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| A quick shot of our opponent's table. |
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What happens when Space Elves and Space Orkz duke it out for no reason on 4 tables with 18,000 points per side? I'll tell you what happens. APORKALYPSE. When the two armies with the hardest super heavy vehicles to destroy in the game face each other... well then even rocks falling from the sky (literally) won't stop their battle.... for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!
This friendly game of Apocalypse was very sudden and was between 3 Eldar players and 3 Ork players. Originally the points were supposed to be in the 20-25k range, but we decided to keep it "light" and play only with 18,000 points per side. And boy was that a LOT.
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| Ork table #2! |
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| Ork table #1! |
Let me tell you something about Orkz. They don't scale up with points very well. The more points you play, the harder it is to find the models to fill in the gaps, because our stuff is oh so cheap. Our list was created in less than 30 minutes.. without writing anything down. O_O We just said what we had and what we wanted and added it all up on a calculator. So in the end we ended up with a lot of "theoretical" models.
We had around 20 Big Meks with Kustom Force Fields scattered all over the play, but we maybe had the models for 4-5 of them (each Stompa had 2 Big Meks with KFFs with some Burna Boyz meks) and we pretty much said that we were going to recycle models. I mean, after all.. all of our models would not have been able to fit on the tables.
There really was no premise or back-story for this epic battle, but the way I decided to look at it was a huge ork Waaagh attacking two Eldar Craftworlds at the same time. Why? Oh.. the usual stuff.
I never really learned the difference between all the Eldar vehicles. Wave Serpents, Scorpions, Cobras, Vampire Hunters.. and what nots. For some reason they all just look and sound the same to me.. and they are all nigh impossible to kill or out-shoot. I'll let the pictures speak for my ignorance. There were a lot of Forge World Eldar fliers. Yeah. You can't charge them, the Orkz' short shooting ranges are decreased even further and the need to roll 6s to hit and having to go through TWO
rerollable 4+ cover saves takes care of even massive fire batteries like Lootaz or Deffkoptaz. Oh, well.
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| 3 out of da 5 Stompaz! |
And the Orkz.. Well.. We fielded 5 Stompaz. Yep. Two of them were built from scratch just the night before. They might look silly, but were SO killy. The white stompa with the googly eyes was dubbed "Da Kindergarten Stompa" from one of the younger players in the store. Does it mean that it had a higher education than any Ork in Ork "history"?
Quite possible if you ask me. ; )
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| Da Kindergarten Stompa! |
Every single Stompa was armed to da teef with dakka. Deff Arsenals, Lifta Droppas, Belly Gunz, Gazes of Mork, Repair Krewz... you name it. We had so much dakka we put the Eldar scatter lasers and other killy pretty lights to shame! No, seriously. Our shooting phase took longer than our moving phase and once you hear how many Ork Boyz we had to move... you won't believe it. Once we saw the Eldar deployed we pretty much knew that our Stompaz were as good as dead, hoping to have at least 2 standing at the beginning of our turn.
But you know what? Stompaz are tough as nails! As I said before, each Stompa had a Repair Krew, 2 Big Meks (who allow weapons to shoot in the same turn they were fixed by them on a 4+!!!), 3 Burna Meks who could fix weapons.. and of course that delicious 4+ cover save from the Kustom Force Field. Add that to the 13 armor on the front and the fact that their primary weapons ignore any destroyed or shaken results on a 4+ and the Stompa becomes a vehicle to behold!
Other things we fielded were the various Apocalypse formations. The Shokk Attack Battery composed of 3 Big Meks with Shokk Attack Guns was quite devastating, a Dread Mob, and Ghazghkull Thraka's barrage of 3
FALLIN' ROCKS definitely surprised our opponents... and us. One of them scattered onto the poor Giant Squiggoth inflicting a small boo-boo on the monstrosity. We had the formation with Lootas in Trukkz, a Deffkopta formation with 21 models, a Nob Biker formation lead by a Warboss, Zagstruk deep struck from the skies and Snikkrot did his snikky schtick. Oh, and we had 3 Green Tides with 200 Ork Boyz in each. My Green tide also had Old Zogwort (completely useless because of the psychic protection that the Eldar have, but the chance of a Deep Strike with 200 Boyz was just too silly to miss) and the infamous Mad Dok Grotsnik who gave all of them Feel no Pain.
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| Avatar: The Last A-- | | . |
Surprisingly enough, none of the Green Tides got wiped out. Scary templates, deadly salvos of alien weaponry that definitely did not make the "dakka" sound.. they somehow managed to foot slog it until they reached the enemies. Well, one of them did hit a formation of an Avatar who was leading every friggin' Eldar Phoenix Lord in existance. That whole thing was more than 1500 points by itself and it did not flinch when it got charged by more than 200 Orkz. Until the end of the game this Ultimate Deathstar unit was kicking ass and taking names and our brave Orkz Boyz, Warbosses and Mad Doks couldn't do squat.. ;_;
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| Clash of the Titans |
Like all games, this Apocalypse game was more of a massive monster mash than an objective game and at the end we were too excited AND tired to care about who controlled the most objectives. And to be honest, I don't think that anything of value was left beneath the stampede of Ork Boyz and Stompaz.
The only Stompa that got gunned down was the melee-oriented Goff Stompa that got most of its structure points melted by a brave unit of Eldar Fire Dragons, but it wasn't until it fell the black Revenant Scout Titan that it turned into a pile of steaming scraps.
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| Stompas ARE Walkers after all.. |
With all the big toys on the field, everyone was trying to achieve moral victory by destroying as many super heavies as possible, but bad rolls, lucky saves and even luckier repair rolls made this feat so much harder. I specifically remember an Eldar Cobra failing both of its rerollable saves and then rolling double 6s next turn, repairing all casualties. Or How a Stompa lost all of its weapons at one point and managed to repair all of them.. Or a Stompa climbing up a building to get a clear shot. The Eldar also had that nasty Nighspinner silliness that made all terrain for MY Green Tide difficult AND dangerous. I then proceeded to lifta drop its ass every single turn, managing to stop it from shooting by glancing it.
I was also a big fan of a melee between a Deff Dread leading some Killa Kanz that managed to krump the faces of a bigger Warwalker squad. Alien technology? Put a gretchin in trash can, wield it shut and see what happens to your fancy Space Elf toys.. : )
In general, the game was a lot of fun. There was not a whole lot of carnage, because most of the Eldar firepower was directed towards our lumbering behemoths. In the end, a Stompa, a Revenant Scout Titan and a few Eldar fliers bit the dust, and both Cobras were wrecked beyond any repair.. I learned that I have less Orkz than I thought I had and that I need more Boyz. But I guess it makes sense, I've been in the hobby for just a year now, the spores are still underground. ;P I'm looking forward to another Apocalypse game and then hopefully I'll have at least one of my Stompaz painted and ready to go. I'd love to do something like they did in the Stompa Apocalypse White Dwarf, where each Stompa had it's own secret mission to accomplish or something like that. I'm a big fan of story driven campaigns or battles.
A lot of the Orkz were painted, which was a pleasant surprise. Usually in games like this da Orkz are mostly black or even grey, but I think that 95% of all Ork Boyz were painted. Now that's impressive! I do have a lot more pictures to post, but maybe I'll save them for some other occasion.
