25,000pt Apocalypse battle [5th Edition] - part 2

Once again due to the unique way of preparing these posts in advance I have stumbled on a new problem. I still have battle reports for 5th Edition while I'm exploring new 6th Editon so I hope you don't mind having to straddle the two rule-sets to enjoy what went down. For one you've no choice and for two I'm not about to dump the content. This was my final 5th Edition battle, a 25,000pt Apocalypse War, before 5th went off and  expired quietly in a corner somewhere.

Here come the Stealers! Both units of Adrenal Stealers came on and the Ymgarls woke from dormancy in the building complex top left. The Stealers and the broodlords multi-assaulted the three Whirlwinds and the deathstrike missile launcher, the Ymgarls went for the Techpriest and the bombard.

The Doom of Malantai emerged from the spore pod and sucked the life out of varied bikers and guardsmen but quite a few managed their cover saves from this life sucking psychic ability [don't even get me started on that nonsense!]

In the lower corner the bulk of the nids suddenly faced a group of outflanking White Scars but the Trygon looked on hungrily, meanwhile the IG heavy Weapons team are no longer a threat. The Tervigon must have spawned the 10 Termagants next to it.

The stealers survey their carnage, all three Whirlwinds wrecked or blown to smithereens, the Deathstrike Missile Launcher gone as was the Bombard and Techpriest, allowing the Ymgarls to consolidate back into the terrain they'd lain dormant in. BOOM!

The Trygon licked it's lips having eaten all the White Scars bikers with the Hive Tyrant but their frenzied attack caught the attention of the Imperial Guard tanks.

The Leman Russ trained its weapons on the Hive Tyrant and blasted it out of existence. Meanwhile the Devgaunts were rooted out of the ruins and more assault marines came on and charged the Termagants and Tervigon. My disrupter beacon continued to play merry havoc with all deep striking units, not least Belial and his attendant Deathwing who ended up perched on the first story of a building in the middle of the battlefield with nothing to shoot and nowhere to go.

In retaliation for the death of the Hive Tyrant the Trygon smashed the Leman Russ to pieces while the Hive Guard shot their Impaler Cannons round corners to destroy one land Speeder and wing another.

The Trygon looked on hungry for it's next target.

The Termagants were reduced down to three and thee Tervigon was on four wounds

While the Hive Guard and Biovore continued to take cover from the ruins safe in their ability to fire indirectly.

The battle in full flow, you can just make out Belials Deathwing on the building middle left above the yellow tape measure. Also of note is the White Scar Drop Pod dead centre of the board sandwiched between the ruin and the Fortress of Redemption. This catastrophic miscalculation due to disruptor beacon interference had essentially car parked the entire Imperial Guard frontal assault which was aiming to drive through this choke point. I was beginning to feel extremely mean about my asset at this point. One other point to make is the missing Warlord Carapace, don't worry it was OK, just kept falling off and it was deemed safer to leave it off.

And here comes the pain, Vendettas swooped in offloading dedicated verteran Xeno purge teams with their many flamers incinerated every Genestealer in sight around the two wrecked Whirlwinds and bruning the Ymgarls out of their hibernation spots.

And that was it for me, time to leave. I have to say this was the most fun Apocalypse game I've ever had. My little force did a lot of damage and went out with a blaze of glory. The fact outflankers will no longer be able to do damage in the way my Stealer just decimated the back field is sad but what a finale! Not to mention the giddy fun but eventual apologetic annoyance my disruptor beacon made to the entire game. What a blast!

25,000pt Apocalypse battle [5th Edition] - part 1

Once again due to the unique way of preparing these posts in advance I have stumbled on a new problem. I still have battle reports for 5th Edition while I'm exploring new 6th Edition so I hope you don't mind having to straddle the two rule-sets to enjoy what went down. For one you've no choice and for two I'm not about to dump the content. This was my final 5th Edition battle, a 25,000pt Apocalypse War, before 5th went off and  expired quietly in a corner somewhere.

I hadn't had much intention to go to the Apocalypse battle at my local friendly neighbourhood gaming club but the wife was amenable so I thought why not. I'd also heard another of my old gaming buddies may turn up, he has around 13,000pts of 'nids which would have been fun, but alas didn't come to pass. Anyway when I got there the 'axis of good was in the process of setting up their 25,000pts. As you can see the setup was vanguard strike, although that's it's 6th name, not sure if it was the same in 5th. Just for context those are 2'x4' panels making a 12'x8' battlefield. Also I think some of the pics are a little out of chronology but I don't think it'll be too bad as I'm only really covering what happened to me, too much was going on to cover the entire battle.

