For our first battle under the 40k Apocalypse rules, the guys of my Monday night group decided to do a 4000 point-per-side battle.
The raw carnage which ensued was impressive. Air power played a key role in the ebb and flow of the battle. Both sides lost legendary units to concentrated blasts of firepower. As the battle drew to a close, both forces were down to a few remaining units. The Xenos laid waste to nearly my entire company of marines.
In the end, as so often happens, victory was decided not by a massed charge of troops and armor but by the decisive action of a single unit.
This battle report is based entirely off of my recollection of the game. Without detailed notes, I’m unable to provide a completely detailed round by round, blow-by-blow replay. However, this summary hopefully captures most of the highlights of the game.
Our team fielded 2000 points of my Blood Angels, two Imperial Guard tanks, a Warhound Titan, and a Thunderhawk Gunship. Going in, I thought we would need the armor and super-heavy units to churn out a lot of firepower because on a battlefield of this size my troops could easily get cut to ribbons before reaching assault range.
We faced a mixed force of Orks and Tyranids. Most notably, the army included three basilisk artillery units, two barbed hierodules, a fighta-bomma and a Skullhamma battlefortress packed with 30 tank-busta orks. This force could lay down incredible amounts of firepower in any given turn.
The Xenos deployed first and took the initiative. The ork artillery immediately knocked down the Titan’s void shields, which would prove to be an important feat. During the opening round of fire, a hierodule killed more than half of my Death Company marines, weakening one of my key offensive units.
That monster was ferocious, tearing into the Imperial lines without fear. It immediately drew a barrage of return fire, which hurt the beast but it remained standing, ready to do more damage.
The Imperial counter-attack in the first round didn’t amount to much. Some Xenos units suffered damage, but not enough to cripple them. However, the Death Company, two squads of Veteran Assault Marines and the Marine Commander were poised to assault the Xenos flank.
When the assault happened, the marines quickly slashed through the Xenos line. A gun truck, a carnifex and a Hive Tyrant died quickly beneath the fire from a Land Raider, a Predator and the blades of assaulting marines. It was to be one of only two highlights for the Blood Angels this game.
The Xenos losses, however, were nothing compared to the damage they inflicted in Round Two. With its void shields again battered by artillery fire, the Titan had nothing to protect itself from the bio-cannons of the hierodule. With staggering blasts of fire, the beast cut down the mighty Imperial war machine. The Titan died in exactly the same spot where it had started the game. The most powerful Imperial ground unit was gone without accounting for a single Xenos casualty.
Another hierodule soon entered play using the flank march strategic asset. It vaporized a squad of marines guarding an objective, and whittled down another with its second bio-cannon.
At this point, air power started to take over. The Fighta-bomma started bombing my squads of marines, who were caught in the open. The Thunderhawk swooped in and annihilated the entire battery of ork artillery in one bombing run. A great achievement, but it came too late to save the Titan.
The ork Skullhamma deployed, bristling with guns and packed with six squads of orks armed with rocket launchers. Since the battlefortress operates as an open-topped vehicle, those squads allowed the Skullhamm to pump out an obscene amount of firepower each turn.
Over the next few turns, the aircraft continued to pound away at ground units. In Round Four, the Xenos called down an orbital bombardment on the heads of five Veteran Assault Marines holding an objective. It seemed like overkill at first, but in the end only two died.
In the same turn, the ork aircraft bombed one squad and the Skullhamma blasted another. I was forced to make four leadership tests or what was left of my company would break. But the Emperor’s words “And they shall know no fear” held true and each squad remained in the fight, ready to die for their cause. Ave Imperator!
So far, the Imperial team had not used any strategic assets. Now, it was time. Using strategic redeployment, we completely abandoned our side of the board, surrounding the Skullhamma with everything we had left. A few marines, a Imperial tank and two land speeders formed a ring around the super-heavy battle fortress. The second hierodule was left with nothing to fight.
Despite repeated volleys of fire, the Imperials were unable to crack the armor of the Skullhamma. It was, however, rendered immobile, prompting the orks to spill out, fresh and ready to rumble against the depleted Imperial ranks.
A series of quick and dirty close combats broke out. With two surviving Terminators and some Veterans still standing and able to charge, the Blood Angels had the initiative and held a slight advantage in their respective fights. At last, a small measure of revenge.
On the other side of the board, the last hierodule made for the closest objective, but still had a ways to go. Time was running out. The Xenos had by far inflicted the most damage, but did hold any objectives.
The Thunderhawk cut loose with its battery of heavy bolters, tearing apart entire squads of orks. Casualties on both sides were staggering with both teams celebrating the carnage.
In its last move of the game, a lone landspeeder, wounded and down to its last weapon, moved to set up a shot against a squad of orks. In doing so, it claimed a single objective. The landspeeder never fired that shot. The orks were torn apart by the Thunderhawk’s heavy bolters, but the objective lay in Imperial hands.
This was the deciding move of the game. The remaining orks were locked in close combat, unable to make a play for any objectives. Across the board, the hierodule found its target objective remained just out of reach.
It would have been nice to play out at least one more turn, but our gaming room was shutting down for the night. As things stood, the Imperials won by a score of 1-0. That’s purely going by the rules as laid out by Games Workshop. If you wanted to count the bodies, then the Orks and Tyranids carried the day.
In the end, the Xenos could have finished off the remaining Imperials and claimed the objectives, or the dice gods might have favored the few remaining marines. If the last troops finished each other off, then the Xenos would have won because the Thunderhawk could not claim objectives, something the hierodule could easily accomplish. Who’s to say?
