A fresh new team of Deathwatch Marines is assigned the task of boarding and clearing any Xenos who may be on Skapula. When the Deathwatch Barge drops from the warp they find a small group of Tau ships near the station and one docked up to it. The kill team is launched towards the command and control center of Skapula via boarding torpedos. THey dont hit exactly where they planned and now have to fight their way to the C2C and retake the Station. Along the way they need to secure the Armory and retrieve and protect the information stored in the data core before Tau scum get to it.

Lots of long dark corridors and a few large rooms for fire fights. My playing group could be anywhere from 5-7 players for this mission so it needs to be challenging for them. I will introduce Sniper Drones, Rail Rifles, Fusion blasters etc.... I know I will have a Dark Angel Devastator who is a huge power gamer so I need to find a way to tie him up at times in close combat. Are Kroot up for the task? Do I need to tweak them at all?

Since the Tau are mainly about fire superiority I will have drones stand and fight while stealth suits, firewarriors, sniper drones etc, fight from ambush or fall back after a few shots and lead the kill teams into places where they can bring their weapons to bear.

First time running DW and I could use any advice you like to give.

How did the Tau ships survive the barrage of weaponry that has kept the Imperium (an entity with vastly more resources and a much higher initial interest in retaking the station) from ever retaking the station themselves?

Good point, and one that I have been trying to avoid, especially since the players dont know this fact

Well, I was playing with the idea that the Tau have been experimenting with stealth tech for their larger vessels similar to the ones used in their suits. They were able to get a small sized shipped "cloaked" as it were and get a team of techs and fire warriors aboard Skapula. They then shut down the automated systems and have now set about trying to steal info and tech from the station. This makes the objective of protecting and retrieving the information in the datacore even more important. The Deathwatch will certainly want to know how the Tau managed to get past the powerful sensors of Skapula.

In fact, perhaps they triggered some kind of "alarm" that sent out a coded distress signal picked up by other nearby Watch Stations and passed on to Higher Headquarters to send a team to retake Skapula.

As I look at my notes I see that I did add an objective to reactivate the stations defenses.

As your players' group is really big, you could implement some tasks in which they have to split up and fight on two fronts at the same time. Not for the whole mission, but for some short, but intense sequences in which every second counts.

Make sure you allow a viewscreen in the room, or even a glasteel window to show the magnificence of the Watch Station letting the Tau ships know exactly what it thinks of their invasion if its airspace...

Kroot are an excellent choice for ambushing a Deathwatch team, though you will have to horde them up. 2-3 medium-sized hordes, 1 with a Shaper with boosted (Elite-level) stats and perhaps a few Space Wolves or Codex psychic powers, or if you have that Rogue Trader adventure, some of the Eldar powers like Fortune or Doom. Horded up, with their unnatural strength, they'll probably be laying serious hurt until <mag 20. The Sniper Drones would probably make excellent backup, "sniping" the marines while the kroot tie them up. On occasion, have a fellow marine notice a blue dot right on a battle-brother's armor before a Rail round passes straight through the exact spot.

Have at least one kroot, during the chaos, suddenly thrust up its arms and its bladed rifle and bleat like a Tusken raider. Throughout the rest of the ship, have your killteam occasionally hear a similar bleating sound from odd directions, closer, further, etc....

There are also Kroot snipers in fluff as well. If Station Skapula has any internal forested areas, ala the Zoo that other Watch Station keeps to ensure the stationed SMs stay busy, you might make it seem to be a "shortcut" for the players, only to find the horror of hordes of kroot in their home element, bleating and with a horde of Kroot snipers camouflaged in the trees. Kroot gauntlet, or precious time wasted? Decisions, decisions.

Kroot are to be feared. Best the players pick that up as quickly as possible.

Drones should probably be the most-encountered thing, with each encounter drawing more and more "heavy" hitters to the kill-team's location.

The Tau should be very well-coordinated, roughly on-par with a seasoned IG regiment or even a space marine company. Consider employing a few specialized Drones filled to the brim with the "Failsafe Detonator" technology currently being placed (in proper grimdark fashion, idiotically) in the suits of the Tau commanders.

ok I really LOLd at the Tuskan Raider bit.

I havent determined if there is an internal "zoo" in the station but lots of long dark corridors and such. My plan for the sniper drones was to set them up in a Cross shaped intersection and have them hit from 2 sides by 2 teams of 3.

The only access to Kroot info I have is what is in the Rogue Trader Core book....they didnt look that tough on papaer there. Am I missing something? I didnt see shaper rules in their either. Or did you just add a few skills/talents here and there?

what stats did you use for the sniper kroot rifles?

