Hi everyone. I just wanted to poke my head in here to let you all know the following....
- I am holding a small 40k tournament at the Armoury in Pickerington on Nov. 7th. 3 rounds, 2 hours each.
- 1500 point armies, WSYWIG models only, and only the current codex. No imperial armour or other non codex units allowed.
- Please bring a clearly legible printed copy of your list with you.
- We start rolling dice at noon, so please arrive well before that to get checked in and get your list approved.
- I like to stay on or ahead of schedule, , so I WILL stop you rolling dice in the middle of a combat if I call time and you are still going. I do give warning at the half hour, 15 minute, and 5 minute marks though.
- $10 entry to help cover prize support, and I give awards to the winner and best sportsman!! There are only 12 spots open, and they will go quickly, so call the store at 614-833-1331 to get paid up and registered in advance!
I hope to see you there!
As I am sure most everyone has already heard Games-Workshop is coming out with a new addition of Space Hulk in September. The models are all plastic, yet are still of amazing quality. Here are two examples I grabbed off the GW website.
For a 40K player like me who has a 55-man terminator army and a ~200 model Tyranid army the arrival of this new Space Hulk game is like mana from the gaming gods! It's also a basic requirement for running 40K Space Hulk next year at Origins. I may or may not incorporate the new rules (40K Space Hulk is ultimately more about the flavor of hunting big bugs in small narrow places than per se obeying any particular rules set), but I certainly need to see them. Besides, the new models really are great...
...except that is for one thing -- they all have Blood Angel symbols and regalia! Great if you play BA, but bad if you play any other space marine chapter. My blue colored Star Guard terminators (who are meant to be a successor chapter to the Dark Angels) are going to look weird with Blood Angel symbolism. If I want to add them to my terminator force -- and, I do -- it'll mean a lot of sanding and filing in order for them to fit my army theme.
Of course, the fact that I would go through such extra effort demonstrates just how good these new models are. Can't wait for September.
I am back from Gen Con and as usual I had a good time, although not quite as good as usual. This is mostly because one of the attractions to such a large convention -- the largest gaming convention in the world -- are all those things I can't do at home. I mean, if I want to play 40K or Magic: The Gathering (which, actually, I haven't done in years) I can do that at my local shop. However, I can only take in special seminars and presentations at a place like Gen Con. Sadly, such events were unusually meager this year. Basically, if you weren't a writer looking for pointers there wasn't much to choose from (but, if you are, I suspect it was great). The one good seminar I attended was on skepticism.
However, even if I had gone looking to play Games Workshop games the only example I could find was the above -- a modest Apocalypse game that was offered repeatedly over the course of the convention (but which certainly looked fun). This is just mind boggling to me -- remember, this is the World's Largest Gaming Convention and the premiere miniatures company and/or its games in the world can barely be found. Beyond this the only real GW "presence" was two dealers in the dealer's room, The Game Room (from Toledo, I believe) and the Warstore.
What is wrong with this picture? I understand that Games Workshop has its own Games Days (but, at least this year, no Grand Tournaments), but are you telling me that showing up at Gen Con is somehow prohibitively expensive or that displaying your product in front of an estimated 30,000 people is a bad thing? The non-attendence of GW goes beyond lost opportunities, but it also ultimately harms its credibility to the average gamer. True, most of the people there were no doubt more interested in collectable card games or a session of D+D, but not even making an appearance makes Games Workshop seem distant, even perhaps elitest. And, it's not a matter of GW being an European company as there were a number of those present, including Rackham.
Come on GW -- get a clue and start showing up at the big conventions.
Continuing on with the report proper there was more to see than just people playing Pokemon. One example is the statue above. It's the good old Serra Angel from Magic: The Gathering except that in this case she's fifteen feet tall! I wouldn't want her mad at me!
Another event was the Gen Con painting contest. The above is an example of one of the best paint jobs submitted -- and, at the same time, an example of how the competition isn't (IMHO) run very well. That head you're looking at is only a little more than an inch wide, yet the model was entered into the large miniature category. How did it manage that? Because the base it's on is five times it's size! So, it was "large" not because it was a large model, but because it's base was artificially large. By any reasonable standard the model should have been placed in the "Single Miniature" category.
