Cityfight! 3000 points! Carnage!

3000 points - Black Scorpions (Blood Angels) Vs The Ultramarines.

THE TABLE

The City!

There would be 5 objectives up for the taking. One in the Church Ruins, The centre fountain, the ruins to the bottom left, the yellow building on the left, and the tall ruined building behind the woods.

THE ARMIES

This battle would feature 2 rough and tough lists.

Chriss went for 2 squads of 7 Hammernators, A terminator Librarian, Marneus Calgar, A 5 man honour guard, 2 sniper scout squads, 2 tactical squads in drop pods, 3 iron clad dreadnoughts in drop pods and an incredible 4... yes 4!!!!! Thunderfire cannons. Ouch!

My army was as follows:

A Storm Raven carrying a death company dread and a tactical squad. Two more tactical squads on foot along with a 6 man Sternguard squad with Corbulo. A ten man assault squad, a 10 man death company with bolters and a 10 man death company with jumppacks (two FOC's) Also, each DC was accompanied by chaplains (Lemartes and a standard Reclusiarch). Two 8 man Devastator squads would accompany the footslogging tacticals.

To top off the list, the mighty mephiston would be joining the fight along with a Furioso dreadnought.


TURN 1

Chriss won the roll off to see who went first. He quickly decided that I would go first. Most of his army was dropping in, and he also needed to position his thunderfires accurately.  I set up with two concentrated forces, one on each side of the board. Chriss set up his thunderfires in techmarine bolstered ruins with direct line of sight to my army. He also places his 2 sniper scouts in cover gaining a 2+ cover save... ugh.

My first turn consisted of very little. Few of Chriss' units were on the table :(

I took some pots shots at this thunderfires, he prompty made his 3+ cover saves. Turn over.... This was going to be a tough one.

Cannon to the right of them, Cannon to the left of them...

The King of Bling himself. Calgar!

Mephiston, Sternguard and a Tactical wait for the inevitable shelling

Chriss started his turn with a big smile on his face mentioning how much he was looking forward to his 'thunderfire goodness' He promptly dumped 3 ironclads into my lines which flamed and melta'd a few marines. Their impact wasn't huge but they'd be a speed bump for me in my next turn. An armour 13, invulnerable to Krak, power armour smashing speed bump. It's also worth noting that ALL of chriss' drop pods had located beacons, meaning he could place the next wave exactly where he wanted it.

Then came the thundering volleys.... this is when things went downhill quickly. Stg 6 blast markers all over the place. Chriss rolled INSANELY well for scatter hitting almost everything. My rolling on the other hand was awful... failing roughly 50% + of my power armour rolls. Marines were dropping like flies. I lost roughly 15 marines....ouchkabibbles!

The Ironclad incinerates two marines and steals a hull point from my dread.

Douche City

TURN 2

Both my reserved Storm Raven and 10 man Assault squad entered the fray! I could finally start to react to Chriss' hard hitting strategy. I dropped my 10 man squad in Chriss' back line. I was aware they'd die quickly but I need to buy some time... He wouldn't be able to ignore 10 angry marines hungry for revenge.

Reinforcements!

I promptly started to return fire. My tactical squad on the right missed with their melta and lascannon. My dreadnought however managed to glance it. Not a good result. My Storm raven proceeded to shoot everything it had at the Ironclad skulking behind the woods, immobilising it. An OK result.

The other Ironclad, directly below me took the full force of missiles and melta sternguard, taking off 2 hull points. Terrible rolling struck again. Mephiston tried his hand with a plasma pistol shot but it overheated, and he failed his 2+ armour save.... and his feel no pain. So far,... a great day!

Woe is me! What a terrible shooting phase. I decided to go all out, I assaulted the two dreads nearest me. The dread on the far right lost another hullpoint as did mine, stalemate. Mephiston promptly smashed one dread into tiny pieces. YAY! First blood to me!

One threat down... 40568 to go.

Chriss was marvelling at my terrible rolling as two of his dreads were still in the game. He decided that the assault squad in his back line was too big a threat. A tactical squad and an honour guard dropped in and surrounded the brave (and stupid) marines. 7 Terminators also materialised near the middle, ready to push forward into my lines.

Uh oh...

Hammernators!

The Jump Pack Death Company would be challenged!

Another volley of insanely accurated thunderfire shots decimated my lines. Marines dropped like flies.. AGAIN. A combination of accurate fire and woeful, abyssmal, depressingly bad armour saves caused casualties everywhere. My assault marines at the back took rapid firing bolters and sniper shots and plasma shots etc etc. This time however, Chriss' rolled badly not causing a huge amount of wounds. I however made up for that with another round of terrible rolling. 5 marines were downed...!! from about 7-8 wounds. To make this worse, Chriss' charged in 5 scouts. He killed two marines, I killed none. My marines fled.... from Scout NOOBS!! This day wasn't going well. Chriss' did note that he'd just committed 600+ points to the far corner of the table to remove an assault squad. Would this come back to haunt him?

