Sunday 2 March 2008

Friday 11 January: Warhammer 40000 Apocalypse

Well that was an awesome week end! We played a 6000 point a side Warhammer 40,000 Apocalypse game with my Chaos Marine and traitor Imperial Guard facing off against a desperate alliance of Necrons, Orks, Space Wolves and Tau. Read on to hear the bloody story of how Lord Charnell fared in his first Apocalypse command without Abaddon’s supervision.

Armies:-
Necrons (Lance, 1500 points): 4x 10 Necron Warriors, Lord with Orb and the electric close combat power, monolith, Nightbringer. Disruption beacon stratagem.
Tau (Olly, 1500 points): 2 hammerheads with rail guns, broadside, sniper drone team, 8 path finders with devil fish, rapid insertion force with 6 stealth suits and 3x 3 crisis suits, commander. Orbital bombardment stratagem.
Orks (Johnny, 1500 points): warboss, 12 nob bikers, 20 storm boys, 2x 1 buggy, 11 boys with truck, big mech with shock attack gun. Careful planning stratagem.
Space Wolves (Emily, 1500 points): Logan Grimnar with 4 wolf guard retinue, 10 bloodclaws in rhino, 4 bloodclaw bikers, leman russ exterminator, whorlwind, 9 grey hunters, wolf lord. Vortex grenade stratagem.

Chaos Marines and traitor imperial guard (me, 6000 points: leman russ demolisher, 2x leman russ battle tank, leman russ exterminator, artillery battery with 3 basilisks, baneblade, brass scorpion of khorne, 2x defilers, 2x chaos predators, chaos vindicator, chaos dreadnought, 3x armoured fist squads in chimeras, imperial guard command squad with commissar in chimera, 2x 10 chaos marines in rhinos, 9 chaos marines in rhino, chaos lord with combi-melta and power fist, chaos lord with mark of khorne and daemon weapon, 2x 9 khorne berserkers, 10 chaos bikers with mark of slaanesh, sorcer on bike with mark of slaanesh, 5 raptors, chaos lord with jump pack and paired lightning claws. Disruption beacon, blind barrage, precision barrage and jammers stratagems.

We rolled the scatter dice for deployment zones and the no-man’s-land wasn’t so straight this time. It actually ran diagonally across the width of the table making for a much narrower front line than I had anticipated. Interestingly, I was given the deployment zone with most of the usable cover but this was not such a blessing as all my long-ranged reserves were hemmed in behind a large central wood which blocked sight for my battle cannons. It also cramped my assault units some what. I had originally intended to send the Brass Scorpion off on its own so that it would either blow up and kill all their models or blast and tear everything apart. Either way, I didn’t quite intend the rather destructive thing that actually happened.

I just won the bid for deployment with 14 minutes to their 15. Frantically, I began dropping vehicles across the front with the two groups of mechanised infantry dominating the right side backed up by the baneblade in front of which was the jump pack lord with his raptors. On the left were the bikes and the sorcerer with the brass scorpion. My berserkers and khorne lord went in the woods in the centre of my deployment zone with the disruptor beacon. The basilisk battery went behind the woods right back on my board edge.

The front of their deployment zone started out as a terrifying mass of necron warriors and space wolf assault troops with the storm boys to back them up and the monolith in the centre. Lines of tau guns and the big mech made up the rear with Logan Grimnar and his vortex grenade starting surprisingly far back (you have to love the jammers asset).

In my first turn I gave them everything. The Scorpion wiped out the bike unit with its tail cannon and then annihilated the bloodclaws in their rhino with its demolisher. The sorcerer successfully lashed a unit of necrons into charge range and then the bikes rapid fired into them, wiping the unit out in their assault phase. The baneblade cannon wiped out almost another unit of necrons but I think the demolisher and smaller guns missed. The lascannons on the baneblade proved utterly useless throughout the entire game. The artillery battery opened up on the storm boys with 8 kills in 2 shells - Not bad and it did pin them. With a turn like that it didn’t look good for the good guys.

Then they had their turn. The monolith released a torrent of electrical energy which stabbed and rippled over the nearby enemy units – and didn’t wound a single one. The majority of the ork reserves were successfully diverted by my beacon to their back board edge. 3 rail guns completely failed to damage the baneblade. With a turn like that things didn’t look good for the good guys.

Turn 2 saw the scorpion forget to fire its tail cannon and miss with its demolisher. It charged the monolith and began tearing into the living metal. Such was its fervour that it missed with 3 out of its 4 attacks. The last one did penetrate and immobilise the terrible machine though. The bikes charged the Tau commander and there they would remain happily locked in combat for most of their foreshortened lives. Olly’s dice returned with a vengeance as he happily made some 9 or 10 invulnerable saves for his commander against the sorcerer’s force weapon. The scattered shots of the basilisks accounted for one or two more models, not a particularly good show. My second barrage proved fairly useful though as it dropped several necrons and blew up one of the ork buggies which had arrived from reserve this turn.

