The perilously close confines of a Boarding Action mean your troops will need a quick-witted commander to survive their shipboard sojourns, and with the first Arks of Omen book arriving for pre-order this weekend you won’t have long to prepare your Boarding Patrols. Luckily, you can research this daunting responsibility with a jaunt through the archives of Black Library, which contains many first-hand accounts of legendary void assaults.
Not sure where to begin? The Black Library team has a few suggestions of their own.
As their name would suggest, the Space Marines are a dab hand at boarding actions, and many stories demonstrate their heroism inside the bowels of one mighty voidcraft or another. Warriors of Ultramar is of particular note, giving us one of our first glimpses inside a tyranid hive ship courtesy of Uriel Ventris – the description of the ship’s Norn Queen is harrowing indeed.
The Ultramarines’ legacy of heroics in ship-to-ship combat began millennia earlier, and the Horus Heresy saw many such actions between the XIII Legion and their bitter Word Bearers rivals. One of the greatest shipbound struggles is found in Battle for the Abyss, where a desperate band of Ultramarines, Space Wolves, loyalist World Eaters, and even a lone Thousand Sons psyker try to stop one of the most devastating warships of the age from laying waste to Macragge itself.
Space Hulk, a classic ancestor to Warhammer 40,000, had more than a few things in common with the new Boarding Actions game mode. That iconic Blood Angel-versus-Genestealer conflict continues in Death of Integrity, though this time it’s their successors the Blood Drinkers taking up the reins – with the Adeptus Mechanicus lurking in the shadows. Savage creatures prowl the halls, rending flesh from bone and coating the walls in claret… do the Genestealers really stand a chance? Our research says: unlikely.
It will come as no surprise that orks revel in the chaotic brutality and piratical plunder of a good boarding assault. Many of their ships are even designed to ram directly into hapless vessels, so these claustrophobic clashes occur with alarming regularity. One such assault forms the backdrop of Da Gobbo’s Revenge – a rare non-Imperial perspective – and while few Warhammer 40,000 players will find the odds quite as stacked against them as Fingwit’s lot, it’s nevertheless a vital read for anyone preferring guile over gunnery.
Necrons aren’t often the underdogs – being the slumbering creations of hungry star-gods will do that you for you – but Twice-Dead King: Reign sees Overlord Oltyx limping away from a burning world, his entire court stuffed into the tomb ship Akrops. Orks and Imperial forces alike are eager to tear off a chunk of necrodermis, but these unwanted visitors will have to contend with the crazed necrons lurking in Olytx’s hold…
Farsight: Crisis of Faith gives you two boarding actions for the price of one, as the T’au Empire and Imperium trade blows amidst the eponymous commander’s early career. Their styles of warfare are as different as night and day, and the challenges Farsight faces are well worth studying for anyone looking to field a T’au Empire boarding patrol.*
Finally, Clonelord poses an interesting contrast between the pro-flesh Fabius Bile and decidedly anti-flesh necrons, as the III Legion’s former Chief Apothecary plumbs an eerie tomb ship for secrets on his quest to track down the mysterious world of Solemnace… and its immortal master.
Do you have any favourite boarding actions that you’ll be studying in the coming days? Let us know on the Black Library Facebook page, and share your tactical dossiers (cleverly disguised as awesome Warhammer novels) with fellow commanders.
* The Greater Evil offers its own T’au take on boarding actions, through the experiences of a (former) Imperial Breacher turned gue’vesa auxiliary.