This may seem like nitpicking, but it's actually fairly important as it gets at the integrity of the competition. The skills that go into painting an average "off-the-shelf" miniature are subtly different than those that go into painting a large model. For one thing a large model is far more likely to require extensive work putting it together in a way that looks natural. It is also more likely to be converted. Most importantly, its bulk makes the act of painting itself somewhat tricky as you can't just place it on the end of soda pop top and go at it. You often have to paint it in sections or manhandle it carefully (which is not the oxymoron it sounds like). Point is that the two size categories are treated differently in competitions for a reason.
For the sake of full disclosure I did indeed enter a figure in this category and did in fact not win anything -- while this model came in 3rd. It is also telling that the same artist won an award in the "Single Miniatures" category as well. Accuse me of sour grapes if you like (I thought the top two winners well deserved their awards and that there other deserving models better than mine that didn't win), but issues like this don't make me eager to enter the competition next year.
Of more fun and less controversy was the dealers room which you see above. Yes, the hall does go back as far as it seems to. It's always the center of activity and a major reason why I go -- there are usually good deals to be found. Unfortunately, there were no real good deals on Games Workshop product, but there was plenty of other stuff. This includes a treasured acquisition of mine, namely new t-shirt from Rich Burlew, the The Order of the Stick guy.
Finally, let me leave you with this picture. It is one of a tournament being played. A miniatures tournament, in fact. Only, it was a tournament for Warmachine/Hordes from Privateer Press. The event had perhaps sixty people in it. Likewise, Privateer had a huge booth in the dealers room with demos and even a painting master working his craft who welcomed any and all questions. Privateer also ran a painting competition that was far more popular and produced far more quality entries than the more generic Gen Con version.
So, again, why is it that Games Workshop can't show up?
Last time I described the events of the actual RTT at Origins this past June, but now I want to go into greater depth about the ideas and difficulties behind actually designing a tournament. It’s a subject that might at first seem straightforward, but which ultimately has a surprising amount of complexity.
Generally speaking there are a possible four factors that go into determining the winner of a tournament: Army Composition; Painting; Sportsmanship, and; Battle Results. Let me talk about each in turn.
Army Composition: Of the four this is probably the most contentious and the hardest one to nail down successfully. This is so much so that many tournaments just drop the concept altogether (including the last Origins RTT). This is partially due to its highly subjective nature. On the one hand you have the question of just what is a “fair” army design and on the other you have deep philosophical differences of just what role Army Composition should have in a tournament setting. After all, don’t the rules themselves represent the acceptable range of possible army designs?
Problem is that we all know there are particular, otherwise artificial army concepts – A Slaaneshi Chaos Lash force anyone? – that are powerful on the table but otherwise violate the 40K good housekeeping seal of approval. Playing within the setting of the game is important to those of us who tend to cringe at the sight of an army clearly designed with only the intent of winning, which in my experience is most players. The natural impulse in reaction is to institute some sort of additional guidelines – that is, Army Composition – that attempt to put a limit on the cheese and encourage fluffy armies.
Of course, just what is “cheesy” and “fluffy”? Have an overly restrictive Composition design and you get cookie-cutter armies, but not have one at all and the result can be bad feelings and a ruined tournament. Most of us have an internal definition of “fair” that we automatically apply to our own efforts and which we subconsciously expect – within reason – the other guy to follow.
Yet, a tournament is ultimately about winning, not per se having a good time. You hope that the two will nicely align, but is it really unfair for your opponent to have gone all out (within the rules) to come up with a kick-ass force? In fact, for some people they expect to face iron-hard armies and will be a bit offended if they don’t – and will resent the hell out of an opponent who attempts to “shame” them into feeling bad that they actually want to win. Going into a competition facing cheese can even be a bit liberating in that you can simply discard the whole idea of worrying about such things.
However, the difficulty for those running tournaments is that they are faced with the not always compatible requirements of offering good competition while making sure everyone has a good time. No one is going to return to a tournament that was as much fun as a root canal, yet no one is going to respect a tournament that only provides limp, watered down battle.
I’m not really sure what the answer to this conundrum is, but I don’t think it is a problem that will just go away. When designing the Origins RTT I crossed my fingers and hoped no one would bring the Cheesefest Marines (or Craftworld) and fortunately no one did. However, I may not be as lucky next time.
