Sunday 27 November 2011

Apocalypse - Out

...finally

For some silly reason we ran the Prime at the Librarian squad and because he doesn't have fleet wasn't able to assault them. Stupid really, he only got 3" and didn't need them to make the assault but we abided the decision just because it was a valuable lesson. Thankfully we didn't need him as the Termagants managed to Poison the remaining Blood Angels and win the day, but non of the objectives.


Over on the other side, the Broodlord was squished, I think one weapon had been destroyed on the dread but it moved off in search of the Trygon. Nothing much happened apart from a few more of the other Blood Angels from the Rhino being picked off, though by warrior fire or Necron gauss I don't recall.


So my thoughts? We had a lot of fun. The last Apocalypse battle we went to was very hectic and the age range was significantly lower which made things more like herding cats. This time there was a lot of experience, maybe too much because we were often bemused by what was going on. Our little corner was pretty much self-contained. But, with so many taking part it was also a bit frustrating to suddenly have swathes of figures wiped off the board without much chance to use them or retaliate. For the most part we faced a squad of five marines, with a Librarian and they pretty much squashed the entire 'nid force flat! Maybe this is how most current games play, perhaps we're still not experienced enough about this to expect that the army you spent hours compiling doesn't get to do half the things you plan on it doing, I don't know. Maybe it's a peculiarity of Apocalypse, again I don't know. Don't get me wrong, it's not sour grapes. Neither my son nor I care whether we win or lose - there's nothing more fun than a spectacular loss but somehow we didn't even get that out of the poor Hormogaunts for instance. And deep-striking was pointless as we only had a couple of turns each and the wee-little Rippers never even got to gnash their teeth.

Saying that though we did have a lot of figures left and in another turn I think the Trygon would have squashed the dread, the Termagants could have captured the objectives and the Warriors would have mopped up anything else knocking about so we were well placed for further battle. Overall we enjoyed ourselves immensely and everyone was super nice and made us feel welcome but I was reminded of how much more fun it is to have a proper 'crew', a group of friends you can banter with and really enjoy the games. I may have some more to say on this in a future post, as a wise-man once said "things are afoot at the Circle K"

Saturday 26 November 2011

Apocalypse - and

Continuing on, here's the rest of the board, though I haven't a clue what was going on. I know my son suggested to the guy with the Necrons who had some power to take control of vehicles why didn't he target the Baneblade [which was actually a Tower of Skulls] which prompted a furious round of high-fives and cackles of glee as they hadn't thought of that!


Another shot of the lay of the land, which I love the board colours, almost 'Ferron' ;)


In their turn all the Hormogaunts were killed by an Orbital Bombardment thanks to Marneus Calgar half a board away. Only the Bonesword Prime left alive, with a Legion of the Damned  squad materialising in front of him to pick off the remaining gaunts. I think at this point the Tervigon had been killed as well, I think that's why the squad left the building to take it out and that Librarian did awful damage. Only 4 of the spawned Termagants died in the Psychic backlash from the death of their Brood Progenitor. Our next turn, the Mycetic Spore arrives with a plop, Devgaunts jump out ready to take on the now decamped Blood Angel squad. With 30 shots I think the managed to take down 1 or two, maybe the Fleshborers did something but 


The Trygon Prime burst from the ground, his Containment Spines perhaps taking out a Space Marine. Meanwhile the Adrenal Stealers were killed off with the Broodlord the only one left.


More Necrons sweep across the board.


I'll conclude tomorrow...

Friday 25 November 2011

Apocalypse - Over

Last Saturday was the Apocalypse battle at the local GW and having finally set on a list me and my son hto footed over to enjoy the 'early' Christmas party. We set everything up and waited for the rest of the eager combatants to turn. By a twist of fate we ended up on the side of the newly resurrected Necrons and as one guy with a number of Monoliths hadn't arrived a mass of the stores Chaos Space Marines turned up to take the middle as we started on the left flank opposite some Blood Angels in Rhinos. You can see the Tervigon, a Prime attached to the Hormogaunt Brood and the two broods of Genestealers by the tower [which contained three objective markers. 


Slightly further over were the Gargoyles and the shooty Tyranid Warriors and attached Prime. In the first turn Tom, the young lad with the Blood Angels burned up in the Rhino and managed to gain entrance to the Tower [damn] he also had the Death Company Dreadnought drop pod in just behind the shooty warriors as you can see below [yes the Drop Pod is that WFB tower...]


I'm not sure how long after these shots were taken but at some point the guy with the other Necron force turned up and the Chaos crew turned traitor [of course they did] and what followed was the chaos force proceeded to shoot/assault us in the same turn we assaulted then, it was all free-flowing and dynamic, mad, fun but also very weird. My son's Tervigon managed to spawn 15 Termagants [the max possible without pooping out]. We decided to barrel the adrenalin fueled Stealers over to the Dread, hopefully the rending Broodlord would have his wicked way as so often before. Th Hormies moved forwards and the Warriors poured fire into the tower hoping to thin out the Blood Angels squad in residence. The Termagants didn't do much and the Toxin Sac Stealers assaulted into cover and were pretty much wiped out as the Blood Angels Librarian with Might of Heroes and another psychic ability decimated them one by one.


Here you can see the whizzy Monoliths doing all sorts of weird Apocalypse things - Null Fields and such, I've no idea. The more experienced guys seemed to know what was going on and I wasn't on the receiving end of it but all these quirky rules were a bit hard for us average gamers to follow. Meanwhile the Adrenal Stealers seemed perplexed by the Death Company Dread. Where in the past they've done really well - rending claws tearing my Dark Angel Dread to ribbons on many occasion, this time nothing and they were whittled down for their efforts. The shooty warriors also suffered a number of wounds spread out over the squad.


