Cleansing Gaaron Prime - The Mission and Army List

My local Nurgle player Bill (bill40k) challenged me to play in a narrative game against his Chaos Marine army. Always up for a challenge and especially to play in a fluffy game, I jumped at the chance!

We decided on playing 3000 points as we had a couple of hours to play and Bill wanted to try some different units to our usual Wesnesday night club games which are generally around 1000-1500 points. 

Bill wrote the mission as an adaptation of a Planetstrike style game, without the strategems or modified FOCs. There were 2 objectives on the table, a Bastion in the Chaos deployment zone worth 3vp and a Coms Relay worth 2vp in the Salamanders deployment zone. Secondary objectives were 1st Blood and Slay the warlord. To make it interesting, once 5 zombies were killed they returned from his board edge as a new 5 man unit - Meat Grinder style.

After some delibration I wrote a list that I then changed about 5 times because I couldn't decide on the best HQ option, knowing he was bring plenty of zombies, I contemplated using a chapter master for the Orbital Bombardment and a Whirlwind in my Heavy Support slot. In the end I went with the list below:

Battle Group Firestorm Army List BLOG by Stuart Coppard

I think that this gave me the best mix of hard hitting armour and mobility so I could cross the board and try and get at least one combat squad into the bastion while holding onto my Comms Relay. We'll see how it goes!

Cleansing Gaaron Prime - The Background

++INCOMING TRANSMISSION++

++Realspace Signal: Priority Maxima++

++Astropathic Communication Unavailable/Blocked++

++Message Begins++

++If you can hear this, send help, please. This is Administrator Lysia of Gaaron Prime. They're all dead, everyone is dead. I fear I am one of the last few left. Days ago the sky turned green and the agri-workers became inflicted by a viral infection . The planet was enveloped by this unexplained fog and then the bodies of those who sucumbed to the malardy began to rise. Within hours we were overrun.++

++If anyone hears this, please send anything you can, I'm not sure if I'll make it through the night++

++MESSAGE ENDS++

The planet of Gaaron Prime has been targeted by Typhus and a strike force of Death Guard for as yet unknown reasons. He has been busy infecting the local population and creating a zombie army. The local PDF have been overrun and the Astropathic communication with the planet has gone dark.

The message above was received by Vulkan He'Stan and a small group of Salamanders who were on their way to  a neighbouring system to investigate a potential link in discovering the Obsidian Chariot. Never one to abandon humans in need, despite their own mission, Vulkan commanded his Navigator to set a course for Gaaron Prime immediately and readied his task force to engage whatever mysterious forces were at work on the planet.

Using the signal from the final outgoing communication, the Salamanders prepared to land at the communication relay station outside of the capital of Gaaron Prime, and claim one of the main defence bastions nearby to serve as a landing zone and a well secured base to co-ordinate a larger assault on the surface. However, his arrival in the system and landing did not go un-noticed by those in service of the dark gods, who prepared a trap the incoming Astartes could not possibly have prepared for...