14,000pt Apocalypse Game

Hey guys and girls. Last week 5 mates and I spent a day playing a rather large apocalypse game. Although I tried to keep a track on what was going on, the pressing need to focus on what 28,000pts of models were up too kept me occupied! So below you can see some snaps from the event along with a few recollections of what might have been going on at the time. Enjoy!

Terrain set up - I find that 12'x4' can accommodate this size game quite well. Just be sure to 'clump' terrain and leave open areas

My contribution to the good side - 7000pts, exactly half the combined army.

The forces played out as follows:

Good

Imperial Guard, Imperial Navy, Inq, Dark Angels

Black Templars

Eldar

Bad

Chaos (including Iron Warriors, Tratior Guard, a Warhound and two Superheavies)

Eldar

Inital deployment saw the Chaos bidding low and deploying in force and the Imperials grouping into what cover they could find.

Chaos Warhound = Awesome

Turn 1 - The Choas forces pull out a careful planning asset and swarm the field with their forces, vastly outnumbering the Imperials.

Iron Warriors defend the Slaaneshi doomsday device, otherwise known as the 'Doom Nipple'

Chaos Turn 2 - The remainder of the Heretical forces (along with Eldar allies) arrive, continuing the punish the Imperial forces mercilessly. The good side hadn't even received any reserves at this point!

A Warp Rift spews forth Daemon Filth - much to the delight of the Daemonhost hiding to the right of the picture (it managed to make itself T9 and S8. Yes please!)

Imperial Reinforcements arrive to redress the balance. They have an uphill struggle.

The might of the Imperial Navy makes itself felt - killing 45 Khorne Berserkers with its bombs alone.

Templar bikers launch a suicidal charge into traitor Terminators holding an objective - straight into the face of the Chaos guns...

A quiet corner of the field is set upon by a Dark Angel Redemption force hunting one of the Fallen

Turn 3 - Imperial Guardsmen arrive to bolster the rapid moving Astartes, their guns thinning down a Berserker charge led by no less than Abaddon and Khan.

Its raining men around the Doom Nipple (or, Black Templars assault the Doomsday device)

Sly Marbo makes himself known, hurling explosives into the now stalled Berserker charge

(Pictures of my painted Marbo soon!)

The end of turn 4 and, despite a early hammering, the fast moving Imperial forces have managed to secure 4 objectives to the 1 held by the Traitors. A glorious victory for the Emperor!

The charge that never was. Khan, so close to the softy chewy centre of the Imperial Army is forced to turn back. How odd that Khan suffered a similar fate at the end of a previous Apocalypse game!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

13,000 points of Apocalypse...

So lets start the new year with a little bit of excitement eh?

Months ago, the day before heading off to Games Day, myself and four friends played a 13,000 Apocalypse at my house. Kicking off at 10am and finishing sometime around 8pm, we managed to play a full 6 turns and rack up some considerable carnage!

What follows are some photos from the battle, including a video of the point where nearly all of the 26,000 points of models were on the table. I intend to let the photos mainly speak for themselves, as I've rather forgotten the flow of the battle! In addition to that I call on all of you to head over to forgotmytea. As a player on the opposition side, Ben has some much better photos of the battle (damn him and his good camaera), as well as a narative descripition of the role his Eldar played in the battle.

Enjoy!

The Board

In order to give the game a little bit of extra space, I used the Space Hulk board sections to create an underground tunnel system, with some extra rules and features. Although, in the event, these tunnels didn't really feature in the fighting, its an idea I would use again!

Deployment

Both armies bid highly with their deployment times, with the Evil armies going first. After labouring to place out nearly all their models, we rewarded the heretics hard work by declaring we would deploy nothing. A cunning plan was afoot.

Turn 1

Turn one came and went, as again the good forces committed no forces to the fight.

Turn 2

Turn 2, well, erm, still no actual fighting.

Turn 3

Turn 3. This was more like it. The Imperials had waited to commit all their forces in one go, the boards literally breaking under the weight of all the assembled models.

Turn 4

65 Terminators from various chapters deep struck into the enemies rear, following two orbital bombardments.

Rhinos form a screen around the entrance to the tunnel system, whilst Tactical Marines descend to clear out the aliens and heretics within.

Turn 5

Terminators charge the mass ranks of Necrons. Despite their unchallenged destructive power, the presence of 5 Resurrection Orbs meant they simply couldn't kill the machines fast enough.

Carnage across the table!

