The Death of a Crusade (8k/side Apocalypse Battle)

Yesterday was the monthly Apocalypse battle at the FLGS. Each player brings 2k, and said 2k can basically be anything; all troops, all super-heavies, all flyers, etc. I usually go for a standard 2k army to keep a nice balance.

In any case, 8 guys showed up for this brawl- Grey Knights (x2), Black Templars, Space Wolves, Imperial Guard, Demons, CSMs, and my Dark Eldar. The store owner decided it would make sense to have the Marines on one side, and everyone else on the other- The IG had fallen to the silken words of Chaos, and my haemonculi had made a deal with the Chaos Lord for choice loyalist "specimens". Whereas the Black Templars were on a Crusade against the CSMs, but had called in back-up when the IG went bad and demons started showing up...

My strategic asset? Flank march, of course.


Picture 1: The "evil" side of the board is closest to the camera. The smiling fellow is the CSm player, and the other guy is "overlord" of the forces for good and one of the GK players. Hard to see, but you can make out the IG big guns to the far right, with assorted CSM and IG tanks spread across the width of the table. My Dark Kin and the Daemons are in reserve.



Picture 2: The first round begins. Both sides bid the same amount of time, so a roll-off determined "evil" got the first turn. You can see a Greater Demon of Tzeentch (left of the black CSM dreads) arrived with the first half of the demons- 4-5 Soul Grinders (That red spot in the center was a Soul Grinder with red dreadlocks and garish make-up...lol). You can also make out of of the loyalist players (the Black Templar) having a cookie...



Picture 3: Turn 2. I decide to bring on a Venom carrying Blaster-wracks (trueborn) and their Haemonculi buddy, along with a Chronos to chew on those unpainted Blood claws. The bunker to the right is an objective. The Chimera is, of course, from the IG, and packed a lovely selection of flame-weapons.



Picture 4: Turn 2, continued. Also brought in my Helli-wrack gang, also accompanied by a Haemonculi, behind the Space Wolves Long Fangs. In the following shooting and assault, I wiped them out. I then parked the helli-wracks there, and used the Baron's abilities to give them a VERY healthy cover save. By the end of the game, there was only the Baron and the helliarch left, but they had tied up several SM squads in a shooting battle...



Picture 5: Turn 3. Naria Rakarth (Rules as per Urien, but female) leads her Grotesques against a GK rhino, which they make short work of... In the resulting implosion, 4 Grey Knights are killed. Over the next few assault phases the marines manage to kill 3 Grotesques (Yay for S6 and T5, boo for force weapons), but are eventually bludgeoned into unconciousness and dragged away...



Picture 6: Turn 3. The Chronos forces the Blood Claws to flee, and turns it's attentions to the GK dread which the Blasterwracks have only blown the assault canon off of. The Blasterwracks also decided to assult, but it all goes horribly wrong- the Dread force-weapons' the Chronos to death, then proceeds to force the Blasterwracks to flee... and , of course, on the Initiave roll-off I roll a 1... FML.



Picture 7: Turn 3, continued. I bring on my Scourges and a pack of Wracks. The grey wings in the scourge flock is their Haemonculi. The Scourges had their best outing so far, gunning down severl Blood Claws (the ones fleeing from the Chronos) and Grey Knights, as well as blowing the Force weapon arm off that damnable GK dread... The wracks didn't get a chance to do much, but they DID manage to beat up 3 Bloodclaws and bring them back to the labs...


Other moments of note that I didn't get photos of:
-The Grey Knight overlord lost his 1k GK Termie "deathstar" to a Deep-strike mishap. The demon player quipped that "Tzeentch sent them to keep Draigo company"...
-My Talos ripped through 2 GK dreadnoughts without losing a wound
-The CSM Lord, Typhus, holding a hotly-contested objective by himself versus a horde of Templars, assasins, Grey Knights, and even Canis Wolfborn...

In any case, when the dust settled, "Evil" had won- Two objectives held versus only one for the Crusade forces. Each player on the winning side got 10$ of store credit- Just what I needed, as several of my paint brushes had expired while painting my Ravager.

All in all, a fun day and a great battle...