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My previous opponent in the 5k battle asked for a rematch, which I was glad to do. Armed with an Apocalypse game under his belt, a good read through the apocalypse rules and a "special surprise", I was more than happy to give him another go. We upped the ante this time, with 6000 points per side and 3 strategic assets, which we both felt was a good number [thinking 1 per 2k points, in our heads]. We agreed not to combine Careful Planning and Flank March.

Notes of my force:
Strategic Redeployment, Blind Barrage, Hold at All Costs

Baneblade, Warp Rift, Daemon Lord Zarakynel.


Notes of his force:
Blind Barrage, Careful Planning, Hold at All Costs [great minds think alike]

Reaver Titan (!)


The game started out with surprises. He had warned me about the Reaver just a few days before, announcing it as his surprise to use against me, and being WYSIWYG, it was armed with a Double Barrelled Turbolaser, Apocalyptic Missle Launcher, and Titan Close Combat Weapon. Never have I seen a more impressive powerfist. The bids for deployment were the next surprise. I bid 9, thinking I might undercut a potential 10 minutes and take the first turn, and he countered with a 3 minute deployment! Shocked doesn't begin to describe my feelings, and he wasted no time deploying a tactical and devastator squad in two buildings, the reaver right out in front, landraider crusader full of assault terminators behind it, predator annihilator, two more tacs in rhinos, a bike squadron and two individual attack bikes, with Mephiston and an honor guard way in the back [he wanted that psychic hood protected!].

I took my time, setting up a large host of infantry, spread out to avoid destruction at the hands of the reaver and set back a bit to avoid assaults. A dreadnought and Landraider full of terminator aspiring champions covered my flank, while on the other I had to settle with only a squad of marines staring down that crusader. The only building I had [and it was impressive - he had made all the buildings on the board] was way in the back of my very large deployment zone [the scatter dice had made the zones rather skewed] and deploying in it would have put the reaver out of range of my lascannons, so they gritted their teeth and deployed spread out in the open. I set aside two rhino-bound squads to come in as reserves after the warp rift opened, and as the timer beeped that my time was up, I'd realized I'd forgotten to deploy my baneblade! No point in crying, so moving on we set up objectives, and I placed the warp rift about 12" away from his reaver near the woods my lonely squad of marines was holding - that'd be some nice reinforcements!

The first turn wasn't kind, and I wish I'd taken my friend's advice and taken the Camoflauge asset. When the dust cleared, 10 fresh terminators had appeared in no-man's-land supported by two dreadnoughts in drop pods thanks to Careful Planning, and my havoc squads were reduced to almost nothing. At least they fared better than the dreadnought, which was completely nothing. To top it off, the tactical squad with attached Lash sorceror I had planned on shooting down some terminators with their plasma weapons had gotten pinned, so it was going to be a light round of shooting, especially since he had dropped his blind barrage in front of all of my heavy weapons and noisemarines. All guns were on the attack bikes, dreadnoughts and terminators. I succeeded in killing 1 attack bike and weakening a terminator squad as well as shaking one dreadnought and immobilizing the other, and I followed up with an assault by my daemon prince to finish off those terminators, and my chosen terminators unloading from their landraider into the other set.

His second turn continued the pounding, and revealed his plans. Behind my lines appeared a chaplain with full death company, Lord Dante and his honour guard, and a Veteran Assault squad. My defiler was eager to drop templates on them, but by the end of the turn he had no more suitable weapons and couldn't even move to scramble into assault. Things looked grim for my rear lines, especially when the reaver opened up again. I chose this turn to use MY blind barrage, limiting the reaver to only the apocalypse missle launcher, which did most of the damage to the defiler and reduced one of the havoc squads down to only 2 lascannons and no support, their icon falling in flames. The front line looked better. Tactical marines charged my daemon prince, being unable to shoot due to the blind barrage, and did a wound. Bikers charged my pinned tactical squad, but they held. The crusader swept around and unloaded near the tactical squad in the woods, but the assault terminators were stopped short by the difficult terrain. My turn....and things changed.

Getting two reserves this turn, I opened the warp rift and the Baneblade rumbled on in my rearlines. My opponent realized his mistake.

