Apoc Game at Miniature Market 04/11/09

Saturday Partho (orks), Aerion (black templars) & myself (imperial guard) headed up to Miniature Market in St. Louis for an Apoc game. I believe the final tally was 20k points on each side and we managed to get in a 5 turn game in a very reasonable amount of time. It was a traditional split between Imperial Forces (2 IG, Black Templars, 2 Blood Angels, 1 Dark Angel & maybe some codex marines) and Xenos forces (Eldar, Tyranids, Undivided Chaos, 2 Orks, Necrons). It was supposed to be 2,000 points per player with an optional 2k points, but the organizer had us throw in everything we brought. After seeing some of the Eldar war machines on the table I know why...

While we had minor issues with the table set-up, Miniature Market's tables are primarily designed for tournaments and they don't really have the capability to make larger surface areas. While the Imperial side managed a solid victory due to objectives, the Xenos side really made us pay for our gains. Apoc rules aside, here's what we had to play on:

Here are some of Partho's Boyz in the mix:

A true battle report would be hard to come by because the long narrow table meant that you had to focus on your immediate surroundings or get overwhelmed (or tired running back and forth). All in all, I was please with the crowd. Everyone was cool, and the level of painted armies (except, oddly, the game organizer) was superior to the last time I was there. Aerion and myself as got the "your stuff looks good on the table" complement from the resident Golden Daemon winner. I'm a painting technician (as opposed to the artists like Aerion & some-Slaaneshi-guy) and that's about the coolest thing that could ever be said about one of my armies.

What were our take home lessons? 1) Never underestimate the psychological impact of playing against a titan. At the start of the game, I had two eldar titans (Revenant & some Knight thing) staring me down and it was demoralizing to say the least. Firing my entire army (less the mighty lasgun obviously) for four turns took them out, but their stinking Xenos engines blew me apart as they died. 2) If you are organizing a game, don't play. Too many things come up during the course of a game that require too much attention to just ignore things and play. 3) Think carefully about setting up a 40,000 point game across a few 1,500 point game tables.

In any event, they should be having a few more of these Apoc games since we were supposed to keep track of story points (similar to the Lucky 13's campaign I hear?) that will have an impact on subsequent games.