Prairiecon 2013 - Another Roadside Apocalypse

On Friday night, I had the opportunity to head to Prairiecon 2013 in Brandon for the Apocalypse game. While it would have been nice to take in more of the convention, I knew I only had the time this weekend for one day of nerding. And when it came down to choosing a game to play at the convention, Apocalypse was an easy choice.

I didn't really get a full snapshot of the battle itself, because it is rather difficult to capture an Apocalypse game in a battle report. However, I had my camera handy the whole time and I was able to get quite a few decent pictures. In the pictures, you can see the time of day change because my camera started to flash when it started getting dark. We were playing in a room with lots of natural light, so the battlefield literally got dark when the sun went down. Pretty cool, actually. But my flash made some of the models looks pretty wacky. For some reason, the flash makes hard edge highlighting pop like crazy.

Anyways. A pretty awesome table:

The game was Imperials/Necrons vs Chaos. I believe the final tally was about 14,000 points per side for a total 28,000 point game. Of course, I played with the Traitors. We deployed using a Blind Deployment, which was the first time I had done something like that. It was pretty cool though. Basically, we just put a huge line of cardboard across the whole table and each side put their shit down. Then the cardboard was removed and we started. Just like that... Crazy.

Homer Sayer alone dropped about 6,000 points of awesome minis. Tons of big baddies and super scary heavies. Among his amazing huge model collections were: An'ggrath (the FW super Bloodthirster), Scabeiathrax (the FW super Great Unclean One), a scratch built Nurgle Plague Tower, a scratch built Khorne Tower of Skulls, a Greater Brass Scorpion, and tons of Soul Grinders and Defilers. We also a had a fellow (whose name escapes me) who brought a bunch of Chaos ground troops with a couple Predators and a Land Raider. Another fellow (whose name also escapes me) who brought a bunch of Chaos Daemons. Collin Martin brought some Thousand Sons with a Warcoven and a huge unit of Terminators led by Abbaddon. Then, my Night Lords with their Thunderhawk Gunship.

My Predator and some Havocs support a Plaguereaper

Collins Thousand Sons support a Nurgle Plague Tower

Lots of tanks...

Big Chaos Monsters

Beautifully painted Greater Brass Scorpion by Homer Sayer.

"Mraaah! Where's my Khorne Flakes?"

Lots of Defilers...

Really nice Soul Grinder

Fucking awesome Khorne Tower of Skulls

"Skulls for the Skull Throne!... And the Tower, don't forget skulls for the Tower"

And, there she is...

What we went up against was scary... They had 2 Necron Pylon things (3 Strength 'D' shots each at 120", with fucking Skyfire and Interceptor). Those things dropped a Super Heavy something each round. They had 2 Warhound Titans, each armed with 2 Turbo-laser destructors (8 more Strength 'D' shots). And they had a Reaver Titan (4 Strength 'D' shots). Now, everyone please pull out their calculators and add that up.

Go on. I'll wait...

Done? Yup, that's right. Each round they had 18 Strength 'D' shots!

On top of that, Garth brought 8 Flyers (Storm Ravens, Caestus Assault Rams, Storm Talons, and an Avenger Strike Fighter). They also had this really cool scratch built Sisters Of Battle tank that also had some custom rules made for it. I tip my hat to that guy because it was very well done and the rules were well balanced. Good job dude, whatever your name was... And, a bunch of Grey Knights with more Storm Ravens, and a bunch of Necrons with even more fucking Flyers... ughh.



Ahhhhhhhh Run!

Air Force Garth

That's how big a Reaver Titan is... And just to clarify, I mean look at the Space Marines at the Titan's feet, not the guy's crotch beside the Titan.

Those are Warhound Titans

That's the awesome Sisters of Battle thing I was talking about. Open topped vehicle full of Troops.



Nerds ready to start playing some massive scale 40k

Apocalypse!

Well, the mission of the game was pretty simple. On our side of the table (Chaos), we had two shrines that we had to protect. The Imperials had to come take the shrines, and they took a shrine by keeping a unit on it for a full turn. The shrines were in our turf, and we didn't need to have unit on them to hold them. The onus was on them to come to us and hop on them. However, they got first turn...

We just didn't have an answer to their massive shooting phases. We had some pretty cool big toys too, but they all got blown up quickly from the onslaught of Str 'D' weaponry. But the game did end in a draw. They got one shrine and they failed to get the other. One of the flaws they had in their organization was a lack of forward moving troops. Lots of big guns and flyers, but not much to go and take objectives. So, they basically tabled us, but couldn't take both objectives.

Lots of great moments in the game. My personal favorite was the game inside the game between my Thunderhawk and Garth's Flyers. Some pretty fun dog fighting... My Thunderhawk did survive the game, which means we have to have another Apocalypse game. Oh darn...

Thanks to Garth and Homer. Really looking forward to July and lots more Apocalypse.

Some more pictures of the action: