Tartarus VII: An Apocalypse Battle Report (sort of)

With the army lists and mission already detailed, the only thing left to tell of the Battle of Tartarus VII is the actual battle report.

I’ve long-since learned that a proper battle report for an Apocalypse game is neigh-impossible to write if you’re actually playing in the game. You’re too busy participating to catch all of the nuance swirling around in the larger battle. And, since we don’t employe a professional reporter for our games, instead I’ve chosen to highlight various parts of the game that were more memorable.

To get up to speed, the teams were as follows:

The Victors

• Dan’s Imperial Guard
• My Ultramar PDF
• Albert’s Chaos
• Sam’s Adeptus Astartes (& Knights)

The Spoilers

• Kurt’s Imperial Guard
• Tim’s Eldar
• Simon’s Chaos
• Mitchell’s Chaos

If you recall, teams were designed (in part) to balance out the players. Folks that generally tend to clump up on teams were separated, and things were evened out in overall power level to the best of our ability. We were doing this before we knew what people’s lists comprised of though, so there was some element of chance.

After teams were chosen, Sam made a command decision that we could not leave the fate of the world to something as random as a die roll for first turn. Instead, he proposed a test of true skill: a breath holding contest. Mitch proudly stepped up to the challenge and the game was afoot!

The gang was largely in stitches throughout the process, and I cracked more than a few jokes (which were apparently funnier to my team-mate than my opponent). I will not own the loss of the “contest of skill” though–that was solely on Sam; however, I do believe this needs to be incorporated as a staple in all future Apoc games.

Mitch’s Team (aka. “The Spoilers”) took first turn and set their forces out on the table.

Shortly thereafter, two friends of mine from Seattle wandered up the driveway…

They’d given nobody any indication that they were going to be in town and, in fact, flew into town that very morning for the sole purpose of hangig out and watching the Apoc game. Sadly, the game was already underway, and neither had brought any models, so there wasn’t really a practical way to work them into the game.

Practicality be damned though.

Since neither wanted to take my army, I dusted off a couple of Hierophants and issued one to each of them to use as they saw fit (which worked out well, since both of them prefer Tyranids over other armies). Blaine unofficially joined our side, whereas Jeremy took up the side of the evil.

Honestly, the day and the game became much of a blur after that. Sure, part of that is because I’m trying to recall events from 10 months ago, but there was truly a lot going on. My house became a real hotspot for activity that day. Two friends from out of town made for an enticing reason for all sorts of friends and family to show up. I believe at one point, we had fifteen people at the house–aside from the 8-10 of us that were actually playing the game. Playing host for the game as well as host for the impromptu housing event took a lot out of me.

What I can tell you about the game is this: Eldar are bullshit.

It’s been a while since I’ve faced them, and Tim wasn’t playing standard Eldar. He was running some Forgeworld list of Eldar pirates, and everything in the list was complete and utter nonsense.

I’m used to units being overpowered, but his list really did everything and was immune to any sort of damage. He single-handedly destroyed something like four knights durig his first real turn of shooting, and even his petty units would absorb every shot we could pour into them with 2++ invulnerable saves. When we managed to charge them, they had rules that made it so we not only automatically failed our charges, but also got to shoot us an extra time.

It was altogether disgusting. My army was in the center of the table, so I was almost exclusively focused on Tim. Things on the other flanks weren’t good for us either, but they weren’t as absurd as the center. I’m pretty sure Tim about tabled three of us by himself, suffering only the most minor of casualties.

On the right-flank, Dan was hammered by a combination of Kurt’s armored company and a couple of Mitchell’s greater demons, and somehow tanked all of that damage and held his own (he didn’t really do much damage himself–despite an amazing amount of firepower–but the fact that he was able to live at all was completely amazing).

On the left-flank, Albert, who is known for being rofl-stomped in APoc games came through as our anchor. Not only did he manage to live, he improbably killed anything and everything in his path.

Our other teammate, Sam, is the epitome of “YOLO” when it comes to games, and was easily baited into dropping his pods into sub-ideal positions, and took heavy fire from tanks. What little lived through the initial blasts was eviscerated by Eldar reserves.

Any more specific details were lost to the annals of my memory.  It was pure carnage and great fun.  Tim learned of the relative power level of Apoc armies at our tables (and promised to tone down the crazy for future Apoc games).  When the smoke cleared, I recall a complete inability to perform basic math (which seems to have become the norm at these events).  I tried to call it a tie, and my math proved it–but Kurt insisted on pointing out just how flawed my math was…

I’m remembering that the math said that we actually won the game, but that doesn’t seem to be what it says.  Likewise, I never labeled the scores at the top of the chart, so we have no way of knowing who was ahead.  At this point, we have no other course of action than to call it a tie!

Muhahahaha!

See below for more pictures….