Rules and Battles
In this installment, we’re going to give you a quick overview of the rules of our Urban Conquest game and go through how we set up our city and decided on our first games.
First, we generated the city of Divinius using the map sheet that comes in the box set. Looking at our excellently low-quality picture, you can see that we not only generated a map but also gave ourselves four spaces each. The grid was 5 x 5, and we chanced upon two ‘special’ cards in our exploration of the city. At the bottom, in the centre, is the ‘Orbital Shuttleport,’ and up towards the top left of the grid is the ‘Aegis City Shield Generator.’ More on these two later in the campaign! The points on the cards represent Resource (above) and Strategy (below). Each can help you in the strategy phase following each battle round, but we’ll get to that later.
As you can see, our forces were spread apart about the city, their positions being based on the ‘Scattered Outposts’ setup from the main rulebook. The marines are red, the Guard are in blue, and the green stickers we used to represent identify the GSC, rather annoyingly, don’t show up on camera, so we added some doubly-fitting blips. The GSC had invaded the lower regions, whilst the humans and their technologically-advanced brethren scrapped over the city’s upper regions.
To get bonus campaign points, each army can attempt to ‘Regroup and Consolidate.’ See the strategic Goal card below.
Each time you play an Urban Conquest game, you need to select a keyword for the force that you’ve chosen from a list of five (Assault, Hold, Reconnoitre, Advance and Reinforce). You reveal the keyword at the same time as your opponent and find out what battleground/mission you’ll be playing using a grid detailed in the rulebook. We decided that we’d write up an army list with a word in mind and then reveal our strategies at the start of play.
We’ll be giving a round-up of each battle and a narrative overview of the last battle which turned out to be especially epic. For each battle, we kept a record of whether the warlord was killed (1 point) and who won/lost/drew (3/1/1), allocating points where appropriate.
Battle Round One
Space Marines (Jake) ADVANCE vs Imperial Guard (Jim) RECONNOITRE
URBAN ASSAULT MISSION.
A thumping win for the Space Marines by virtue of their phenomenal saves whilst in cover. Jim’s Guardsmen were halted by the yellow tide of the Imperial Fists and their superior training; however, both warlords died in the process. A squad of plasma-wielding veterans took out the Marine Librarian whilst the Guard commander met his match with a certain Space Marine hero.
Space Marines – 4
Imperial Guard – 2
Imperial Guard (Jim) ADVANCE vs GSC Cult of the River Wyrm (Chris) ADVANCE
FIRESWEEP MISSION
A closer game, but ultimately the Cult won out through a combination of luck and some of their fancy new abilities. The cult had brought a trio of vehicles constituted by two rock grinders and a Leman Russ they’d ‘acquired.’ The Rockgrinder’s clearance incinerators were lethal in amongst the guardsmen and the cult’s Jackal Alphus teamed up well with the Russ to make a more lethal assault vehicle. The Guard had come with a beefed-up tank commander of their own with enough flamers to make the cult try and avoid it altogether. The Cult’s Magus warlord survived by dint of a nearby friendly biker diving in front of a Rough Rider’s battle lance at the last moment, allowing him to save his last two wounds. Meanwhile, the Jackal Alphus managed a worldy one-shot on Darrick Leto, incapacitating the great man.
Genestealer Cult – 4
Imperial Guard – 1
Space Marines (Jake) ASSAULT vs GSC Cult of the River Wyrm (Chris) ASSAULT
URBAN ASSAULT MISSION
For this battle report, we’re defaulting to the luminescent intelligence of the GSC’s gestalt hive mind.
Magus Orinocus III had masterminded a grand start to the assault on the metal invaders. The Brood Brothers had, along with their ‘acquired’ Russ, torn a phenomenal hole through the giant metal walking beast they had brought with them. The rock grinder had followed the Alphus’ sniper round with a devastating charge into the librarian, rigging its explosives to clatter through the armoured host. They had lost a squad of surprised acolytes in the process, but it had been a devastating strike. Now the flow of battle had turned, and the invaders had ruinous accuracy. Their rounds decimated the squads whilst Orinocus willed them forward. All are grass in the great plan. The cult’s bikers had also managed to deliver a devastating strike to the Marines’ artillery.
But then, as the battle seemed to be decided, disaster struck, and the Genestealer force was split. The Emperor Wyrm himself had been left exposed, and the blistering weight of fire was too much for him to bear. Even now, in his pool at the base of the Divinius hive, it is not certain whether he will rise again. Vengeance was wreaked, in part, by the Alphus himself, gunning down the Librarian. But Kelermorph Rubicus Holliday’s murderous spree was far from over, and he obliterated a biker squad with revolvers blazing. A narrow loss was acceptable against such storied foes, but a different approach would be required in future engagements.
Space Marines – 4
Genestealer Cult – 2
We’ll be back next week to show you how the strategy phase of the game works, where we tot up all the points we have so far and vie for our positions on the map.
