Six Things I Learned about Playing Apocalypse

Last Friday I played my first Apocalypse game. I was definitely fun, but more than anything it was a learning experience. I thought I'd share some of my observations.

First off, let me explain how I came to participate in this battle. A friend of mine suggested to his gamer friends that we all take a day off of work to have a huge mega-battle. I was skeptical at first, but eventually gave into peer-pressure.

We had seven people total. We ran two boards: one 6'x4' and one 8'x6'. I partnered up with another Chaos player named Dan against Brian's 4,000pts of Orks. The other table was an alliance of Necrons, Tau, and Eldar with an Imperial Callidus Assassin for good measure. This unlikely union faced off against a team of Tau and Imperial guard.

Unfortunately, we got stuck on the small table. Here's a picture of our forces after set-up:

I'd like to point out several a couple things. First off, Brian's excellent scratch-built stompa. Also, remember, all those trucks and what-not were full of Orks.

Bottom line, it was a slaughter. It really was a green tide.


OK, so here are 6 things I learned in this first game:

1. You need to build an Apocalypse Army. Dan and I basically threw together a force from what miniatures we had available whereas Brian had a huge, well-defined force. The Orks were an Apocalypse Army: Chaos was two 40K armies. This goes hand-in hand with my next point...

2. You need to use Datasheets. Brain was using three: Speed Freaks, Mek Stompa, and Skullhama Battle Fortress. We had none. I've been working on a tide of spawn, but it's not ready. Neither of us had anything to really threaten those killer units.

3. Know your ally. This is not to disparage Dan, who I met five minutes before we started playing. He was a real cool to play with and a nice guy (and his army, unlike mine, was completely painted). I just wish we could have coordinated before hand so that we had a sense of what we were doing. A ten minute discussion before the game probably won't cut it.

4. Play fast as possible. Seriously, games like this take a long time. I think generally, I play pretty fast. I make decisions fast and I move from phase to phase as quick as possible. This means I probably make a lot of mistakes, but I'd rather see more things actually happen during the course of a game than think about what could possibly happen over the course of a game.

5. Know what you're fighting for. This is complicated and I plan to write more about this in the future. Plus, the basic point applies to regular 40K games as well. I think game-playing is so much more enjoyable when you are playing to a story or background. Maybe I'm just a RPGer at heart, but I don't find pointless destruction entertaining. This is not to say that I don't find the strategic challenge of 40K fun. I do; I just like more.

6. Apocalypse is about planning as much as it is about playing. I have to say I got away with very little pre-game work. Still, the guys who organized this put a lot of work into getting people, tables, models and terrain together. Plus Aaron was nice enough to open his home to us. He even provided coffee and a deli tray:



My hat goes off to the all the people who planned this day-off event.

I hope to play more Apocalypse in the future as time allows.

Here a few more pictures from the game:
ORKS!! And...


More Orks!


Here's a picture of the backside of the only fully-painted unit I fielded. OK, I need to go paint now...

Give Thanks for Updates!!

OK, these pictures aren't the best, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't update my blog before going away for Thanksgiving.


Here is the second unit of Thousands Sons. The sorcerer needs a little more gold, but all the rubric marines have their base gold (which is a 1:1 mix of Vermin Brown and Shining Gold)

Here are my unmarked Chaos Space marines. They're going to represent Space marines that have recently rebelled, so I've mixed a lot of loyalist parts in.

LET THE SPAWNING BEGIN!!!
This was one of my birthday presents. Thanks again guys.


Here are the first four chaos spawn I've made. I tell you, making spawn is fun! I could just make spawn for the rest of my gaming career, seriously.


Game Store Update and Sale!

As mentioned in my last post, there is a new store in town. I got to visit a couple of weeks ago and it's looking good so far. I heard they've added a couple of tables, so that's even better.

I thought about it later. This is probably the first game store with gaming in Chicago in nearly 10 years. The last one I can remember was Third Eye games, and close down a long time ago.

