Battle of Electros Hive - Mortwald

Points: 1500.

Mission: Data Scry Salvage.

Secondary Objectives: Assassination, Grind Them Down and Retrieve Nephilim Data.

Opponent's Secondary Objectives: Exalt The Dark Gods, Rise To Glory and Warp Ritual.

When the invading forces of Chaos turned to face the Imperial forces, they held one of the most important locations on Vigilus. Mortwild Hivesprawl was the primary food source for the population on Vigilus. Unless the hive was recovered then the billions would starve to death. A force of Word Bearers settled themselves in the path of the Rift Wardens within a blasted collection of ruins covering an advance where the space marines had little concealment. The Word Bearers commanded a wide field of fire.

Under the cover of dense smoke from burning buildings, most of the Rift Wardens advance force approached the Word Bearers position. Contact was soon established with the enemy, and the Rift Wardens made negligible progress beyond this position. Under the cover of thick smoke, a small force led by Arthurus himself, advanced through narrow streets up to the traitor's position. When the Word Bearers detected their approach, the Rift Wardens were mercilessly raked by massed firepower. The main Rift Wardens force fared little better.

It soon became clear that neither side could budge the other and since neother chose to retreat, the impasse hardened into a stalemate, that would lock the two antagonists into a relatively narrow stretch for the next four weeks. Arthurus ordered his battle brothers to to entrench as much as possible within the ruins. The marines dug in and prepared for a lengthy siege. 

Siege warfare was an unexpected option for the Word Bearers who preferred a more straight forward battle plan, but they adapted quickly. They used powerful daemon engines to unleash a constant stream of firepower into the Rift Wardens location to both hold them in place and to inflict heavy casualties.

The early loss of their dreadnoughts and tanks handicapped the Rift Wardens. Only some relic deimos pattern predators were powerful enough to shell the enemy positions and they proved inferior to the daemon engines. Reinforcements were requested and rushed to their side but for now the two forces were locked into their stalemate.