Angerland said:

Into the Storm has rules for Kroot PCs, and includes a Kroot Shaper branch. Fluffwise, Kroot Shapers are the biggest and baddest of the kroot around, so I'd recommend at least giving +10 to +20 in appropriate stats. They're also a race known to have psykers, so I figured adding that in might be fun. I suggest Hording them up, as while they're dangeous to mortal folk, power armor and UT negates 'normal' attacks. You might consider giving the Kroot, or at least the horde of kroot hiding the Shaper, a evolutionary adaptation: If they've fed on a lot of Greenskins, they might have +10 T, or even UT. You might give them Unnatural Speed (Hyper Nymune Organ, i believe its called), you might give them some natural armor, or you might even give all their attacks the Toxic trait.

I don't know if the Kroot Hunting Rifle has been statted up, but I'd suggest starting with the Hunting Rifle as a base, then either giving it Toxic or Pen 3 ammo. The Kroot Rifle, the basic one with the blades, can probably be found in Rogue Trader.

Thanks for the tips! I know someone in our group has In to the Storm. Great! I was really worried I would have a suitable melee combatant to tie the Kill team up while fire warriors and what not fire in to the group. I know for a fact the DA Devastator will probably tweak that BS of his to ridiculous levels... I would expect nothing less of him. He will get his chance to shine but I want to at least make him sweat a while first.

Wow, deja vu. I just ran a mission to retake Skapula for my group as well. We had some similar ideas.

They arrived via frigate and found two tau ships in orbit around the planet, with a small craft attached to the station itself. Lacking the firepower to assault both tau ships (one was Messenger class, one was..umm..the other frigate-sized Tau class, I forget right now). They decided to do a hit and run attack. They were able to approach using the ships Empyran Mantle (ship component from Into the Storm I figure most DW ships have) and strafed the Tau vessels. Two boarding torpedos were launched at one Tau ship, one containing murder servitors (a distraction) and one containing the Kill Team. Afterward the DW frigate disengaged slowly, leading them just enough so the Tau tried to pursue. They KT was able to fight their way to the bridge and take command of the ship. Afterward their frigate returned and destroyed the other Tau ship one-on-one. They captured the Tau military commander and were able to get some good information. During this engagement the smaller ship docked to Skapula had disengaged to the planet below (a dead world). They were able to find out that the Tau had located an ancient structure on the planet and had a small research group setup. They eventually let the Tau vessel go (which was terms for them taking the commander alive).

They then were able to slowly reactivate the Watch Station. They were only able to do this due to the fact that the core of the mission revolved around the activation sequence being revealed by the Omega Vault prior. The sequence was hand written in native Medusian and thus fate seemed to shine on the Iron Hand Techmarine in the group.

I had the Techmarine decide which order he wanted to bring systems online (based on components from Rogue Trader) and they learned that the station had an archaeotech warp drive with some pre-calculated warp jumps in-system (very odd indeed). They jumped the station farther out in the system and started letting the auger arrays gather data. The system had came up devoid of all records, its data-vaults either purged or simply gone.

The follow-up mission led them to the surface where they encountered what the Tau had found.

As to the question of why the Imperium "wasn't able to retake it". Remember that in the Core Rulebook it states that Skapula has been deactivated for a long time and clearly states its in Tau space and being investigated by them.

Hey guys, When I was figuring out Objective rewards, Requisition points, Experience and all that In my notes I wrote something about honor points, now I cant find where I saw these in the game. Are these the points used to advance Reknown?

Also, as I have both a Dark Angel and a Spacewolf in the Kill team, and they are brand new I was planning on having them fight the ritual duel between them. Have any of you done this yet? With out anything in the rules to go by I was thinking of letting them go at it for 2-3 rounds with combat blades only and then see who inflicted the most wounds and declare them the winner. I would count the "wounds" as superficial so that no real permanent damage is done and they are healed before real fighting ensues.

You probably meant 'renown' which is used for increasing... renown.

There's a thread on here somewhere where GMs have discussed how they've handled honour duels. It depends on your players, really. You could simply make them perform an opposed WS test, or you could make them slog it out with knives.

I had them do a pretty abstract system. They rolled 5 WS tests and counted their degrees of success and failure. At the end whoever had a majority would win. They ended up coming very close so we called it a tie instead. I didn't want the combat to take too much time out of the game since it didn't include every player, but thought it worked well.

Graf said:

sorry I didn't mention this sooner: Thanks for the tip! having a big group is always a tricky thing, especially when several of the players are great powergamers.

I fought an Honor duel with a Dark Angel recently. It was basically a dodgefest. I scored more hits, but the Watch Captain declared it a draw as we were going to beat each other into critical range (we had declared someone had to surrender, bad move) the fight had gone for close to twenty rounds at that point, and was getting monotonous.