunker occupied by gaunt snipers. They feel short with their charge, but only slightly so, and thus were able to take out many gaunts with their hand flamers. They thought too lowly of their foe, however, and were soon overrun by genestealers! The ‘stealers flayed the marines with frightening speed, save for one brother, who was outside of their charge range (...we forgot about follow-up moves…). He managed to flee over the hill. Though the genestealers made great effort to catch him, it was one of the two remaining sniper gaunts who got their revenge and gunned him down from afar.
The D30-Durant pattern tank charged up the centre, hoping to open fire on the hive tyrant, alas, its autocannon jammed right away, and its flamers couldn’t reach any other target. With no clear threat to its armour, it sat casually in the area hoping to gun down weaker foes. It took 2 turns of nibbling on its tracks for the tyrant to land a penetrating blow - destroying the tracks and causing the tank to veer out of control straight ahead into the bunker.
Meanwhile on the other half of the board, the librarian, techmarine, and dreadnought were locked in a clash of titans.
The tyranid lictor ran up from the middle, and used its flesh hooks to pull the techmarine into cqc. Brother Galagus gave the fight his all, but was ultimately split in twain by the lictor.
The dreadnought, Brother Templatus, got its heavy flamer blown off by the zoanthrope using its brain blast, cast with ultimate force. However, the librarian somehow convinced a demonic force to snatch the soul of the zoanthrope… if it hadn't used so much Warp energy to power the spell, it may have survived! With the zoanthrope down, Templatus moved into cqc with the lictor, hoping to avenge Brother Galagus.
The carnifex, after subduing the devastators, turned its focus to the dreadnought, aiding its broodmate who was unable to harm the armoured walker. The librarian, fearing his terminator armour may not reliably protect him against the carnifex’s scythes, teleported to the unit of gaunts who were mostly blown apart by plasma a few turns earlier. While fighting the gaunts, he had hoped to smite the Carnifex, but it was seemingly protected by the psychic field of the hive tyrant.
The tank was seemingly not destined for greatness, but that was about to change. Its heavy flamer sponson was now in range of the last two bunker gaunts - the prometheum spew converted their fleshy forms into a pile of ash. Its autocannon - whose jam was cleared last turn - spun around and lined up a clear shot on the hive tyrant. Rolled a direct hit, 2 sustained fire shots, 2 successful wounds. Its chitin proved insufficient at stopping the shots, it was all up to its voltage field… which also failed. The first shot caused 1 wound - a hot round lodging right into the beast’s shoulder. The second shot caused 6 wounds - directly into its cranium - leaving naught but a gory mess and twitching body.
Only left equipped with a multimelta, Brother Templatus turned to flee the 2v1 he was engaged in. Turning his back was a risky move, but his armour held true. A failed shot at the carnifex - could anything take this monster down? Yes, but not using a weapon forged by any manufactorum…
With the psychic protection field down, Epistolary Taddius summoned the Emperor’s light from across the galaxy, smiting the carnifex with a column of golden energy.
The lictor, seeking a cowardly target, charged the librarian who was beating up gaunts for their lunch money. Earlier in the fight, Brother Templatus landed 2 wounds on the lictor with his storm bolter, right before it and the heavy flamer were blown off by the zoanthrope. The lictor was deadly, but now frail with only 1 wound remaining. In the final turn of the game, victory came down to this duel - the librarian needed to only land 1 solid hit in combat.
And he did, felling the sneaky beast!
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As this was our first game of 2e, we decided to keep it simple and make the objective simply to kill whole enemy units. The score ended up being around 5-3 for the space marines. I feel the genestealers would have been all-star character killers, and changed the course of the match greatly, but in order to get into the hero brawl, they would have had to run by both the tank and the dreadnought, so they hid and avoided fire for the rest of the match.
I was lucky and drew the demon attack psychic card twice - though my opponent suspected I had something like it the 2nd time around and played cautiously.
We were both very impressed with how 2e plays and had a lot of fun with all the crazy stuff happening. I like how every unit feels quite lethal compared to modern 40k - relying on stacking buffs and stratagems to get stuff done gets old quickly, imo. The carnifex story is a great example - sure it 1-shot my devastators, earning its points back immediately. But then it too got 1-shot by my librarian once the hive tyrant’s psychic field dropped.
The system feels like there is a good mix of proactive strategy, reactive strategy, and crazy stuff all healthily co-existing. Obviously, it’s not a perfect system (and some egregious imbalances in some armies), but it’s quite fun overall. And while cqc does take a little longer to resolve, it feels a lot more engaging and fun for both players.