Anyway, Galaxy America is having a Thanksgiving sale. Here are the details.

In the spirit of the turkey, we are having a sale this Wed., Fri., Sat. and Sun. (closed Thursday) 10% off on everything in the store (several baneblades in stock), 5% off special orders, and a few specials including a SM Battle Company marked from $450 down to $400. Also, LOTR is 15% off. Our 2 full-sized gaming tables are up and running and terrain options are constantly expanding. You can find us at:

4318 W. Irving Park Rd.
Chicago, IL 60641

Wed-Sat: 2-8pm
Sun: 2-6pm

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Hazzah!! A New Store!

There is now a game store in the Chicago city limits. Yes, I'm as shocked as you are. It's called Galaxy America and it's on Irving Park Road. Check out this forum post.

Also, I called the place today, they were super friendly on the phone. I'm planning to check them out on Saturday, so I'll report back.

As far as the regular painting blog stuff, I've done so much lately, but have no pictures to prove it. Recently, I've built a full squad of Chaos Space Marines, a Thousand Sons Predator, and four Chaos Spawn. Basically, my loyal readers, I owe you a lot of pictures.

In other news, I finally got a chance to play the new codex. I have to say, that I like a lot of the way the new list plays. It was nice to be able to include a unit of relatively cheap CSMs along side my Thousand Sons. Also, those AP3 bolters are nice against Sisters of Battle. Wounding on 3, with no save? Nice.

I'm not going to say much about spawn yet, because I think I got pretty lucky my first game. I rolled well enough to get a first turn charge. The two spawn broke a unit of Imperial guard, effectively taking them out of the game. My opponent, Anton, committed three death-cult assassins to taking them out. The spawn took out two before falling to the third. Not a bad performance, but like I said, I think I got lucky.

Force weapons are nice, too. My sorcerer was able to take out his Cannoness with one wound and a psychic test. Too bad his Inquisitor killed my HQ in the same turn. Also, when that one remaining Death cult assassin charged one of my units of sons, she didn't last very long.

I lost the game, but it was the closest game I've played against this particular opponent. I really need to get my sons some Rhinos, too. They really need to be kept away from close combat. They also need a commanding firing position to blast away at the enemy.

I'll keep posting about this as I get more games under my belt.

Thoughts on Army building

I've actually built and painted quite a bit since my last blog post, but I haven't seem to have found the time to take any pictures. However, I hate the thought of a week going by without a post, so I decided to write about something else on my mind.

I've been thinking a lot about the way in which people go about planning their armies. There are countless ways to go about this, I've found two general philosophies pretty common. One is to build a force in small, playable chunks. The other is to write a goal list (for example a 2,000pt tournament list) and build your army to that goal.

I've been trying to build with the second philosophy in mind. Long ago, I wrote a 1,850 (or so) list that was something like this:

HQ - Tzeentch Sorcerer on Disc
Troops - Thousand Sons Squad w/ Sorcerer
Troops - Thousand Sons Squad w/ Sorcerer
Troops - Thousand Sons Squad w/ Sorcerer
Troops - Horror/ Flamer Demons
Troops - Horror/ Flamer Demons
Heavy - Defiler
Heavy - Defiler
Heavy - Lascannon Predator
Fast - Screamers

Every model I was working on would be part of this list. I found ti difficult, however, to write smaller lists with models from the larger list. This became quickly evident when I started playing the escalation league. We started at 300 points, which basically bought me one squad of Thousand sons. this was compounded by the fact that there were a lot of restrictions on what you could buy at various stages of escalation (see the rules here).

Another thing that threw a monkey wrench in the works was the fact that a new codex came out while I was still int he midst of building my army. This meant that my "goal list" was no longer valid.

Plus, with the new codex, there is a lot more freedom with which units I can add to my army.