Zarakynel assaulted the reaver, locking it in close combat for the game. A greater daemon supported by lesser daemons assaulted the terminator assault squad that had appeared out of their landraider, and 5 more units of daemonettes appeared in front of Mephiston's assault squad, charging in while others prepared to go after the tactical and devastator squads he'd put in the rear to hold objectives. A timely Lash of Submission by the daemon prince pulled the devastators from their cover and he along with his unstoppable terminator bodyguard charged into them. A sorceror moved to help the squad that had been assaulted by bikes and then assaulted again by a fresh tactical squad, and my obliterators and vindicator continued to pound his reinforcements. In the rearlines was the other show-stopper. After an impressive display of every single blastmaster missing the nicely bunched up assault squads, the Baneblade decided to show them how it's done. After getting one Lash of Submission dispelled by the meddling Mephiston's psychic hood, another succeeded and pushed the death company into a nice compact mass of marines together with the veteran assault squad. The baneblade opened up with everything it had and by the time it was over, the veteran assault squad's sergeant was running away and Lord Dante stood alone amidst the sea of blood.

With his rearguard decimated, his front line broken and the Reaver locked in a close combat with Zarakynel he couldn't win, we called the game a turn later.

This game was a blast for us both, and though he realized he'd made a mistake, he loved the blood and carnage and nailbiting of the first couple turns. I learned to fear titans, and he learned that deepstriking is risky. I'm afraid next time I might have to deal with those same assault squads flank marching, and it may be a very different game indeed.

Zarakynel herself! Did she manage to do anything to the Reaver, or just hold it up?

Nice game, total bloodbath when the baneblade went to town. Nice work Chaos

- Salvage

Awesome spellbound...

thanks for the report!

How the HELL did he get all that down in 3 minutes, did he have all of his models staged off to the side of the table? And did he just lob them towards an area that he wanted them to be in? haha kudos to him for being able to drop that fast. thats a pretty powerful skill to have for apocalypse

We both decided the "5 minute planning session" would be better spent taking our models out of their cases, since we were just 1 player per side. So we had them out and set aside, and he just had to grab them and put them down.

4 tanks, 6 bikers, 20 marines and 6 assault marines, and the titan was all he really deployed at the start, since he knew careful planning was going to help him.


Zarakynel managed to immobilize it and destroy the apocalypse missle launcher and the close combat weapon, and do 1 point of structure damage to the titan. Had the game continued it would have gone down very fast, with no weapons and no movement causing those results to become structural damage instead.

She would have done better, but I kept forgetting to cast Warp Time in my turn, and the one time I remembered it was cancelled by Mephiston.

....before he was torn apart by daemonettes

Great report- sounds like a fun game!

One question- Don't non-Gargantuan units (like Zarakynel) have to disengage from assault with a superheavy every turn? Only gargantuan creatures and other super-heavies remain engaged with superheavies after a round of CC. Everyone else has to move away 1" at the end of combat, according to the Apoc book. That'd mean a lot of nasty shooting coming your way between scraps, at least from the arm-weapons.

Or am I missing something? I looked at Zarakynel's rules, and she's an MC, but not a GC. Did you and your opponent agree to make her a GC? Or is there a Slaanesh power among her psychic tricks that prevents disengaging?

[EDIT: Forgot about IA:Apocalypse. Havne't read it yet, but I assume it makes the FW Daemons into GCs. D'oh.]

Yup, IA Apoc makes all the FW Daemon Lords into gargantuan creatures. It's actually a downgrade I'm not at all in favor of, as they're not as tough as their price tags suggest. An'ggrath gets that nice 2+ armour save that helps him shrug off missle launchers and anti-infantry wounds like heavy bolters and autocannons, but Scabbie and Zarakynel aren't so lucky, and Zarakynel is by far the squishiest with only 6 wounds. Nobody in their right mind is going to charge one of them so that they're able to use their stomp attack to wipe out a whole unit, and when charging I'll only be in base to base with a few models, making the stomp useless.

Really, all the characters require someone feeding them units, a healthy supply of independent characters or really juicy targets [like terminators, especially Zarakynel with her no-save weapon], or another gargantuan creature or super-heavy target to make them points-effective. Otherwise you're far better off blowing them up with a baneblade than throwing a daemon lord at them.

They look hella cool though

...Not to mention that they would be easy to proxy using any of a number of Spawn toys...

Awesome ! that is so fething epic. The three minute deplioy and warp rifting baneblade was so amazing!