Monday 30 August 2010

The battle for Vogen


I don't know how many of you are familiar with this ancient volume of forgotten lore. I wasn't , until recently , since I started playing 40k back in 2002 (and certainly didn't care about alternative rules systems at the time) and Codex Cityfight was published in 2001. I came across a copy a while ago and I was  intrigued to find that the 122nd Cadian Regiment was featured heavily in this tome.

The Khai-Zhan rebellion

Khai-Zhan was a planet with great strategic importance. It was an agri world with a close proximity to Cadia (about 75 light years). It mass production of seaweed consumables meant that it kept half of the population of the Cadian Sector fed. Comprising mainly of water mass it only real city was Vogen, the only place with a spaceport.

For the last 10 years, before the event, the planet had fallen into decay. Corrupted Imperial Governor Harikon Kadulus has neglected it's people. The budget for the planet's defence was minimal and there was a  growing malcontent amongst the general population. Con artist extraordinaire von Guyen took advantage of the situation and set up covens to worship the warp. Selling false hope to the disillusioned citizens he steadily gained followers and power.

The chaos rebels consisted of deranged cultists to Night Lords chaos space marine and everything between. Also some of the planets own PDF took part in the apostasy. On the day of the governors birthday they launched a precise strike and took the  world by storm. Almost the entire city of Vogen fell but for two loyalist strongpoints, the 122nd Cadian HQ compound and the Adeptus Arbites precinct house. Although the waves of attacking cultists were vast, the Cadians were well dug in and of superior training. They hold the tide back and bought enough time for reinforcements to arrive. The building laid close to the city walls so their allies could get easily inside the city. Although the battles were furious, the rebels never managed to capture the compounds.

The regiment took heavy casualties in the first day. Only half a dozen men manage to stay unwounded but everyone kept fighting with all their strength.  By the third day the troops from the 122nd regiment were reinforced by troops from other Cadian regiments and the Imperial Fists Space Marines. They were able to counter assault and started taking the city back. The cityfighting that emerged was brutal, with death waiting on every street corner. After three weeks of attrition the apostates had been driven back to their final strongholds. With the aid of the Imperial Fists, who are famous for their siege warfare, the loyalist forces managed to breach the defences of the Palace of Peace. The planets Adeptus Arbites made the final push and the horribly overmatched rebels were cut down to a man. The Khai-Zhain uprising was over.

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This is a very nice little piece of fluff spanning five pages of the book. It's exciting hearing about my army in action. I know it's not much, but since my army hasn't got the literary wealth of , say ,  Ultramarines or Space Wolves, every little bit of information I can get is quite precious.

Fortunately the paint job on the tanks is similar to what I have done. This is completely coincidental by the way. I hadn't seen any of these pics before I painted my first tank, which was solely based on the illustrations from Imperial Armour. Here are some pics from the book that showing the GW studios122nd Cadian in all it's glory. The infantry models are the old metallic ones but the chimeras are close to the original and you can compare them to mine.





7 comments:

  1. Always good to take a look at these older pictures. I hadn't noitced the extra armor for the Chimeras before. It is an interesting conversion.

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  2. Yeah I always enjoy a trip down Nostalgia Lane. But I am glad I can have an all plastic IG army nowdays!
    By the way I changed the page layout and I forgot to ask how people like it. Is it better than before? And are the letters readable with this font/colour/background combo? Please let me know :)

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  3. That extra armour...is it simply taking either the interior side of the tracks/an extra section of the tracks and putting it on the side? looks pretty good.

    I know what you mean about nostalgia...i found my collection of white dwarfs' spanning from as early as 95 to 2003/4 yesterday! Some great articles, puts modern WD to shame.

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  4. The background is a bit distracting, but it's easy enough to scroll the text to where it's readable. And, it sure beats a plain background.

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  5. Ditto on the background, and ditto on the coolness of posting that old Codex: Cityfight stuff. Great book and great campaign!

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  6. I remember that WD batrep! Nostalgia FTW dude!

    As for the new background I find it nigh on impossible to read the text now without having to scroll up and down all the time to try and find a better contrasting section of background. Maybe its just me and my Dyslexia/Irlen, but I think having that set as a border but leaving the area with the text black would be way better.

    Also it reminds me of some emo kids Myspace page with way too much going on at once ;-)

    We know you aint emo.... or are you? MY GOD WHAT HAS MARRIED LIFE DONE TO YOU!?!?!?!?!?!?!

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  7. Tut, tut, tut Neil I know you are jealous of my CSS/HTML skill but you don't have to be so bitter about it :P
    Yeah I realise there is the big flash on the middle of the screen but you can always scroll down a bit.
    And since when was the Imperial Guard emo? :P And a background + a div at the top is too much? I thought I was doing minimal effort here! I do HTML for fun anyway so Blogger gives me a good platform to practise.

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