My group has been playing quite a few apocalypse games lately. We get together at my apartment a lot, and I can only really supply one 4x8, so the 5 of us have been doing a lot of 1500 per player games.
As we've played almost weekly for a month or two, we've all gotten a little better at making lists, and choosing strategems. Not to say that we are playing 'competitive apocalypse'. but the games have gone from total wacky joke games to.. uhh smack-talk filled competitions. TONS of fun.
We took the armies we were currently working on. So no fluff teamup here. I chose to split up the shooty armies and the assaulty armies so that it didn't become a one-sided affair.
Team Shep
IG (disruptor beacon)
expensive heroic senior officer with some
CC upgrades
2 platoons of guardsmen with anti-infantry weaponry
1 tank squadron
1 baneblade
Templars (careful planning, vortex grenade)
modified 'strike eagle' drop pod assault
(3 crusades and 2 venerable dreads)
Team Jerks
Tau (disruptor beacon)
armored interdiction cadre (3 railheads)
1 stealth team
2 firewarriors in fish
1 pathfinder team in fish
1 shaso
1 broadside team
2 piranha
Space Wolves (strategic redeployment)
Ancients assault force (1 hellfire 2 venerable)
LR exterminator
long fangs with laserback
grey hunters in rhino
scouts
big termie squad with a wolf lord
Ok, so like I said before we've all seen all of the tricks. So both me and my tau opponent were tired of being flank marched, so we both took disruptors, both paid off HUGE.
We both choose 30 minutes for deployment, haha, so we just diced off for who would 'get' to go last. We just wanted to go last for the strike eagle, I don't know why they didn't want to pop the baneblade before it got going.
Our whole gameplan revolved around my templar teammate dropping the vortex grenade on this building in the center of our opponents deployment, to open up
LOS for all my tanks.
Turn one, strike eagle starts dropping into our enemies deployment zone and into the disruptor beacon. The tau player only manages to disrupt a single drop pod. Which happens to be the emperors champ holding the thrice blessed "special" holy handgrenade. he redeploys the pod in a corner and it then scatters off the table. the rest of the
BTs arrive and start earning their paycheck, the baneblade drops some serious hurt bombs on the broadsides and the stealth team. Other than a devastating loss of the pod and our asset, a good turn so far.
Turn one for them, got a structure point off the baneblade, tried to set up a termie charge into a crusade. Not a good turn for them. The carefully planned strike eagle totally screwed over the wolf player. With enemy within 12" of him on the top of turn one, we totally locked down his strategic redeployment. So tit for tat on lost assets.
turn 2, us... baneblade puts more hurt into the broadsides and stealth suits, essentially finishing them off. The templars get some charges off, but don't have anyone but space wolves to charge.
turn 2, them, got some good counter charges onto the templar units. Shook the demolisher cannon on the baneblade, and driver stunned it. my disrupter beacon starts rolling yatzee 6s on the tau players reserves. He gets 1 piranha in my backfield, the other piranha and a devilfish warrior unit are forced to come onto the table right in front of my tank squadron.
turn 3 us... our worst turn. templar player is almost tabled. hes basically just shooting with an immobilized dread and all his pods. Baneblade is tryin to take out vehicles now. And manages some light damage to a dread or two and maybe a hammerhead.
turn 3 them... Man my disruptor beacon goes off again, blocking his shaso and something else that i forget now. they weapon destroy the baneblade, I was taunting them so much that they cowboy'd up and chose the baneblade cannon... I saved it of course
My luck this game was really good.
turn 4 us... moving my tanks out of cover to grab up the 2 neutral zone objectives and my wimpy infantry that never does anything just stood on the 2 deployment zone objectives. tried in vain to destroy some vehicles but the russes and baneblade just weren't up for it.
turn 4 them.. space wolf player finally tables my
BT teammate. He sat down opened a cold soda and said. "i hope I sold my life dearly enough"
turn 5 I enacted revenge on him by killing 9 of 10 grey hunters with the baneblade. At this point it was really all vehicles left and my guardsmen.
bottom 5. They needed to get the baneblades drive damaged twice or get a chain reaction. They couldn't get him, so the baneblade scored one of their own objectives.
I finally won an
apoc game and my rookie
BT teammate is undefeated in 1 game. one infantry squad claimed one objective. A single hammerhead out-scored a single leman russ on a neutral zone objective. the other neutral zone objective was solo claimed by a leman russ. They solo claimed their other deployment zone objective........
and I outscored the leman russ exterminator with 2 command squads and an infantry squad! The difference was the power fist that i bought for him. Winning a 3,000 point game by 20 victory points was priceless.
MUCH smack was talked afterwards. our space wolf friend is now winless in like 6 games. We joked that I am going to houserule a new strategic asset. It allows you to not have him as a teammate! We all got a good laugh out of that one... even him
my baneblade was insta-killed by the armored interdiction cadre last week so i was so happy to see him go for 5 turns! He was definately man of the match....
I wonder what ever happened to that emperors champion? you think the grenade went off in the pod?