Painting: Again, this is more of an issue than you might think despite the fact that there are fairly good guidelines and examples out there as to what a good paintjob really is.
For one thing there is still a measure of subjectivity involved as judging painting quality is ultimately, well, a judgment call. Yet, a bigger problem that this is the fact that many people may lack the skill to even know what a good paint job really is.
Let me tell you a story. Last decade I went to a number of Grand Tournaments in a bunch of different cities. I hadn’t been playing or painting for all that long, so when I came back from my first GT with a mediocre painting score I wasn’t surprised. However, the fun I had did inspire me to try to do better. Thus, I set about constructing my Vampire Counts army. I converted everything and overall spent three times the effort painting up the force. Accordingly, I go to the GT the next year expecting a substantially higher painting score.
Instead, I received the exact same result. As you might expect I was more than a little miffed. I had spent all that extra time and got nothing for it!
However, over the years as my painting skills and experience have improved I’ve come to realize the score was pretty much exactly right (although the system they were using at the time did tend to grade on a curve that pushed results into a bland middle ground). Despite my efforts I hadn’t really improved my level of expertise and no amount of conversion work can make up for the same old mediocre paint job. Point is that at the time I didn’t really comprehend the limitations of my painting abilities. It took long experience to realize what goes into a good paint job and how difficult various techniques really are to do.
Now, what if I had been my earlier self and gone to the Origins RTT? I probably would have thought the judges were uncommonly tough, maybe even unfair. Funny thing is that I was undoubtedly the harshest of the painting judges for the tourney. On a scale of 0 to 20 I frankly wouldn’t have given anyone there better than a 12 or 13, but not because the paints jobs were so terrible, but because to my mind the scale should be accurate and uncompromising. A 20 represents a Golden Demon winner and I personally think my best work is maybe a 15. Thus, on that scale even a “mere” 10 represents a pretty darn good army more than worth having pride in.
Still, getting a “mere” ten is usually going to be interpreted as a poor result by a player just because it is so far from the best possible (after all, since when is 50% more than a grade F?). Likewise, mediocre scores can all too easily be seen as reducing the value of a good paint job. Why go to a lot of trouble on your army if it only gets you a few extra points? In fact, you might need to have a Painting award just to make sure that people bother trying hard at all. Even then many people may just conclude they don’t have a chance of winning it anyway and just ditch the whole thing.
That would be bad as painting is a fundamental part of the hobby that needs to be encouraged as much as possible. Yet, at the same time it can’t be too much of a factor in tournament scoring or else you just end up with a Grand Demon contest. I’d like to find a happy medium that would integrate painting more fully into a tournament, but I am not sure what that may be.
Sportsmanship: This is an important qualification that is a staple of most every GW-themed tournament out there. It is also in a way the most subjective. The reason boils down to the question of what just a good sportsman is and how people can confuse it with other things.
In theory a good sportsman is one who knows the rules, is polite to his opponent, is reasonable in his judgments, and does what he had to make sure the game itself is successful. However, it is easy for people to confuse this was general charisma and the other guy’s ability to entertain you outside the confines of the game itself (say, he tells great jokes). You shouldn’t have to be an outgoing entertainer to get a good sportsmanship score. Yet, people have a tendency to see likeability as being the equivalent to a good sport.
The other problem with sportsmanship – one which threatens to make it meaningless – is that players tend to give others perfect scores by default rather than judging people as the tournament rules suggest. It’s an unsurprising human reaction. Most of us don’t want to anger those we play needlessly or fail to give him the benefit of the doubt. Worse, in a situation where everyone is getting perfect scores to actually not get one can easily seem like a slap in the face. It can also be seen as the difference between a “good player” and a “bad player” as in “What, that guy only got 17 points out of 20 when most everyone else got full points? Boy, he must be a jerk.”
Of course, if everyone does get a perfect score then what is the point of having sportsmanship at all? You might as well just give everyone the same score from the get-go and avoid any possible recriminations. The basic question then is whether sportsmanship is worthwhile as a tournament concept or whether you can come up with a way for people to be more discerning when grading it.
Battle Scores: By far the single most important factor in tournament scoring, battle results are what really determine who the grand champion will be. In the Origins RTT all by itself it represented 60% of your final score and there are many instances where the ratio is even higher.
