Yes folks, it is here! Last Saturday saw the mightiest Apocalypse game of all time. Well, perhaps not, but it was an absolute blast, raise plenty of cash and went off without a hitch. Aside from all the things that didn't quite go to plan...
So where to begin? To say Friday was stressful for me doesn't cover it. If it could go wrong it did, including making Dice Cakes. Despite leaving the cake out for half an hour to cool and then putting it in a freezer for longer than it took to bake it, it was still too warm to cut properly, let alone ice, so in the end I just had very rough cubes of sticky toffee cake. They sold well though, with patrons asking if I had included various drugs in them because they were so addictive. I'm fairly certain I didn't, but who knows how Asda make their products so cheap?
Newho, on to the bit you guys are more likely interested in; the gaming! At the crack of just after 8am, I got to Leicester University to find one player looking lost (not knowing the university much) and another all ready at the room! Having set up the tables with the help of Toph the night before, all I had to do was get my laptop set up, some music playing (a mix of the soundtrack from Dawn Of War with more than a few of the atmospheric sounds thrown in) and set up an introductory powerpoint. Nothing fancy, just the name of the event, a quick video reminding people about the charity...
And then this guy interrupted. In classic Monty Python style, I had the jaw moving up and down in time to some prerecorded audio. I also planted him randomly throughout the powerpoint countdowns to each break for the game, shouting at the players and generally changing up the game. He threw the Orks a bonus Waaagh!, extended one player's Finest Hour by an extra turn and even repaired the biggest tank on the table (actually a Stompa, but still...) only to make it worth extra Victory Points to the other side! With a little luck I'll get a video up of him, because I like to show off, but for now you'll just have to take my word that it was quite funny.
As you can imagine, there was far too much happening throughout the game for me to tell you everything, with sides starting at around 10k each and 8,000 points of Space Marines joining in part way through. Instead, I'll give you a few of my personal highlights. Alternatively (or as well, if you'd prefer) you can follow this link to my Flickr Set of all my photos from the event!
So highlights... I'll try to keep these in roughly chronological order.
Big Games need Big Tables, and we had three!
You can see on them blue-black smoke-like things; the Shades of the Black Sun. These Warp Portals were the only way between the tables, as any of you who have read the Rules Pack know, and were very much the focus of the gaming on the two smaller tables. The white dots, six in all, where the Strategic Objectives.
Turn one was immensely destructive for both sides. The Forces of Chaos were inundated with flying Monstrous Creatures from the outset, Deep Striking right in their back lines without scattering thanks to a Strategic Asset held by the Xenos alliance. The end of turn one turned out to be our first break (it takes quite a while to set up and move sooooooo many models!) which heralded the arrival of the Space Marines. Randomising which side they would join, the Imperium's Finest descended upon Toreldos, determined to rid the planet of heretics, using the aliens as weapons against the warp threat. In best Emperor loving style, the Marines appeared via baked bean ti... I mean, Drop Pods;
The player controlling the Marines had asked me before if this was ok. At the time I assumed he had maybe two or three, so said it was fine so long as he paid slightly more for his ticket (more money to charity, after all!) I really should have charged him more, but what was done was done. It took him so long to get all his models deployed he missed his first shooting phase anyway, allowing Chaos the opportunity to capitalise on the Marines' confusion, fighting alongside Tyranids despite being led by Marneus Calgar!
In the centre of the table, a living fortress of chitin slammed in the the steal fortress of Leman Russes and a Baneblade. In of itself, this wasn't a great event, but it set up several key units for later on...
On the desert board, the abandoned system defence missile silo saw plenty of action. A wounded Chaos Lord of Nurgle escaped the main table only to be surrounded and assaulted by a wave of 'gaunts and a Zoanthrope. This was to become 'The Eternal Combat' as neither side managed to do any telling damage to the other for several turns!
We also saw Silo Foxtrot Uniform live up to its name, being destroyed by another Zoanthrope's Warp Lance right as a Unit of Chaos Terminators got inside to fire the missiles at the other table. No interplanetary fun from this board, but still an objective to claim!
After the dinner break, the Space Marines realised the Chaos forces were no longer the larger threat, switching sides and attacking the Nids and Orks. This really turned the game on it's head, with both sides thoroughly intermixed :D
It made for interesting scenes like this, where the Marines and Flyrant had Deep Striked as allies now turned upon one another, all round the room. It was about this point we looked at the back corner of the main table and realised something that surprised us;
Four Carnifexes/Carnifexs/Carnifi (yes we did have that discussion, no we didn't come to a conclusion) had emptied this corner of models by themselves! Ok, they had lost two f their number along the way, but considering how densely packed it had been at the start of the game, it was an impressive achievement.
