Playing Rogue Trader: The Walls of New Rynn City

Campaign day again!

But with serious innovations: Given that nor the Rogue Trader Rulebook or White Dwarf magazine provided more scenarios, we invented a few. All credit for this must go to Rodrigo, the mighty designer of 'La Puerta de Isthar' RPG (only in Spanish for the moment, but hopefully in English anytime).

The battle he designed for us is coherent with the previous two, and takes place after the Jadeberry Hill incident. In this imaginative exercise of creativity, Orks begin the siege of Rynn City while they build a Gargant for that very purpose. They need to blow up the walls to allow the engine get into the city (The Gargant's legs cannot go over the wall, they're too short for that!). Captain Cortez must hold the Walls at any price. To make things more complicated, the Town Mayor has recruited some discontented Orks to betray their kin (RT times, remember?), but no one knows if they will be reliable at all...

So, Space Marines will achieve victory if the kill every ork carrying a 'bom' (including reinforcements that would eventually come up turn after turn, if the Ork player rolls a 2+ in a D6 at the beginning of each turn. Getting a 1 means that no more boyz will get into battle). The greenskins will get the victory if a boy with a bom stays a whole turn besides a piece of wall and detonates the device (rolling a 6 in a D6).

These are the combatants (Marines painted by my rival, Miguel, Orks painted by me):

Captain Alessio Cortez (before he had that awful mini years later)

Beakie Squad #1 (Squad Suarez)

Squad Ramos

Planetary Defence Force Squad#1

PDF Squad#2

Revered Brother Arsis

Luggub da Boss

Four Grenadierz Squads like these (and later reinforcements)

Da Dread!

Oldie Buggy!

Da Turncoatz! Boooo!

Each turn, both players roll a die. The one who gets the higher score controls the Turncoatz that turn. If they get the same score, the Turncoatz will spend the whole turn debating who would they really support and they will do nothing else...

Well, so let the battle begin!

That scenery on the corner is Jadeberry Hill from the previous battle

And the walls are the 80's WH Mighty Fortress!

So let's go for Turn 1: The Orks advance, but the turncoatz are controlled by the humans and they get out of any possible cover. The Ork Dreadnought opens fire against the Space Marine Dreadnought and causes him three wounds. Dakka dakka!

Attak, boyz!!

Captain Cortez (escorted by the two survivors of the previous battle, BTW) made a heroic way out of the walls and all the Marines shooted at the greenskins.

Sir, you sure of what we are doing?

They did a real carnage, killing 30 Orks! Yuk! Brother Arsis charged his armoured bulk against another squad. The Orks reacted firing on him, causing some more damages.

Fear the power of the blue can!

But, unexpectedly, Luggub stroke the Dreadnought and ended his existence with a mortal definite hit.

Ho ho! I did it, boyz!

So Turn 1 ended with that mutual massacre. Turn 2 begun rolling for reinforcements. A die for each squad obliterated in the previous turn. I got a 3 for the first one... but the dreaded 1 on my second roll! Agh! No more reinforcements at all for the rest of the battle!!

Boss, dis is lookin' bad for us!

The Turncoatz stayed on the Ork side this turn and everyone went towards the walls. The buggy rammed on two marines, but inexplicably harmless, as almost any shoot the Greenskins made. Things were turning low for the invaders...

We no doin' well, boss!

The Space marines did their part quite better indeed, and they riddled the Orks with no mercy at all.

Before...

...and after.

So at the beginning of turn 3 the Orks had these chances: There was an Ork just next to the wall (so rolling a 6 now would make it!), there was a Squad on the left side of the table (which would reach the walls and maybe blow them up next turn) and there was another Ork with a bom falling back (who could 'regroup' -with himself? if he passed a morale check).

Nothing is yet decided!

The fleeing Ork... kept on fleeing and abandoned the table. Shame on him!
The Turncoatz were under Ork control again and, alongside the Dreadnought and the buggy, tried to kill some defenders, with some relative success.
The boy with the bom had the game in his hands. Rolling a 6 would inmediately give Orks victory. The die fell, rolled on the table and....
Got a 3!
The Ork mishandled the explosive and fell apart in the explosion.

You can easily imagine the rest. The defenders shooted with everything they had against the remainig Squad, the only one that could set another bom. The Orks had some losses and failed the morale roll, so they totally fell back.

Ooops! We better go back!

That was it, the defenders held the walls and the Ork offensive would have to be delayed.
On the whole I can say it was a very funny battle. Orks had all kinds of mishaps, luck was against them. If they had received some reinforcements, maybe they would have ended up blowing the walls, but being short of boyz really set the battle on the defender side quite soon. However, the single roll that could have decided the game was tense and really fun.
The Turncoatz were not a decisive element, but more a kind of nuisance, they introduced some randomness in the game, and that was also great, they made their part. Totally fun!

There will be another two battles as part of this campaign, so stay tuned, I promise you the next one is truly epic!