In one way this makes sense as ultimately the main point is to play the game and see who wins. On the flip side such a dominating position within the scoring scheme tends to make other considerations less meaningful if not meaningless. That may not sound so bad, but it could have the result of discouraging anything but cutthroat tournament play, including ignoring things like painting which are fundamental to the game(s).
It also has the secondary effect of making each game (especially in a three round tournament) vitally important. Lose even one and you are effectively out of the running for grand champion. That can lead to players losing enthusiasm over the course of play or even ditching out early to go do something else. The last thing a tournament organizer wants is to lose half his players before the final round. Fortunately, the vast majority of players are more respectful than that, but still knowing you are out of the running after the first game is still something of a downer.
Indirectly this emphasis on battle results has the additional effect of making scenario design paramount. It should be anyway since it is key to having a good time at the tournament, but when it comes to battle points even a slight bias or misstep in scenario design can give players an unfair, crucial advantage.
Take for example what happened to me a few times at earlier Grand Tournaments. There were a few games – on both the 40K and Fantasy side – where winning literally came down to a single die roll at the start of the game. Namely, were you the “defender” or the “attacker”? I couldn’t find anyone who won as the second. What could be worse than having something like that happen first thing and destroying any chance for ultimate victory?
But, you don’t need something so extreme to still skew results. For example, a tournament that that gave mobile armies inherent advantages due to scenario design – even for a single round – could ruin the chances of Imperial Guard or Tau players from the get-go. You can mitigate this effect by providing other rounds that reverse the advantage, but the balance is very tricky, especially given most tournaments have an odd number of rounds. It’s also easy to give an advantage without knowing it to certain armies if you aren’t careful, the result being that halfway through the tournament you realize you made a fundamental mistake and can’t do anything to fix it. In such a case hopefully the players don’t notice!
Origins lasts four days, but Sunday tends to be short and there is only at best time to run something quick. As a consequence Saturday was the climax of our games – and fittingly enough it was a Rogue Trader Tournament.
The day started early (too much so for my usual tastes, but then again I wanted everything to go right). It had to as we needed to put out terrain (it would have been too dangerous to leave the terrain out all night – it might not have been there in the morning), setup our table, organize all the paperwork, and so forth. Fortunately, while I hadn’t run a tournament before I had certainly played in a lot, including GW Grand Tournaments. As a result I made sure to make out copies of everything we would need, even special forms to help us keep track of points and determine the winner. I even made sure to produce three separate, color-coded sheets for everyone to fill out with game results and sportsmanship scores.
Registration started at 9am and went to 10am. The one fear I had in the run up to Origins was whether or not we would get enough people. We had done everything we could think of to advertise, but this was our first year and thus we had no good (or even bad for that matter) reputation to attract potential players. Add in the cost and the economy and I had visions of one or two participants showing up. Fortunately, we ended up with sixteen. It wasn’t as much as we could have gotten, but it was still more than enough to have a good tournament.
Things started more or less on time with everyone getting a random opponent to start off. From there everyone would be partnered up with their next nearest competitor in terms of battle points. I didn’t bother with using a tournament program given the relatively small amount of players (when we have the 100 man tournament within a few years then it’ll be necessary). It wasn’t as hard as you might think as not everyone gets their results in at the same time and we made sure to provide enough time between games to account for possible hold ups.
A funny thing about running a tournament is that it doesn’t give you any gaming stories to tell after the fact. No harrowing story about how I needed to roll three-sixes and no “I coulda been a contender” tales of woe about how I would have won “if only…” Instead, as a tournament organizer you spend your time answering questions, making rulings, filling out forms, keeping an eye on things, and generally making sure everything goes somewhat according to plan. I am pleased to say that we didn’t get any trouble makers – even when losing people kept their cool. More than that it sure looked like everyone was having more or less a good time. At least, that’s what you assume when you hear a lot of whoops and laughs.
One other thing you quickly learn about tournaments is that they are hard on the feet. By the end of the day I was practically needing crutches. What stinks is that was with inserts in the shoes. I got to find a better solution for next year.
Anyway, the three games all went well without any significant problems save that we needed to alter a scenario rule that didn’t work as well as I had hoped (lesson: You can’t over plan or overwork when it comes to tournament preparation). It took me only fifteen minutes to figure out the winners, but we delayed the award ceremony until everyone got back (and, gratifyingly, every player was there). Good thing too as I think at least a few were surprised by their wins. A lot of congratulations and thank-yous came next with nary a complaint in sight. The only downside to tournament being over is that then you have to clean everything up!
