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.

Apocalypse: Winter 2018 – Army Lists

In continuing our Apocalypse wrap-up, we move on to army lists….

Much like our normal Apoc games, we didn’t split up teams in advance.  We do this because, although some people like to build lists together, we find that gives them a strategic advantage over many of our more casual gamers.  Competitive players already have an advantage, so anything to even the playing fields seems like a good idea.  We came up with an arbitrary point limit of 180 power, but allowed people to share extra power if they wanted (because at least one player toyed with bringing a warlord titan at 200 power).  People were pretty loosey-goosey with the power levels though, but it all worked out in the end.

We originally had the first two people walk through the door be team captains, but that eventually petered out when we found that of the 9 folks playing, four of them brought chaos.   It made so much more sense to break up teams in that fashion.  The teams were a little like this:

Sam’s Imperial Fists & Friends:

• HQ:
  • Chapter Master in Terminator Armor w/ Thunder hammer, & Storm Bolter
• Elites:
  • 10x Terminators w/ 2x Cycline Missle Launchers
  • 10x Sternguard w/ 2x Heavy Flamer, 2x Combi-Flamer, & Powerfist
  • Ironclad Dreadnought w/ 2x Hunter Killer Missiles & Ironclad Assault Launchers
• Flyer:
  • Storm Raven w/ Hurricane Bolters, Assault Cannon, Multi-Melta, & Typhoon Missile Pod
• Heavy:
  • 8x Devastators w/ 3x Multi-Melta, 1x Plasma Cannon, Combi-Plasma & Armorium Cherub
• Transport:
  • 1x Drop Pod w/ Storm Bolter
• Lords of War:
  • Knight Errant w/ Therma Cannon, Reaper Chainsword, & Stormspear Rocket Pod
  • Knight Paladin w/ Rapid Fire Battle Cannon, Reaper Chainsword, & Icarus Autocannon
  • Knight Warden w/ Avenger Gatling Cannon, Reaper Chainsword, & Icarus Autocannon
  • Knight Crusader w/ Avegner Gatling Cannon, Rapid Fire Battle Cannon, & Ironstorm Missle Pod

Sam has always been known for drop pods, but once the Knight kit came out, he served two masters.   Recently, since drop pods are expensive, he tends to run knight, but you never know with him.  Also, he’s been going wild with painting various units (he had an absurd idea that he would paint up everything he owns, and is amazingly making great progress towards it), so who knew what he was going to bring?

Apocalypse Winter 2018: The Rules

Often I’ll work up some fluff to support an impending Apocalypse battle, and then drum up some interest in advance on the blog; however, this time I did none of that.  Last weekend, we experienced the first (and hopefully not the only) Apoc game of 2018, without all of the fanfare.

Truth be told, I wanted to have a game, but I didn’t want to commit all of the time and resources into creating it.  So, I wound up coasting on this one.  I’ve learned my lesson from the past though, and will get the details written up much faster this time.  Being our first Apoc game of 8th edition made it a little easier.  First, we didn’t know what kind of rules exceptions we needed to clarify or amend, but also, 8th is significantly streamlined.  As a result, the rules for army building (and for the day of the battle) are listed below:

Army Creation Rules:

All players were given these rules in advance to make their lists:

• Please create 180 Power Level Lists (power level vs. points is just easier to make quick lists).  Please try not to abuse the power level system.  For those that are not familiar with power level, try to use units/upgrades that you would normally take in a points level list.
• Scoring points will be awarded in three different ways:
  • Holding Objectives.  For the purposes of this game only units without the CHARACTER keyword can hold an objective.
  • Defending Objectives.  This largely means killing scoring units off of objectives.  Any unit can earn these points.
  • Titanic Destruction:  Per Apoc, at the end of the battle, each side receives victory points for each enemy TITANIC unit that has been destroyed
• Matched Play: we’ll be using the rules for Matched play (I know base rules say Apoc is “open play” but that seems too abusable.  (Rulebook page 212)
• Detachments: Please limit your force to up to 3 detachments for your army (Rulebook page 214)
• Warmasters will be in effect (chapter approved 10) – “Slay the warmaster” will also be in effect
• Timeclocks will be used.  Per usual.  Probably 4 hours per team.

Day of the Game Rules:

For the day of the game, we didn’t clarify terrain, have to set rules for deployment areas, outflanking, etc.  8th edition streamlined all of that for us.  Instead, we just added rules for how to score points:

• Scoring Rules:
  • Objectives:
    • At the beginning of each side’s turns, roll a die.  On a 1-3 the Fortress of Redemption is your objective this turn.  On a 4-6, the objective is the large ammo dump building.
    • At the end of that side’s turn, objectives will be scored as follows:
      • +2 points for each of their non-character units within 3″ of the objective.
      • +1 point for each unit of their opponents’ that was destroyed who was within 3″ of the other objective (the one which was not rolled)
    • Points will only be scored by the active team at the end of their turns.
  • Titanic Destruction Clarification:
    • If a model with 20 or more wounds is destroyed during the game, an additional X points will be awarded to the opposing team where X is the total number of wounds the model started with, divided by 10 (rounded down).

In retrospect, these rules worked out relatively well.  Maybe we could’ve tweaked the number of points given for “titanic destruction” though.  In truth, that rule normally says you just get one point for killing a titan, so we had up to 5 points per titan in play.

In the next two posts, I’ll go over army lists and how the game played out.  I’ll also include some pictures from the actual game (in case the time stamp didn’t already clue you in, these photos are of previous apoc games).

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 Mission of Tartarus VII

I’m continuing my write-up for the Battle for Tartarus VII: an Apocalypse sized battle we used to herald the passing of 7th edition last year. For some reason, I wound up kicking the can down the road on writing up the batrep (if I had to guess why, I’d say it was apathy combined with the fact that I lost some of the army lists that folks had given me). Well, in an effort to right previous wrongs, I’m making good on my write-up.

As with previous Apoc battles (Apoc 2016, the Fall of Morrsleb, the Vacillite Campaign, Argos Prime, & Arctic Apocalypse 2010), I’ve taken to writing this in multiple parts:

• Army Lists
• Mission
• Battle Report

In some instances, I’ve broken them down even further, especially when there are excess details. This one will be summed up in three posts for sure though. The first post, covering Army list, went live earlier, so we’re up to the mission itself.

As with every game we’ve played, we try to mix things up a little bit each time. We’ve introduced some items over the years that have become regular staples (such as time clocks), and some that show up occasionally (like personal objectives). This game was to be no different.

Per usual, I enlisted the help of anyone who wanted to contribute for plot twists, terrain, and mission setup. For this game, Kurt and Mitch stepped up to the table, and we brainstormed ideas until we came up with something that seemed like it would work.