Fourth War for Armageddon, Day One

We started up our Fourth War for Armageddon campaign, with small (Power Level 25) games.  We played a modified Patrol mission, with the Imperial forces rolling out in clearing operations against resurgent Ork concentrations.  Along the way, many are ambushed by Chaos forces that have infiltrated on-world, as above.

I'm playing my Merkan 76th Imperial Guard, and as they are using the Steel Legion figures, in this instance they're Steel Legion in name as well as in form.

My first game was against Terry's Bad Moons.  He came at me, I had good dice, Imperial victory.

Elsewhere space marines from the Wild Knights are surprised by World Eaters and their daemonic lackeys.

Death Korps of Krieg forces, on R&R leave on Armageddon before deployment to a real war zone are ambushed by...Necrons?

Blood Angels find their way to their objective, a Deffskull ork camp, but are driven off after their outflanking attack is foiled by booby-trapped rubble filled streets in the ruins of Hive Hades.

Another Bad Moon camp is attacked by a combined force of Steel Legion and Black Templars.

Steel Legion and Black Templars also clash with Da Kunnin' Pinkies, an offshoot of some ork warband obsessed with flamingos.

Pulling back from facing mobs of flash gits, the Blood Angels are set upon by Word Bearers that have come up from the underhive.

Here, sonofsonsoftaurus and I played a 2v2 game against Chaos.  We set up first, and after that I realized the error of our haphazard mission modification, with deployment zones way too close to each other.  Two forces of daemons and berzerkers in range for turn one assaults.  Oops.  Here Ultramarines face off with World Eaters.

While I with the Merkans face the Alpha Legion.  Now you see them...

...now you don't.  I did manage to kill the rhino and both squads of berzerkers, and got the prince down to one wound.  So close!  Had my attacks been a little better or his saves a little worse, I could have wiped out the Alpha Legion and would have had the opportunity to be killed by the World Eaters instead.  Maybe next time.

sonofsonsoftaurus' Ultramarines teamed up with the Templars/Steel Legion for a 2vs1 game against the Pinkies, with the Imperials trying to escape the debacle the Imperial effort had generally devolved into.  (Ambush mission, Orks PL 85 vs. total PL 80 for Imperials)  One officer made it off the edge and escaped and the orks were mangled, but they ended up with a lot of new vehicles to loot.

Twelve players and a bunch of games!  Plus another few players that couldn't make it out for opening day.  Most campaigns see people peel away over time, but hopefully with the excitement around the new edition people will hang in longer.   Overall a poor showing for the defenders of Armageddon, with my small win against the orks as our only victory I'm aware of, though we did get some points for damage done in other games.  We can come back from the shock of having to fight both orks and chaos (and Necrons, apparently) but it will be an uphill climb after the initial setbacks.