More to come...
Ranillon has already covered the flow of the game itself. He mentioned having help from a teammate that flank marched into the enemy's rear? Those were my marines, and this is my take on the battle.
FLANK MARCH
On setup, I found our force setting up opposite a player who brought a MASSIVE imperial guard tank company, complete with superheavy tanks and backed up by a Reaver titan and a Warhound titan. While my own Reaver Titan set up on our side with space marine scouts as screening troops in cover around it's ankles, my space marine battle company was able to come in en masse over consecutive turns behind the imperial guard player, thanks to a distinct lack of jamming or chaos covens in his area.
I had intended to shoot up his transports and then assault the troops inside, so my marine company would have an assault to hide in during the IG player's next shooting phase. But I discovered to my horror that the 16 or so Chimera transports he had brought were in fact EMPTY. It seems he only had so much room in his car, so he'd left all the actual infantry at home! While this seems a very odd thing to do for an unlimited-points game, it quite nicely left my space marines stranded behind a sea of battlecannons, and only his desire to shoot my tanks first saved my marines' ability to fight. Krak grenades, melta bombs, and the odd powerfist or meltagun did most of the work.
HOT REAVER-ON-REAVER ACTION
Let's face it... no matter how you arm these monsters, a reaver titan is pretty much capable of savaging another reaver titan unassisted in 2 turns. With the sort of help you find in an apocalypse game, even a Reaver titan stands up to only one turn of firing.
My Reaver went first, assisted by a squadron of my predator tanks who downed a few void shields. An apocalypse barrage launcher stripped the remaining shields from my opponent, and I savaged him down to 2 structure points and a lot of engine hits with a Turbolaser and a stratch built Volcano Cannon. Sadly, I inflicted no weapon hits and no "cannot fire next turn" hits, which I was counting on to slow his counterattack.
The IG player's reaver went next, preceded by a tremendous amount of battlecannon and lascannon shots from an approaching company of Leman Russ tanks. They stripped my shields, and while his vulcan megabolter could not harm me, his plasma cannon inflicted some engine hits while his single shot Vortex Missile ripped through my titan like a hot knife. His Warhound titan joined in and finished me off with a Turbolaser shot.
STERNGUARDS FOR THE KILL
I had two squads of sternguard veterans in the IG player's backfield at this point. In an unlimited-points scenario such as this, both 10 man squads were fully equipped with Combi-meltas, and each squad had a librarian attached to them. The librarian's job was to give the veterans a 5+ save and, more importantly, teleport them around at 24" per turn. Though an enemy psychic hood was limiting the effectiveness of this tactic, one sternguard squad managed to teleport in behind the enemy reaver titan and unload with it's remaining 7 melta shots. The damaged Reaver titan went down quite easily to this tactic, freeing my surviving predators and razorbacks to unload on other things.
80 PERCENT CASUALTIES FOR THE WIN
Doesn't seem like much of a win, but I did sweep the IG player off the board (Minus his superheavies, which Ranillon was dancing with) and claimed an objective marker or two in the process. Oddly, about 1/3 of my marine casualties came not from incoming fire but rather from exploding tanks. With so many krak, meltabomb, and powerfist hits each turn against densely packed IG tanks, I was losing marines at a steady rate to 6's on armor penetrations when they killed a tank. One unit of assault marines in particular was reduced to a single model without ever being fired upon, due to 5 successful assaults with melta bombs.
LESSONS LEARNED
1 - For their points and/or cost in Assets, Orbital Bombardments are useless against tanks. Even strength 10 ones. Quite often, you'll just inconvenience a tank or two. If you get them free as part of a formation or as an ability from your army codex, fine. But don't waste an asset on them, and don't aim at tanks.
2 - Teleporting Sternguard Squads with combi meltas. A squad is pretty much guaranteed to kill a superheavy target and then rough up any infantry they see on the way to an objective marker. Even after they're out of combi weapon shots, they still have krak grenades at no extra cost! If you're not limited by points and you have an asset that allows all your units to be scoring units, then there is no reason not to overload on these as much as you can. Mine are represented by Deathwatch marines, since there are no current rules for Deathwatch.
