Apocalypse 2018: Winter Edition – Battle Report

Writing Apocalypse battle reports is hard work. Writing a detailed accounting of what transpired in the order they happened is neigh impossible.

I used to bother trying to go through the ordeal, but I’ve learned my lesson. Since I was playing in the battle, and my army was really sequestered to one half of the table, I had almost no clue as to what was going on on the other side (other than they were clearly taking “too long”). I’m hoping then that someone from the far end of the table speaks up in the comments and gives me some idea of just exactly what was taking so long.

The day began with the potluck that went awry. We always do a potluck when it comes to Apoc games as it just works out well. In our first few, everything went groovy: people brought various foods and everything just worked out. Then, one game someone thought ahead to bring breakfast and that was a deal changer. It blew our minds that someone would bring breakfast.

Don’t ask me why, as we’ve always started between 8am and 10am, so breakfast should be first on someone’s mind.

Still, it was a novel concept and very well received. Well, in succeeding events, we’d had problems with too many people bringing breakfast, and this was just a continuation of that. Of the nine people in attendance, fully five of them brought some sort of breakfast item, which meant that lunch really consisted of a couple forms of cookies, a veggie tray, and some soup. I eventually busted out some frozen pizza and that made up for the difference, but a key lesson to learn here is that we should limit who all brings breakfast. Simply put three dozen doughnuts, sweet rolls, and muffins proved to be more than our old pallettes can handle.

With the food sorted out, and the teams decided (as detailed in the previous post), we moved on to determining who goes first.  In our last game, Sam had decided that nothing as important as first turn should be decided by something as insignificant as a die roll, and the test of skill was born.  For those that don’t recall, he and Mitch held their breath, and Sam lost.  Itching for a come-back, his new “feat of strength,” was whoever could chug a soda and smash the can first would be crowned the winner.  I escorted them outside, knowing that someone would make a mess and let them do their thing.

Sam proved that the old timers still had something left in the tank, and Chaos was scheduled to take the first beating.

We chose the far side, for I’m not sure what reason.  I liked it because it seemed more open and we had more super heavies, but Sam agreed for a different reason (I don’t recall what that was).  Blaine and I took the left flank with Team Tyranid, while Sam and Sean took the right.  Our Warmaster (by default), Kurt, took the center of the table.  Albert failed to seize the initiative and the cannons roared.

The first shot of the game was Kurt’s warhound vaporizing Scabbeathrax (Albert’s version), and slaying their warmaster.  The second shot, was Kurt’s other gun nuking a Lord of Skulls, destroying two super-heavies in two shots.  When my Hierophant fired a round into the other Lord of War and felled it with a single shot as well, it became all too clear that Macro weapons just erase super-heavies.

I don’t recall how much damage the Warhound did, but my Hierophant had six shots (with each gun), doing 2d6 x 2 wounds vs. anything with the “Titanic” keyword.  If I wounded with each, I was going to do–at a minimum–24 wounds, which was enough to kill virtually any titan they had on their side.  Realistically, I wasn’t going to wound with all, but then again, each wound should do an average of about 14 wounds each.  That meant I really only had to wound twice.

The objectives for our turn, and indeed for most of the game, was that the bugs were forced to hold the objective, while the imperials and eldar on the far end were to kill units.  For four of the five turns, the objective played out that way.  Likewise the chaos players also had 80% of their turns with the same objectives–only theirs were inverted.  They had to hold the far objective and kill Tyranids.

From the Tyranid perspective, we spent the game shooting units in the hopes of killing them off before they hit our lines.  Largely, we were successful, but the Chaos units hit us on more than one wave.  Luckily, the waves that did hit us were relatively small.  The biggest was on the bottom of turn 1, when Kharne and his buddies slaughtered three carnifexes.  Unfortunately for the fickle chaos gods, Kharne also rolled a large number of 1’s and also slaughtered his supporting unit as well (in fact, he wiped out 15 berserkers on his own, plus the carnifex).

We wound up losing a few hive guard, all of the biovores, and even a couple of Exocrines by the end of the battle.  Blaine’s Hierophant was down below half strength, while mine took two wounds during the course of the entire game (including one from a particularly brave, but foolish, nurgling).  After we wound up tabling both of our chaos opponents, we started skittering across the board to see if we could kill things in the city and help out the Eldar & Monkeighs that were taking a beating.

Other notable events that happened during the game:

• Almost no vehicles or monstrous creatures “exploded” on our half of the board.  Conversely, the far side of the table claimed that their explosion rate was closer to 60%.
• Mortarion is apparently a badass.  Rumor has it that he single-handedly killed two knights in the first two turns, and then proceeded to draw the ire of two armies heralding his eventual return back to the warp.
• Simon lost three super heavies before the first turn of the game.  People were intentionally ignoring him so as not to table him.  We now blame this on his desire to take the middle of the table.  He is forbidden from doing this in the next game.
• Simon’s plasma was hotter than he expected.  Though his sorcer managed to punk a knight with his psychic abilities, he and several other marines died to perilous 1’s on overcharged plasma.
• Simon’s game wasn’t completely a loss.  He wound up mortally crippling Kurt’s warhound, who eventually overcharged his plasma in suicide rather than letting the titan die to a Demon Prince in combat.  Apparently though, that lone prince of Khorne was tearing him up time and time again in assault.
• Kurt, not used to getting up so early eventually konked out and took a nap in the middle of the game.   He at least waited until his lone model died though.
• The scores were pretty one-sided for much of the game, but during one turn, Chaos scored 20+ points and pulled into the lead.

None of us had played 8th edition Apoc before, and about a quarter of us had never played 8th edition 40k.  Still, the game went smoother and faster than any of our previous apocs.  I’d consider that a major success.

The scores came out lopsided, but that’s likely to be expected with one team almost tabled.    In the end the Chaos team scored a total of 30 points for holding objectives, 2 points for killing units off the other objective, seven points for killing super-heavies and another point for slaying our warmaster.  In total, that was 40 points scored (fully half of them came in their second turn).

In contrast, the loyalists (if that’s what you want to call an army anchored by two Hierophants), scored 46 points in holding objectives alone, plus 8 points for killing things off the remote objective, 12 points for destroying super heavies, and a single point for slaying their warmaster.  That brought our total to 67 points.

The game could’ve definitely gone differently.  Had they had first turn, they would’ve had three more super-heavies to deal with and might have been able to kill off some of ours–effectively flipping the entire battle.  Still, I believe much fun was had by all.  Even Simon, who is routinely tabled (and took a whooping this game), indicated that he enjoyed himself.  After the game, he texted with renewed vigor how much he liked this game/edition.  We’ll just have to get him on the winning side next time…

Anywho, that’s about all I have to say about that.  Feel free to click any of the photos below for bigger pictures.  See you next Apoc game!