Inquisitorial agents gather before a closed bulkhead that leads deeper into the Catacombs.

“One must not abide the heretic. He must be hunted down. He must suffer for his sins. He must beg for redemption and, whether he renounces his heresy or not, he must die.“—Master Inquisitor Garren Usal, Ordo Hereticus, M39

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Prelude

On the feudal world of Regno Borealis, Inquisitorial agent Konrad Gallus has spent the past two years attempting to stop a band of cultists from finding three keys that can open an Eldar psychic prison that holds the Greater Daemon known as Kossogtha.

Although he failed to stop the cultists from acquiring the first key, Gallus did manage to kill the cultist leader Magna Ra.

Now, Gallus has learned that the cult, led by the heretical psyker Thaetos, has discovered the location of the Catacombs of Nagarlan, a long-lost and near-mythical set of ruins where once stood a research facility from the Age of Technology.

Gallus also knows the location of the catacombs, and on 6 751 745.M41, he and a team of acolytes arrive at the site. There, they find that someone already has excavated the site and uncovered a long-buried entrance to the catacombs. It seems the cultists have beaten Gallus to the scene.

There is no time to lose. The cultists must not succeed in their quest for the second psychic key. Drawing his bolt pistol, Gallus leads his team into the darkness of the catacombs.

The Scenario

Not far away, cultists search for the psychic key to release the daemon known as Kossogtha. They soon shall clash with the Inquisition party.

Our tabletop battle was fought atop six Killzone Gallowdark game boards, with a variety of sci-fi walls and scatter terrain to represent the catacombs. The rules used were Games Workshop’s now-out-of-print Shadow War: Armageddon.

The Inquisition team was led by Interrogator Gallus, a number of acolytes from GW’s Kill Team: Inquisitorial Agents boxed set, and a handful of Inquisitorial stormtroopers built using Tempestus Scions.

The cultists were led by the psyker Thaetos from the Necromunda miniature collection and a variety of mutants created using  bitz from a variety of GW and Forge World models.

The scenario was a basic snatch-and-grab mission: Six objectives. Five were worthless, but the sixth held the psychic key that both sides want.

There was a quirk to the rules that ultimately proved key to the battle’s conclusion. Each time an objective was seized, a player rolled a d6. On a 6, they’d found the key. If a 6 wasn’t rolled for the first five keys, then the sixth, by default, was the key.

The First Moves

The two Kill Teams entered the battlefield from opposite sides. The cultists go first and divide their forces in two—each targeting an objective marker that was close at hand.

The Inquisitorial team was more cautious, as the two closest objectives were not as well screened by terrain. Gallus took two Stormtroopers and approached an objective to the right of his side of the board. Three acolytes head to an objective on the left side of the board, but they were delayed by the need to awaken the Machine Spirit of a hatch that blocked their advance.

In the middle, the psyker known only as Mystic, and a Death Cult assassin called Caliope, advanced into a large central chamber where another objective rested in the middle of the battlefield. Alas, the two were delayed as there was insufficient cover, and they had to be careful about their path.

The next turn, the cultists reached the first two objectives. They rolled, and it turned out that the key was elsewhere.

The cultists had better cover, so they advanced and took positions that allowed them to fire on all three Inquisitorial teams.

When cultists and the Inquisition finally clash, the cultists find that the arrangement of passages, debris, and scattered equipment favors them with a superior option of firing positions.

Casualties

To the left, the Inquisitorial acolytes quickly were pinned down by enemy fire. Their objective wasn’t that far away, but whoever attempted to inspect it would risk being hit.

On the right, Gallus and the stormtroopers also were under fire, But there was more cover here, and while the stormtroopers fired to distract the enemy, Gallus moved forward, slipping methodically from point of cover to point of cover. Barring a lucky hit by the cultists, Gallus was confident he would reach his objective before the cultists.

The center was a tactical nightmare. Mystic and Caliope had not realized the advantages the terrain provided the cultists. The heretics had managed to use the cover in the central chamber to flank both sides of the objective in that room. As a result, it was near suicidal for the Inquisitorial agents to approach this central objective.

But Mystic and Caliope also had the objective well covered with weaponry. When one cultist ran to the central objective, Mystic used his psychic powers to cast Psychic Shriek and shatter the cultist’s mind. The heretic was dead before his body hit the floor..

At this point, Caliope took a chance. Racing forward with inhuman speed, she leapt over a pile of rubble to target a cultist who was firing at Gallus. The heretical was decapitated before he realized the assassin was nearby. Alas, she had failed to notice two cultists huddled behind a corner in the shadows. As she turned to kill a second cultist nearby, the two heretics fired at her.

Struck twice in the back, she hit the ground as dead weight.

Click here to read the conclusion of this battle.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.