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.

A long way to go

I am not actually sure when this photo is from. The painting progress, which is post Yorkshire Open suggests this is about September 2012, so I have set the post date to then. I was already at 3 Battle Companies, my favored 4th, 5th and 6th with a smattering of tanks, scouts and other companies.

Yorkshire Open Doubles

The Yorkshire Open Doubles tournament at Warhammer World was my first event at the hallowed halls of GW. It was also the first event I attended with 6th ed rules, just weeks into the new rule book. Myself and Harry from Hulls Angels jumped aboard the coach from Games Workshop Hull, with 1200 points of Space Marines between us. 600 points apiece split between my Ultramarines and Harry's Blood Angels.

Ready for the off

I ran with two tactical squads in the colours of the 5th a Chaplin  and a 5 man Devastator squad with missile launchers in the colours of the 4th. I also dug out some classic marines and painted them shining gold and doused liberally with snow as objective markers, along with a teleport homer for the relic mission.

Our first game was a bit of a washout, facing off against two Vindicators and a Daemon Prince. Harry's Tactical squad broke and fled and the rest of our forces were picked apart convincingly. We felt it was a bad game overall and dubious lists, but despite a challenge from us everything added up and the defeat stuck.

During the break Harry entered his Captain into the painting competition and although he didn't win it was good to see it up against so much excellent competition.

The second game was also a loss, although a narrow one. It was the most enjoyable game of the day, with a headlong rush for the relic and last ditch attempts to win as well as some great give and take with the guys from the York club.

The third game was also a loss, although by this time we were getting used to it. Bad dice and bad luck haunted us throughout and patience was wearing thin.

Our final tally for the day put us low down the table, but we made back a lot of points on our painting and our overall force. I look forward to the next one!

One thing did come out of the day though. Harry bought a Warhound Titan, to be named Ted.

Starting somewhere in the middle

So where do you start when you are collection 1,000 marines? I wanted a small army that I could play with pretty soon and that would embody the drop pod aesthetic that had really captured my imagination. With only a limited grasp of the mechanics of 5th edition, I put together a 5 drop pod 51 marine list that filled out nicely with 30 jump pack-less assault marines and a Dreadnought.

With such a heavy weight to the assault marines, the first chapter I was going to paint was the 8th, the Ultramarines reserve company, dedicated to assault.

 List clutched in my hand I turned up at Warhammer world and with my friends help bought the entire army outright. 6 drop pods, 6 boxes of assault marines, the Assault on Black Reach boxed set and a tactical squad box along with a few of the metal shoulder pads. The WHW staff gave me a great box to haul it all home in, a green plasma ammunition crate that I am still using to haul my armour around in.

Warhammer World started it all

Warhammer World is an international Mecca for fans of the Warhammer and Wahammer 40k hobby.

I did not actually visit until 2010 and I was blown away by the fantastic atmosphere and great gaming tables.

I had been out of the hobby for a while and I had agreed to meet a couple of friends for a game. This was my first encounter with drop pods and it was these that re-ignited my passion for the game and lead me to collect my first 'human' army. This, I decided, was how Space Marines were supposed to play!

Why the Ultramarines? I liked the fact that the Ultramarines are the definitive Space marines of the 41st millennium. They are part of the core cannon and have some pretty epic battles. They also fit pretty well with the rest of my Eastern Fringe collection, with Iyanden Eldar, Tau and a smattering of Orks. Last but not least there is a fairly clearly defined number. More or less 1,000 marines, meaning that however distant, there was an end point for me to reach to.