Apocalypse Battle

So I played my second game of Apocalupse this past Sunday with Kris from over at Riders of the Cosmic Serpent. He's had his Phatom Titan for about a year now, and I wanted to give him a reason to use it, so we dida 4000 point Apocalypse battle, and had agreed on 2 Strategic Assets each.

Getting ready for the match, I knew he was going to bring the Titan, and likely one, if not both of his Phoenix jets. Beyond that, since he's a long time Saim-Hann player, so I expected a Wind Rider Formation, and possibly some other troops. So going into the game, my thought was to put 3 triple Lance Ravagers in a Titan Hunter formation to help deal with the Titan, and any extra Dark Lances to help the cause as well. I'd try and take out the flyers with my Splinter Raide formation on the turn they came in, since they counted as flyers, and I wouldn't loose the 12" to shoot them. I wanted to try the Karnival of Pain, so I dropped it in and let it eat up it's points as well. After that I went back and filled in points with Lelith and a retinue and 2 squads of wyches, a couple Talos, some Warrior squads on foot with Dark Lances, and Asdrubael Vect.

Now since most of my Raiders were used, I knew a large portion of my army wasn't going to be as mobile as I wanted to be, the first Asset I took was Webway Assault. This let me deep strike 3 webway portals onto the table, and I could move into one and out of another to get a unit wherever they were needed. For my second Asset, I knew my Splinter Raid Force already counted as 12" further away since they'd be flyers the turn they came in, so I decided I'd throw Nightshields on all the Raiders as well, this meant if he was over 18" away, he couldn't shoot me. Generally, that's not that big an advantage in Apocalypse where range starts being measured in feet, so to counteract that I took the Lords of Twilight. This made the turn Night Fight on one of the opponents shooting phase. I figured since most stuff would be 12+ inches away, he'd need to roll atleast a 7 or better on his nightfight roll to be able to see the Splinter Raid.

So Sunday roles around and after our little terrain fiasco, we got down to playing our game. We ended up on a 12 x 5 board, with only 2 larger pieces of terrain. The thought was, it wasn't going to save me much against flyers and titans. So Kris surprised me a bit, by bringing an all vehicle army, not a mech army, all vehicles, not a single infantry model in the list, and no troops. Which meant it was my game to loose. His list consisted of the Phantom and 2 Phoenix jets, his Scorpion super heavy tank, and a Cloudstrike formation of Fire Prisms. I was expecting a good game, and it was. He took the Careful Planning and Flank March assets, and put his whole army in reserve and gave me first turn. This allowed him to bring on up to half his reserves the first turn, and could come on from any table edge. The first turn saw the Titan and the Cloudstrike formation come on opposite corners of the board, the Titan laid loose on some infantry and my Talos, and the Cloudstrike used the focused beam to kill all 3 Ravagers with a D hit. It looked pretty grim at that point, his trick had worked nicely. Luckily, I brought in my Splinter Raid, and focused on the Cloudstrike formation. I managed to kill one Fire Prism and shake another, then on his turn dodged retribution with my Lords of Twighlight asset. It was bloody battle, and in the end his titan ended up with no weapons, thanks in part to warriors with Dark Lances and Lelith in close combat. Kris will be putting up a full video on his site in the coming weeks, so keep and eye on it.