Probably THE highlight of the game; Marneus Calgar vs The Swarmlord;
Seeking revenge for Macragge, Calgar wailed on Swarmlord, giving it the full Gauntlets of Ultramar treatment. The Xeno monstrosity was, in kind, a whirlwind of boneswords. As the dust settled, the mightiest champions of both races were left on a single wound! A further round of combat came and went, neither colossus able to inflict damage on the other. For the third round, Swarmlord landed several telling blows, but Marneus's Invulnerable held (thanks to a charity reroll only!) Seeing his opportunity, the Master of the Ultramarines did a Captain Kirk...
slaying one of the greatest Tyrannic threats. By the way, be very careful when googling "Captain Kirk Double Fist"...
Oh, and I forgot to mention that during this time the Stompa had managed to get involved in the fight! To do so he had had to avoid the following;
The Shadowsword and Baneblade had both been bought back by spending Strategic Victory Points. What, not long enough odds for you? How about Da Big Mek on the timer giving the Chaos side 3 Rokz (Orbital Bombardment assets that didn't cost points)?
Scattering D6 feet, certainly makes thing interesting. Still, Gork (or possibly Mork) must have been watching over that Stompa. Not only did Da Big Mek repair it, but from that point on it didn't take a single iota of damage! Who would have thought Orks could measure iotas!
Newho, In the dying turns of the game, we had one final act of insanity. The sprinkling of Secret Personal Missions players bought to raise money/earn some extra Strategic Victory Points had seen them doing odd things all game (such as moving further away from the units they wanted to charge so they could get a set number of charges over a certain distance, ignoring easy targets in favour of moving from table to table to table, buying cake for people other than themselves...) but in the last few turns, even after the count down had officially ended, one mighty hero/infamous villain was doing something incredibly bizzare. He got off his base and started climbing a statue;
All in an effort to be the highest model in the game. Not even close as it turns out: The flying Hive Tyrant on the Orky Fortress was several inches higher, but I very nearly awarded the Victory Points for the sheer audacity of the move!
And that was when the fat lady sang. Or, in our case, Da Big Mek reminded us that Orks never lose! We counted up the last Strategic Victory Points from Objectives, double checked all the Secret Missions and totalled up the scores;
For an Apocalypse game, that's actually surprisingly close, especially as had only a couple of objectives or secret missions gone the other way, it could have swung heavily in the Warped of Toreldos' favour. Of course, we were all winners as we had an absolute blast playing a very unusual game of Apocalypse and the REAL winners were the Derbyshire, Leicestershire at Rutland Air Ambulance. Counting up in the following days, we managed to raise £100.60! Not too bad for a bunch of geeks rolling dice, and a great target to hopefully smash (just like Calgar did to Swarmlord) in the future!
As I said, these were really just a handful of highlights from a great day. I know each of the players took away something unique and awesome one of their models did, and most of them also had a model that did so terribly badly but somehow still brought a smile to their faces. Once I have recovered, I will certainly be running another one of these games in the future. Watch this space for details, especially if you want to get involved!
Until next time,
Matt
So where to begin? To say Friday was stressful for me doesn't cover it. If it could go wrong it did, including making Dice Cakes. Despite leaving the cake out for half an hour to cool and then putting it in a freezer for longer than it took to bake it, it was still too warm to cut properly, let alone ice, so in the end I just had very rough cubes of sticky toffee cake. They sold well though, with patrons asking if I had included various drugs in them because they were so addictive. I'm fairly certain I didn't, but who knows how Asda make their products so cheap?
Newho, on to the bit you guys are more likely interested in; the gaming! At the crack of just after 8am, I got to Leicester University to find one player looking lost (not knowing the university much) and another all ready at the room! Having set up the tables with the help of Toph the night before, all I had to do was get my laptop set up, some music playing (a mix of the soundtrack from Dawn Of War with more than a few of the atmospheric sounds thrown in) and set up an introductory powerpoint. Nothing fancy, just the name of the event, a quick video reminding people about the charity...
And then this guy interrupted. In classic Monty Python style, I had the jaw moving up and down in time to some prerecorded audio. I also planted him randomly throughout the powerpoint countdowns to each break for the game, shouting at the players and generally changing up the game. He threw the Orks a bonus Waaagh!, extended one player's Finest Hour by an extra turn and even repaired the biggest tank on the table (actually a Stompa, but still...) only to make it worth extra Victory Points to the other side! With a little luck I'll get a video up of him, because I like to show off, but for now you'll just have to take my word that it was quite funny.
As you can imagine, there was far too much happening throughout the game for me to tell you everything, with sides starting at around 10k each and 8,000 points of Space Marines joining in part way through. Instead, I'll give you a few of my personal highlights. Alternatively (or as well, if you'd prefer) you can follow this link to my Flickr Set of all my photos from the event!
