Apocalype Battle Report - Jan. 7, 2008

Although my group is planning to play through a full campaign, we weren’t able to get everything ready for our first session of the new year.  Instead we played a straight-up one-on-one Apocalypse mission. It’s taken me awhile to finish writing up this battle report, but here’s how it went down:

Points per side: 4000

Key Units 

Imperials: four drop pods w/Blood Angels veteran assault squads, one death company squad and a dreadnought; three predators, one Baneblade, one land raider, one land raider ares conversion, an exorcist, terminators, land speeders, and a Damocles command rhino and four callidus assassins.

Aliens: One tyrannid hierophant; two hive tyrants, a carnifex, a battery of captured artillery manned by orks, an eldar vampire raider; a couple of ork truks, a couple of battle wagons packed with rocket launching orks.

The Imperial side deployed first and took the initiative. A line of Imeperial tanks spread out with clear lines of fire at the most imposing Alien unit: the hierophant. Making use of a free careful planning asset from the drop pod formation, the Imperial land speeders dropped in and leveled their mulitmeltas at the artillery batter tucked in the back of the board.

Unfortunately for the forces of the Emperor, the first round of shooting was almost a complete waste. The dice were unkind and all of the Imperial tanks managed to inflict only a handful of wounds on the great beast. The land speeders completely whiffed, leaving the artillery unscathed.

The Aliens fared much better. The hierophant’s biocannons and the other tyrannid weapons carved up the line of Imperial armor. Rolls on the glancing hits table came up “vehicle destroyed” over and over again.  The Imperial forces were in trouble, and it would only get worse.

In round two, the drop pods, assassins and terminators made their appearance. The assassins neural shredders quickly neutralized the artillery batteries, but the terminators and drop pod troops had little success. The heavy armor and high toughness scores of the Alien forces allowed them to shrug off the hits with little damage.

Losing the artillery battery did little to slow down the Aliens, who continued to pound away at the Imperial forces. The hive tyrants opened fire, cutting through the Imperial troops.  The hierophant’s biocannon easily took out the land raider ares and damaged the baneblade.

The Death Company and other Imperial troops managed to finish off the Hive Tyrants and carnifex, and the assassins kept stunning the artillery battery to prevent it from taking advantage of its spotting rounds.  But the hierophant continued its rampage, drawing fire from the remaining Imperial armored units, allowing ork reserves to enter almost unchallenged.

It soon became clear the aliens would carry the day, it was only a question of how bad the slaughter would be.  It seemed everything was over when the aliens flank marched in a captured shadowsword tank right behind the Imperial firing line. But the hierophant finished off the baneblade, and the resulting explosion took the shadowsword with it.

The Imperials tried to take advantage of the strategic redeployment asset and claim some objectives. But the vampire raider swooped in and annihilated key scoring units. At one point, a unit of Imperial terminators scored hits on the enemy aircraft, which turned out to be harmless due to its holo-fields.

Time ran out before a full six turns could be played, but the outcome was not in doubt. The aliens’ two MVPs were the hierophant and the vampire raider. The giant hierophant absorbed tremendous amounts of damage but refused to fall. The raider, with its destructor-class main weapon, superior mobility and defensive abilities, simply was overwhelming.

In this case, superheavies won the battle, and it wasn’t even close.