The Scouring of Vibros

Hulls Angels recently ran a “day of war”, two thematically linked games, with a 2,000 point battle for objectives followed by an apocalypse scale game. It has been a while since my Ultramarines have taken to the field, but I love the madness that is an apocalypse game, so I dusted off my codex and headed over to the club to join in.

With no lords of war and no formations, it was back to the classic force organisation chart, what is now called combined arms. One of the great things about Ultramarines and marines in general is that there are so many viable styles of play, so I decided to go with a fast list, composed of the 10th and 8th companies (Assault), with scouts in Landspeeder storms as my core backed up by three whirlwinds, a Storm Raven two Landspeeders with melta guns, an ironclad dreadnaught and 5 Thunder Hammer Terminators in a Landraider Redeemer.

For the apocalypse game I also had another 3 Vindicators and a combat squad in a Rhino for an easy 500 points.

This will not end well

Game 1 was a slog-fest against Tau in which both sides completely forgot about the objectives and tried to wipe the opposition off the board. Three Riptides were making a nasty mess of anything they decided to remove from play, but as a combined unit they were only killing one unit a turn. A very early lucky shot with the Landspeeders killed a Hammerhead and won me first blood, while my Scout Bikes advanced in a death or glory attack taking out the one unit of Tau pathfinders on turn 1, suffering the wroth of the rest of the Tau army for their trouble. It was a high price to pay for them, but made a big difference to Tau shooting in the rest of the game.

Turn two and three were largely manoeuvring while the Whirlwinds acquitted themselves well, accounting for most of the enemy troops on the board. My Terminators underperformed, denting, but not destroying a unit of Ghost Keels, the Ironclad deep struck with skies of fury, positioned badly and died to pulse rifle fire. Time was running out, so the game was called early, but a turn four flanking move by the Landspeeder Storms got me line breaker as well, leading to a narrow victory in a very tough fight.

Scout bikes on the offensive

Game 2, the apocalypse game, saw most of my forces facing off against Eldar. The three vindicators sat almost on the other side of the board, dropping an apocalypse template a turn on advancing Orks. My Scouts made an early objective grab with their scout move and managed to sit on it through the rest of the game. So much happens in an apocalypse game that spanned 5 hours that I can’t cover it all in detail.

The Whirlwinds performed well again, killing Orks, Chaos Cultists, Tau and an entire unit of Banshees the turn they were forcibly disembarked from a wave serpent until Karandras assaulted them from the rear and totaled three in 2 turns. My Captain went toe to toe with an Autarch and won, splitting the Eldar in two with his relic blade, before being shredded by return fire from Dire Avengers and Dark Reapers. Death Korps of Kreig hammered out 7 or more strength 10 large blasts a turn and the whole game was very close until the last turn, where Dark Angel bike units made a grab for the objectives and put us ahead, with 3 out of 4 possible slay the warlords, with only 1 in return and 6 of the 8 objectives, leaving Vibros safely in Imperial hands.

Hulls Angels Wargames club

I have mentioned in a few posts already my local Gaming club Hulls Angels. It is a fantastic place full of friendly and like minded people and is doubly worth a visit now as they have just relocated!

Their new gaming hall is larger and better equipped, 20 tables, varied terrain and some storage space for club members too. There is more soft seating, space for board games, displays including award winning miniatures.

These are the guys who keep me coming back to the hobby time after time, with loads of enthusiasm, loads of ideas and always something going on. If you are in Hull go pay them a visit. Find out more about them on their site: hullsangels.com

Tournaments - Be on time

With so many local players at Hulls Angels spaces playing against York Garrison were limited. I was the last person in, so missed a slot. I am unhappy that I missed out, but best of luck to everyone playing and hope you have a great day.

I will keep honing my lists for next time...

Tournament rush again

It has been a while since I have had much hobby time, but tomorrow Hulls Angels are running a small tournament to raise money for a cancer charity. As well as raising money for a good cause it is also going to give me a chance to sharpen my rusty game play before we take on York. I have been tinkering with a list that is hard hitting but not as resilient as I would like. I will post more details of it after I play York Garrison to avoid too much meta game, but for now I will say that this list was originally written to face down 6 Imperial Knights and has already proven very effective against battle suits.

Apocalypse at 30,000 points a side!

Once in a while Hulls Angels hold large mulit-player Apocalypse games and I couldn't miss the chance to be the largest army on the board, so I grabbed together my stuff and headed to club.

Here is the long table shot. You can just about see the blue smear by the central ruins where my Ultramarines stopped. There is a full battle Company in reserve to use the outflank rule. It is the 3rd company with Rhino transport. There is also some of the 4th Company with drop pods and 25 Terminators are to arrive via teleport.

If you are wondering what the thin line of miniatures ahead of the deployment zone is, the 10th are 'skirmishing' and forming a nice speed-bump for the the Tyranids opposite.

Setup and ready

The small cabal of Dark Eldar on my left flank was quickly pulped by the line of heavy weapons in my front rank, but Morlocks and other Tyranid infiltrators appeared in my center and started chewing through my counter assault units.

In the center of the table things stayed fairly static as strategic assets redirected enemy reinforcements left and right resulting in an evenly matched slug-fest that lasted the rest of the game.

Angry Hatter a fellow collector of Astartes brought quite a few drop pods. Turn 1 his drop pods were counter charged by Demons who were appearing all over the board and by turn 2 between us both we had dropped the better part of a battle company into this 4 x 6 table.

Orbital insertion

Things were still not going well despite weight of numbers, the Demons were not going down and the shooting from the Ork horde you can see in the distance was proving uncannily accurate. Turn 3 saw 3rd company level the odds as Angry borrowed them to outflank the Orks, taking them in the rear. 100 battle brothers and a command squad disembarked from their transports and reduced a swath of the green skin threat to a bloody smear with rapid fired bolters.

On my end of the table I was still struggling to contain the infiltrators in my back lines. To add even more mayhem Typhus and his honor guard appeared and  started leveling targets on after another.
The dark shadow of a super heavy flyer graced the table as the Harridan swept in over the Ultramarines' heads and every Imperial flyer on the board zoomed to intercept, eager to claim the epic kill that taking down this bio monstrosity was. Frightened and sporadic ground fire proved ineffective, despite the Harridan being in skimmer mode. It was finally a lucky shot from a Storm Raven that brought the creature down, although the pilot and crew paid with their lives as the enemy singled them out for reward.

A shining beacon on hope appeared in the form of a teleport beacon and the 1st Company made a strategic hammer blow and dropped into the central ruins, taking one of the key objectives for our side.

Three turns was enough to fill the day and there were some epic individual stories.

My memory is fogged by fatigue and enjoyment, so if you were there and remember anything significantly different please comment below and I will do my best to update things.