To console me, my dread locked in combat with an Ironclad managed to take it's last hull point.

Allow me to illustrate. At the end of Turn 2 the casualites were as follows:

Chriss' losses

My losses....

TURN 3

Despite being blasted to hell and back I soldiered on. I knew there was a possibility to salvage this if I could do some damage. I still had two full death company squads and a storm raven full of stuff. If only I could push back and cause some damage....

I stopped taking so many pictures at this point but in short: I swung my storm raven round and blew up a drop pod, hoping to cause an explosion that would kill some tacticals and scouts surrounding my Assault marines. I did! and killed nothing in the ensuing blast. This sounds like a terrible waste of shooting but at this point there were no decent targets for the Stormravens' cargo or weapons.

 What was left of my shooting forces did little, most were cowering in the ruins trying to hold on to the objectives.

However, It was my time for revenge!  Lemartes and the Death Company sallied forth and charged headlong into the hammernators!

REHRVERHNGE!!!

Lemartes challenged the Sergeant, slaying him with is rage induced raging rage attacks. (Keep in mind that Chriss had to roll 1's to fail any saves) The rest of the Death company sported 8 marines with 40 regular attacks, 1 with 4 powerfist attacks and 1 with 5 power axe attacks. Death Company get to re-roll failed misses AND wounds on the charge IF they're accompanied by a chaplain. Weapons skill 5 and strength 5! I scored 37 wounds out of 40.... say it with me... 37!!! Chriss failed 7 saves exactly and that was that. I didn't even get to strike with my powerfist or axe. Revenge is a dish best served with Death Company!

More death company goodness.

In the ruined cathedreal my Death Company managed to reach combat. Only 5 made it close enough to strike but it was enought to slay 3 marines. They were locked in combat with the sergeant.

FAIL!

My surviving assault marines tried to take out the techmarine. He saved all the wounds inflicted and killed the two marines. A fitting end to a squad who ran away from sniper scouts.

Chriss' had little to do in his turn other than push forward and try and kill something with his thunderfire cannons. He finally wiped out the devastators in the ruins and kill a couple of Death Company marines from the squad that just wiped out his terminators.

Near the cathedral he charged in his honour guard, hoping to take out some death company. My Chaplain challenged his chapter champion, striking first due to ini 5. Luckily for me, the chaplain found a chink in the champions armour and smashed his face in. The rest of the squad fared badly, he missed a fair amount of his attacks. He killed 2 death company only and lost the two honour guard with power axes.

The second Death Company do well.

Close combat was not working well for Chriss' my terrible start to the game began to take a slightly more positive turn as Chriss's left flank was falling.

TURN 4

Turn 4 was a quick affair. My storm raven turned around and offloaded the tactical squad inside into the centre fountain, claiming the objective.

It is mine!

My storm raven also dropped a Death Company Dreadnought which proceded to move toward the chaos near my deployment zone. It quickly smashed into the the tactical squad which had drop podded in last turn and killed them all. It was only a 5 man combat squad, the dastardly Chriss' anticipated this carnage. The thunderfires again took pot shots at various surviving marines wiping out my second devastator squad and causing considerable casualties on the squad hiding in the fountain.

TURN 5

This was were I needed to make everything count. It was potentially the last turn so 'all hands on deck'!

Again, the Death Company cause carnage

I committed everything to the fight. My dreadnought, deathcompany and mephiston charged into Chriss' second terminator squad. Luckily a lonely surviving sternguard was holding away Marneus Calger. Mephiston slew the sergeant in a challenge and the death company, despite being fewer in number still managed to inflict a horrendous amount of wounds. Chriss rolled the exact amount of 1's needed to wipe the squad out, including the librarian. 

Marneus faces down the Death Company

 The lonely banner bearer is finally slain. The Death Company surging forward toward the Techmarine scoring a Linebreaker! victory point

Chriss then moved Marnus Calgar toward Mephiston hoping to slay him for a victory point. Mephiston is a bit shit now due to being AP3. Marneus only inflicted 3 wounds and Mephiston none, seeing as Calgar had a 2+ save. Poo! Chriss' did not slay the warlord but did gain Linebreaker.

 Chriss the rolled to see if the game would continue, rolling a 1. We then tallied the score!:

Ruins: Ultramarines! 3 Victory points!

Fountain: Black Scorpions! 3 Victory points!

Yellow Building: nobody....

Cathedral: Black Scorpions! 3 Victory Points!

Ruins: Ultramarines! 3 Victory points!