If I was a less fair man I would probably not tell you about the second turn of the good guys. I would simply say “Um, ouch!” and leave it at that. I am fair however so here goes...

The last of the ork reserves arrived – remember that they took careful planning as their asset. Most of them – the nob biker horde and the warboss with his truck mob – were moved by the disruptor beacon. The stupid 35 point buggy wasn’t. It fired its linked rokket launcher at the back of my brass scorpion. It missed. It rerolled. It hit. It penetrated. It rolled a 6. That meant a chain reaction result on the superheavy damage chart. That meant losing one of its two structure points and rolling on the damage chart again. It rerolled. It rolled a 5. That meant losing a structure point on the superheavy damage chart. The scorpion was destroyed. When a superheavy is destroyed you roll on the catastrophic damage table to see what happens to the wreck. The brass scorpion represents its psychopathic khornate tendencies by adding +2 to its catastrophic damage chart under the Doomsday Reactor rule. It achieved an apocalyptic explosion. This meant that everything within 3D6 inches (9 in this case) takes a strength 9, AP2 hit. This happened to be most of my army. I lost 3 chimeras, 4 marines, 4 berserkers and 12 guardsmen. The monolith took no damage. I think the only wounds on the allied side were 3 grey hunters and the buggy that fired the shot in the first place. This is definitely the point where things started to go wrong. Olly also used his bombardment in this turn, massive lasers and shells screaming down from orbit to pound 2 of the basilisks into scrap. Shots also started getting through the baneblade’s armour as well with it losing its demolisher cannon and having its drive damaged over the next turn or so. My dreadnought, all excited about fighting the monolith, decided to wait a turn to wipe out a guard infantry unit with a fire frenzy. When it did charge the nightbringer it was so nervous that it couldn’t perform properly. It missed and so the necron god chopped its face off.

After that, things just got disastrous. My vindicator rumbled on to the field and its bound daemonic essence was released. Howling with glee at being freed it fired a demolisher shell right into one of my rough rider units. Those that could galloped swiftly off the field. 2 more leman russ shells also scattered harmlessly and my predator, which spent most of the game dueling with the space wolves’ exterminator, failed to hit.

I am afraid my memory becomes a little hazy about the precise order of things after this. The rapid insertion force were rapidly inserted and killed the vindicator and a defiler. The second defiler tore through two units of crisis suits in combat before being fusion gunned into oblivion. The baneblade, which could now only move 3 inches a turn, was chased half way down the board by some not so carefully placed ork reserves (why won’t people drive their trucks under the designated area of an orbital bombardment when you ask them?). One positive thing about the baneblade is that it did make something like a dozen saves on its primary weapon to avoid it being destroyed. It did end up being stunned for almost every turn in the rest of the game but it did not blow up until the tank itself did.

On that subject, I thought it deserved a little fiction…

“Gerrit lads!” roared the warboss. Vaulting over the side of his truck he charged towards the massive bulk of the baneblade, his great chopper slamming into the metal with tremendous force. Giving shout to a mighty “Waaagh!” his boys followed, slugger shots rattling off of the tanks front armour. The nob grinned. Here was a foe worthy of his power klaw. With a puff of oily smoke and a grinding of gears the teeth of the weapon bit deeply into the scarred vehicle. The tank commander stood in the turret braving the badly aimed bullets of the orks to rake them with fire from his heavy stubber. All around him the sounds of battle rang with artillery and automatic weapons fire booming and chattering. Suddenly, a cacophony louder than everything else drew his attention. A cloud of black smoke and a din of engines announced the arrival of a horde of enormous orks on bikes. Power claws and shooters bristled from the great green monsters as they turned to face his beleaguered tank. With a gunning of engines and another ear-splitting war cry they charged. Blows hammered again and again against the tank as it desperately tried to extricate itself. The smaller weapons mounted on its hull and sponsens fired until their barrels warped but still the tide of ferocious greenskins came on.

Suddenly, the commander was thrown from his perch to land in a heap in the noisy interior of the vehicle. A great blast of vivid emerald energy had slammed into the side of the baneblade and a jagged crack appeared in the armour down the left side. As the crew watched, yet more of the armour was stripped by the disintegrating energies of the monolith’s cannon.

“Stand to your stations!” called the commander. “anti-tank weaponry seek targets on the port side.” The nervous young lascannon gunner on the left sponsen fired shot after shot but his hands trembled and he didn’t stop to aim properly. A few moments later, the awesome energy of the monolith’s gun hit the vehicle again and sliced effortlessly through the armour where the gunner’s head was. It stripped him to his component atoms and he was whisked away in the maelstrom of energy from the cannon’s blast. A sizeable slab of armour had now been torn from the tank’s side and the commander, who had now regained his feet, could see the light and smoke of the battlefield beyond. He scrambled back up the ladder to the stubber in a desperate attempt to rid the tank of more attackers. As he stuck his head above the hull of the tank he was suddenly gripped with a terror the likes of which he had never known. Visions of violence and evil surpassing anything he could imagine flashed through his head and he screamed. He looked back to see a patch of blackness gliding across the battlefield. The only thing truly discernible was a great, gleaming scythe. The commander fell back against the rim of the turret hatch and stared in horror as the apparition slowed to a halt directly behind his baneblade. It raised its massive weapon and the commander’s mind exploded with the great booming laugh of the immortal creature as the blade swept down.

