Apocalypse 2: Tauriffic Boogaloo, Final entry.

Last weekend 9 of us nerds gathered at the Morris Nerdatorium (Greg’s basement) and brought 2500 pts each for a knock down, drag out, smash-em-up, Apocalypse battle.

I, Jordan, was the game master and if you want to know the story line then check out the previous Apocalypse 2: Tauriffic Boogaloo posts.

ONTO THE BATTLE REPORT!

The Tau/Eldar had to deploy first and started with 2 Fortress of Redemption buildings, as these were the main objectives, worth 1 VP per section held at the end of the game.  The crates that littered the centre of the table were worth 1VP, which was tallied just before each break.  These points could be spent on Strategic Resources and Strategic Reserves.

DEPLOYMENT

Since the Tau and Eldar were the defending side they deployed first.  Their deployment zone will be the North part of the board, for ease of describing where everything is.  In their deployment zone they have both Fortress of Redemptions and at least 6 crates.  Wes took the Initiative and deployed a good size of his force right up front with the intent of taking control of some of  the crates early on to earn some VPs, the rest of his army went in the eastern Fortress.  Chad deployed some of his forces on the battlements of the western Fortress and joined Wes with a smaller force taking the crates.  Mike deploys a minimal force near the western Fortress.  Sean deploys his Titan behind the western Fortress using the tower to gain a cover save from most of the table, some grav tanks on the edge in the middle, and his Farseer formation in the east Fortress tower.  There were several Crisis suits, a couple Riptides, and 2 Tigersharks in reserve.

The Imperials, being the attackers, deployed second but would be receiving the first turn.  In their deployment zone they had some rocks

That didn’t stop them though, the forces they deployed were right on the line ready to move forward.  Greg and JP deployed Land Raiders on the bridges, providing some cover to the Baneblades right behind them.  Charles had a couple mini-super heavies and a regular super heavy on the table and Steve had next to nothing.

TURN 1

So it turns out that the Imperial players took this whole invading strike force thing seriously as they had almost half of their points poised to deep strike but not before playing their assets that allow them to deep strike without scatter and naming Longstrike as the warlord worth 3VPs...uh oh.

So that’s a look at what the table looks like after the reserves come in and the Tau take a pounding.  Particularly poor, poor Wes who loses half of his army when the Imperials drop, but like a champ, holds onto the Fortress of Redemption he has occupied.

There were a bunch of Kroot there

The cavalry arrives with the Tigersharks coming in from the north west table edge and a handful of crisis suits, along with several Eldar deep strikers.  The retaliation is fierce, but somewhat ineffective despite removing an entire unit of assault marines with a Tau bombardment.

At this point we have been playing for 2 hours and it’s break time.  The score is:  Imperials 6, Taudar 1

TURN 2

Thanks to the spanking they received in turn 1, the Tau are able to activate their Devine Intervention which gives them all Stubborn and Feel No Pain (4+).  However the pain does continue.  Much to Wes’ chagrin, the eastern Fortress of Redemption comes under siege from both Charles and Steve.  Combined flaming and assaulting the hatches puts a hurt on the units inside but they manage to hold on.  The Blood Angels Librarian on the west side scare the Broadsides and they run off the table and one of the Tigersharks is shot down.  The imperials, considering they are up by 5 points decide that they are safe for now and spend a point to get their Praetor tank back in reserve, they will need it to take out the Tigersharks.

The Tau take this opportunity to spend a VP to get their Tigershark back and put it in reserves, a risky move considering they are so far down in points.  However, the Taudar fight back valiantly and manage to put a smack down on the Imperials killing many marines, the Macharius mini-super-heavy and the Baneblade super heavy.

After 4 hours of gaming we have completed 2 turns, not quite the pace that was set in the previous Apocalypse game run by Greg, but lots of shit is dying so it’s fun all around, and the score is 11-6 (or somewhere around there) for the Imperials.  We break for meat and Greg, once again, does a wonderful job of BBQing up our steaks, or half a cow in JP’s case.  After a quick walk for some snacks for later, and I snap this pic of an awesome swing

It’s time to get back to the game.  Now it’s 6:30, so it’s pretty clear that unless things get moving we are only getting one more turn in, but It’s a doozy.