Total:
Black Scorpions 8 victory points (2 objectives, Line Breaker and First Blood)
Ultramarines 7 victory points (2 objectives, Line Breaker)

What an insane game! By far the most exciting, fun and enjoyable game of 40k I've ever had. It was so close at the end. I feel pretty good for not losing hope and soldiering on. Despite Chriss' super accurate, carnage causing thunderfires I'd managed to steal victory by the skin of my teeth. The first 2 turns were hard to get through, I was literally being blown off the table. Chriss' was astounded by how accurate his scatter dice were, claiming on multiple occasions 'I swear this is random' or 'I'm not cheating!'. It was quite amazing. If he did get an arrow on the scatter dice he seemed to roll a 1's and 2's therefore getting hits anyway.

A milestone for me was finally getting my Blood Talon Death Company Dread into close combat. Chriss ruined my fun by combat squading his tactical marines so I only got to kill 5.

Both my death company squads saved the day for me. The man of the match has to go to Lemartes for slaying two sergeants in challenges and leading the death company to glory against 2 squads of Hammernators and a Librarian.

I mean, the stats are just ridiculous. WS 5, 2 base attacks, relentless, rage, feel no pain, furious charge, re rolls to wound and hit on the charge if they have a chaplain.

Many thanks to Chriss' for being a great opponent all the way through. We came to the conclusion after the game that Death Company led by chaplains are insane.... and thunderfires now ROCK.... They are tough now, and can lay down serious firepower as well as hold their own if they're assaulted. The Techmarine is no slouch in close combat either, 2 regular attacks, 2 powerfist attacks and a 2+ save. Might have to get me an allied thunderfire.

Space Marine Thunder Bolt II aka 'Warthog'

Finally made some progress on my counts as Storm Raven. It's not 100% complete yet but it's getting there. Some clean up on the hightlighting and the scorpion logo and some more detail and I'll be close!

Here it is!

A nurgle Sentinel gunned down!

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!!!

Progress - The Hydrobian 8th 'The Rags and Riches'

The Hydrobian 8th are recruited from the captial hive city of the lanet Arcturus: Hydrobius Altus. A sprawling mountain of metal and stone. A gleaming tower of trade, merchandise and industry yet its underbelly is violent and dangerous place. Every year a lottery is taken selecting young men from the hive to join the 8th. There are no families that can escape this selection, underhive scum are rounded up along with the firstborn of Lords and Barons. Even the Lord Governors family is not safe. Hence the Regiments name ' The Rags and Riches '

Enough background. Here's the WIP!

I'm modelling this army on the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games. I really wanted to get the feel of an Imperial Guard army that gives it's soldiers decent weaponry. Also, I HATE HATE HATE the standard lasgun, it's so massive compared to the models. So spent months... yes months, trawling the internett looking for a decent replacement. I settled on HassleFree Miniatures m16 Assault Rifle. When I got them I went.. 'SHIT!' Cos they seemed so small but I continued, Once painted up they actually look great. phew.


1st Squad, 1st Platoon!

Autocannon ftw! I really liked the idea of taking a .50 Cal into combat. You can't take stubbers so... Autocannon it is!

I also studied a hell of a lot of military pictures to try and get the poses right. Rreally happy with this one. Using his left arm as a stabiliser.

Dudesmen! Really like the helmets.

 2nd Squad, 1st Platoon!

There is an autocannon missing, not painted yet.

Thanks to Rik for the super awesome goggle cadian heads. They seem to fit sooo well with the m16.

Forward!

Ahh, My new passion. Mortars! I'm going run at least 4 squads. I figure, they cost 60 pts. If I have enough of them they will eventually kill something. Plus they look cool!

I used a mix of Catachan bits to represent these guys sweating in the back line, not really needing their armour or try to cool off while they wait for orders.

Two more Autocannon teams to be attached to future Squads. Notice the 40 mm bases? I'm hoping ppl will be OK with that. the 60mm bases are just way too big!

Dakka dakka dakka dakka!

My allied imperial guard will never leave home without some hard cover. I had half an Aegis line left but needed some more wall. I used the extra flash you get from ForgeWorld models to use as the barriers. They kinda look like motorway concrete separators. 

Barbed While and Sand bags a plenty!

This is the 'counts as' Quad Cannon Anti Aircraft gun.

 For those of you interested, look up CIWS Goalkeeper system on youtube and you'll know why I wanted to make this!

Really happy with it. but it looks nasty, I think it might attract some fire 'in-game'

Oh, and wee extra thingy, It's 100% complete yet but I'm tired of playing games with crappy objectives. I'm going to make 6 unique objectives on 60 mm bases. This one works well as a Relic. 'An excavation team as dug up an ancient grail.... Claim it! '