“We’s neally froo!” bellowed the warboss in triumph. Most of his mob were dead now but the armour was torn and holed in many places.

“Boss, da god of the metal skelies is comin!” called one of the bikers.

“no! we’s gonna get the humies tank first!” screamed the war boss.

His eyes were caught by the mesmerising curve of the nightbringer’s enormous scythe raised over the vehicle. He tracked the swing of the great blade down and was then knocked several feet backwards as the massive vehicle exploded in a ball of shrapnel and flame.

The explosion of the baneblade was not quite so much fun. It didn’t reach as far as the scorpion. It didn’t spread as far. It did kill the nob of the warboss’s boys unit and I think it took a wound off of one of the nob bikers. The nightbringer stood in the wash of flames, impassive.

The last part of the game was just mopping up. My sorcerer finally redeemed himself by killing Logan Grimnar before he could use his vortex grenade but I think he was then zapped by the monolith. My Khorne lord clambered bodily over a wrecked chimera (there was a cool bit where his move only took him far enough over the hull to hang by his axe from one of the tracks of the tipped vehicle), and charged into the commander fight which, at this point, had Logan, Olly’s Tau leader and my sorcerer. With a roar, the frenzied slaughterman leapt down from the top of the vehicle and charged into the fray, hacking in all directions. Unfortunately, he tripped over his cloak and cut his knee quite badly (bloody new codex daemon weapons). While the sorcerer was bandaging it for him, Logan cut his head off.

My predator lost its duel with the leman russ and one of my standard Leman Russes was destroyed by a rail gun. With no infantry, and no more than 5 vehicles, I conceded the game.

We all agreed that this had been a much more apocalyptic game. We had the templates and superheavies to make it stand out from 40k in a very exciting and destructive way. I heartily recommend it.

I lost because of some horribly unlucky ordnance in the middle turns. I fired at one unit of battle suits with 2 leman russes, a defiler, an exterminator and an anti-infantry predator with no effect. It gave them the respite they needed to regroup and shoot the crap out of me.

Our next apocalypse game is scheduled for early February and will see a team with my Chaos Marines allying with Johnny’s Orks and facing off against Lance, Emily and Olly with Dark Angels, Space Wolves and Tau respectively. Keep checking back for it.

For the rest of that evening we played a 1500 point 3-way game with Imperial Guard, Tau and Orks.

Armies:-
Guard: 3x basilisks (one indirect fire), 2x 25-man infantry platoons, heroic senior officer command squad, 6 hardened veterans, 3 sentinels, 10 storm troopers in chimera, 10 rough riders.

Tau: 2x hammerhead, 1 broadside, 12 fire warriors, 8 path finders with devil fish, 1 commander, 19 kroot with shaper and 2 krootoxen, 1 piranha, 7 vespids.

Orks: battle wagon, 20 storm boys, 2 deth kopters, 20 shooter boys, warboss on bike, 12 boys with truck, big mech with shock attack gun.

We played a modified take and hold mission with a crossroads representing the objective. The first turn was night fighting.

After the mammoth apocalypse game the turns seemed to go fairly quickly. The basilisks did relatively well, wiping out the vespids one turn, pinning the kroot for a turn, destroying a hammerhead (thereby denying the Tau control of the objective) and stunning the battle wagon several turns in a row. The orks two units of note were the storm boys who were able to assault the imperial guard on the first turn (gulp!). The only problem with having 3-way armies is that there is fairly limited space and so the ork assaulters were able to tear their way through almost all of my army. I was only saved by a stubborn autocannon crew who finally downed the power klaw-toting nob. By this time however I only had 3 or 4 scoring units left and they were all miles away from the objective. The ork warboss on bike also made multiple armour and cover saves with abandon and chomped his way through the Tau lines destroying almost all the infantry. He was finally brought down by a fusillade of Kroot rapid firing.

The Tau, despite being on the end, were caught between a rock and a hard place. With orks running amuck through their lines, crap dice rolls and imperial guard artillery bombardment they were hard pressed. They did incredibly well under the circumstances and would have won if we hadn’t realised that independent characters weren’t scoring units. When we discovered this it was nearing half 3 on the second night of a very late week end and we thought a draw was a good result considering the carnage we’d packed into the game so far. It really was probably one of the most evenly-balanced games I’ve played in a long time.

I like the artillery battery heavy support configuration. 3 basilisks, despite their weak armour, can be a formidable challenge when in good cover. I felt that all three armies were well balanced and the gaming showed both this and our relative experience at playing one another.

Sorry again that this is so hideously late, I will catch up soon - I promise.

Commander Portman