White Scars - Against the Hydra: The White Scars are proud, but rarely are they arrogant. The sons of the Great Khan recognise the galaxy always has another lesson to teach, and they have adapted and refined their hunting techniques over the millennia in response to defeats and new threats.Never has there been a more deadly or unpredictable quarry than the Tyranid hive fleets; the White Scars have been forced to learn and adapt faster than ever before in the face of this onrushing xenos threat, often at a cost in blood.Upon the world of Haadekh in the late 41st Millennium, a strike force of 2nd Brotherhood warriors under the command of Chaplain Subdakhar lost this contest of hunter and prey when the swarms of Hive Fleet Hydra overran them utterly. The defeat was costly and gruesome, and could not go unavenged.Yet Khajog, the khan of the 2nd Brotherhood, recognised that new hunting tactics would be required if this deadly prey were to be defeated and another massacre prevented. Drawing upon the wealth of strategic lore he had amassed in the libraries of Quan Zhou, and consulting for long solar days with the Chapter's Stormseers, Khajog Khan at last settled upon a stratagem.The White Scars met the Hydra once again upon the unstable volcanic world of Horatian Utukh, a planet Khajog Khan believed the perfect hunting ground. Drawn by the biomass within the planet's bore hives, the Tyranids were already attacking when the White Scars arrived; chitinous bodies piled against the cities' walls like living ramparts.Khajog Khan sent in a strike force armed with every Flamer weapon that could be amassed, from man-portable firearms to Incendium Cannons. Deploying to the Tyranids' rear at Hive Lakhvor, the 2nd Brotherhood unleashed a firestorm that ravaged the massed broods and burned away xenos flesh quicker than it could regenerate.The Tyranids turned upon this fresh prey, their psychic screams through the Hive Mind drawing down waves of brood-spores from orbit. Immediately the White Scars fell back, plunging into the unstable lavafields and drawing the Tyranids after them.Battle-brothers were lost as racing transports were overtaken by the surging tidal wave of Tyranids. Yet the White Scars knew that victory could not come without cost, and plunged on, deeper into the shuddering landscape of cracked basalt plates and roiling lava. Still they fired into the Tyranid masses, their aircraft crisscrossing in savage attack runs that slew ever-more leader beasts.In their death throes, these monsters summoned yet more bio-spawn into the lava fields until at last, the critical mass of living organisms was too much for the fragile ground. Upon Khajog Khan's signal, gunships and tank transporters executed screaming dives into the rupturing lava fields, swooping up the surviving White Scars even as the ground shattered and molten rock surged hungrily upwards. Hundreds of thousands of Tyranid bioforms were annihilated in a matter of solar minutes.Khajog Khan and his warriors soared like Chogorian berkut back to their waiting Strike Cruisers to re-arm, reinforce, and repeat their cunning ruse. It was only the first victory of a long and gruelling campaign against the Hydra, but it was the beginnings of vengeance.