TURN 3

You might be thinking, Greg had all kinds of cool rules in his game.  Big balls of falling poo, prisoners in pens, etc. etc.  Well, I did too, I guess I just didn’t make it quite so obvious as to how they would get these rules into play, but it all comes together this turn, by accident.

This turn starts off with JP calling his Finest Hour.  His warlord, Vulcan now has strength 10 attacks that have the Concussive and Strikedown abilities.  Vulcan calmly exits his pimped out ride, a Cestus assault vehicle and strides up to the Eldar Titan.

Elsewhere, shooting is happening and lots of shit dies.  The crowning achievement though is when a Hellhammer shot deviates a little and hits one of the large objective crates.  I had mentioned that the crates can be destroyed and count as AV14 immobile vehicles.  No one had been shooting them though because they are objectives.  Still, I thought one or 2 would get shot at to prevent the opponent from scoring those points.  Nevertheless, one of the larger crates blows up and sets off the Magma storm unnatural disaster.  The larger crates set off the Flaming Boulders result, and the smaller crate would set off the Rain of Lava result, which we will get to.  The way I resolved who was going to be hit was to start with the closest unit then move outwards until all the flaming boulders were resolved.  Well I just so happened to roll 6 flaming boulders, which are S10 AP2 large blast.  The result was several things dead AND 2 more crates were busted open, a small one and another large one which sends 5 more flaming boulders into the air.  The small one killed several heavy weapons marines on the South East corner of the central board, and the large one manages to blow up A FOURTH CRATE which in turn kills s couple of things around it.

So, one deviated Hellhammer shell detonates 4 crates, kills over a dozen models, smashes the Cestus to the ground, and inflicts a hull point on the Eldar titan.  It’s too bad this happens in the late stages of the game because if 1 more crate would have exploded then the Airborne Inferno result would have been activated for the rest of the game.

Ok, that was the shooting phase, NOW back to VULCAN! 

Remember that he called his finest hour which makes him strength 10 in combat right, and he got out right in front of the Eldar Titan right?  Well, that crazy son of a bitch assaults the titan.  With his 5 attacks, he manages to inflict an amazing 8 hull points worth of damage and kills the titan.  As Vulcan turns to walk away from the wreckage, cause cool guys don’t look at explosions, the titan erupts in an explosion the intensity of a small supernova and Vulcan is incinerated.  Oh well, you can’t win them all.

The Taudar turn is a bit of a scramble.  With the titan gone, along with most of their army they are struggling to score points.  In a desperate attempt for those points, Mike attempts his secret mission, which is to kill the Eldar Warlord, Eldrad.  In writing this objective, I was kind of hoping that Mike might take it a little more personal and try to snipe out Eldrad, who was in an unkillable unit of Farseers, who were forced to jump off the top of the Fortress of Redemption tower.  However, Mike tried to pull off the old “oops didn’t see you there” bombardment.  Unfortunately the bombardment was off target and it smashed into the Fortress’s bunker that happened to be occupied by Wes’ troops.  The bunker was destroyed along with the models inside and the Eldar were unscathed.

It was at this point that the players recognized the potential devastation of the crates, combined with their desperation, and several shots were wasted trying to shoot a large one near several Imperial units.  In retrospect, perhaps I made them a little too strong to kill which made the idea less inviting.  Who wants to waste a lascannon shot to kill an objective when it could kill the model on the objective?

In the end the score was:

Charles scored 2 bonus points with his secret objective by killing the most expensive unit in Mike’s army with one of his units that had the Red Thirst, despite the beating he took, Wes still had a unit of 6 Firewarriors inside a section of the Fortress,  the Hellhammer was the only superheavy to survive the whole game, and Sean scored 2 bonus points for killing the Imperial Warmaster (Vulcan) and stopping his Finest Hour.

All in all it was a great day, and everyone had fun.  At least that’s what they told me.  Looking forward to the next one which, as I understand, will be run by Wes.  Check the forums for details.