Apocalypse Battle Report – Crenelation

Hi All,
Recently I posted about the Apocalypse mission I designed myself in this article here. Well my club got to play it recently and I figured I would report on the results.

Set Up:

As per the mission instructions, the forces were divided up into two boards. Unfortunately, we lacked enough people to play on the smaller board, but it was a bit of a moot point as most people ignored the void shield mechanic : / The teams were: Tau, Space Marines (x2) vs Nids, Space Marines/Guard and Tau. One Tau player had a Taunar and a few Stormsurges while the other had a Tigershark a Stormsurge and a few other tanks.

Deployment went pretty quickly. The defenders got a lot of advantages but also did not get to pick if they would go first or second. Additionally, none of the attackers seem to take fast moving armies (save one) and so I was worried the game would get out of hand quickly.

Turn 1:

After the first turn I realized my fears were well founded. While the defenders may have benefited from the terrain the attackers made a series of baffling decisions that greatly hurt them. The Nid player decided to fire all of his rupture cannons at a single skyray while other superheavies were roaming the board (he did do a total of 40 damage to the poor Tau tank). One Tau player yolo-ed his Tigershark to it’s death while also suffering from some very bad luck with his railcannons rolling 2 “2’s to wound against the Taunar. The return fire from the defenders effectively neutered the attackers tanks and superheavies on both flanks and only one player had any units close to an objective.

Turn 2 was a continuation of turn 1, with the attackers making little progress and briefly contesting the command post objective….until the attackers turn anyway. At that point the game was obviously over. Providentially one player had a hard stop at 6:30 PM so it was better that the game was already over at that point anyway. It wasn’t quite what I had hoped though. Below is a gallery from the event, enjoy the “fever-dream” tyranids with many being scratch built…

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My Conclusions:

Okay so the mission wasn’t as great as I had hoped. However I do have some takeaways:

• Never judge a mission on the first play through, the variance in army and player skill (particularly evident in this game) can swing even a balanced mission
• In the next game it might be best to assign attackers and defenders beforehand so they can tailor their lists. Not knowing might have caused players to bring hybrid options that worked better in a defensive role.
• I had the attackers deploy first and then choose who goes first or second, I might reverse that or allow them to deploy second and still choose. They need a buff to offset the defender’s advantages.
• I think there is a split between Superheavies that kill things and superheavies that don’t die and trying to balance that is an issue. For example one side had mostly Shadowswords and the Tigershark which hit hard but are squishy. The other team had the Taunar and the Mastadon which have good guns but are tougher. I should have split them up and that may have balanced things out.

In the end, everyone still seemed to have a good time, which is the goal after all. The day ending early was a bit of a perk for the players too. And as the GM of this campaign the result was also the easiest narrative for me to write so everyone wins!

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