The War to end all Wars! - 18,000 point Apocalypse!

And so it was that the day was finally upon us. A few months of planning, some quick painting and a lot logistics were finally finished and we stood ready to do battle on an epic scale! We set up the table the night before and had everything ready so we could start early on saturday morning.

The Teams

The forces of Light:
Rory aka 'Rottimus' - Black Scorpion Legion  (counts as Blood angels)
Chriss - Ultramarines
Mons - Eldar

The forces of Darkness:
Rik - Traitor Guard
Magnus - Traitor Guard & Chaos Marines
Mattias - Chaos Marines & Daemons

The Table:

The Battlefield - The forces of light would be assaulting a fortress!

I won't write a full battle report because as most readers will know, Apocalypse is simply wholesale destruction. In short, The forces of light went first, Our opening turn wasn't particularly successful, the most powerful eldar weapon, the big red hover tank in the middle, missed with its massive D cannon. We quickly noticed that we we're horribly outgunned with most of our points being sunk into hard troops or deathstar units. We faced 12 leman russ tanks, 3 bane blades, 1 macharius, 6 basilisks and 1 vortex/deathstrike missile.

An impressive array of weapons

We on the other hand had 2 basilisks, 3 leman russes, an Eldar D-cannon super heavy, a Titan and a special mega dread. Most of our points were in the 4 land raiders filled with terminators and death company.

The battle was quite close for the first 2 turns but the sheer number of enemy heavy weapons took its toll. We pushed forward but made several key mistakes (hindsight ftw!). A linebreaker squadron pushed forward up the road toward the gate house. Instead of individually firing their guns at say, a super heavy, we elected to use the super large blastmarker to take out guardsmen...(why!!!) Our D-cannon super heavy also made the mistake of trying to take out the vortex missile launcher on the first turn... which when I think about it was silly seeing at how it can't fire on its next first turn anyway. We should have targetted the 6 russes and 30 chaos marines right in front of us.




D-cannon here please

Some highlights ofhe game included blowing up a baneblade resulting in a 18 inch atomic blast! Mons rolled 3 6's!!! Carnage ensued. Scheduled bombardment also proved usefull taking out many tanks and marines on both sides.

Around 11 at night, having played for 12 hours straight, on the force of darkness' 3rd turn we decided to end things. The forces of darkness held their home objective and everything else was contested. At the end of turn three things were looking a little negative. Not terrible though. We had plenty of models to take back our home objectives easily, and a no mans land objective was only contested by a Chaos Lord who faced a full death company. I reckon the game would have been a draw, possibly even a win for us if we'd played to turn 4 (that sounds bitter doesn't it? It gets worse, keep reading! :-)

Our points were mostly sunk into hard, tough troops and elites all of which were still alive. I think I had roughly 4200 points left on the table when we finished. miraculous considering it was Apocalypse.


Conclusion?

We made poor use of our forces. The more I think about it the more I realise the other team simply had a better & simpler plan and made better use of their units. They set their army up with 3 defensive lines full of armor 14 and 3+ cover save troops i.e totally expendable. They had a relatively simple plan, Hold the two home objectives, destroy one using a daemon called Mamon (he can rot away an objective) and that's basically it.

We on the other hand didn't really have an overall plan, only lots of smaller Use A to destroy B plans. Most of which failed. We held the line quite well though. Hindsight isn't wonderful, it's a bitch. Usually one crucial mistake can make you lose, we made several.

On a side note, Mattias, the Daemon player had some really nasty combos. Mamon, a nurgle daemon prince can rot away an objective. This particular ability was revealed only after Chriss had committed his reserves. Two important scoring tacticals squads to the far left moved onto the board near this objective, only to be told that the objective would be gone next turn, with no real hope of stopping the destruction.

The Chaos Lord also had some wargear, I can't remember what it was, but it allowed all deepstriking units to not scatter. Something that proved very usefull on turn three when about 7 different units appeared exactly where they were needed. The stench of parmesan, cheddar and brie was strong at this point! :) After the battle my team felt that this was slightly unfair. The reason being that before the game, we'd agree to limited wargear that had large ranges or full table effects.

How to make it better for next time?

We had far too many points and too much terrain. We started in a city which made maneuvering very difficult. There was just too much stuff on the board. It was chaos. Also, more openess about wargear. This can be debated as you aren't techincally required to explain all your wargear without being asked.

We had booked the whole weekend for play and we all foolishly decided to play on to late in the evening. By then people were exhausted and weren't keen on coming back in the morning. We should have played until 7 or 8 and then started again in the morning.

We also decided that with SO many points, each turn just felt punishing. You get shot at for an hour, then assaulted for another 30 minutes. In most normal games you can lose 3 to 4 hundred points in a turn. In apoc you're losing 1000+. It's a different mindset.

A bad loser?

Me!

I'll freely admit that losing doesn't feel awesome. I'm not a classic sore loser in the sense that I'll smash my models and cry if I lose. This loss wasn't even big. It was hard fought and very close. I do however have trouble losing to bad winners. Towards the end of the third turn, I had to roll 5 armor saves for some terminators, I rolled 3 1's. That stings a bit. It stings even more when your arch-enemy (in this case the dreaded Rik) bursts out in what can only be described as laughter that would put the Joker to shame.  Needless to say I didn't really see what was so funny. It's a personal peeve of mine, I've always felt one must be gracious in defeat AND in victory. That being said, I'm not a pillar of honour, just conditioned not to gloat. I literally have a BIG brother, any gloating or laughing was quickly followed by a severe beating so its just something I don't do.

I realised quickly enough that I was getting angry over picking up and moving a piece of plastic but it was more a mix of things so Rik isn't entirely to blame. I apologised and so did he so no worries there.

The game was simply too long and I think everyone's patience was thinning at this point, apart from Magnus who seemed to have a zen like calm about everything, even after losing three demolishers from 5 heroically intervening Vanguard. We packed up amidst a slightly strained atmosphere for which I was partly to blame. I apologised to those affected afterwards and we all concluded that the game was really fun up until around 9-10 o'clock. so, 11 hours of fun vs 1-2 hours of 'a bit crappy' is pretty good I think.

So the conclusion is crankyness, tiredness, low blood sugar, and apocalypse doesn't mix. Also, losing to an Englishman is more than my proud Scottish heart can take! :-)

A MASSIVE thank you to Chriss for organising everything, driving people home and putting up with our smells.

Thanks to all who participated! I did genuinly have a good time. Looking forward to the next battles.

And to Rik, you may have won the battle, but you have not won the war!!! :-)

More pics coming soon!!!