I asked if there was room for my 2,000 pts of 'nids and the 'axis of evil' who were still to setup had only brought 23,000pts so how perfect was that to allow my force to balance the sides? I would also get to choose a strategic asset. I had a quick look at the variety of little doodads you can choose to disrupt, enhance or delay your opponents. In the end, having seen the masses of drop pods waiting to come in I chose a 'disruptor beacon' it was cited just to the right of the Honoured Imperium statue in the picture above. This little device means anything that deep strikes within 48" of the beacon can be repositioned by me anywhere else on the battlefield on a 4+ [what's the symbol for evil grin smilie].

This is the evil deployment, Necrons, Orks, some Marines, some Chaos and the bulk of my 'nids in this lower corner, Hive Guard and Warriors skulking behind the Land Raider for cover. Yes, that's a Warlord Titan on the right, sadly he kept falling apart but it did add to the drama when his torso would randomly crash forwards, if only that had been when he was shot. Dan standing in the background from the goodies, he had Dark Angel's.

My deployment in the lower corner - Devgaunts in the building, Hive Tyrant, Hormies, Tervigon and Trygon, the Warriors and Hive Guard behind the two Land Raiders. The remaining two broods of Adrenal stealers and a unit of Ymgarls ready to outflank in the very top left corner, hopefully, where there was an  awful lot of artillery. Lastly the Doom of Malantai in a Mycetic Spore...

The goodies were predominantly Space Marines - Dan and Rob's White Scars and Roy's Imperial Guard. As you can see the board was pretty packed and it soon became apparent that trying to move units to the centre of the board was a challenge - we needed some of those WW2 deployment map sticks you see in the films!

Roy's Heavy Weapons teams prepare to face the oncoming horde.

A unit of White Scar bikers that ended up facing my nids in the lower corner shortly after I'd finished deployment. Roy on the left, Dan next to him and Tom our Necron general on the right.

Another of Roy's heavy weapons teams, and what they'll be aiming at.

My Monstrous Creatures tower over an allied unit of Space Marine bikers.

The combined evil infantry at the bottom pic, Necrons and a lot of 'counts as' Orks face off against the many tanks of both the Space marines and the Imperial Guard.

Necron Wraiths eager to tear apart the metal boxes.

The awesome 'counts as' orks [or so I believe], everyone different

More of our infantry.

And yet more.

KABOOM! Not so much a pie plate as a serving platter. So when I decided to put my Warriors and Hive guard behind the two land Raiders for cover why did I not realise that given their 'alpha mech' status they would be a primary target for the goodies. Rob had three Vindicators that could combine their firepower into on massive blast template - covering the two Land Raiders and my 'nids.

Here's Rob's Vindicators taking aim, not to mention the assorted other vehicles keen to face down the 'deluded' blue marines.

Ouch, the Land Raider was toast, the Vindicator on the right also was down, but luckily for me I came out of with one wound on the Hive Guard a Warrior down and a few wounds on the remaining brood, it could have been so much worse.

First contact for me, a unit of Assault Marines target the Hormagaunts who suffer terrible loses despite holding onto the cover they were in. 

The Assault Marines wipe through the Hormagaunts and consolidate into the building hunting the Devgaunts on the third floor. 

So I'd lost the Hormies and taken wounds on my core units but amongst all of this the disruptor beacon was paying dividends by the score. With tunnel strategic assets around the feet of our Warlord Titan and main objective drop pods, teleporting Terminators and assault units all tried to secure a foothold in out deployment area but over half of them had their co-ordinates disrupted and I got to move them back to their own defensive positions. I actually felt sad about this in the end but they weren't too far from their own objective so there was still some good they could do in the battle.

Anyway, more to come too much for one post alone...

Warhammer World - Imperial Fists for Turiya64

OK, here's one for my blog buddy and STC 'guinea pig' Turiya64 he's a big fan of the Imperial Fists so I thought I'd treat him to the Warhammer World studio display.

I really like this Venerable Dreadnought, I thought it was Forgeworld but I see now it's the original metal one that's out of production [OOP as the say]

Some cool looking scouts.

Unfortunately the High Marshall of the Black Templars came out a bit blurred, I know he's not Imperial Fist but 2nd founding so he kinda counts. Anyway as he's the number one figure you see when you browser deletes your country preferences on the GW website I thought I'd capture him for posterity. I appreciate I didn't quite manage that but nevermind it's the thought that counts!