I decided to adopt a new policy in regards to my army building. Instead of thinking of my army as points, I would just think of it as a series of modeling projects. I then created a new goal list based on the modeling ideas I have banging around in my head. It looks something like this:

HQ - Tzeentch sorcerer on disc
HQ - Renegade Lord in Terminator Army & Lightning Claws(Unmarked/ Undivided)
HQ - Tzeentch Demon Prince
Elite - Chosen of Tzeentch (w/ Meltaguns)
Elite - Chosen of Tzeentch (W/ Flamers)
Elite - Renegade Termiantors
Elite - Chosen of Slaanesh (Power Weapons, Power Claws)
Elite - Possessed of Slaneesh
Elite - Dreadnought (Slaanesh themed)
Troops - Thousand Sons Squad w/ Sorcerer
Troops - Thousand Sons Squad w/ Sorcerer
Troops - Thousand Sons Squad w/ Sorcerer
Troops - Renegade marines (Unmarked/ Undivided)
Troops - Renegade marines (Unmarked/ Undivided)
Troops - Renegade marines of Slaanesh
Troops - Noise marines
Troops - Summoned Demons (Horrors)
Heavy - Defiler (Close combat)
Heavy - Defiler (Reaper/ Havoc)
Heavy - Lascannon Predator
Heavy - Vindicator
Fast - Raptors of Slaanesh
Fast - SPAWN!!! (About a dozen, I figure)

Whew! that should keep me busy for about 10 years. Granted, I could never field all these units in one game (unless it's Apocalypse of course). Still, it's a nice way to keep all the things I want to do organized.

Plus it gives me flexibility. I can field a renegade force with Thousand sons allies, or I can field a renegade force with Slaanesh elements. Or maybe just a dark allegiance of Tzeentch and Slaanesh. We'll see if I work some Khorne or Nurgle in at some point as well.

Is this modeling-based approach to army building practical? I'm not so sure. I know that this is the way that my mind works, so it will make the building of this force, a lot more enjoyable.

Why can't Tzeentch get Apocalypse love?

I haven't bought Apocalypse,yet, but I've been paying attention to the news and rumors about it. So far, all the Datasheets I've read are pretty cool (I would buy several Tide of Spawn boxes if I could afford them).

The one thing that kinda burns me is that there are no Tzeentch specific Datasheets.

On the Apocalypse book itself, there is the Brass Scorpion (Khorne) and the Plague Reaper (Nurgle). Fine, they promised that more Datasheets would follow and the website, so no big deal.

Games Workshop just released more Datasheets (at this point only on the UK site). What do you know, another Khorne sheet (Maelstrom of Gore) and another Nurgle sheet (Zombie Plague).

Don't get me wrong, those sheets are awesome, but why no Tzeentch?




Edit - Since I posted this yesterday, GW has removed the datasheets from their website. Hopefully they'll be back soon.

C:CSM Review?

I was planning on writing a lengthy review on the Codex: Chaos Space Marines. I've wanted to write a review for a codex for a long time and figured that this was my chance. The problem being of course that the thing has been out for almost a month now. I started writing the review and realized I wasn't saying anything that hadn't already been said ad naseum on dozens of forums.

Anyway, I won't bore you with a long-winded re-cap of the pros and cons of the new codex.

I will say, however, that I love this new list. It's so much more flexible! while it was nice to get bonuses for doing a purely Thousand Sons force, just adding one random non-Tzeentch unit would make the whole thing fall apart. Now, I can add anything I want!

Needless to say, this alters my plans for this army dramatically. I plan to add some vanilla renegades, havocs, some Emperor's Children Noise Marines, and some Slaneesh-marked possessed. Who knows, down the line, I may even add some Nurgle themed troops.

This doesn't mean that I'm abandoning the Thousand Sons. It does mean however, that to do all the things I want to do with this army, I'm committed to chaos for a long, long, time.

Update

This will be quick, but I'm now finished with all the layers of blue.

More later...