Deathworld missions

The deathworld missions published in the latest white dwarf are not to be entered into lightly by DE. I had the fortune / mis-fortune to play the Search and Rescue mission today.

The basic premise of deathworld games is that at the start of each player's turn you roll on a Hazard Table which says whether the effect for that turn will be Environmental, Siesmic, Indigenous, or Hellscape. You then role on the corrisponding table for an effect. In total there are 24 effects that can happen.

Looking through the Hazard Tables it is easy to realise that most effects are bad for DE and a few are realy bad! But in general I went into the game thinking that there was a fair chance my SM opponent would be hampered as much as I would be, as long as I didn't get the Rain of Vitrol!

So of course during the game Rain of Vitrol was rolled up 4 times!

So what does this bad boy do?

Well each unit not inside a building or transport vehicle takes 2D6 S1 hits at AP5! and... it effects units in open topped vehicles! So what it does is kill DE real well. I ended up loosing 17 models including a haemy to this. I also lost another 5 models to other effects, all the while suffering under the withering fire of massed lascannons and autocannons from the SM who were giggling whilst my army was being melted by the planet.

On the plus side my scourges had the good sense not to arrive via deep strike until the last turn and then land perfectly on the objective in difficult terrian for the draw (jump packs, bikes, and cavalry count as scoring). All in all it was a crazy fun game and we decided that whenever we play multiplayer games we are going to use these rules for even more mahem.

I remember fighting my buddy's Catachans back in 3rd Ed when they had their own Codex and using the Deathworld rules presented in there, it always made for an "interesting" if hectic game. I really want to get a couple of games in with these new rules. Glad you had fun even if your men did melt like the wicked witch.