In early 742.M41, scores of warships, troop transports, supply vessels, and an Adeptus Mechanicus forge ship left the orbit of Belliose III for what eventually became known as the Damocles Gulf Crusade.

TheGM: The Damocles Gulf Crusade has ended, and I need to contemplate the Corvus Cluster’s role in the adventure.

When I launched this narrative campaign nearly 14 years ago, I set the clock at 001 735.M41. I knew vaguely that, if we kept up this campaign long enough, we would eventually find our time line catching up to the Damocles Gulf Crusade.

I wasn’t sure we’d last that long, but we did. In the blink of any eye, a decade had passed, and we ran a blog where Cardinal Esau Gurney of Brimlock called for a Crusade to eliminate the Tau.

Two months later, my 5th Company of the Knights of Altair Space Marine Chapter landed on the world of Namatos. This invasion was part of a three-world campaign to eliminate all Tau influence on Imperial worlds and hold disloyal planetary governments accountable for their treasonous relationship with xenos.

In 742.M41. an armored spearhead of the Knights of Altai prepared to launch its attack against Tau interlopers on the Namatos Colony.

The Imperial punitive campaigns on the colonies of Gamus and Kleist are established lore. But we decided to stay on the fringes of the “historical” campaign. We decided to fight a separate mini-campaign on what we called the Namatos Colony, where we intended to defeat the Tau and then join the main Crusade Fleet for the jump across the Damocles Gulf and the invasion of the Tau Empire.

Alas, it didn’t work out that way. In our tabletop battles, the 5th Company was defeated time and time again on Namatos. It was extremely embarrassing, and these defeats left us in a dilemma. If the 5th Company couldn’t extract itself from our own mini-campaign, how was it going to rejoin the Crusade Fleet?

Our answer was to follow the original intent of our campaign. The narrative would be decided (as much as possible) by the results of tabletop battles. So, if the 5th Company couldn’t defeat the Tau on Namatos, the Space Marines would be left behind. The Crusade Fleet wasn’t going to wait for them.

That was a disappointment.

We also got a bit distracted with other war zones in our campaign. While we fought the occasional battle on Namatos, we needed to “move the narrative” on our other mini-campaigns, such as battles against Chaos on Dozaria, mutant rebels on Morkai,and the Necrons on Mykonos.

So, we didn’t write fight tabletop battles reflecting the main Crusade’s progress—instead I wrote “historical updates” that kept the Crusade in the public eye. The result was that we didn’t explore some parts of the Crusade’s official lore with the rigor I would have liked.

Chronologically, each year in “real life” corresponds to a year in the Corvus Cluster. Time flew by, and we suddenly reached mid-2025 (745.M41), and the Crusade had crossed the Damocles Gulf, and it was time for the climactic finale of the entire campaign.

We also had Tallarn troops fighting on the sept world of Dal’yth. It proved a costly campaign. By its end, 117th Tallarn Regiment was reduced to a few hundred men.

We didn’t have the time to hurriedly fight the small ground battles—or the huge naval battle—that preceded the invasion of Dal’yth Prime, the first (and only) major Tau sept world the Crusade attacked. That hurt. It was a lost opportunity.

But we tried to make up for it with a new mini-campaign about the invasion of Dal’yth Prime. We co-opted the 310th Cadian Regiment as our “narrative anchor.” We put the 310th on the flank and, while we used the official lore as the background of our mini-campaign, the Cadians had their own small role to play—and that was our main focus.

Sadly, the 310th fared even worse than the Knights of Altair’s experience on Namatos. Although the Cadians won their first fight against the Tau, it lost the last three—and after an attempted “wave attack” against the Tau, the Cadians were a spent force.

The subsequent retreat from Dal’yth Prime and the redeployment of Imperial troops to Ultramar, proved almost a relief. There was no glory to be had by the Imperials.

All in all, we did a fair job in intertwining the official lore and time line with our campaign. But it was not a fair fight. The Tau overwhelmingly won the overall campaign (at least in regards to our tabletop battles).

In total, we wrote 23 articles:

• Seven articles advancing the lore of the story (tying official lore with advancing our mini-campaign)

• Four articles reporting on naval battles based on official lore

• Seven articles that were battle reports on our mini-campaign on Namatos

• Five articles that were battle reports on our mini-campaign on Dal’yth Prime

The Tau’s main battle tank, known as a “Hammerhead,” proved a deadly part of the Tau arsenal, proving capable of threatening even a mighty Titan.

On average, we only managed three battles a year associated with the Crusade—not a massive number. I’d say we get a B- for incorporating a major lore event into our overall narrative campaign. I’d have liked to have fought out some of the Crusade battles listed only for “historical” purposes, but this is a hobby. We play games when we can play games.

I know this is a long article. It really is written for posterity. The underlying theme of this website is to have a record of our “fun,” and sometimes, I feel a need to document what happened from my perspective. In a few years, I’ll want to revisit this article to recall how things went.

Now we move on. The Tyranids are on their way. Let’s see if we can do a better job of incorporating them into our table adventures. I’m already doing my part: I’m busy painting up my first Tyranid army—my 10th army since we began this campaign.

(By the way, the Tyranids already have made one minor appearance.)

Cheers!

—

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