[redbeard]

My brother, Centurion, and I (and a bunch of other friends) played a large 20k game this last weekend. Here's a link to the action.

http://kallend.net/40k/batreps/apocalypse/11-10-07/

[Yriel of Iyanden]

Before I forget- Happy belated B-day Redbeard! I'm waiting to board another plane right now- but can't wait to see pics when I get to a computer.

I can't wait to see how it all went down. What did you guys think of Apoc?

-Yriel

[Droids_Rule]

Wow those are some very nice models in that battle. 8)

[Farseer_Emlyn]

Good lord man - that is fantastic! I want to be your gaming buddy in my next life. All of those models are excellently painted...that's the most amazing thing to me. That's a ton of figures....but a ton of figures that all out shine even the best of my own. *retreats to a jealous sulk*

[ForbiddenKnowledge]

Excellent! I love em.

And, god, that Deathclaw is about 4 times larger than what I thought they were.... that would make a dent.

[Guitardian]

hahajaja.... what do we think of apocalypse? Well, personally... I think grown men shouldn't be having this much fun playing with toys... As supreme Eldar commander (the largest points force on the table for my team by far) I discovered that it is really hard to keep track of THAT MUCH STUFF all at once. Maybe it was the beer, but the 'Where's Yriel' problem actually occured a couple of times. We chopped each other to pieces as usual (games with Red tend to go that way) but I think some of the 'assets' chosen were very deciding for the overall game -

The 'Destruction' team definitely had an advantage flanking us, and of our own assets, only the bombardment did any good, The null field (chosen by OUR team!) just blocked my FIVE farseers from being anywhere close to useful, and the minefield (also ours) just got in the penitent's way. Poorly co-ordinated (an eldar no-no) led to a squad of Falcons entering the board on turn 2, only to have no game time left to do anything.

Co-ordination was so disorganized... the beer was good, the fact of having an entire GW store's worth of figs blowing each other up - ALL painted and on a table the size of Texas - also good. Just the scale of it was so phenomenal I didn't care who won or lost. The game was fun and there were many memorable battles within the battle - from my own perspective, seeing the darkreapers wiped out of their central commanding view position by the flanking Chaos horde, and Maugan-Ra just shrugging it off, calmly blazing away and destroying them back without a thought for his dead children, or Eldrad climbing to the roof of the tallest building and just looking cool waving his staff around ineffectively due to the Null field, Baharroth's valiant stand, and the Wraithlord vs. Keeper showdown were all cinematic quality moments in what was ultimately a battle dedicated entirely to chaos (not 'Chaos' mind you... just chaos).

Next time we try anything of this scope, I think I will put a lot more thought into the 'assets' which seemed very deciding for the outcome of the battle. Just try to move 7500 points worth of figs over the course of an afternoon while your drunken teammates are yellin at ya that yer taking too long... I think I will concentrate on 1000 battles for the time being.

And what's up with the first-turn bidding? We all concurred that it is a dumb way to get things done. Both teams bid 30, then, obviously seeing how that would turn out on the re-bid, we just took a boot to the teeth and picked 28 instead of 29 just to move things along. Lo and behold, the math guys picked 29. What a surprise. I think a simple dice roll would have been better. Nobody wanted the first turn.

Reserves are a big part of how the battle goes by... but 'real' time vs. reserves choices was a big problem. If we had all night to play through, the reserves issue would have been much less important, but as it went, half of the guys we had didn't even participate, as they entered on turn 2, and the game (due to 'realtime' consideration) was over before they threw down into the fray. Alex and Jon picked their assets so as to field almost nothing on their deployment, but rapidly dump everything on their turn, outflanking everyone ("gee... didn't anyone notice that Gargant slinking its way towards the battle?" - "gee boss, I thought that building was further away an hour ago")... Which, in a protracted lengthier game, would not have been such a problem, because we could counter-reserve the reserves and have time to counter-blow-the-badguys-up. Unfortunately, living in realtime, there was not such an opportunity.

Final thoughts:
-yes it's fun.
-yes they are all painted. aesthetics is everything.
-try to put aside a full 24 hour session if you really want to see how ugly stuff can turn out.
-be careful of what 'assets' you choose, don't be dumb.
-reserves, reserves, reserves.
8)

good day to you all.
-jme

[purple_harlequin]

OMG Love the Eldar in those pics! That must have been a fun, all day affair. Who won? I'm guessing the bad side.

[Praying Mantidae]

Holy wow. I love that Witch Hunter's Land Raider... any chance of finding out how that was done?

[crazedmongoose2003]

Applauded, both of you.