Warhammer World - Game 1 Night Lords [Blood Angels]

Here's the first game of the 'Let There be War' Tournament at Warhammer World. This was four of the local GW's in two teams - the 'Seasiders' (Southport and Blackpool stores) Vs the 'Inlanders' (Liverpool and Preston stores). Both my Son and I were obviously on the Southport side of the 'Seasiders' both with a 1000pts of 'Nids. The three games would utilise all three mission objectives and deployments. 

First match for me was a guy called Mark with his Night Lords [counts as Blood Angels]. Spearhead deployment with five objectives - one just on the upper side of the petrified forest were the Stealers infiltrated, another behind them. One in the centre of the board on the hill. He had a squad in the Razorback, a normal Dreadnought, a Librarian Dreadnought and the unit alongside the Razorback with an Assault Squad in reserve.

My deployment had the spore mine objective secured below the forest and the Hormagaunts heading for the building which contained and objective on the second floor.

The Hormagaunts got a decent run and captured the building objective.

I'm not sure who got first turn but I know the Tervigon spawned 8 and got doubles so not more Termagant troops for me. The Tyranid Warriors received a lot of attention from the Razorback and Dreadnoughts. Unfortunately I wasn't able to try some wound allocation shenanigans to try and keep the unit alive as Mark didn't seem familiar with using the Primes higher toughness to take one wound from the Las-cannons instead of Instant Deathing a whole Warrior. I wasn't going to be an a$$ about it so we carried on and the unit slowly whittled down.

Turn 2 and the Trygon deepstruck  and deviated, he's so unreliable. Mark was very generous in that he said he was just on the board, which was nice and karma rewarded him later. He shot with his Bio-Electric pulse and killed two of the Marines. In hindsight I'm not so sure I should have put him here he may have been better in the centre of the board.

Anyway, his Assault Squad deepstruck and he too deviated. I think the scatter dice should have had them a little closer to the board edge but even if they'd have been two feet onto the next board I'd have let him have them land safely considering his generosity with the Trygon.

The Hormagaunts took a bit of a pounding so I sent the Termagants in to shore them up and hopefully secure the objective. As you can see the Warriors have been decimated, with only the Barbed Strangler having taken a wound and Prime left. The Strangler got a beautiful pie plate to cover the entire Assault Squad but it either deviated or failed to wound a single Marine :(

The Trygon charged into combat, I guess the Bio-Electric pulse failed to take anymore down, or I forgot to shoot, but the assault was immense...

it killed a fair few, enough to cause a Leadership check which they failed and chased them down and ate the lot. That was a pretty awesome result but the consolidation didn't take me very far in my attempt to tackle the Razorback.

The Termagants failed to do any damage to the Assault squad, neither did the Prime. Meanwhile over on the left flank the Stealers had taken some casualties but had spread out to capture the forward objective and take cover.

Having spawned out the Tervigon did what I thought was the sensible thing and went for the Razorback and also the central objective. As you can see the Plasma/Missile Dread was pretty much slaughtering Hormagaunts and Warriors with abandon thanks to his central location and hilltop vantage point.

The Librarian Dread had all sorts of psychic advantages that managed to whip it about the field I think. So he slaughtered the Warrior and Prime, they weren't even strong enough to do any damage to its ceramite hide. The Termagants and Hormagaunts were roasted by hand flamers and shooting from the Plasma/Missile Dread.

Here come the reinforcements. Again deviation and again Mark was quite generous. I'd hoped to get them back here to shoot the Assault Squad down and recapture the building objective. Again this was a bit of a mistake.

The Razorback disgorged it's troops and targeted the Tervigon who received a number of wounds. The Assault Squad then charged in and I think slaughtered it.

Over on the right the other Assault Squad made it into the building and captured the objective the Devgaunts may have been whittled down to nothing and over on the left the Stealers conga lined to try and capture the two objective but Mark was adamant that they could not reach both objectives. So the end result was a LOSS as he had two objectives to my one.

In conclusion I think I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory here. I overstretched myself. Perhaps if the Trygon had come in on the centre objective it could have cleared the Plasma/Missile Dread or the Razorback allowing the Tervigon space to capture. But then perhaps the Tactical squad it ate would have had free reign to go for the Stealer's objective. Definitely if I'd put the Spore Pod down to capture the other objective on the left I could have saved a draw at least but at the time I thought the Stealers could have got both. Either way I think I should have done better, objective scoring is this lists forté and I blew it by trying to capture all of the objectives instead sticking to two or three at the most.