And combat in the tunnels...

Turn 6

The Terminators, now severely depleted, still try to deal with the un-dying masses of Necrons.

The damned indestructible monoliths, sitting atop an objective each.

By the end of a hard days fighting, victory narrowly law with the forces of evil, by one objective. This was in no small part due to the fact we simply couldn't kill off 120+ Necron warriors, and the Monoliths squatting over vital objectives. Still, an exceptionally fun day, I hope you all enjoyed the photos!

Updates: Vogen '09 & Tale of Painters

Today's post is a quick update on my two main projects, should any of you out there be following them. I'll start with the more boring of the two:

Tale of Painters 3: Jokered 

Regular readers will have noticed that there's not been much new painting around here of late. In fact I've only painted 2/3rds of a single Terminator this month, indeed I've not had much time for 40k at all recently. I'm not going to bore you with the reasons for this but it does mean I've have to use my one 'Joker' in the Tale of Painters Comp. The joker effectively allows you to get away with submitting no painted models for a month without going out of the competition. 

I've had to play this card a bit earlier than I had planned, but we are now half way through & I'm confident I can see the project through to the end. My current schedule only demands one painted model a week - as I only I have 7 Deathwing, 3 Ravenwing & Belial left to complete.

For those interested in the overall competition, here are a few statistics that the fantastic organiser Cyric the Mad complied: 

• 54 Entrants
  
• 54% have Jokered out (i.e. left the competition)
  
• 24% are on-track
  
• 22% are a little behind 

Given that rate of attrition I don't feel so bad! I strongly suggest you have a root around on the Librarium projects forum, there are some excellent ToP armies being built. 

And on to update two...

Vogen '09 Update

Well, after Malcom Wilson asked for a proper Vogen Campaign update I though I had better bring it all up to speed. 

The two battle reports that have been written so far have dealt with my Dark Angels' games up till Campaign turn 8. 

The start of Campaign turn 9 looked something like this:

As you can see there were three major conflicts on the day, but we only managed to get round to 2 of them. Both turned out to be Apocalypse games and, although I was unable to take detailed battle reports, I have a few snaps of both of them. 

1. Necrons vs. Eldar - 2500pts Apoc. (For 8 contested victory points)

From what I saw of this game, it was a (sometimes) surprisingly close contest between Wookie (using elements of my Eldar models) & Vessey's Necrons. It seemed for a while that the entirely Mech. Eldar force might keep itself out of the Necron clutches. However after stretching his force a little too far Wookie was eventually bogged down and taken to pieces by the C'tan, who were both present! 

Necrons: 3 Objectives     Eldar: 1 Objective

This victory won Vessey three territories and leaves him at the head of the leaderboard. Wookie on the other hand is in dire straights. Boxed in and with no VP's he is going to need to work hard to turn things around. His occupation of the Water Plant allows does allow him to strike anywhere in the city, but he's going to have to be clever to use that to his advantage. 

2. Dark Angels Vs. Tyranids - 2500pts (For 4 Contested Victory Points) 

Determined to see off any challengers Alex showed his love of Forge World by bringing no less than 3 (!!!!) Gargantuan Creatures to the table. His two Hierodules and one Harridan dominated my combined Dark Angels/Imperial forces, and the table soon became a tank grave yard. I also had some terrible luck with deep strike, with one Deathwing Squad being lost to the warp while another ended up in an entirely useless spot. This was crucial as their 2+ saves were the only thing standing up the Tyranid fire.

Tyranids: 2 Objectives     Dark Angels: 2 Objective

With some admittedly clever maneuvers I managed to scrape a draw against the beasts. However, this did not help me. Draws in campaign games are decided by victory points (who wrote these rules!!??.....oh yeah, I did) and by the end Alex had claimed more than double the VP's I had. This left him in control of Angel Square, and me in some desperate need of Super Heavy support. 

So, after this day's games we were left with the following:

The game between Sam and Alex is hopefully going to be played shortly. However I'm afraid after that there will be no updates until Easter time, when we all reconvene. I hope this has wetted your appetite enough till then! I certainly can't wait to exact some vengeance on Alex, and work out how to get out of this mess I find myself in...

Anyway, this 'short update' got a tad more detailed than I had planned, but here's hoping that nobody is complaining! I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on the update. I've also got two non-campaign battle reports to write up for the blog soon (including one with my Saim-Hann!) and hopefully there will be some painting updates soon.

Thanks for reading guys!