The Daemon's Claw

One the 18/19th of November the Warlords held our annual convention. We had about 100 attendees playing a wide variety of periods. Here is an overview of the hall. This is showing the 40k players with the Horus Heresy narrative event in the background. DBMM games in the conservatory. Here is another view across the hall, this is looking towards the Flames of War event, then the demonstration games and the This is a game of Age of Sigmar. This is an interesting take on a Deepkin army. It reminds me of the ghost army from Lord of the Rings.  Here are another couple of AoS armies. Snakes why did it have to be snakes? Eldar rampaged across the 40k event, the other side has a lot of dreadnoughts. This is a DBMM game. Each of the tables was laid out to imitate a famous battle.  Some people were playing games with 40mm models. These are easier for people to see. This was Lion Rampant representing the conflicts of the 13th century This is the American rebellion. The Red ones are the E...

 The Home Guard have raced back to their headquarters at the Church. (its the only place with a working phone). They have found the vicar and verger inside and have amassed a stock of supplies with which to make maguffins and other unique weapons of war. Just then a dark smokey cloud spreads over the graveyard and long dead hands start erupting from the ground. The Vampires have arrived, and this time they are led in person by Major Shreck. Can the Home Guard drive off the fiends of the night? Here is the church and its surrounding graveyard. (Seriously, who does that?) To the right is the church hall and at the bottom a couple of bomb-damaged houses. There is a war on. Here are the brave defenders taking their positions. The vicar briefly protested as his windows are broken to make firing ports. Alan won initiative for the first time in the campaign. Major Shrek raised the Iron Cross and the horde shambled forwards. Alan also got the effect that meant he could only move once per t...

 After the incident at the cottage the action then moves to the train station. The Vampires are trying to catch the morning train to Eastwick where they can spread the disease of vampirism across the south coast. Only the thin brown line of the Home Guard stand in their way. This is table layout for the train station. The Home Guard are assisted by the Sea Scout boys. The Home Guard and Sea Scouts march off towards the rain station. Sgt Wilson leads some of the Sea Scouts up onto the overpass. The plan is to shoot down onto the undead. Captain Mannering leads Private Walker and Private Fraser to the train station to warn some passengers not to get on the train otherwise they could end up being lunch for the vampires. The Undead are getting themselves organised and flow forwards into the gardens. Hauptman Kutrz is a hulking bestial vampire.He was promptly targeted by accurate rifle fire and fell dead. "Five rounds rapid, Open Fire!" The bats are swarming and zombies are lurchi...

This is the first scenario, some of the Home Guard with support from some Local Defence Volunteers are out patrolling. They are looking for German aircrew from downed planes or possible saboteurs or other 5th columnists. The group are patrolling past Mr Godfrey's cottage, when something dark swoops overhead and touches down in the nearby farmland. It was indeed something dark and sinister, a DFS 230 glider skidded to a halt and disgorged a nightmare cargo. Major Shreck and his Nactjager Kommandos had arrived. Here is Godfrey's cottage, unfortunately his sisters are home so the squad need to ensure their safety. The Vampires and their Totenganger servants advance to secure the nearby area and round up any locals before they could raise the alarm. They could also provide extra rations for the vampires. The Home Guard are making their way to the cottage and its stonewalled garden.  The undead are spreading out. A couple of unfortunatel locals have fallen into their clutches. Alan ...

 Alan's Inquisition team and George's Ork lootas were also looking to escape by the same route as Inquisitor Rathbournes team. These pictures show how they got on. Here are the Orks spilling into the corridor. The Orks tried shooting through the bars but were bottled up in the entrance way for several turns. Inquisitor Malus, barely made it out of the starting point and were quickly pinned down with zombies bursting in from all sides. A profusion of smoke grenades were deployed to prevent or at least minimise the firepower of the zombie troopers. In the third room, the inquisitor was confronted by one of the rightly feared bloater zombies. If that go into the room amongst the team and exploded the casualties could be horrific. The Orks are clearing a room in the bottom right of this picture. They had made slow but steady progress. About this time the Orks took down Inquisitor Rathbourne. In the next combat roll the Ork Warboss attacked a zombie, I rolled for this zombie and rol...

With the information we managed to obtain from Medlab it looked like the infection rate for this outbreak was close to 100% as was the mortality rate. If you could call what happened to the suffers death. We needed to get back to our ship and summon more reinforcements to purge the station. However the normal route back to the docking bay was cut off so we needed to make our way to the transport hub via the habitation ring. This was a maze of utility areas and looked nothing like our maps. We were making steady progress when our motion detectors showed a cluster of blips ahead of us. This layout is made with terrain from Death Ray Designs and scatter from a Mantic Games Terrain Crate. Here we are lined up to enter the next room. Remember short controlled bursts. We make it through the first room and then into what could have been a mess hall or commissary. This room has a data terminal which might provide useful information. Just then some plague zombies lurch through the door. So much...