Saturday, October 16, 2010

Apocalypse! The Eldar challenge.

As I'm moving out of town next month, and it seems to be tradition around here to have a 'going away game', Noah approached me with the idea of a big TWO DAY Apocalypse game. We both have rather large Eldar armies and both are increasing slowly. We each totalled what we had and came up with a combined total of around 9000 points! The combined forces of Yme-Loc and Iybraesil issued an open ended challenge on the local forums here and awaited a challenger.



For a while we didn't think anyone had the courage (or points) to face us, but finally the Space Marines have stepped up. At first it was a lone Defenders of Terra (Imperial Fists / Blood Angels) player who knows no fear, but he was soon joined by others. Both the Blood Angels and Imperial Dragons (Salamanders descendant) chapters have made showings. They've shown courage, but that may not be enough, do they have the points?

A list of what we are bringing follows shortly. As it stands, we are planning on using the cloudstrike squadron to get in behind enemy lines and use Pulse Lasers Lances on the BaneStormSwordBlade that we are pretty certain of seeing. These will also serve to take out the Defense Laser but I'm really really hoping that they've all forgotten that particular bit of terrain I built.

The Aspect Assault wave will be used to charge in and deliver all sorts of killy-ness. 2 squads of banshees, 1 each of dire avengers, scorpions and fire dragons will be joined by Jain Zar, Asurmen and Fuegan. They'll use the energy wave ability to force pinning checks for 5d6" around. Most of the eldar will be immune since the Avatar will be aboard, not to mention that all 5 wraithlords and the wraithguard unit (also in a wave serpent) all grant Fearless within 12" thanks to the Spirit Host formation.

My Wild Riders will be waiting in the wings to fill in whatever gaps or capturing/contesting objectives as needed, but Autarch Ry'hanna will break off and join the Shining Spears when they arrive. When they aren't charging into combat, Ry'hanna will be laying down Marine death with her Reaper Launcher. Elorrah is also in the host, and will offer backup Farseer support when needed.

We each have Pathfinders and Reapers that will be placed all about the board, and my Reapers will have Maugan Ra to give support if the enemy gets too close. Noah also has several 5 man DA squads in case we need to hold or contest objectives.

Noah is bringing a trio of Fire Prisms. I regret that I don't have one to loan him for a decent Sunstorm formation. That would really make them second guess deploying their superheavy in the open, which they will no doubt do.

We fully expect to see a Titankiller formation since our Defenders of Terra player loves Lysander so. That vortex grenade could really make for a bad day. Thankfully we're largely mobile, but should they decide to come in our back field and try and assault our Wraithlords it could be bad if they catch one or two off on their own. We were planning on keeping them back and sniping with the brightlances. Luckily if that happens, 4 of 5 of them are armed with wraithswords.

We're randomly pulling Strategic Assets to keep things fresh and relying on generalship and less on cheezy combos. Only Troops will be scoring units this game.

I'm pretty confident that we will pull this through, especially since Intel has told us that the three generals aren't co-ordinating their army lists the way that Noah and I did. Still, coordination only goes so far when there are a bunch of Land Raiders on the board. Wish us luck! I for one am really excited about this game, it will be the largest I've ever played since 1st edition.

Well if you've read this far you probably want to see the army list, so here it is! The Yme-Loc/Iybraesil coalition! Game starts today at 6pm Eastern and may very well be televised! Come by and say hello!

3 comments:

  1. It was a good learning experience. I know I really learned a lot. This is the first time I have played a large army of marines since the new SM codex came out. I think we played a bit too conservative and allowed the Eldar to distract us from where we needed to focus our efforts. Overall, it was a well fought battle and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

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  3. I'm just happy that no punches were thrown! I now know to better hide from plasma cannons, that Wraithlords should not be fearless in the face of SS/TH termies, Fuegan should be a little less sure of himself around ironclad dreads, and to be thankful any time your opponent ignores your firedragons. Overall, a very enjoyable 10 or so hours of 40k!

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