Tales from Origins -- Apocalypse Then

Posted by gbprime on 23. July 2009 16:15

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.