Soul Storm is a Warmaster French campaign involving 38 players all around France.
The players have joined either the Alliance side or the Destruction side.
The official material is there:
http://warmaster-fr.niceboard.com/f24-campagne-tempete-d-amesThis is in french, but there is the rules, scnerii, detailed information about turns, links to all battle reports and a LOT of fluf.
Basically the Fluf is that Be'lakor returned to the Old World and decided to break the Empire to prove the Dark Gods wrong (they denied him the right to lead the final Chaos invasion for milleniums). For decades Be'lakor gathered the broken remains of the Archaron troops and had them harass the Empire slowly trying to recover from the Chaos Storm event.
In the meantime, Be'lakor weakened the (already fragile) Empire with epidemias, plots and corruption. When Karl Franz died of old age, this resulted in the Empire being divided by a succession war. This is when Be'lakor ordered all its troops to stop harassing and start marching against the Empire, from every borders. Thus started the Sould Storm.
=== Initial Situation
This is the campaign stratgic mag. The 5 regions are the regions in France where players have registered for the campaign.
They fight battles Alliance vs Chaos and the battle line will move according to the battle results.
The outcome of the campaign will be determined by the final battle that will be played next may. This battle will see each side get bonuses based on the chaos invasion level and various sub-quests that could be unlocked (via scenarii). This way the outcome will ONLY be determined by the final battle.
Here is the map:
=== Turn 1
Turn 1 the Empire is stoke by surprise with the chaos assault and Be'lakor expect this to spread as much chaos an ddestruction as possible to the Empire.
The scenarii this turn allowed the Alliance side to end the succession war within their region (granting bonuses each turn and to the final battle) and allowed the Chaos to get Champions granting better heros to lead their armies.
18 battles have been played, and here is the situation at the end of the turn:
In brief, the Alliance side immediately stopped the invasion in 3 out of 5 regions (no Chaos victory) and the north-east region has been overrun by the chaos (a single Alliance victory, and massive Chaos victories). A single region (east) sucessfully ended the civil war and none got chaos champions.
=== Turn 2
This turn Be'lakor stole a very old book written by Nagash. With this book he learned the dark magic to "drink souls" and created minions that have the ability to drink souls to fuels its own power: tha Nagas (the Chaos exclusive miniature). With that magic, Be'lakor is about to become the "Soul Harvester" and ordered its generals to seize control of several major Chaos Monolith dedicated to him, and infuse them with a major rituel so that they become magnets to dead souls, devour them and send their power to Be'lakor. In the meantime, the Chaos forces are still rampaging through the Empire that is trying to get unified again and face this new threat.
The scenarii this turn allows either the Chaos side to "mark" a monolith to enable it to devour souls (granting bonuses for the final battle), or have a Sigmar champion appear within the Empire.
This turn, generals of Be'lakor are allowed to play a special unite, the Dark Nagas, a monstruosity summoed by the Dark Master:
(those beasts have 4 att, 4 hits, 4+ svg, size 1, are restricted to a single unit per army, cost 90pts, cause Terror, ignore armors, move through terrains like infantry and always hit on 4+)
A few time later, the Empire Repurgators are available to Alliance players to counter the Nagas and all other chaos beasts:
(those saviors are like Empire Skirmishers, but can be included to any Alliance army, are restricted to 1 per army, cost 45pts and give the following bonuses to the joined unit: 1 shot, ignore Terror, +1att/stand againts monsters/undead/demons. Unlike Empire Skirmishers, they don't have to be removed as the 1st casualty).
9 battles have been fought, with a lot of battle involving 4 to 6 armies.
Some pictures of the more massive battles:
Paris/Orléans massive battle:
Lyon/Grenoble massive battle
Here is the situations at the end of the turn:
This turn confirms the Turn-1 trend: Chaos is breaching though Kislev but is held still on all other borders of the Empire.
Be'lakor successfully summon a marked monolith within near Praag, wreaking havoc while a start feasting on freshly-dead-souls tens of miles around. The east empire provinces are reunited under a single Emperor rule.
Picture of the end of the battle of Praag, when the ritual is complete and the monolith is marked with Be'lakor power to drink souls:
=== Turn 3
Be'lakor invasion in the north-est continued successfully, but failed everywhere else.
Here is the situation at the end of the turn:
The Alliance will have big advantages for the final battles that will conclude the campaign and decide the fate of the Empire.
=== Final battles
The final battles have been played.
Each region played a final battle to determine wich side is locally victorious; the side with the most victorious regions will be the global winner.
The Alliance have major bonuses to most of those battles since it dominated most of the whole campaign. Still, the final outcome will be determined by the end battled ONLY.
Out of 5 regions, 4 played their final battle with the following outcome:
North-Est/Paris: Minor Victory for Be'lakor (2pts)
South/Lyon/Grenoble : Major Victory for Be'lakor (3pt)
West/Toulouse: not played
Est/Orléans: Minor Victory for Be'lakor (2pts)
North/Strasbourg: Minor Victory for the Alliance (2pts)
Total:
Alliance: 2pts
Be'lakor: 7pts
=> Major Victory for Be'lakorWhat a surprise!
For the final battled, Be'lakor himself joined the battle, so does the Mumakils coming from Ind.
Some pictures of them plus random pictures of some of the several battle played as final battles:
Siege of a Artemis city within the Border Princes, won by the Chaos:
A massive battle in the north where the Alliance will crush the Chaos troops emerged from the Middle Mountain and marching upon Middenheim:
The Mumakils, marching from the far Ind to crush the Empire and blocked by Elven and Dwarfs:
Be'lakor posing in front of Kislev, once the city is won:
A very tough skaven+chaos vs lizardmen battle. Chaos won in the end, but they were 1 stand (STAND!) from breaking!!!
---
Here is what appended from the Final Battles to 6 month later:
The Empire was already at the verge of breaking from the start, weakened by major epidemias and monthes of civil-war.
With the failure to contain the initial Be'lakor invasion, the Empire troops have been forced to retreat inside major fortified cities and stand sieges in the hope that the approaching winter will be hard enough for Be'lakor hordes to be weakened and defeated when spring will be back.
Be'lakor ignored those cities and its troops marched quickly to besiege Nuln and Altdorf.
The Demon-Prince assumed that fortified cities left behind will not have enough courage and troops to indulge in massive counter attack. He proved right enough.
Nuln and Altdorf could have standed siege for monthes if not years. But again, Be'lakor had a plan. The apocalyspe canon the chaos dwarf had forge him have been given to skaven and used to breach the cities form below, allowing skaven to perform surprise attack from inside, take a gateway and open it to chaos troops. This worked enough for Be'lakor to capture Altdorf and Nuln at the start of winter.
The Empire was now broken, and Be'lakor ordered its troops to retreat to Kislev territory and build their a Chaos kingdom.
Be'lakor feel he took revenge upon the Chaos Gods:
* He proved them he was the one able to destroy humans and they should have better made him the One instead of Archaon.
* Its horde established a chaos-kingdom in place of Kislev, with sole duty to protect the Empire from chaos invasion. Thus taking revenge from the god.
* He instilled much terror within human heart and is now seen as the One Who Is The End Of Everything. As such its influence grew a lot, enough to become a Rising Power (would-be chaos god).
