Some ITEN scenarios played

Last Sunday, my gaming buddy and I tried a the campaign rules for In the Emperor's name! with a Terminator vs. Genestealer cult setting. The first thing we realised was that such classic encounter of Termies vs. Genestealers is boring with ITEN rules as all of them has Grit 2+, and you have to roll 1 to kill someone, so the game become long and repetitive. My buddy suggested to use Grit 2+ only for leaders and special characters, and I think it was a good idea that we will try some other day.

The situation of the campaign was that a Space Hulk crammed with Genestealers and perhaps some Orks, had crashed on a abandoned planet only inhabited by savages and gangers. Our Librarian was almost sure that in that Space Hulk was a very powerful and long missed pre-Heresy weapon, so he set up a squad and landed near the Hulk to explore it.

We rolled in the Investigation table and got "Whispers in the dark", so to keep it with the Terminator's fluff, we changed the informant for a dead Terminator which had to be retrieved.

As usual, all pictures are clickable.

We used Termagants as Hybrids and a Tyranid Broodlord as Patriach, but with different stats.

As everybody had the same Grit (2+) and penetration power (Fighting value + weapon bonus -Genestealers 5+2 and Termies 3+4-), it was hard to get some kills, and then the game derived into a general and endless melee around the objective.

In the end both sides suffered almost same casualties (2 Hybrids and 1 Genestealer vs. 2 Termies) but the Genestealers' speed made them to win the day.

As the Terminators had lose the scenario, they had then to fight a "Survival mission". We rolled on the appropriate chart and we got "What a piece of junk!". They had to find the supplies to repair the airspeeder whereas fight off the Agents of Chaos who were trying to destroy the ship.

Both fallen Terminators passed a Grit roll and made it back on time for the mission. The four Termies faced thirteen gangers, fallen guards and one Chaos Space Marine.

Terminators got in cover and then the agents of Chaos had to make huge Torrents of fire to have a minimum chance to kill some of them.

They failed and then the Termies charged into melee, each of them attacking two enemies at the same time, as this was a faster way to kill people than shooting (there is no rate of fire in ITEN).

The Chaos Space Marine was the first "smart" guy to go for the ship but was shot in the back.

Seeing the baddies that they could not penetrate Terminators' armour, the broke off melee and split to avoid being caught grouped. They tried to sneak through Termies line to set the satchel charge in the ship, while the Terminators chased them down like in a rabbit hunting.

Well, they killed ten of them but could not finished them all, so the ship was blown away in the end and the Termies lose this mission as well.

We rolled again on the Survival mission chart but we looked at the wrong chart and then we finished playing "No stone unturned" with the forces asked for "Ambushed!" LOL. Thus, there were only two Terminators to check the ruins. Now, according to the scenario, there have to be at least 24" from the Terminator's starting point to the first of the buildings, and the figure must spend one full turn investigating the building.

Well, this take you four turns to do it, and the scenario has a six turn game limit; therefore we could only check two buildings. In one of them there was nothing and in the other three Genestealers.

The Terminators killed them all but as he could not find any evidence in the buildings, he did not gain any Victory Points and consequently the mission was failed.
At this point we decided to quit the campaign and try a single game with different retinues containing lower Grit and different characteristics and weaponry.

So we played "Kelly's heroes" with an Imperial Guard vs. a Orks retinue, and this time we had fun.
Both groups run towards the objective and when they were in range, they started to fire at each other with small Torrents of fire of two, three members each.

As soon as the first casualties took place, everybody got in cover.
As my Orks could not run because they were seeing the enemy, they never were able to charge the enemy from cover, and when they tried to do it in the open they were massacred by the Hellguns (the two guys in the open in the picture below).

This handicap turned the battle into Imperial side and the Orks were quickly overwhelmed as they could not use their strong point which was melee. Anyway, the game was fast and bloody and we enjoyed it.

In the Emperor's name!

This morning I played in the local shop a game of ITEN for the first time. We played the scenario Kelly's heroes with a retinue of Space Marines vs. a retinue of the Iron Warriors Traitor Legion. Both squads had to retrieve an Archaic Record located in the centre of some ruins.

The SM retinue was formed by a sergeant with Bolter, a SM with a Plasma Gun, and three more SM with Bolters, all of them in Power Armour.
The Iron Warriors were formed by an aspiring champion with Bolter and Power Fist, one with Plasma Gun and two more with Bolters, all of them in Power Armour, and one lesser daemon with flamer.

A very classic encounter between good and evil forces!
All pics are clickable.

In the beginning the Space Marines were cautious and this let the Traitors to reach the ruined building in the centre before them. Seeing this and realizing that they could not shoot at the Traitors inside the structure, the rushed forward and made the first blood by killing the daemon on the left flank.

2nd turn of the game

The Iron Warriors entered the house unopposed and retrieved the Archaic Record. The Space Marines then dashed into the house in hot pursuit. There were several shootouts but the Power Armour and high Grit in both sides avoided casualties.

As the Traitors were escaping with the mission objective, one Space Marine run and engaged in close combat with the aspiring champion, with fatal result. Then the aspiring champion killed the Space Marine with the Plasma Gun, whereas another Iron Warrior locked in melee with a SM at the entrance of the building, and the two other run away with the Archive Record.

Seeing they were leaving the area with the objective, the Space Marine charged in hand to hand combat again with the closer enemies, and threw a hand grenade to the ones escaping, but missed.

The aspiring champion was stun, but when he recovered, he charged and killed the sergeant SM. The rest escaped with the Archaic Record.

In the Emperor's name! is a simple (rules are 3-4 pages) and really fast game (it lasted less than half an hour), and very fun to play. Moreover, it has a very promising campaign that we will soon start to play. It is great to play again with those W40K miniatures in the Rogue Trader universe! ITEN is a free downloadable game from the guys of Forge of War and FUBAR.