I've been running a slightly modified Rejoice for my players, and today we had one of the most impressive battles in my experience. It involves Theodosia getting an idea of what the party want - they couldn't get Orday's case, but he did recognize one of them at the party, so he sent his goons. The party was split as some of the players did not make it to the session, so I had their two characters in a different part of the house when the mercs hit. I decided that since the characters inside were spread, so would the mercenaries. 6 people should be enough to handle a few unprepared hired guns.

So... one group goes upstairs to deal with the players (1 techpriest, 2 psykers, just shy of rank 4), the rest spread out to hit the other targets. The techpriest actually hears what they use to blow up the gates and (being from a war world) takes up brand new bolter (not fully loaded yet), puts on a flak armor and goes to wake the two psykers in the next room. Just as they get ready to head downstairs and see what's happening, six mercs come through the corridor, and we roll initiative. Two go before the players, take cover in front of the rest and shoot - one of them actually does some damage to the techpriest, despite the guard flak armor he has. From then on things go downhill for the attackers.

In the rest of the first round, the two psykers manifest spasm on the front-liners. They tend to keep doing it most of the fight - and between having to stand up so they can see anything from their cover, the front mercs only fire single shots. On the second round, the backup generator kicks in, and with their rolls the mercs hit nothing. From then on the front ones are spasmed more often than not, and tend to hit each other (being the closest thing to each other) quite often, though seldom for any serious damage. By then I'm thinking their comm chatter should be fill with "WTF is going on". They're essentially at a stalemate against 3 armed and armored opponents. Then we get some funny rolling on the players' side. The psyker with the death light manages 3 headshots in a row - two of which "natural", and one called shot. The tech-priest, despite 4 decent wounds (enough to take several wounds off after TB 3 and guard flak) hits more often than not, and tends to hit arms or heads - so the cover doesn't help. Then, to add to the chaos and fear, one of the psykers gets phenomena. Now, at my table, when I say "phenomena" I tend to mean "perils," because the dice just roll that way. So now we have gale-strength winds wooshing about. One merc retreats, two are unconscious. I think if they should call for reinforcements, and realize what's happening to the other 2 PCs not here. Then I realize they are a guardsman with a heavy stubber and an arbitrator with a flamer . In a narrow corridor. I start laughing my head off. No reinforcements for this merry group, then. Even better, they get to hear agonizing screams over their micro-beads,

Around the end of the next round, there are only three functional mercs, and one of them pull out after a nasty bolter round in his arm. The other psyker goes for a spasm again, gets a phenomenon, then it turns into a peril. 74: blood storm. Statues start crying blood. Then it pours out of their eyes, mouths, phantom wounds, cracks in the columns, cracks in the walls, Over several seconds, the hallway is flooded with gallons of blood.

Now, I was talking to my players afterward, and they found the battle hilarious (there was more insanity to follow, see below). I was wondering how the mercenaries' comm chatter would look like. Basically, I imagine that this mission would turn into a bona fide nightmare - finding armed and heavily armored professionals instead of helplessly sleeping people, losing the element of surprise and being blinded by the lighting, finding out there are psykers involved, hearing another group slaughtered or burned, then seeing some incredible shooting, magical feats and finally being drenched with blood and gore. If anything, I might have played them as too brave - but how do you think their comm reactions would be?

In case anyone is interested, this fight became crazier still. Now, due to the sight I rule everyone gets to take a -10 fear test. One of the mercs passes his test but I decide that after all that's happened he's sure as heck not staying around. The other rolls for fear and freezes. The psykers pass... and the techpriest fails it, big time. He rolls for shock, rolls bad, and snaps. After a roll-off he puts a point-blank burst into the offending psyker (and gets a righteous fury, to boot) and the psyker is out, the player burns a FP to not die. The other psyker jumps to his bedroom, locks the door, and hides in the corner. The techpriest then continues to fire at the remaining mercenary, killing him, then at the door to the remaining psyker, and only then snaps out of it to find himself wading in blood, one of his teammates is unconscious with a huge tear in her leg (since she burned a FP I decided the bolt passed clear through the tissue and only detonated afterwards, when it was safely lodged in the wall), and his other teammate running for his life away from him.

As I said, pretty crazy fight. Probably the wackiest moment ever since that fight with the Churgeon, where one of the psykers threw a flame bomb so badly, it exploded just over most of the party.

Seems like a fun encounter for your players. But you seemed to have played your mercs like total mooks. Were they just hired toughs without military or small unit tactics experience or actual mercs?

Because standing up behind cover isn’t a move action. So the mercs should have gone full auto instead of single shot (unless they have laser sights etc. which would make a single shot action more attractive). At the very least, one of them should have used full auto suppressive fire to limit your players to just a half action if pinned. And mercs usually have access to grenades…When in doubt, grenade it out! And while some of them are pinning down the players (or just grabbing their attention) others would try to flank them (standard military procedure which mercs would know).

Another point would be the other two players…You say the tech-priest could hear the mercs and thus also warn his mates in the next room. But why would the other two (who couldn’t make it to the session and thus were located in different parts of the mansion) be awake and armed too when the mercs hit them? You seem to have hand waved that situation in their favour when it should have been a deadly fight with them scrambling for weapons in their pj’s while the mercs are going full auto on their asses….

I don’t mean to rain on your parade as you and your players seem to have had a fun time and that’s the important thing when playing but as fights go, this didn’t seem very impressive although the FX were nice.

Well, I considered it likely that the PCs would be in neighboring rooms. Now, maybe I should have required more time for the psykers to get armed and armored, but a few rounds sounded decent enough considering they only had a single weapon each and a mesh cloak. As for the mercs - they were effectively surpressed by the psykers spamming spasm (which I hope the perils will teach them not to do) - they needed a half action to stand. While they could shoot lying down, I didn't really see how this would work with cover - the idea is that at least some of you is elevated enough to see from the top.

The mercs, as statted, were armed with lasguns and thus had no full auto. I imagine that it would have proven useful, but to be honest I expected a 2:1 numerical advantage to provide a good enough challenge. I guess I should do better next time . Perhaps they should have retreated after the first obvious signs of psycraft, but I would expect them to be reliable enough not to get spooked THAT easily.

What I only later realized I hadn't done, at all - it was a long session - was allow any sort of parry/dodge reactions in that battle. The thing is, thinking back... the fight already took over an hour, and we were tired. Between speeding up the fight and making it that much bloodier I think it was a good thing, at least here.