3 - A Titan, any Titan, must endeavor to engage the enemy line from OVER 60" away, and use it's 96" or 120" range guns. If it cannot do this for any reason (physical limit of table size), it will attract fire and die on turn 2.
4 - Psychic Hoods are normally wonderful for cutting down on the dirty psy stuff the enemy is pulling on you. But a Psychic Hood has a limited range, and in Apocalypse it is easy for an enemy psyker to be out of range. A DARK ANGELS Psychic Hood, on the other hand, HAS NO MAXIMUM RANGE. One Dark Angel librarian with a psy hood can interfere with each and every enemy psyker in an Apoc game, no matter where he stands or how large the board.
The first day of Origins was 40K Space Hulk, two introductory Warhammer 40K games for as many as six players. From the very start I imagined it being a 3-D environment just like the models themselves. I also decided to make it the players against the game masters rather than one group playing marines and the other Tyranids. I thought this approach would allow greater control over the player experience, important since some of the players would be complete novices.
Building a Space Hulk
Originally my idea was to build a number of square sections with terrain built up on them. Each would be designed to fit only with certain other sections in a certain way. This had the advantage of allowing me to contruct large and complicated models with an overall impressive effect. However, it also came with three major disadvantages -- one, it would be hard to move around; two, it would always be the same layout for every game, and; three, not only would it take more time and effort to construct, but it was all-or-nothing -- every part had to be finished or the whole thing wouldn't be useable! Considering that I wasn't sure how long it would take I feared I wouldn't be ready in time.
Therefore, I made the choice to instead make the 'hulk' modular, with rooms and corridors seperate. This allows the hulk to be arranged in different ways and to switch out components. I could also build up to a minimum amount of pieces needed to play the game without being stuck having to get every last thing done. I could always add more if I had the time. The question now was how to create the thing.
In the end I used the gothic building sets from Pegasus Hobbies for the walls of the Hulk's chambers. The box sets allow you to put together the walls however you like, a heck of a time saver for what I had to do. I eventually constructed seven different rooms: Two expanded hallways, an Imperial Shrine, a Chaos Shrine, a control center, a storage room, and a ship cannon room. To connect all of these I cut up a bunch of long hallway sections.
In the end I had enough time to "finish" everything, but not to finish with the level of detail I had hoped for -- man, but it takes a lot of effort! But, ultimately that's okay. The Space Hulk still turned out well and I can always go back to do more work on the project for next year.
Playing the Game
I designed the rules to allow for a lot of fighting with the terminators facing being overrun if they weren't careful. When a terminator squad enters a room it automatically faces a group of bugs while otherwise there is a 1-in-3 chance Tyranids would show up anyway. Since I had the models I made it so that you could face not just genestealers, but gaunts and Tyranid warriors as well. This allowed for a lot of variation and the feeling among the players that bad news was literally behind every corner.
The first game had a full house and everything went well. The players tended to roll up a lot random encounters. It wasn't unusual for squads to face down wave after wave of bugs. That made for a tense game -- can he make that armor save? Can he kill the last two genestealers? Will any of his dead terminators return? A player's entire game could rest on a single throw of the dice. It all made for a great game -- you know things are going well when people are cheering during play.
The second game was almost as good, but in retrospect suffered because it had two less players. That meant fewer encounters, all the more so as in this case there weren't as many random encounters. As a result at times the scenario didn't quite reach the necessary "critical mass" to make for a properly exciting game. Everyone clearly still had a good time, but I realized that for next year I have to make sure that there is always a regular supply of Tyranids rushing in.
All-in-all 40K Space Hulk worked out rather well, I think. The players and game masters all had a great time. It also taught me a lot of things that will mean tighter rules and more challenges for Origins 2010. We should even be able to offer the game the whole convention, not just on Thursday. So, if you want to play you'll just need to grab some of your friends and come on down. Just make sure to bring extra ammo for your storm bolter!
Note: You can now click on the pictures to see larger versions
I had a lot of fun at Origins and in the process learned a lot about running large events. I also happened to be in a 95,000 point Apocalypse conflict and I learned a lot during it as well.