The Gargoyles decided to have a bite of the Chaos Warriors hiding in the ruins, the ate one and then proceeded to be slaughtered to one plucky little flapping thing...


More tomorrow...


Thursday 17 November 2011

Apocalypse Wow!


 
My local GW - Southport has recently had a new manager start, and as mentioned there will be an Apocalypse battle against the newly reawakened Necrons on the 19th November. So we've got together a 1,500pt force [as per instructions]. It's prety much our standard list but I wanted to try out the two Primes, and the Mycetic Spore.

We ummed and ahhed over Zoanthropes, Rippers, more Hormogaunts and the Biovore and in the end managed a bit of each just minus the Zoanthrope. 'Madness' some may say but he's currently broken and although their the only real anti-tank we have I don't think it's worth it to pin all our Monolith killing hopes on the big brained bug.

The Biovore was also not a first choice but having heard some reports about the danger of the new Scarabs I can see his pie-plate blasts coming in handy to thin out those things, so he came back in.

The Rippers may be surprising considering my past thoughts but I wanted to finish the other two bases of them but in the end thought just the three, and the Biovore was a better option. I ran the maths versus more Hormagaunts but realised I could have 4 Hormies or 3 Rippers and although there's less option to claim objectives the increased wounds may make them more of a pain to the Necrons. So long as I can keep them in Synapse of one of my creatures, probably the Trygon Prime after Tunneling then at least they won't start eating themselves!

So we have:
  • Tyranid Prime with Lashwhip and Bonesword, Deathspitter
  • Tyranid Prime with Pair of Boneswords, Scything Talons
  • Tervigon with Catalyst, Toxin Sacs, Adrenal Glands, Stinger Salvo
  • 10x Termagaunts with Devourer inside:
  • Mycetic Spore with Hardened Carapace, Lash Whip, Ripper tentacles, Stinger Salvo
  • 21x Hormaguants with Toxin Sacs
  • 3x Tyranid Warriors with Barbed Strangler,Deathspitter
  • Broodlord with Scything Talons, Adrenal Glands, with:
  • 7x Genestealers with Adrenal Glands
  • 7x Genestealers with Toxin Sacs
  • 3x Ripper Swarms with Tunnel Swarm
  • 10x Gargoyles
  • Trygon with Upgrade to Trygon Prime
  • 1x Biovore
1499pts. 68 figures [7 Synapse creatures] although some will be deep striking. The CC Prime will most likely join the Hormagaunts. I think the Trygon will be deep-striking but we'll decide on the day. I'll take pictures and report back after the event.

Friday 11 November 2011

Size is everything... excuse me, isn't 'Terrain everything'?

Well, I suppose it's a bit of both in this case. You may recall the new kitchen was fitted last month and with it came a new dining table. Some may say it's too big but 'some' would never say that to his wife! The old table was 118 x 76cm, and the new table is 150 x 90cm [a 5' x 3' table!] which translates to 127% more width and 118% more length [depending on which way you look at it].

Obviously these pics imply that Ferron proxima has bitten the dust and been replaced with the homeworld of Superted's side-kick Spotty but this is only due to a new Ferron Proxima battlemat awaiting printing.


Here's my son's Tervigon and Old Matt Black: Former hero of the Imperium to add a sense of scale. Considering it's only a minor increase in size it certainly seems like there's a lot of room. To play I think we'll rotate the table so we can finally setup long board edge-wise but our deployment zone will only be 6 inches in so we have the full two inches of killing ground to make the shooting phase effective.


Anyway, when the new battlemat is done I'll share it with y'all.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

To done...!


Following on from Purity Sealing 90% of my son's 'nids, which was on my To Do List. I still had to gloss varnish all the claws and talons. This wasn't actually high up on my list, not with some progress on my Dark Angels, which I'll share at some point. However, I found out the other day that our local GW is having an Apocalypse battle on the 19th to celebrate the Necron re-awakening and you've got to bring a 1500pt army. I wanted to get the majority glossed up so their claws are nice and sharp for the living metal.

The Trygon, Tervigon and Broodlord were already done but I've just gone through the
  • 3 Tyranid Warriors
  • 1 Tyranid Prime [the other hasn't been sealed yet so there's not much point to varnishing it]
  • 24 Genestealers
  • 28 Hormagaunts
  • 47 Termagants [I think, it's difficult to count them as they all look the same - racist!]
Any job done so I'm a bit chuffed with myself and also that my son is interested again, well he's written his list for Father Christmas and good old Santa is going to have to visit GW too!

Monday 7 November 2011

The art of 40k - More Gary Harrod

In the second of my posts about my favorite 40k artists I've only gone and stumbled across a few more pictures by Gary Harrod so I thought I'd share these before going on to my next fave artist. So here's the pic that blew me away the most [the one I described in my original post]. They all click much bigger than my usual fair, so enjoy.


Next up are three images from the Deathwing, Space Hulk expansion rules. Like I said the stark highlights and shadows literally jump off the page compared to the rest of the illustrations and I think when you add in the two pictures I already found you can begin to see the awesomeness of Gary's work. I love this terminator, just look at the amount of light coming from his gun, you can imagine having your retinas scorched by that after image!


Here too, the psychic battle between genestealer and presumably Deathwing Librarian. Taking into account most of the GW rulebooks at this time were monotone, with pure black and white and where grey was needed the dots in the halftone pattern were employed to give the required grey it was Gary's extensive use of black and white that made his drawings stand out most, like I say they leap from the page.


Lastly, what i think is the weakest of the three images in execution but possibly the image which holds more menace and anticipation thanks to the unsuspecting marine about to experience 'death from above' not the other way round as their usual motto states.


Oh, and the two previous pics to see Gary's work I've discovered so far as a set.