So highlights... I'll try to keep these in roughly chronological order.
Big Games need Big Tables, and we had three!
You can see on them blue-black smoke-like things; the Shades of the Black Sun. These Warp Portals were the only way between the tables, as any of you who have read the Rules Pack know, and were very much the focus of the gaming on the two smaller tables. The white dots, six in all, where the Strategic Objectives.
Turn one was immensely destructive for both sides. The Forces of Chaos were inundated with flying Monstrous Creatures from the outset, Deep Striking right in their back lines without scattering thanks to a Strategic Asset held by the Xenos alliance. The end of turn one turned out to be our first break (it takes quite a while to set up and move sooooooo many models!) which heralded the arrival of the Space Marines. Randomising which side they would join, the Imperium's Finest descended upon Toreldos, determined to rid the planet of heretics, using the aliens as weapons against the warp threat. In best Emperor loving style, the Marines appeared via baked bean ti... I mean, Drop Pods;
The player controlling the Marines had asked me before if this was ok. At the time I assumed he had maybe two or three, so said it was fine so long as he paid slightly more for his ticket (more money to charity, after all!) I really should have charged him more, but what was done was done. It took him so long to get all his models deployed he missed his first shooting phase anyway, allowing Chaos the opportunity to capitalise on the Marines' confusion, fighting alongside Tyranids despite being led by Marneus Calgar!
In the centre of the table, a living fortress of chitin slammed in the the steal fortress of Leman Russes and a Baneblade. In of itself, this wasn't a great event, but it set up several key units for later on...
On the desert board, the abandoned system defence missile silo saw plenty of action. A wounded Chaos Lord of Nurgle escaped the main table only to be surrounded and assaulted by a wave of 'gaunts and a Zoanthrope. This was to become 'The Eternal Combat' as neither side managed to do any telling damage to the other for several turns!
We also saw Silo Foxtrot Uniform live up to its name, being destroyed by another Zoanthrope's Warp Lance right as a Unit of Chaos Terminators got inside to fire the missiles at the other table. No interplanetary fun from this board, but still an objective to claim!
After the dinner break, the Space Marines realised the Chaos forces were no longer the larger threat, switching sides and attacking the Nids and Orks. This really turned the game on it's head, with both sides thoroughly intermixed :D
Four Carnifexes/Carnifexs/Carnifi (yes we did have that discussion, no we didn't come to a conclusion) had emptied this corner of models by themselves! Ok, they had lost two f their number along the way, but considering how densely packed it had been at the start of the game, it was an impressive achievement.
Probably THE highlight of the game; Marneus Calgar vs The Swarmlord;
slaying one of the greatest Tyrannic threats. By the way, be very careful when googling "Captain Kirk Double Fist"...
Oh, and I forgot to mention that during this time the Stompa had managed to get involved in the fight! To do so he had had to avoid the following;
The Shadowsword and Baneblade had both been bought back by spending Strategic Victory Points. What, not long enough odds for you? How about Da Big Mek on the timer giving the Chaos side 3 Rokz (Orbital Bombardment assets that didn't cost points)?
Newho, In the dying turns of the game, we had one final act of insanity. The sprinkling of Secret Personal Missions players bought to raise money/earn some extra Strategic Victory Points had seen them doing odd things all game (such as moving further away from the units they wanted to charge so they could get a set number of charges over a certain distance, ignoring easy targets in favour of moving from table to table to table, buying cake for people other than themselves...) but in the last few turns, even after the count down had officially ended, one mighty hero/infamous villain was doing something incredibly bizzare. He got off his base and started climbing a statue;
And that was when the fat lady sang. Or, in our case, Da Big Mek reminded us that Orks never lose! We counted up the last Strategic Victory Points from Objectives, double checked all the Secret Missions and totalled up the scores;
For an Apocalypse game, that's actually surprisingly close, especially as had only a couple of objectives or secret missions gone the other way, it could have swung heavily in the Warped of Toreldos' favour. Of course, we were all winners as we had an absolute blast playing a very unusual game of Apocalypse and the REAL winners were the Derbyshire, Leicestershire at Rutland Air Ambulance. Counting up in the following days, we managed to raise £100.60! Not too bad for a bunch of geeks rolling dice, and a great target to hopefully smash (just like Calgar did to Swarmlord) in the future!
As I said, these were really just a handful of highlights from a great day. I know each of the players took away something unique and awesome one of their models did, and most of them also had a model that did so terribly badly but somehow still brought a smile to their faces. Once I have recovered, I will certainly be running another one of these games in the future. Watch this space for details, especially if you want to get involved!
Until next time,
Matt
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