The game had the more or less standard format of Imperials vs. Aliens, although in this case since we had a lot more of the former than the latter we needed a few of us to switch sides. This time that included me. So, I setup on one end of the long game table facing down a straightforward Space Marine army and an Imperial Guard Tank company brimming over with super-heavy tanks and one Armorcast Reaver Titan. Fortunately, a teammate took out the Titan, but I faced most of the remaining super-heavies alone.
Facing them I had four super-heavies of my own – two Shadowswords and two Baneblades. Stupidly I had left my Stormlord at home (doh!), but given its anti-infantry armament its absence wasn’t as critical as it could have been. I also had my own Titan (an Armorcast Warhound I bought way back when the model was new) to anchor my portion of the battle line. Likewise, I possessed an Eldar Scorpion (the role of which was being played by an old Tempest), but I decided to flank march it, my two land raiders, and a handful of infantry.
With all this I had my legion of terminators, a few squads of allied Eldar, two assassins, and an Inquisitor in a Valkyrie. I kept the terminators in reserve to have them available whenever needed up and down the line. As it happened I later brought all of them in on my section of the board anyway to secure objectives. Arguably they might have been more useful down at the other end where our allied Tyranids and Orks were getting slaughtered (entirely because they were two large infantry forces trying to destroy Titans and tanks), but the terminators weren’t really meant to kill things so much as to hold territory. In this they did pretty well as when the game was over I managed to grab the two objectives nearest me.
My flanking force came in from the nearest end of the table. It was worth only perhaps 2000 points, a total that might sound impressive until you remember that they represented less than 3% of the forces playing. However, they did a good job of bogging down my nearest opponent. He couldn’t just wander past without facing serious flank fire and thus had to devote troops to take me down. My forces were tough enough to stick it out for the most part, giving as good as they received. The upshot is that it kept the enemy just far enough away for me to secure the nearest objective counter.
In doing this I learned that the Thunderfire Cannon is a better unit that I had originally thought. It might not be able to ignore the armor of Space Marines, but its 5” templates could still bomb entire squads at a time. Likewise, its 60” range meant I had my choice of a wide range of enemy units, thereby guaranteeing that there was always a relevant target within reach. All-in-all I am now a good deal more enthusiastic about the Cannon (if I can only find my White Dwarf with that Apocalypse Thunderfire Cannon formation….)
The highlight of the game had to be my duel against the opposing line of super-heavies. In particular, one spectacular firing from a Shadowsword of mine ended up producing three sixes in a row and destroying an enemy SS in single shot! Beyond that we spent most of the game slowly crippling each other’s tanks, although thanks to a backfield assault from one of my allies our side ultimately managed to get the best of the deal.
This duel taught me the value of ShadowSwords in an Apocalypse game. I was initially a bit unenthused with them when compared to Baneblades if for no other reason the latter has so much more to shoot! Yet, the Strength D Volcano Cannon on the ‘Sword is an especially handy weapon to have when facing super-heavies and Titans. All you have to do is hit and you’re rolling on the damage table. While Baneblades may be better against infantry hordes the Shadowsword is definitely a superior choice when facing the big stuff.
Not all my units did well – take my homemade Lightning fighter. I did get some positive reviews for my on-the-cheap conversion, but as an actual military unit the thing couldn’t hit the broad side of a Baneblade. In my first turn I shot two missiles at a single target only to roll snake eyes. I then followed up by missing with my twin-linked lascannons the rest of the game! Thus, in the end my fighter accomplished little more than take in the sights. At least the difficulty of hitting a zooming flyer meant it made it through without so much as a scratch.
One of the enemy players showed up with a whole air force of Forge World flyers and man were they impressive to see. Not so impressive that I’d be willing to pay the hundreds of dollars to have the same thing, but impressive enough for me to look into doing other conversions. A Marauder Bomber would be especially nice to have for the next game.
Of course, nothing is better than having a Titan on the field. In this game we had two Reaver Titans and at least three Warhounds on the board. It makes me wish I could time travel back fifteen years and splurge on some of the old, but still great Armorcast models. Having just the Warhound is nice, but more would be better.
Regardless, the game was a lot of fun. While we may not have broken the Apocalypse point record we did attract a lot of attention and there are already new volunteers lined up for next year’s game. I think we can guarantee breaking the 200,000 point barrier if not (much) more. Here’s looking forward to Origins 2010!