Brother vs Brother: Salamanders Civil War in Kill Team
Last hobby night gave us one of those wonderfully absurd Warhammer moments that basically writes its own report: Salamanders fighting Salamanders… while another Salamanders mirror match was happening on the table next to them.
So yes, it was a proper green-on-green evening.
On the featured table, we had a fratricidal clash between Salamanders run as Deathwatch and Salamanders from Angels of Death. And despite all the shared drake iconography and noble intentions, once the dice started rolling it turned into a fast, brutal, very cinematic game.
Right from the start of the second Turning Point, the Angels of Death Salamanders launched themselves at their battle-brothers. On one flank, the Heavy Gunner pushed in. On the other, the Captain went to work. Through the middle came the Intercessors, and from there the game became a savage exchange of fire and charges.
Marines were dropping alarmingly fast for a power-armour matchup. It really had that feeling of every activation mattering, every trade being painful, and no one getting to breathe for long.
One of the best moments of the game came when the Deathwatch Gunner completely failed to do anything meaningful to the opposing Captain. Sometimes the big guns just refuse to cooperate. But then Aegis sprinted in and solved the problem the old-fashioned way: with a mace, taking the Captain’s head off.
Naturally, this being that kind of game, Aegis only got a brief heroic moment before dying shortly after. Very on brand for a battle report we would retell over the table later.
What made the game especially fun was that, despite those explosive moments, the Angels of Death Salamanders never managed to build a truly comfortable lead. It stayed blow for blow almost the whole way through.
By the fourth Turning Point, the teams were tied on Crit Ops and Tac Ops, so the whole result came down to the Kill Op. That final point swing decided everything: the Angels of Death Salamanders edged it because they had two models left standing, while the Deathwatch side had only one survivor.
Final score: 14:12 for the Angels of Death Salamanders.
It was one of those wins that really hung by a thread until the very end, but in the end it felt fully deserved.
And because no Salamanders-heavy evening would be complete without admiring the armies themselves: there was also some genuinely nice paintwork on display.
Meanwhile, on the second table, command duties were apparently handled by a proper Adrax, which is exactly the kind of energy we want to see in a Salamanders gathering.
We love games like this. Tight scoreline, ridiculous mirror-match energy, cinematic heroics, and just enough surviving models at the end to make everyone double-check the scoring one last time. A proper battle report and a very good reminder that even among the sons of Vulkan, things can get extremely messy.